Engaging Diverse Gifted Learners in U.S. History Classrooms

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Multicultural Education

With increasingly diverse school populations comes a need to design classroom environments and experiences that are culturally responsive. To meet this need, Green (2007) argued that teachers must first develop culturally responsive teaching methods to recognize and acknowledge students’ differences by creating classroom activities that develop a student’s self-worth. Culturally responsive classrooms are designed to be sensitive to students’ needs, incorporating learning and teaching styles that reflect the diversity within the class. Culturally responsive teachers believe that all students are capable learners and hold high expectations for learning through challenging curriculum and by developing relationships built on mutual respect and accountability (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). In a culturally responsive school setting, teachers, parents, and students share a commitment to positive learning outcomes and seek to empower students for success through developing personal strength and integrity (Nelson & Pang, 2006).

Culturally responsive classrooms are a critical component of multicultural education. Gorski (2001) defined multicultural education as a “transformative movement in education that produces critically thinking, socially active members of society” (p. 61). He noted that multicultural education requires more than simply modifying the current curriculum or adding new classroom activities, explaining, “It is a movement that calls for new attitudes, new approaches, and a new dedication for laying the foundation for the transformation of society” (p. 62).

Banks and McGee (2001) maintained that such a philosophical approach would enable schools to become environments where students from both genders and from diverse cultural, linguistic, and ethnic groups would have an equal opportunity to experience school success. Schools that embody such an approach recognize that factors such as race, socioeconomic status, gender, culture, and religion affect students’ learning and that educators must embrace multiple perspectives to show how all cultural groups have contributed to society. With this more inclusive view, a multicultural perspective seeks to challenge broad assumptions and stereotypes to provide all students with a better understanding of cultural differences.

Meeting the Needs of Diverse Gifted Learners

To address the needs of diverse gifted learners, Ford and Harris (2000) developed a model for gifted education that merged the approaches of Banks’ models for multicultural education and Bloom’s (1956) Taxonomy, a well-established model for teaching higher order thinking. They maintain that the goals, objectives, and theoretical underpinnings of multicultural education and gifted education are more complimentary than different. They also believe that while gifted education must integrate the goals of multicultural education by attending more to issues of diversity, multicultural education must likewise incorporate the goals of gifted education by challenging students cognitively and academically. Through their model, Ford and Harris (1999) posited that multicultural gifted education supports young people intellectually, academically, and aesthetically.

The Ford and Harris (2000) model combines higher order thinking skills with culturally relevant content to engage students in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as they examine different perspectives and become involved in social action. They argue that multicultural education provides a method to engage gifted learners, address their individual academic needs, create interest through meaningful engagement, and prepare students to live in a diverse society.

In reviewing various approaches to addressing multicultural issues in the classroom, Banks (1991) delineated the following four approaches to integrating multicultural content: contributions, additive, transformational, and social action. In the contributions approach, multicultural content is “contributed” to the curriculum by supplementing the curriculum with learning about cultural traditions and holidays. The standard curriculum remains unchanged, and various groups are highlighted briefly, for example, by instituting a Black History Week or Mexican History Week. Students learn about “safe” cultural heroes who did not try to change the social order; as a result, students do not gain an authentic understanding of various groups.

In the additive approach, the basic curriculum also remains unchanged as minority groups are “added” to the curriculum through the study of an additional book or unit, or the assignment of a special project. This approach further embeds the view of diverse groups as segregated because they are studied separately rather than infused throughout the curriculum. In this approach, various groups are never truly understood.

In the transformational approach, the curriculum is restructured to reflect contributions and perspectives of various groups. This approach helps students to develop an appreciation for various cultural groups by highlighting contributions made by the groups and empowers students by showing examples of success from all cultures.

Through a social action approach, students are able to identify important social problems and develop actions to resolve the problems. Young people become empowered to make social change through the knowledge and skills learned and are proactive in their approach to society.

Inspired by this model, Ford and Harris (1999) merged Banks’ levels of curriculum integration with Bloom’s Taxonomy. The combination of the Banks’ model and Bloom’s Taxonomy focuses on the intersections of the transformation and social action approach with Bloom’s analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels. At these intersections, students are able to experience multiple perspectives, and multicultural education becomes a transformative process that allows students to make changes in society. Implementing such an approach with gifted learners involves teachers engaging their students in processing ideas, concepts, and understandings of multicultural content through the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy—analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Students are empowered to take an active role in their own lives and in the life of their community, and teachers become empowered to seek positive changes for their students. Finally, this perspective provides opportunities for students to learn from each other and develop positive relationships.

Discussions

Discussions in social studies classrooms have been identified as a means of making education a multicultural experience. A discussion involves interactive group conversation dealing with a particular topic and often incorporates an exchange of differing views on the topic. Hess (2004) noted that high-quality discussions allowed students to develop original ideas and critical thinking, essential skills needed to help students analyze varying perspectives. Hess indicated that another benefit of discussions is they enabled students to recognize, understand, and begin accepting differences among individuals.

Camicia (2009) found that through discussions of controversial issues, students were able to hear competing perspectives and evaluate their beliefs against other views. Open dialogue among diverse students thereby allowed for exploration of personal opinions and those held by peers. Furthermore, Parker (2001) posited that discussions could become significant learning experiences for young people by allowing participants to challenge the points of view held by others while reexamining their own beliefs.

White (2008) worked with middle school social studies teachers to explore the meaning of social justice and how to infuse it into the curriculum to engage students in social action. The teachers organized the curriculum around themes such as racism or sexism and had students examine the content of the curriculum through those lenses to gain multiple perspectives. As part of their instruction, the teachers supplied students with texts that related to the issues and invited students to share significant personal stories in class discussions. The educators also used current events as another means for facilitating discussions. In their examination of racism and sexism, for example, they had students identify how groups were portrayed in the media and discussed how this might affect attitudes toward particular groups.

A significant trait that differentiates gifted learners from their age peers is their capacity to cognitively absorb information and use it productively. They analyze information intuitively and efficiently, and learn quickly and effectively (Parks, 2009). As a result, gifted learners require instruction appropriate to their higher order thinking capacities. Thought-provoking discussions and debates are critical to keeping advanced learners intellectually engaged.

Discussions support the high level of language development and verbal ability evident in gifted learners as well as their ability to generate original ideas and solutions and debate complex and abstract concepts (Clark, 2007; Davis, Rimm, & Siegle, 2011). Moreover, thoughtful discussions allow students opportunities to better understand the world in which they live and hold important conversations about their beliefs and ideals.

For example, discussions on immigration reform require students to research the content of immigration policies to gain an understanding of the topic, while also evaluating their own views on the issue. In a middle or high school U.S. history course, students could be assigned to research immigration legislation and the difficult challenges faced by immigrant groups in their community. Students might even want to poll their school’s students and faculty regarding immigration issues. Following that polling and research, students would then be ready to hold a discussion on the issues, examine how others view the topic, and reexamine their personal beliefs about immigration. Such a discussion would lead to a more formal classroom debate, with students publishing the debate highlights in their school newspaper or class website to help raise awareness among their peers of the difficult issues surrounding immigration. Students might also be encouraged to produce a short video or news clip explaining the controversies to other teenagers and disseminate this video via YouTube.

The incorporation of thought-provoking discussions also supports the social action component of multicultural education. For example, young people would enter into deliberate discussion about immigration controversies, develop a deeper understanding of the issues, and design a social action campaign to address the difficult living conditions of new immigrant populations in their communities.

Infusing Multicultural Literature and Poetry

Social science educators may also consider infusing multicultural literature that represents individuals from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities into the curriculum to reinforce the multiple cultural perspectives that students are being asked to reflect on. Secondary educators may also consider infusing poetry from diverse groups. Incorporating multicultural trade books or young adult novels in the teaching of social studies also presents students with multiple perspectives on a wide range of topics through the portrayal of characters (Boyle-Baise, 1996; Jones, 2005). In their work with multicultural literature that accurately reflected the cultures of specific groups, Bainbridge, Pantaleo, and Ellis (1999) found that such literature fostered greater acceptance of diverse groups. They also reported gains in self-esteem and academic achievement among culturally diverse students who were exposed to books in which they saw themselves represented.

Secondary educators who integrate multicultural trade books or young adult novels into the curriculum will need effective strategies. In an interactive literacy strategy referred to as sitting in the hot seat, students assume the role of a character featured in the literature, speaking from the character’s perspective and providing an analysis of their point of view. For example, students in a U.S. history class read literature that describes the experiences of young children who immigrated to this country and arrived at Ellis Island at the turn of the 19th century. Through this reading they learn that some children were sent without parents and survived the difficult voyage as stowaways. Once they arrived, they faced great difficulties in finding ways to earn money, and many ended up living on the streets. Participants in this activity assume the role of the stowaway children and respond in character to questions posed by classmates.

Another strategy is using poetry strips to examine passages from the text in greater depth. Students select sentences that stand out and work collaboratively to arrange the sentences so that they make a statement about the topic being studied. When reading narratives about the experiences of immigrants, for example, students might focus on examples of discrimination each group faced. They would be directed to select passages from the narratives that highlight the experience, write a sentence on a strip of paper that captures the essence of that experience, and then arrange the sentence strips to begin crafting a poem that portrays the experience and also represents the voices of the immigrants.

Writing in the role of the literary historical character is another strategy that educators may consider. In this technique, students assume the role of a character and write from their perspective on a situation that occurred in the book. For example, students studying immigration might read about the experiences of a Mexican child who crossed the Rio Grande River with his family and traveled over rugged terrain to finally arrive in the Southwest, where he and his family settled. Following this reading, students would engage in creative writing exercises in which they wrote letters to family members back home in Mexico, or wrote entries from the main character’s journal depicting the immigration journey. All three of these strategies—sitting in the hot seat, poetry strips, and writing in the role of the character—enable students to examine the world from another perspective to better understand others’ motivations and attitudes. For the learner, these experiences involve higher levels of analysis, and synthesis—the production of new information and ideas.

The use of literature and poetry infused in social studies curriculum supports gifted learners with their ability to integrate ideas and disciplines, and nurtures their advanced language development and verbal ability (Clark, 2007; Davis et al., 2011). Infusion of literature and poetry also assists teachers in addressing the affective dimension of advanced learners. Gifted students appreciate teachers who acknowledge their heightened levels of sensitivity and empathy (Piechowski, 2006), and provide them supportive opportunities to interact with literature through identification, catharsis, and insight, learning historical content while developing self-understanding (Ferguson, 2009; Hébert, 2011).

The inclusion of multicultural picture books depicting the topics under study also helps broaden students’ understanding of history. Literacy research has found that secondary teachers value picture books highly as appropriate instructional material for teenagers (Carr, Buchanan, Wentz, Weiss, & Brant, 2001; Graff, 2010) as they provide background and context for academic engagement. Older students in particular appreciate this nontraditional approach, especially when the illustrations in the books are sophisticated.

When properly selected, picture books can readily and effectively reinforce major concepts in a middle or high school classroom. They provide opportunities to integrate the arts with content subjects, and they hold special appeal for visual learners. Picture books read aloud to selected teenagers may introduce provocative issues and moral dilemmas that stimulate higher order critical thinking. Moreover, secondary social studies educators with limited instructional time appreciate the efficiency involved in facilitating thoughtful discussion through a picture book that can be read aloud to a group of teenagers in a short amount of class time.

In studying immigration, middle and high school students may enjoy sophisticated picture books such as Shawn Tan’s (2007) The Arrival, a wordless graphic novel that portrays the displacement and awe with which immigrants responded to their new home and a new way of life. Amy Hest’s (1997) When Jessie Came Across the Sea helps teenagers appreciate the immigration experience through the narrative of a 13-year-old girl who left behind her beloved family in a poor Eastern European village to establish a new life in New York City. Elvira Woodruff’s (1999) The Memory Coat, another portrayal of immigration at the turn of the century, provides students with a poignant depiction of the Ellis Island experience and the fears of being turned away by immigration authorities on arrival in this country. These books provide their readers with thoughtful representations of immigrant experiences, challenging students to examine these experiences across various groups and time periods. Exposure to high-quality picture books such as these may inspire secondary students to further investigate the immigration experience of diverse populations.

Infusing poetry and art into the curriculum further assists students in examining multiple perspectives (Camangian, 2008). McCall (2004) found that reading poems from marginalized groups helped students learn about the personal experiences and provided opportunities to listen to the voices of people who are rarely represented in history textbooks. Analyzing such poems enabled students to discuss those experiences in light of their prior assumptions and to evaluate personal biases and stereotypes. Through poetry interpretation, students were able to represent their understanding of the cultural group being studied as well as make connections to their own lives.

For example, teachers may locate poems online written by Chinese immigrants at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, offering students a glimpse into the lived experiences of those who entered our country generations ago. To provide a more complete understanding of attitudes toward immigration, teachers may also share examples of poetry expressing negative feelings about immigrant groups entering the United States. Using online resources, teachers can access controversial poetry to stimulate thoughtful discussion and debate among middle and high school students. One example is Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s work titled Unguarded Gates, which depicts the xenophobic attitudes evident in the late 1890s in the United States. An examination of such material could help teenagers thoughtfully examine the fluctuating sentiments of Americans regarding immigration laws in this country throughout history, and would involve advanced levels of analysis.

Middle and high school students can also study the experiences of immigrant groups through the literary devices of the time period under study. Following their reading of and research on this work, students could produce a class exhibit of artwork depicting the historical experiences of the immigrant group under study and hold a forum to discuss their interpretations. Stephens and Karnes (2009) maintained that products such as these are essential to teaching gifted learners, as they allow teenagers to express themselves and convey their understanding of broad concepts in interesting and complex ways. This approach supports gifted learners with their ability to retain large quantities of information and synthesize their ideas in a comprehensive way (Clark, 2007; Davis et al., 2011). Such projects in a U.S. history class help to increase motivation while providing contexts in which teenagers can develop their knowledge and skills.

Role-Play

Role-play can be described as assuming the character of another and representing that individual’s experience in a drama. Teachers may want to engage students in dramatic role-playing experiences to present multiple perspectives in teaching historical content. Fry (2009) identified dramatic interpretations as scenarios in which students assume the role of a member of a given group to grasp that group’s perspective on specific historical events. By placing themselves in such roles, young people internalize aspects of the culture being portrayed while also learning course content. In producing a dramatic interpretation, students also engage in critical thinking activities, cooperative learning experiences, and self-exploration, all of which contribute to a multicultural education. Role-play is one strategy that enriches instruction and supports the unusual sensitivity to the feelings of others evident in gifted learners (Clark, 2007; Piechowski, 2006). In conducting role-playing scenarios in her classroom, Rosler (2008) found that students engaged in critical thinking and developed empathy with the groups under study.

Teenagers studying the history of U.S. immigration will certainly examine the experiences of people arriving at Ellis Island through the decades. Students can use primary accounts and other resources obtained from library and Internet research to depict the experiences of those who arrived at Ellis Island. For example, students may read stories of immigrants traveling in cramped quarters in steerage, undergoing immediate inspections to determine whether they carried diseases, having their clothing chalked if they were potentially sick, undergoing literacy tests, and being subjected to other rigorous inspections and medical examinations. Individuals who failed the medical exam, were missing documents, or could not produce legal documents were all held in detention rooms for days before being deported.

In conducting role-plays, teenagers would use class time to design their scenarios and write the dialogue they would use to realistically portray their interpretation of the Ellis Island immigration experience. Their scenarios might include scenes from the steerage compartment on the boats, the tensions evident in the inspections, the challenges of providing legal immigration documents, dialogues with the immigration officials at Ellis Island, medical examinations, and perhaps the decision to deport individuals seen as unfit for entry into the country.

Ethnographic Research

Secondary teachers have found ethnographic research techniques—including interviews, participant observation, and studying cultural artifacts—to be effective in enriching the social studies curriculum and providing students opportunities to investigate multiple perspectives on historical events. Educators who use interviewing as a means of giving voice to marginalized groups have found that it allows students to have genuine interactions with individuals from diverse cultures, explore various perspectives, understand differences among groups, explore their own biases, and identify common stereotypes and compare them with the actual experiences of the cultural group (Jones, 2005; Thornton & Garrett, 1995). Teachers who employed interviews in teaching history found they fostered cultural sensitivity and challenged students to confront previously held beliefs.

Teachers of U.S. history may want to organize a series of class speakers from immigrant groups to share their experiences. To prepare for the guest speakers, students would explore barriers facing immigrant groups and generate a list of interview questions geared toward understanding how those barriers may influence immigrants’ well-being on arrival in the United States. Based on the information gained from these questions, students would then be required to create presentations of those described experiences to help raise the awareness of other students in their school.

Students might interview recent immigrants and develop case reports of each interview to be compiled in a class anthology for students enrolled in the class years later to read. Students may also conduct oral history interviews with older relatives or neighbors who immigrated to the United States. An oral history collection of interviews might be electronically archived by the technology buffs in the history classroom and preserved for the school district and the local historical society. In addition, podcasts of interviews with individuals who recently immigrated to the community could be created and celebrated with the community.

In employing participant observation as a learning technique, educators might attend a local cultural arts festival with students. Following classroom training in how to write field notes, students would observe events such as dance demonstrations, concerts, and theatrical productions, and enjoy the culinary delicacies of the culture. Through field notes, photography, and conversations with participants, they might produce a class photo journal to raise the awareness of students in their school of cultural differences and similarities. Alternatively, students could also create an online museum of the cultural festival in which they participated, complete with photographs, essays, videos, podcasts, and discussion forums.

In examining cultural artifacts as part of their training in ethnographic research, students attending the cultural arts festival could investigate significant representations of the culture under study. For example, in examining the artifacts from a local Hispanic festival, students might enjoy studying the juguetes, tiny toys intricately designed by wood-carvers in many Mexican villages and sold at local fiestas and to international tourists. These carvings of various animals painted in bright, bold colors would be photographed and studied to gain insight into the value of artistry within the culture. Investigating cultural artifacts such as these may reinforce understandings gained from interviews with individuals at the festival.

Researchers and educators in gifted education have long maintained that curriculum for advanced learners should provide opportunities for students to engage in original, practical, and authentic work in the disciplines (Tomlinson et al., 2009). Gifted students in U.S. history classrooms must have opportunities to create new knowledge rather than simply recalling and recognizing historical facts. Teachers of diverse gifted learners must provide opportunities for them to learn the skills and methodologies of a discipline by asking them to function as practicing professionals in a field of study (Renzulli, 1977). Through interviewing, participant observation, and analyzing cultural artifacts, young people learn to work as social scientists. In doing so, they are “transformed from lesson learner or consumer of knowledge to problem solver and knowledge producer” (Tomlinson et al., 2009, p. 7).

“Gifted students in U.S. history classrooms must have opportunities to create new knowledge rather than simply recalling and recognizing historical facts.”

Primary Documents

Training students in historical methodology includes teaching them how to analyze primary documents. Primary documents consist of unpublished material that was created or produced during a time period under study. Examples include manuscripts, diaries, letters, photographs, postcards, posters, audio or video recordings, oral histories, speeches, or official documents (Bogdan & Biklen, 2006).

Boyle-Baise (1996) found local history projects that incorporated primary documents helped students learn about their community and gave voice to marginalized groups. Danker (2003) argued that primary sources introduce students to authentic voices of members of marginalized groups and incorporate groups whose histories have been traditionally excluded from social studies courses. By collecting local stories, students can balance various perceptions of groups with the information they collected firsthand. Through the use of primary documents, teachers can incorporate what Merryfield (2004) referred to as substantive culture. Recognizing that studying other cultures often leads to the exotic, peculiar, or trivial facts, substantive culture allows students to appreciate others’ perspectives by learning how other people perceive work, time, space, roles, social hierarchies, and the relative importance of the group versus the individual.

In this approach, students can use scholarly databases filtered for young people to examine photographs and archival materials that help them understand the comparative experiences of immigrant groups. From their research, students might produce materials that can be used by others in their high school. Alternatively, students may search for primary documents and photographs highlighting one aspect of the immigration experience and create a mural of those experiences for the school media center, the local historical society, or the community library.

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is the collection, editing, and presentation of still images to present a story. The goal of this type of journalism is to present a fair and accurate depiction of events within an historical context. Social studies teachers have found that students appreciate it as a method of making sense of important issues addressed in history courses. Dejean (2008) discovered that photojournalism could help young people understand social justice issues from multiple perspectives. Through the use of photography, students were able to conceptualize social justice and internalize their understandings of it.

Serriere (2010) had her students analyze photographs to assist them in defining the meaning of “equality” and “justice,” and found that students were able to reenvision those concepts through analysis and discussion. Students viewed photographs and were asked to imagine the reality of the individuals pictured, attempt to understand their perspectives, and develop rationales for their views on life. Through discussions of their work, students discovered that the meaning of social justice varied even among their classmates. Students were able to determine the essence of social justice or injustice from their own perspectives as they delved into discussions of causes and solutions of problems of social injustice.

Incorporating this method into secondary social studies courses enables teachers to effectively address the needs of gifted students. Photojournalism supports numerous characteristics of gifted learners, including their emotional depth and intensity, as well as their strong capacity for processing information, generating original ideas, and comprehensively synthesizing ideas and solutions (Clark, 2007; Davis et al., 2011).

To learn about immigration, students might shoot photographs to create a picture book of their interpretation of an immigrant teenager’s experience or produce a photo journal representing the challenges faced by immigrant children. High school students could create a multimedia production incorporating film and photography, and post their research-based interpretation of the immigration experience on the popular photo-sharing website, www.Flickr.com.

Musically oriented students could write lyrics and compose music for a song that captures an immigrant’s journey to and from their homeland to the United States, then record it, and post it on the class website.

Service Learning

To make education a transformational experience that raises a student’s social conscience, secondary educators need to engage students in service-learning projects. Terry (2008) defined service learning as “a method by which students learn and develop through curriculum integration and active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that address needs in their community” (p. 46). Brown and Howard (2005) identified service-learning projects as opportunities to engage students in discussion and examinations of inequities in society as a way to promote social justice. Ohn and Wade (2009) defined service learning as a method in which people learn and develop through active and organized experiences designed to address a community’s needs. In conducting service-learning projects with their classes, they found that students gained much new knowledge about their community, leading them to reconstruct their belief systems and moving them toward the evaluation levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Researchers have found that service learning provides gifted students with opportunities to exhibit high levels of responsibility, creativity, reflective judgment, self-awareness, empathy, and autonomy of thought and action (Terry, 2003; Terry, Bohnenberger, Renzulli, Cramond, & Sisk, 2008). Terry (2008) noted that service learning can help gifted learners reach their creative potential as they seek solutions to society’s problems, while also assisting them in their journey toward self-actualization.

Service-learning opportunities for teenagers can be designed to address the problems facing immigrants today. Service learning involves high levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation for teenagers. Through the use of ethnographic research methods described above, students could examine the plight of immigrant groups and maintain a consistent feature on this subject in their school newspaper, with articles on the challenges facing immigrant groups in their community. High school students could also write research-based editorials for the local newspaper about the immigrant group’s challenges. Students might also enjoy creating bilingual orientation materials welcoming new immigrant students to their school and community. To meet the needs of the various immigrant groups, students might consider designing and implementing a campaign to provide school supplies for young children in the economically impoverished immigrant community in their town.

Researchers and theorists in gifted education have maintained that many gifted young people exhibit high levels of sensitivity and empathy for others (Hébert, 2011; Piechowski, 2006; Silverman, 1993). Middle and high school teachers working with diverse gifted learners can help students cope with their strong emotions by providing appropriate outlets that nurture empathy. Thus, service-learning projects integrated within a secondary curriculum would be beneficial for many gifted young people.