Cynthia A. Tyson

Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms for Gifted African American Students

The need to more effectively teach and meet the needs of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students occupies a great deal of attention in the field of education. In gifted education, much of the discussion centers on the underrepresentation of diverse students in programs and services for gifted students, with a growing body of work focusing on issues of underachievement among these students. In this article, we contend that one solution to these two issues is for schools to create culturally responsive classrooms. We describe the needs of diverse students, give several rationales for creating culturally responsive classrooms, and provide recommendations for creating classrooms that affirm diverse students.

Multicutural literature and gifted black students: Promoting self‐understanding, awareness, and pride

otherwise not be so identified, and also help us to recognize that people identified as gifted by traditional means (Renzullis so-called schoolhouse gifted) may have gifts that, in the broader scheme of things, are somewhat limited in scope. Development ofGiftedness. To the extent one believes that intellectual gifts represent, even in part, forms of developing expertise (Sternberg, 1998), we may wish to help youngsters compensate for weaknesses as well as capitalize on strengths (Sternberg, 1985). Those youngsters with weaknesses in one or more areas might be encouraged to develop these areas. Ultimately, an analysis such as this one can help all individuals optimize the development of their full potential.

Living Dialogues in One Neighborhood: Moving toward Understanding across Discourses and Practices of Literacy and Schooling

Drawing on a critical discourse perspective, we examine the “living dialogues,” or the complex interplay between discourses, in one neighborhood to recontextualize the often polarized debates about literacy instruction within education. Focusing on three children, their families, teachers, and classrooms, we argue that the creation of more inclusive school literacy practices requires a consideration of how discourses function within and across homes, communities, and schools. Thus we focus less on the merits or limits of one instructional method than on how living dialogues reflect particular and situated beliefs about language and literacy practices. Within this theoretical frame, classrooms arise as contextualized spaces where the living dialogues of unique discourse communities intersect, and where the relational discourses that shape and reflect classroom practices have the potential to open up or close down instructional spaces for children. A critical discourse perspective re-situates debates around literacy instruction and allows us to engage in complex ways with the dilemmas and possibilities of school-based literacy practices. Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. For if the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison, and destroy. - Ralph Ellison