socio-economic conditions and poor educational quality in rural schools. Thompson (2010) emphasizes that underrepresentation of rural children in gifted education programs is
problematic not due to the lack of gifted and talented pupils in remote areas but because of the unavailability of special support programs for highly able students in remote areas. According to Puryear and Kettler (2017), rural students’ abilities to compete with their urban counterparts may be constrained due to the limited subject choice and the shortage of school resources in rural settings. Even withstanding the fact of generally smaller class sizes in rural areas, this cannot guarantee teachers’ competence to identify and work with gifted students (OECD, 2019).
Co-occurrence of giftedness and special educational needs also can pose a barrier to the enrolment in the gifted education programs. Montgomery’s (2013) scrutiny of the literature reported that it was only in 1970s when the very first attempts to address the needs of gifted children with disabilities were made. However, there is still lack of knowledge on understanding these students’ learning peculiarities. According to Omdal (2015), a teacher who is working with twice exceptional students should also have a deep awareness on education for gifted and special needs students. The research of Reis (2014) also claims that the teachers’ perceptions on dual-exceptional students are directly linked with their awareness of the intersection between giftedness and disabilities. Aside from difficulties in identification and teaching procedures, Montgomery (2013) also comments that there should be effort made to overcome attitudinal barriers and dispel doubts and fear associated with including students with any mental or physical disorders in gifted education programs.
enacted (Chen, 1998; Greenberg et al., 2006). Each country may be at a different stage of policy enactment and depending on its development trajectory certain equity items might be more important than any others. Nonetheless, recommendations for equity in gifted education programs primarily focus on equity of access and students’ identification procedures.
When analyzing current US gifted education programs and observing ubiquitous underrepresentation issues, Dai (2013) gives some recommendations on achieving a fairer way of distributing educational opportunities. Firstly, he calls not to reward “giftedness” but
excellence. In this opinion if a child has high IQ score but is not motivated to study there is no need to offer extra services. Instead, another student with lower IQ but higher authentic examination results deserves gifted education services, if he motivated. In other words, when changing identification tools there should be equal consideration of one’s potential excellence along with demonstrated excellence. Nevertheless, Dai (2013) highlights the importance of early childhood intervention rather than just changing identification criteria to solve the problem underrepresentation of minority and disadvantaged students.
Concerns of appropriate identification instruments is also a matter of urgency for China and other developing countries. It is essential to set research-based standards of gifted
education to ensure equity in student selection procedures to uncover real gifted children (Almås & Johnsen, 2012). Secondly, the school curriculum should meet the needs of diverse students and offer proper opportunities based on their field of interest. Most importantly, educational quality in the specialized schools for gifted children, and mainstream schools should be improved simultaneously and be given equal attention (Fu, 2017).
Nevertheless, ensuring equity of access as indicated by Merry and Arum (2018) can be applied to any schools no matter their context. They highlighted three main prerequisites schools should make sure to enhance the relationship between fairness and entry exam
policies. First, schools have to identify their underlying intentions in selection procedures.
Although it may not be explicitly seen, implicitly schools may support strong social justice values or focus on high academic scores or aim to maintain other pedagogical goals set by school curricula. Secondly, entry exam criteria should align with the educational opportunities that students will be later exposed to. Ideally, educational assessment should take into account several factors in order to ensure reliability and validity of the procedures. For example, it may employ subject tests, a candidate portfolio, and letters of reference. Thirdly, assessment results should be systematically analyzed and monitored. This accountability helps to reveal possible factors leading to social exclusion. Thus, policy changes are only made possible after
investigating the structural and cultural setting as well as identifying and understanding priorities set among those involved (Ringeisen et al., 2003).
Achieving equity in gifted education programs is undoubtedly an expensive and a multi-dimensional goal. While structural inequities in societies may need a variety of solutions, the field of education demands specific approaches. Maintaining the balance between equal access and quality of educational opportunities demands more financial and human resources and lies on the crossroads of the economic and political conditions of a country.
Equitable resourcing should also consider the issues of low-income families.
Traditional identification tools or standardised tests are not fully applicable for gifted students from rural and economically disadvantaged students (Aamidor, 2007). As it was already mentioned, these students may experience shortage of learning materials due to the scarcity of funding and distance from special educational centres (Castellano, 2011). In addition to these hurdles of access to quality education, barriers to participation can be caused by application fees in the admission process that are impossible for children from families at the lower end of
the socioeconomic range. An example of the recognition of these issues for promising students from low-income families can be seen in the work of John Hopkins Center for Talented
Youth, which provides a wide range of support and special scholarships for bright but disadvantaged students.
The scope of obstacles to equitable access cannot be determined only by the aforementioned problem of the “capacity” but it is also tightly linked with the “will” of stakeholders. As reported by Levin (2003), if “capacity” refers to people’s awareness of what to do and knowing their potential to do something, “will” speaks to their inclination for promoting equity. These two are intertwined when implementing social policies, since a system aimed to support those in need will ensure efficiency of allocated funds. Moreover, Wright, Ford, and Young (2017) claimed that the potential barriers of minority students remain pervasive mostly owing to either people’s ignorance or indifference towards their situation. These all indicate how one’s personal inclination of equity issues are important.
Achieving educational equity in schools is strongly linked with the school principals’
inclination towards equity. This is assumed not because of the power and authority they possess but because of their role as a central source of leadership of change. Principals’ can influence their schools in a variety of ways: guiding the use of educational programs, monitoring assessment procedures and developing fair evaluation criteria, and striving to develop equity-friendly school environments (Ross & Berger, 2009).