Browsing by Author "Callahan, Carolyn M."
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- The Forgotten Many: Rural Gifted LearnersKuehl, Rachelle; Callahan, Carolyn M.; Azano, Amy Price (IGI Global, 2022)Limited economic resources and geographic challenges can lead rural schools in areas experiencing poverty to deprioritize gifted education. However, for the wellbeing of individual students and their communities, investing in quality rural gifted education is crucial. In this chapter, the authors discuss some of the challenges to providing equitable gifted programming to students in rural areas and present approaches to meeting those challenges (e.g., cluster grouping, mentoring). They then describe a large-scale federally-funded research project, Promoting PLACE in Rural Schools, which demonstrated methods districts can use to bolster gifted education programming. With 14 rural districts in high-poverty areas of the southeastern United States, researchers worked with teachers and school leaders to establish universal screening processes for identifying giftedness using local norms, to teach students the value of a growth mindset in reducing stereotype threat, and to train teachers on using a place-based curriculum to provide more impactful language arts instruction to gifted rural students.
- Learning in Place: Teachers' Experiences with a Place-based Language Arts Curriculum in Rural AppalachiaRasheed, Michelle Christian (Virginia Tech, 2021-04-16)Research in rural gifted education is garnering increased national attention (Plucker and Callahan, 2014; Lewis and Boswell, 2020), yet inequities in rural gifted services continue to challenge educators in their efforts to meet the needs of a unique population (Azano et al., 2014, 2017). Understandings about existing systemic structural challenges in rural gifted services highlight a need to mitigate opportunity gaps for rural gifted students (Azano et al., 2017). Using Greenwood's (2003, 2008) critical pedagogy of place as the theoretical framework, this qualitative case study examined how 16 teachers in a high-poverty rural district consisting of eight schools experienced the Promoting PLACE in Rural Schools curriculum, a place-based language arts curriculum designed for gifted third- and fourth-grade students. Analytic induction and thematic coding of four distinct sources of evidence (fidelity logs, observation documents, questionnaires, and an interview) were used to make sense of teachers' experiences in implementing of the curriculum. With "an emphasis on experience, understanding, and meaning-making" (Merriam, 2009, p. 19), the researcher explored what teachers' experiences and perceptions could teach us about instruction in high-poverty rural communities and opportunities for gifted learners. Findings illuminated influences on teachers' ability to implement the curriculum such as the under-prioritization of gifted education by the larger school community and teachers' own ingenuity in ameliorating challenges to implementation. The study offers insights about students' access to gifted instruction in one school district in Appalachia. Findings from this qualitative case study may shape gifted instruction in rural places and inform stakeholders of ways in which opportunity gaps for rural gifted populations may be addressed. Insights offer implications for practitioners, administrators, policymakers, community members, and researchers to mitigate instructional challenges and increase students' access to place-based gifted curriculum.
- Responding to the Challenges of Gifted Education in Rural CommunitiesAzano, Amy Price; Callahan, Carolyn M.; Brodersen, Annalissa V.; Caughey, Melanie (Mercy College, 2017)There are both achievement and opportunity gaps for low-income students when compared to their economically advantaged peers; and, for rural students, these gaps may be even more pronounced. In this manuscript we draw from our ongoing work in a five-year federally-funded, Jacob K. Javits grant focusing on promoting gifted education in rural schools. To address issues of under-identification of gifted students in these settings, and to investigate ways to maximize achievement, we established an alternative process for identifying gifted students in rural schools; and we created units integrating place-based pedagogy within an evidence-based curriculum model as an intervention. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings from the pilot year and first half of the second year of the study documenting success in augmenting the pool of identified students and engaging teachers in implementing the curriculum. Perhaps more importantly, we document lessons learned and more global takeaways for the field. Specifically, we discuss the influence of deficit thinking with regard to rural schooling (and subsequent recognition of gifts and talents), the risk of generalizing rural to all rural places, and the nuances of rural poverty not captured in commonly used metrics, such as Free and Reduced Lunch.