Family Influences on the Achievement of Economically Disadvantaged Students: Implications for Gifted Identification and Programming

This review of the literature looks at family influences on the achievement of economically disadvantaged youth, with an emphasis on relationships among families, academic achievement, and gifted education. Theoretical perspectives on the study of families have focused primarily on families as static systems and families as dynamic systems and, more recently, on families as interactive systems. Correlation between single parenting and low academic achievement has been found, though the presence of extended family members appears to overcome this problem in many instances, and processes that support academic achievement may also mediate this relationship. The importance of schools and communities in supporting families and the family culture is stressed. Studies specific to gifted education have found status variables that correlate directly with identification of students as gifted, and that indicate the importance of focusing on individual expressions of giftedness within cultural contexts when evaluating gifted students within economically disadvantaged families. (Contains 70 references.) (DB

Core Attributes of Giftedness: A Foundation for Recognizing the Gifted Potential of Minority and Economically Disadvantaged Students

A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. This report explores the characteristics of giftedness in minority, language minority, and economically disadvantaged student populations and ways to assess giftedness in these populations. A qualitative content analysis is used to analyze gifted literature to determine characteristics of gifted children in general (n=262) and characteristics of gifted children from specific cultural groups (n=95), including African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics. Ten core attributes of giftedness are identified: communication skills, imagination/creativity, humor, inquiry, insight, interests, memory, motivation, problem-solving, and reasoning. A general description accompanies each identified attribute. Implications are discussed for using these core attributes to facilitate educators\u27 recognition of gifted abilities in student populations from minority or economically disadvantaged families and areas, and to guide educators in the selection of measures for identification of minority or economically disadvantaged families and areas. Recommendations for educators include the use of a variety of evaluation measures to assess giftedness and the use of standards to interpret performance on tests that accommodate the differences in the expression of gifted students from diverse backgrounds. An appendix includes a list of categories of giftedness and relevant checklist indicators for the different categories. (Contains 74 references.) (Author/CR