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Lack of support for gifted students in the United States

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Lack of support for gifted students in the United States

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i

Lack of Support for Gifted Students in the United States

by

Yoonna Lauren Petrea

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Yoonna Lauren Petrea

ii

What makes a child gifted and talented
may not always be good grades in school,
but a different way of looking at the
world and learning.

-Chuck Glassley

iii
Dedication
For my family: Past, Present, and Future
To all gifted students, including my son, Brayden,
keep learning and ask questions,
reach for the stars.
Dear Coco Bear, I did it!

iv
Acknowledgements
My personal drive to be a lifelong learner was the reason I became a student at the
University of Southern California. This commitment to better myself meant that my family had
to make sacrifices and my schooling took me away from my son’s sports practices, seeing
friends, attending social events, and family time. When I was tired, it was my family who
reminded me of how proud they were of me. I know I could not have finished the program
without my family’s love, help, and words of encouragement. Without the support from my
parents (Soo Hee Lee and Wol Soo Kim), my husband (Cris Petrea), and our son (Brayden
Petrea), this journey would have been harder.
To my husband, Cris, I share this degree with you. You had to take on so much more
because of my grad school workload. Thank you for everything you took on so that I can focus
on my research.
My mom, she brought me to the United States in September of 1991. She said she had
one goal when she brought me to this country. She wanted to ensure that I learn to speak English
fluently. Mom, thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Brayden, I am really grateful to have you as my son. I am proud of you. You are
confident, witty, and kind. You are a true leader and I can’t wait to see everything you are going
to accomplish in your life. I dedicate this paper to you.
While I was studying at USC, I lost my dog, Coco Chanel of Malibu. He was by my side
for 14 years and I was his favorite person in the world. I am not sure if I can love another dog the
way I loved Coco. Coco was my first baby and my only roommate for a long time. I want to
thank him for being there from my 1
st
teaching assignment to now.

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I have to mention my two dogs, Mya and Buttercup. I wrote my paper during a pandemic
and these two spent so much time with me. My double trouble kept me entertained with their
constant barking and trips to the backyard.
I would like to thank my team of professors for being alongside me through this process.
My heartfelt thank you to Dr. Min, Dr. Canny, Dr. Kaplan, and Dr. Wilcox for their guidance,
insight, and feedback. Thank you for your patience as I worked through my research and writing.
I feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with them.
I would also like to thank all the participants for being part of the study. I have learned a
lot from them and it was a rewarding experience to learn more about our dedicated educators.
I want to express my appreciation to my cohort, cohort 11. Making friends through this
program was my favorite part of being a student again. I want to thank my Trojan family for
their friendship. I knew I could always count on my classmates when I needed help
understanding assignments and completing work.
I want to thank Dr. Polito and Dr. Rudolph for encouraging me to pursue my degree.
They believed in me to lead a school site while I was pursuing my degree at USC.
Thank you everyone for believing in me. I appreciate all of you. Fight on!

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Table of Contents
Epigraph…………………………………………………………………………………………...ii
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...iii
Acknowledgements...……………………………………………………………………………..iv
List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………..x
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...xi
Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………………...1
Introduction of the Problem of Practice ……………………………………………………… 1
Organizational Context and Mission…………………………………………………………..6
Organizational Performance Status……………………………………………………………8
Organizational Performance Goals…………………………………………………………...12
Description of Stakeholders…………………………………………………………………..13
Stakeholders’ Performance Goals…………………………………………………………….14
Stakeholder Group for the Study……………………………………………………………..15
Purpose of the Project and Questions………………………………………………………...16
Conceptual and Methodological Framework………………………………………………...16
Definitions……………………………………………………………………………………17
Organization of the Project…………………………………………………………………...20

Chapter Two: Review of the Literature………………………………………………………….22
History of Gifted Education…………………………………………………………………..22
Legislative Acts………………………………………………………………………………24
Supporting Gifted Students …………………………………………………………………..27
Lack of Identifying Gifted Students………………………………………………………….30
Parent Pressure……………………………………………………………………………….32
CogAT Test…………………………………………………………………………………..35
Effective Programs for Gifted Students……………………………………………………...38
Gifted Students are Special Needs Students …………………………………………………41
Professional Development for Teachers to Support Gifted Students ………………………..43
Teacher Training and Preparation …………………………………………………………...45
Clark and Estes Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences Framework ………46
Stakeholder Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences………………………..47
Stakeholder Knowledge……………………………………………………………………...47
Factual Knowledge…………………………………………………………………………...49
Procedural Knowledge……………………………………………………………………….50
Metacognitive………………………………………………………………………………...51
Stakeholder Motivation………………………………………………………………………53
Expectancy Value Theory……………………………………………………………………54

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Self-efficacy Theory………………………………………………………………………….56

Organizational Influences…………………………………………………………………….60
Cultural Models and Cultural Settings………………………………………………………..61
Cultural Model………………………………………………………………………………..63
Cultural Setting……………………………………………………………………………….65
Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Stakeholders’ Knowledge and Motivation and
the Organizational Context …………………………………………………………………..67
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………71

Chapter Three: Research Methodology………………………………………………………….73
Purpose of the Project and Questions………………………………………………………...73
Methodological Approach and Rationale…………………………………………………….73
Assumptions………………………………………………………………………………….76
Interview and Survey Sampling Criteria and Rationale……………………………………...77
Administrator Participant Criteria……………………………………………………………77
Data Collection and Instrumentation…………………………………………………………79
Observations………………………………………………………………………………… 81
Interviews.……………………………………………………………………………………82
Surveys.………………………………………………………………………………………83
Credibility and Trustworthiness ……………………………………………………………..84
Validity and Reliability.………………………………………………………………………85
Ethics.…………………………………………………………………………………………86
Limitations…………………………………………………………………………………....88
Summary……………………………………………………………………………………...88

Chapter Four: Results…………………………………………………………………………....90
Research Questions…………………………………………………………………………...91
Participating Stakeholders……………………………………………………………………91
Knowledge Results…………………………………………………………………………...96
Teachers Lacked Knowledge of Working with Gifted Students……………………………..97
Motivation Results…………………………………………………………………………..109
Organizational Influences…………………………………………………………………...112
Cultural Model………………………………………………………………………………112
Cultural Setting……………………………………………………………………………...114
Summary…………………………………………………………………………………….117

Chapter Five: Recommendations……………………………………………………………….119
Introduction and Overview………………………………………………………………….119
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences……………………………….119
Knowledge Recommendation……………………………………………………………….119
Motivation Recommendations………………………………………………………………126
Organization Recommendations…………………………………………………………….131
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan…………………………………………….138
Implementation and Evaluation Framework………………………………………………...138
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations……………………………………………139

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Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators…………………………………………………….139
Level 3: Behavior……………………………………………………………………………141
Level 2: Learning……………………………………………………………………………145
Level 1: Reaction……………………………………………………………………………148
Evaluation Tools…………………………………………………………………………….149
Data Analysis and Reporting………………………………………………………………..152
Summary…………………………………………………………………………………….154

References………………………………………………………………………………………156

Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………...170
Appendix A: Document Analysis Rubric…………………………………………………..170
Appendix B: Survey to Administer Immediately Following Initial Training………………173
Appendix C: Survey Cover Letter………………………………………………………….175
Appendix D: Survey Instrument……………………………………………………………176
Appendix E: Interview Information Letter…………………………………………………179
Appendix F: Interview Protocol for Teachers……………………………………………...180
Appendix G: Interview Protocol for Administrator………………………………………...181

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List of Tables
Table 1: Organizational Performance Goals……………………………………………………..14
Table 2: California GATE Standards…………………………………………………………….40
Table 3: Knowledge Influences, Types, and Assessments for Analysis…………………………52
Table 4: Motivational Influences and Assessments for Analysis………………………………..58
Table 5: Organizational Influences and Assessments for Analysis……………………………...66
Table 6: Sampling Strategy and Timeline……………………………………………………….79
Table 7: Participants of Each Method …………………………………………………………...94
Table 8: Grade Levels of Qualitative Interview Participants…………………………………….95
Table 9: Interviewed Teachers…………………………………………………………………...95
Table 10: High Achieving Students in Each Class………………………………………………96
Table 11: Misconceptions Teachers Have on Working with Gifted Students………………….103
Table 12: Classes Observed for the Study……………………………………………………...108
Table 13: Assignments Turned in by Students of Class One…………………………………..115
Table 14: Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations………………………...121
Table 15: Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations………………………...127
Table 16: Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations………………………132
Table 17: Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes……………..140
Table 18: Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation………………….141
Table 19: Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors……………………………………..143
Table 20: Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program………………………..147
Table 21: Components to Measure Reaction to the Program…………………………………..149

x
List of Figures
Figure 1: How many gifted students are in each state…………………………………………...26
Figure 2: CogAT bell curve ……………………………………………………………………..37
Figure 3: CogAT sample question……………………………………………………………….38
Figure 4: Interactive conceptual framework for gifted identification……………………………69
Figure 5: This figure represents a snapshot of what CAASPP data would look like…………..153
Figure 6: This figure represents a snapshot of what iReady data would look like……………..154

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Abstract
In the United States, the gifted identification process and gifted programs are not required in
school districts. The current federal law allows school districts to make their own decisions in
how they will fund, provide support, and identify gifted learners. Therefore, there is an
inconsistency in how gifted students are receiving educational services and what it means to be
gifted and talented students in each school district. This paper utilizes the Gap Analysis (Clark &
Estes, 2008) framework to identify what knowledge, motivation, and organizational gaps exist at
a school district serving TK to 8th grade students in Northern California in supporting their
gifted students. This is a mixed methods study and teachers were given a survey, teachers and a
school administrator were interviewed, and classrooms were observed. The survey and interview
questions focused on teachers’ knowledge and motivation on working with gifted students and
what cultural setting and model barriers the organization have. The results of this study should
contribute to addressing the lack of support for gifted students in school districts and help
teachers understand more about working with gifted students. New world Kirkpatrick’s Model
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) was used to evaluate the results and to create a plan for school
districts to improve their practices in supporting gifted and talented students.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Introduction of the Problem of Practice
The concept “talented” is used for the children who are superior to their peers in terms of
intelligence and talent (Ekinci as cited in Gurlen, 2017). Gifted students are one group of
exceptional learners not normally considered at-risk for academic failure or problems (McCoach
& Siegle, 2007). One definition of gifted and talented is students who are identified as
possessing demonstrated or potential abilities that give evidence of high performing capabilities
in intellectual, creative, specific academic or leadership areas (Çakır, 2014). Jones (as cited in
Gurlen, 2017) classified the characteristics of gifted individuals as the diversity of the fields in
which extraordinary performance is shown.
Another definition of gifted and talented is having ability in the performing or visual arts
and/or who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully
develop such capabilities (Çakır, 2014). According to Cloud (2007), in the United States, many
school districts use Intelligence Quotient (IQ) to identify gifted learners. IQ is designed to assess
human intelligence. Of the 62 million school-aged kids in the U.S., only about 62,000 have IQs
above 140 (Cloud, 2007). Research shows that gifted learners (130+ IQs) learn up to eight times
as quickly as low IQ students and can master several years of grade level material in a single
year (Cloud, 2007). When provided with the right kinds of intellectual stimulation and
enrichment, gifted children will thrive in schools, become leading scientists, entrepreneurs and
innovators (Ibata-Arens, 2012). Giftedness requires social context that enables it (Cloud, 2007).
Like a muscle, raw intelligence cannot build if it is not exercised (Cloud, 2007). The state of
gifted education has been in decline in recent years (McCoach & Siegle, 2007). Currently, there

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is no federal policy to protect gifted programs and each state makes its own decisions on
identifying gifted (Shaunessy, 2003).
A study conducted by the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented found
that gifted students may already know 40-50% of the materials covered under the standard
curriculum (Reis et al, 1993). In 2006, there were over 3 million gifted students (6.7% enrolled
students) in public schools (Snyder & Dillow, 2009) and currently according to the National
Association for Gifted Children (2020) states that there are 3.2 million gifted and talented
students in the United States. Each state individually decides whether and to what extent it will
provide gifted services, how it identifies gifted children, or whether it delegates this
responsibility to local school districts and schools (Shaunessy, 2003). According to Shaunessy
(2003), only thirty states mandate that schools provide special services for gifted students. Many
local education agencies (LEAs) are given the freedom to choose their own identification
strategies and are not always monitored by the state (Bhatt, 2011). Even though gifted students
are considered special needs students in these thirty states, 99.9% of special education funding
goes to the lower end of the ability continuum (Sternberg, 1996), and less than two cents out of
every $100 allocated for education is directed to gifted students (Winner, 1997). Special
education funding is not being allocated to the high achieving students.
According to Cloud (2007), No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has forced schools to deeply
subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered from the policy.
The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted
education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000 (Cloud, 2007). Districts have
shifted funding from gifted programs and training to support the least gifted (Sternberg, 1996).
Once NCLB passed, federal spending on gifted programs declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to

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$7.6 million in 2007 (Cloud, 2007). With NCLB, districts are penalized by the state with budget
cuts when schools are not moving underachieving students forward but there is no reward for
moving high achieving students to achieve more (Sternberg, 1996). These pressures are
impacting districts to make decisions that do not benefit the high achieving students (Cloud,
2007). According to the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented a significant issue
with respect to gifted education and programming is funding. Without money set aside to support
gifted education through teacher training and gifted programs, districts cannot support gifted
education (Reis et al, 1993). According to Rainey (1996), gifted education in most public schools
is underfunded at the state level and has not improved. According to Yeung (2014), currently in
the United States, there is a variation in the resources districts receive from the state that go
toward gifted education.
In 2015-2016, the number of students ages 3 to 21 receiving special education services
was 6.7 million, or 13% of all public-school students (National Center for Education Statistics).
According to Gagne (1993), 10% of students in the United States are gifted but do not receive
special education services because districts focus on servicing underachieving students (Belanger
& Garne, 2006). Since there are 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and Guam each
making their own decisions about gifted students, there is a great deal of variance in gifted
education across the U.S. (Steward, 2018). Considering there are probably as many gifted kids as
there are kids with learning disabilities, there is a difference in funding for gifted programs
versus funding for special education programs (Rainey, 1996). Most districts do not see GATE
as students with special needs and implementation of gifted programs in most schools have been
lacking fidelity due to small amounts of resources, training, and support (Seedorf, 2014). When
districts are biased towards servicing high achieving students and teachers do not have proper

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training to support all students, as a country, schools are failing to help all students to meet their
fullest potential (Seedorf, 2014). Pheiffer (2001) believes that gifted programs are in crisis
because there is a growing movement to disband special programs for the gifted, use the gifted to
tutor underachieving students, and even view all students as gifted in some way.
Currently, only four of the 50 states, Iowa, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Georgia in the
United States mandate and fully fund gifted education, and another 23 states mandate and
partially fund gifted education (Kettler, 2016). Twenty-seven states have some funding, ranging
from Idaho with the least at $150,000 to Texas at over $57,000,000 (Steward, 2018).
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Dakota do not have a definition of giftedness
(NAGC, 2014). These three states do not have anyone in their state education departments
focusing on gifted education (NAGC, 2015). California does not mandate districts to identify nor
provide services for the gifted, therefore when there is a lack of interest in supporting gifted
children in an individual school district, there will be no support for the gifted students (Cloud,
2007). Without having a federal policy to shield gifted students, districts do not have to fund
gifted programs (Pheiffer, 2001). When there is no federal policy to fund gifted education and
programs, schools will not hire staff to support GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) programs
and students, there will be no mandated teachers training in differentiating instruction or
providing challenging curriculum for academically gifted students (Seedorf, 2014). According to
Ibata-Arens (2012), when comparing similar socioeconomic gifted students from the United
States to gifted Asian students in China, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan, gifted students in the
United States are underperforming. Through her research, Ibata-Arens (2012) found that other
countries stated above promote rigor and challenging curriculum to their brightest students and
these Asian countries provide identification process, gifted programs, and gifted teacher training.

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According to Konstantopoilos, S., Modi, M., and Hedges, L.V., (2001) the United States
is falling behind internationally because the United States does not support their brightest
students. Konstantopoilos et al. (2001) argued that it was vital to support gifted students in
learning to maintain high national standards of achievement in education, as well as international
economic competitiveness. NCLB has put tremendous emphasis on supporting students who are
performing below grade level and during this process, schools have changed their focus on
providing academic intervention rather than providing academic rigor (Renzulli & Park, 2000).
Kellar (2012) states that NCLB requires states to:
1) adopt standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college, the
workplace, and the global economy
2) build and manage data systems that measure student growth and inform teachers
and school leaders about instructional progress
3) recruit, reward, retain, and develop effective teachers and school leaders,
particularly in high need areas
4) turn around the lowest-performing schools
The evidence highlights that the majority of students in the United States feel their curriculum is
too easy and that students are not being challenged at schools (Ozturk & Debelak, 2008). A lack
of challenge is the most commonly identified cause of classroom boredom and disengagement
(Gable & Springer, 2000). This problem is important to address because in today’s society,
academic achievement is extremely important because it relates to career opportunities in many
different fields (Williams, 2011) and out of all high school dropouts, as many as 20% may be
gifted (Renzulli & Park, 2000). With the lack of support for the high achieving students, students
may continue to find schools’ boring and lose motivation to learn (Kellar, 2012). Kellar (2012)

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explains that the NCLB blueprint for strengthening schools suggest that schools will meet these
requirements by:
1) providing more rigorous coursework
2) hiring science and math professionals to serve as adjunct teachers
3) using empirically proven methods of instruction
4) continuing to hold schools accountable for results. (p. 3)
She then goes on to note that NCLB was created to help students achieve greater academic
growth but does not define what constitutes high-quality instruction. Kellar (2012) further
explains that the NCLB blueprint mentions training teachers in empirically based instructional
methods but fails to fully define what this actually means.
Organizational Context and Mission
Emerson School District (pseudonym) is a public school funded and operated by the state
of California. The parent organization at Emerson funds a majority of the programs through
fundraising and donations like music, physical education, world languages, design thinking, art,
and social and emotional learning. Emerson is one school district serving students Transitional
Kindergarten (TK) through 8
th
grade and follows the California Common Core Standards.
Emerson’s cabinet members include the superintendent, one interim elementary school principal,
student services coordinator, and the director of business and accounting. The mission of the
school is to prepare today’s students to be thinkers, leaders, and creators of tomorrow. Emerson
is committed to being a diverse and inclusive community and believes the inclusion of people of
diverse race, ethnicity, national origin, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, learning
style, physical ability, family structure and socioeconomic background enriches its academic
programs and the experience of students, educators, staff, and families. While preparing and

7
educating young people for roles as citizens and leaders in a highly diverse world, it will
cultivate understanding and strengthen relationships, appreciating the benefits and rising to the
challenge of integrating diversity in all aspects of its community.
Emerson Elementary School is located in California. Emerson district serves over 400
students of whom 72% White, 12% are other, 8% are Asian, 5% are Hispanic, and 3% are
African American. Emerson school district has 212 males enrolled and 196 females enrolled.
There are 62 (15%) identified special needs students and 21 (5%) English Language Learners
who are receiving services. There are 33 (8%) students enrolled in the free and reduced lunch
program and 30 (7%) students are kids who are bused in from another school district. At
Emerson, 100% teachers are certified and have more than 3 years of teaching experience.
Currently, the average class size is 11 which is typical of small schools districts in Northern
California. At Emerson, there are a total of 69 staff working at the school district. It is composed
of 4 administrators, 4 office staff, 52 teachers, 6 specialists, 10 para educators, 3 custodians.
Emerson also hires outside consultants for design thinking, GATE, structured work inquiry,
Silicon Valley math initiative, and social and emotional learning. Emerson is a high performing
and high SES (socioeconomic status) school district with high parent participation and
expectations.
Until 2013, the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) was used to identify gifted students at
Emerson District. The assessment was used to test all 3
rd
grade students in reasoning abilities in
the three areas: Verbal, Nonverbal, and Quantitative. In California, the CogAT is often used in
admissions decisions at private schools and for Gifted and Accelerated school programs (Warne,
2015). In 2013, the administrative team at Emerson District decided to stop administering
CogAT. The team felt that the data from the assessment was not being utilized and because no

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GATE programs exist at the site, this was not a necessary test to administer to their students.
Currently, teachers refer high achieving students from their classes to receive support from the
GATE consultant. The GATE consultant works with students 3
rd
grade through 5
th
grade who
have been recommended by the classroom teacher. Students receive 30 minutes a week of
pullout services from the GATE teacher. However, without a formal GATE identification
process, Emerson district is pulling students based on teachers’ observation, test data, and parent
requests. Average students being pulled for support is 5 students per class, which is 45% of the
students from each class.
Organizational Performance Status
The organizational performance problem at the root of this study is the lack of federal
and state policy to provide support for GATE students at a district level. Without a federal
policy, districts like Emerson make their own decisions to identify gifted students and determine
how gifted students will be supported. Currently at Emerson, there is no assessment given to
identify who are gifted students. CogAT was administered in the past to all third-grade students
at Emerson, however in 2015-2016, the district leaders made a decision to stop administering the
CogAt. The district felt that the cost of CogAt and the time spent administering the test was not
valuable.
Emerson’s philosophy is to provide services to all students based on needs. Unlike most
public schools in the United States, students at Emerson receive occupational therapy
consultation and behavior support without an IEP (Individualized Educational Program). Also,
Emerson district communicates to the parent community that identification of a student as gifted
should not be the sole criteria to receive services. Therefore, Emerson district does not identify
gifted students.

9
To meet the needs of academically high achieving students, Emerson district has hired a
GATE consultant. The GATE consultant is paid annually and is on site Mondays and Thursdays
for half a day for the entire school year to service all students. The GATE consultant pulls up to
15 students a period or 30 minutes of small group per teacher a week. Students in grades 3-8
th
are
referred to work with the GATE consultant by using assessment data and teacher
recommendations. However, during the 2018-2019 school year, classroom teachers had to
change the model of the pullout program because children of most vocal parents received
services through the GATE consultant rather than students who are most qualified to receive
services. The GATE consultant reported to the site principal that she was servicing students who
are performing at grade level. Classroom teachers also reported to the principal that students not
being pulled by the GATE consultant were feeling bad about themselves. Classroom teachers
wanted all students to benefit from the GATE consultant and therefore decided as a team that the
GATE consultant will rotate and pull students in all academic abilities.
Since there is no clear guideline for the GATE pullout model and the criteria has not been
communicated to all stakeholders, teachers were free to change the service model. The principal
asked classroom teachers to select students based on student participation, students’ interest in
math, and students’ motivation to be challenged as well as students’ test data to determine which
student is eligible for special services. However, the principal found that the highest achieving
students were not receiving services because teachers wanted all students to have an opportunity
and some teachers felt pressured by angry parents wanting their child to also receive the special
services. The Los Angeles Times reports that parents who push schools for attention to the needs
of their children are extremely unpopular and are perceived as having an inflated view of their
child’s abilities (Ulene, 2006). This tension between egalitarianism and exceptionalism has

10
resulted in a gifted education system that is schizophrenic in nature. On the one hand, there is a
general acknowledgement that giftedness is real and should be nurtured, but on the other hand
the resources at the federal and state levels to achieve this goal have been almost absent (Yeung,
2014). Ulene (2006) further explains that teachers do not really understand what gifted means,
therefore each teacher may have a different opinion on how gifted students should be supported.
Administration at Emerson found pullout students’ abilities were too wide to properly
service the students. The GATE consultant also shared with the administration that when
servicing gifted students, her recommendation was to service students who can work in similar
academic levels in small groups. Tomlinson et al. (2003) found that students in small groups
achieved significantly more than students not learning in small groups. Tomlison et al. (2003)
further explained that often the level of instruction is set to address the mid-level learners. Early
finishers need to have opportunities to utilize their extra time with lessons that will engage and
enhance their learning instead of waiting for others to finish while completing busy work to keep
them occupied.
According to the California Department of Education (2010), before the 2008-2009
school year, funding was restricted to the gifted and talented programs. Now the funding for
GATE programs is flexible due to Education Code Section 42605 (California Department of
Education, 2010). Now in the state of California, LEA (Local Educational Agencies) may utilize
all of their program funds to provide services for the program or they may use all or part of their
program funds for other educational purposes. The option of utilizing the GATE funds for other
services gives schools permission to distribute the funding as they deem appropriate. The option
of using the GATE funds for other educational purposes may lead to negative implications for
gifted services. This means the school board and the administration have the right to determine

11
how GATE funds will be spent. Without the support from the decision makers, often budgets are
being pulled for providing services for the underachieving students (Tomlinson et al., 2003).
When Emerson School Board and Administration were budgeting for the 2019-2020
school year, gifted education support from the consultant was cut in half. With the new
leadership team and the new school board, Emerson’s focus has now changed to the English
Language Learners. With shorter hours of services than the year before, Emerson teachers had to
review which and how many students should receive pullout services from the GATE consultant.
The elementary school principal found that third grade teachers at Emerson stopped sending their
brightest academic students because teachers felt that these kids were perceived as elitist and
smartest students in third grade. Also, the principal found that teachers wanted funding to be
spent on academically underachieving students because high achieving students will be fine and
do not need services. In Chapter 2, when reviewing teachers’ knowledge and motivation
regarding this topic, the researcher will address the belief teachers share on supporting
academically underachieving students and how this affects the district from providing services
for the academically high achieving students.
To determine the quality of GATE consultant’s work, teachers and administration
reviewed assessments such as the previous year’s CAASPP (California Assessment of Student
Performance and Progress), MARS (Mathematic Assessment Resource Service), and classroom
assessments to select their highest mathematicians to work with the consultant. However, the
administration received feedback from the quarterly survey that teachers did not find the work of
the GATE consultant helpful. Teachers also viewed parents to be pushy in order to have their
children receive GATE services.

12
For kindergarten through 2
nd
grade, the GATE consultant was utilized to provide
consultation to the classroom teachers and help teachers plan lessons for their high achieving
students. The GATE consultant used Beast Academy and purchased materials similar to Math
Olympiad work when working with students from Emerson. Unfortunately, there were a lot of
problems with this model. Students being referred for services were not all academically gifted.
These students were reading at or below grade level, scoring an average of 80% on their math
unit tests, and performing at or below grade level in district’s on demand writing assessment.
Students were only receiving 30 minutes a week of service. The gifted teacher reported to the
site administrator that when the gifted teacher asked to collaborate with the classroom teachers,
classroom teachers did not respond to her request. Also, when the gifted teacher went to the
classroom to have a conversation with the classroom teacher, classroom teachers were
dismissive. The researcher found that the lack of clear policy to support gifted students resulted
in lack of clarity to implement extra support for the academically gifted students. In the quarterly
survey teachers completed, teachers also shared that this pullout model put a lot of pressure on
teachers because parents were demanding teachers to service their children.
Organizational Performance Goal
Emerson District’s goal is that by June 2023 it will adopt policies to identify gifted
students grades 3
rd
through 8
th
and provide services to the identified gifted students. In the fall of
2023, all students in grades 3rd through 8th will take a test to determine which students are
gifted. Starting in the 2023-2024 academic school year, only 3rd grade students will take the
GATE identification test. In 2021-2022, Emerson District will form a GATE committee through
their School Site Council to review and understand what assessments are being used in other
school districts in California to identify their gifted students and implement a process of

13
identifying their gifted students. The committee will be led by the elementary school principal
and will have representatives from school staff and parents. The achievement of this goal will be
measured by having a district adopted GATE assessment plan to identify academically gifted
students for the 2023-2024 school year and will have a plan in place to provide services to the
identified gifted students. The superintendent of the district and the school board will oversee the
process.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
One of the many challenges in the classroom is to support all learners. Gifted learners are
particularly challenging to support because these students are difficult to identify and there is no
federal policy to support this special group of students (Warne, 2015). The goal of Emerson
District is to meet the needs of students academically, socially, and emotionally. In order to meet
the needs of all students academically, the district needs to have a process of identifying their
gifted students. Gifted students learn quickly, and they process information differently
(McCoach & Siegle, 2007). Teachers need to know who their gifted students are and receive
additional training to guide these exceptional learners (Williams, 2011). All districts in the
United States have a process of identifying students who need an IEP (Individual Educational
Plan) for the academically underachieving students (Kettler, 2016). Kettler (2016) further
explains that through an IEP process, academically struggling children receive support from the
special education department. There is no regulation to support academically high achieving
students (Renzulli & Park, 2000). According to Rakow (2008), for the gifted students, grade
level standards are often inappropriate because their depth of knowledge is significantly beyond
their chronological peers.

14
Ozturk and Debelak (2008) explained that in this era of high-stakes testing, classroom-
based learning opportunities are focused on ensuring that students reach minimal competency
standards, and little attention is paid to those who have already mastered those standards. Just
like schools identify individualized educational services for students with a learning disability,
schools need to identify gifted students at Emerson District. With identification of gifted
students, teachers and students will have a better understanding of how these students learn best.
Once students are identified, gifted students should be able to receive services to meet their
needs. These students should be treated as special needs students as well. The stakeholders of
focus for this study were teachers. The teachers play a key role in using the assessment data and
providing differentiated instruction for all students. To have teacher buy-in to the organizational
goal, the district needs to provide professional development opportunities for staff to understand
how gifted children need differentiation and how teachers can provide challenging curriculum in
the classroom. Teachers will need to be trained on analyzing the assessment data as well.
Stakeholders’ Performance Goals
Table 1
Organizational Mission, Performance Goal, and Stakeholder Performance Goal
Organizational Mission
The Mission of Emerson School District is to meet the needs of all students academically,
socially, and emotionally.

Organizational Performance Goal
By Fall of 2023, Emerson District will adopt an assessment plan to identify gifted students. All
3
rd
through 8th grade students will take an assessment in the fall to determine who is qualified to
receive gifted and talented education support.

15
Stakeholder 1 Goal Stakeholder 2 Goal Stakeholder 3 Goal Stakeholder 4
Goal
By Fall 2021, Emerson
District’s will form a
GATE committee.
During 2021-2022,
GATE committee
members will research
and learn more about
gifted assessment and
programs.
By June 2023,
Emerson School
District will adopt an
assessment to identify
gifted and talented
students.

By Fall of 2023,
all students in
grades 3
rd
and up
will have an
opportunity to
take the district
adopted GATE
test to identify
gifted students.

Stakeholder Group for the Study
While the joint efforts of all stakeholders are valuable in achieving the organizational
goal of identifying gifted students at Emerson District, without teacher buy-in to provide
additional support for the gifted students, district adopted assessment will be meaningless.
Therefore, the stakeholders of focus for this study were the teachers at Emerson district. Most
college teacher preparation programs do not include coursework in gifted education, and training
in gifted education is not widely required through in-service professional development courses
(National Association for the Gifted, 2009). That is why it is important to understand teachers’
beliefs regarding gifted education and also understand teachers’ motivation in providing
differentiated learning in the classroom. Without teachers’ commitment, identifying gifted
students will be ineffective. Teachers need to use the GATE assessment data to drive instruction
in the classroom. There will be no reason to identify gifted students, if teachers do not use the
information. While implementing an assessment to identify gifted students is a great first step,
there has to be a follow up plan to utilize the assessment.

16
Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this project was to conduct a gap analysis to examine the knowledge,
motivation and organizational influences that interfere with meeting the academic needs of all
students at Emerson district. The analysis began by generating a list of possible or assumed
interfering influences and then by examining these systematically to focus on actual or validated
interfering influences. While a complete gap analysis would focus on all stakeholders, for
practical purposes the stakeholder to be focused on this analysis was the staff of Emerson
Elementary School.
1. What are the teachers’ knowledge and motivation in relation to identifying gifted and
nongifted students to differentiate instruction accordingly in K-8
th
classrooms?
2. How do teachers’ knowledge and motivation affect the district’s ability in adopting an
identification process to support gifted students to meet their full academic potential in
K-8
th
classrooms?
Conceptual and Methodological Framework
The framework by Clark and Estes (2008) provides a systematic problem-solving
approach to improve organization’s performance by identifying the gaps between the current
performance level and the performance goal. The three causes of performance gaps are people’s
knowledge and skills, their motivation to achieve the goal, and organizational barriers (Clark &
Estes, 2008). The K stands for knowledge and skills, the M for motivation, and O is for the
organization. In order to make an organizational change, all of these factors need to be in place
and need to be aligned to the goal (Clark & Estes, 2008). Knowledge and skills are divided into
four types: (a) factual; (b) conceptual; (c) procedural; and (d) metacognitive (Krathwohl, 2002).

17
These skills are measured and identified to understand if stakeholders know how to achieve a
performance goal (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Motivation influences were determined by stakeholders’ active choice to accomplish a
goal, to stay persistent with a goal, and to invest in achieving a goal. Finally, organizational
influences on stakeholder performance to consider may include what procedures were in place,
how much resources one had, and workplace culture (Clark & Estes, 2008). Each of these
elements of Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis will be addressed below in terms of the
teacher’s knowledge, motivation, and organizational needs to meet the performance goal at
Emerson School District of implementing a process of identifying gifted and talented students in
grade three and higher by Fall of 2023. The first step was to identify the knowledge and skills
teachers need in order to understand the value of having an identification process in place to
support academically gifted students. The second step was to understand what and how teachers
are currently motivated to achieve this goal and what factors are holding them back. Lastly, what
organizational influence was currently in place and what gaps needed to be filled will be
explored. In the KMO model, gaps or assets were identified and measured by examining the
stakeholders’ knowledge and skills, their motivation that pertains to their performance, and how
the organization facilitates and supports the stakeholders’ performance. In Chapter 2, each of
these assumed teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational influence were examined and
explained.
Definitions
The following definitions as established by the researcher are provided to deliver an
understanding of these items throughout this study.

18
Accelerated Learning: A strategy for pacing students through the curriculum at a rate
commensurate with their advanced ability.
Accountability: The idea that the school, district, or government should be responsible for
improving student achievement and rewarded or sanctioned depending on achievement data.
Achievement gap: A consistent disparity in achievement scores on standardized tests between
poor, Hispanic, African American, and English Language Learners and consistently high-
performing White and Asian students. Other achievement gap indicators include graduation
rates, dropout rates, rates of passing the high school graduation test, and college entrance rate.
For the purpose of this study, the disparity in achievement scores was the primary means of
measuring the achievement gap.
Assessment: Refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate,
measure, and document academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational
needs of students.
At-risk: Students who perform below grade level standard and are not prepared for the next grade
level.
Beliefs: a mental state possessed by individuals pertaining to an opinion or conviction they
acquire as truth.
Complexity: The quality or process of thinking that combines many ideas or parts to develop
complicated and interrelated whole. A common characteristic of gifted people.
Content Standards: The specific academic knowledge skills, and abilities that all public schools
in the United States are expected to teach and all pupils are expected to learn in each of the core
curriculum areas at each grade level.

19
Depth: A process of thought that seeks to understand concepts and generalizations through the
analysis of the rules and principles that support the larger idea.
Differentiation: A match between content (that the student learns), process (how it is learned),
and product (how the learning is demonstrated) and the readiness level, interests, and learning
preference of the students.
Dropout rate: An estimate of the percentage of students who drop out between 9
th
and 12
th
grade
based on data collected for a single year.
Equity: A belief that governments are obligated to provide equal access to educational and life
opportunities. Disparities in funding levels, adequate facilities, and skilled teachers contribute to
inequity.
Gifted Child: When used with respect to students, means children who give evidence of high
achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in
specific academic fields, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the
school in order to fully develop those capabilities.
IEP: Individual Educational Plan refers both to the educational program to be provided to a child
with a disability and to the written document that describes that educational program.
Heterogeneous Grouping: Grouping students by mixed ability or readiness levels.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB): The reauthorization of the 1965 ESEA. NCLB significantly
increased the influence of the federal government in education, including assessment,
accountability, and teacher quality. NCLB sets proficiency targets that increase each year with
the goal of achieving proficiency for all students by 2013-2014.
Novelty: The process of being new, unusual, or unique.
Perception: A point of view attained by observing and understanding experiences.

20
Professional Development: Programs that allow teachers or administrators to acquire the
knowledge and skills they need to perform their jobs successfully.
Special Needs: In the context of children at school, particular educational requirements resulting
from learning difficulties, physical disability, or emotional and behavioral difficulties. Students
who need more than what a classroom teacher can provide for the child.
Organization of the Project
Five chapters were used to organize this study. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the
study, describes the lack of support for gifted students in the United States, and provides a
history of gifted education. The purpose and significance of the study provides a rationale for
conducting the study and explains the readers the key concepts and terminology commonly
found in a discussion about the lack of identification of gifted students and lack of programs for
gifted students. The organization’s mission, goals, and stakeholders as well as the initial concepts
of gap analysis were introduced regarding the topic of supporting academically gifted students.
Chapter Two provides a review of the most relevant literature surrounding the topic of
the study. Topics of gifted education, identification process, policy, and lack of teacher training
will be addressed. Research is presented that informs about factors that contribute to why gifted
students are pushed aside and resources are not used to support them. The chapter includes how
gifted students can be identified and what knowledge, motivation, and organizational
performance gaps exist from teachers to provide support for all students, including the gifted.
Chapter Three explains the methodology employed to examine lack of identification
process of gifted and lack of programs for gifted at Emerson School District. The chapter
presents the research design, a description of the sample school, instrumentation used to collect
data, and a description of the data analysis methods used to address the two research questions.

21
In Chapter Four, the data and results are assessed and analyzed from the quantitative
survey and qualitative interviews conducted at Emerson School District. In Chapter Five the
researcher will present detailed analysis of the data, including conclusions and recommendations
for schools and districts to support all learners including the gifted.

22
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
This literature review will examine the effect of lack of support for gifted and talented
students (GATE) in grades K through 12
th
in the public schools of the United States. The term
gifted and talented is used to describe students who may excel in academic subjects, performing
well above grade level in specific areas, such as math or reading (Renzulli & Park, 2000).
Giftedness is a dynamic concept and early identification is important to the development of gifts
into talents (Johnsen, 2009). This chapter first reviews literature on best practices for identifying
gifted students, effective programs for gifted students, and the positive influence of professional
development in gifted education to support instructional practices. The review will present an in-
depth discussion on understanding the needs of gifted and talented students, how gifted students
are currently identified in the United States, and why in many districts there is no funding set
aside for gifted programs. Then, the chapter provides an explanation of the Clark and Estes
(2008) knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences’ lens used in this study to meet the
stakeholders’ goal of identifying and supporting gifted students. Next, the chapter turns attention
to defining the types of knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences examined and the
assumed teacher knowledge, motivation and organizational influences on performance. This
chapter ends with a presentation of the conceptual framework guiding this study.
History of Gifted Education
In order to understand why gifted education exists, or lack of, people need to understand
the history of gifted education in the United States. Gifted and talented programs in the United
States date back to the mid-1800s when the first classes for high-ability children were integrated
into Missouri public schools (Bhatt, 2011). The National Association of Gifted Children (NCGC)
began in 1954 and has grown to become the nation’s primary gifted education professional

23
organization. NAGC defines giftedness in terms of people who are gifted. They (NAGC, 2020)
state that,
Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as
an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or
achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains. Domains include any
structured area of activity with its own symbol system (e.g., mathematics, music,
language) and set of sensorimotor skills (e.g., painting, dance, sports).
The National Society of the Gifted and Talented (NSGT) was founded in 2003. It is devoted to
connecting gifted youth to resources that will help them develop to their full potential (Steward,
2018). Part of the difficulty is a lack of leadership at the national and state levels for gifted
education similar to what there is for special education. The federal government leaves the
identification, the provision of services that would help meet their learning needs, and funding
for programming, for meeting the educational needs of highly able students up to each individual
state (Steward, 2018).
The field of gifted education has faced a serious challenge for decades (Peters &
Engerrand, 2016). Plucker, Hardesty, and Burroughs (as cited in Peters & Engerrandm, 2016)
have argued that underrepresentation of minorities, English language learners have contributed to
large and growing excellence gaps. Gifted programs are unique because they focus only on high-
ability children. These programs expose children to more advanced materials than they would
typically learn in a regular classroom (Bhatt, 2011). Over the past two decades, definitions of
giftedness have broadened to include abilities related to leadership, creativity, and the arts rather
than just focusing on assessment data and IQ scores (Mcclain & Pfeiffer, 2012). Gifted and
talented programs in the United States date back to the mid-1800s when the first classes for high-

24
ability children were integrated into Missouri public schools. In 1958, the National Defense
Education Act (NDEA) was established to improve math, science, and foreign language
competency among elementary and secondary students, and this is viewed as the first formal
federal support for gifted education (Gallagher & Weiss, 1979). Through NDEA, the federal
government provided funding and created policies to regulate curriculums in the United States.
However, with different leaders and presidents, focus on education has changed (Bhatt, 2011).
Schools have mandated assessments and the focus on performance has shifted to supporting
below grade level students rather than helping all students.
Legislative Acts
In 1969, the Gifted and Talented Children Educational Assistance Act was introduced.
One purpose of the bill was to include the phrase gifted and talented in the Elementary and
Secondary Educational Act and Educational Professional Development Act (Harrington,
Harrington, & Karns, 1991). According to Lee and Richotte (2018), even though the purpose of
the bill was to bring more attention to gifted and talented students, there was no consensus on a
definition of gifted and talented in education that could critically influence the provision of
suitable services for GATE students.
First federal definition in the United States recognized that gifted and talented students
need different programs or services from regular school programs. Unfortunately, districts
interpreted state and local requirements in ways that were different from the original intent of the
legislation (Ross, 1993), therefore districts’ identification process was different and how students
receive services also looked different. That meant, according to Lee and Richotte (2018),
students from diverse cultural backgrounds, the economically disadvantaged, females, students

25
with disabilities, underachievers, and students with artistic talent were underrepresented in gifted
programs.
According to California Department of Education’s (CDE) Gifted and Talented Guide
Book (2020), LEAs that elect to provide GATE programs must submit an application for
funding. EC Section 52200(c) states that all programs for gifted and talented pupils should
include the following:
1. Differentiated opportunities for learning commensurate with the gifted and talented
pupils’ particular abilities and talent
2. Alternative learning environments in which gifted and talented pupils can acquire skills
and understanding at advanced ideological and creative levels commensurate with their
potentials
3. Provide elements that help gifted and talented pupils develop sensitive and responsibility
to others
4. Create elements that help to develop a commitment in gifted and talented pupils to
constructive ethical standards
5. Have elements that assist gifted and talented pupils to develop self-generating problem-
solved abilities to expand each pupil’s awareness of choices for satisfying contributions
in his or her environment
The guidebook further explains that each school district has the responsibility for
developing a method for the identification of pupils as gifted and talented (California
Department of Education, 2020). The guidebook further elaborate that GATE program services
can be special day classes for the gifted students, enrichment activities, independent study,

26
acceleration, services for underachieving GATE pupils, part time groupings, and cluster
groupings (California Department of Education, 2020).

Figure 1. How many gifted students are in each state (Krisch, 2018).

Figure 1 shows how many students are enrolled in gifted programs based on data from
the National Center for Education Statistics in 2018. Gifted students come from different
families, parent educational level, gender, and age but this figure shows that there is a huge
discrepancy of students participating in gifted programs based on the state they live in (Krisch,
2018). Gifted programs expose children to more advanced material than they would typically
learn in class and are designed to challenge their critical thinking and analytic skills (Bhatt,
2011).

27
Supporting Gifted Students
The National Association of Gifted Children (2010) points out that not all states spend
money for gifted and talented education. Among those which do, not all 10 designate funds
based on numbers of gifted students, but instead, use a range of funding formula and
implementation procedures that do not always result in an equitable distribution of funds
(National Association of Gifted Children, 2010). With the current lack of policy for gifted
programs, states are free to develop their own definitions and districts can create their own
policies on how they will support GATE students and programs (Ahern, 2015).
According to Ahern (2015), the lack of federal policy leaves each district to choose how
gifted students will be identified and supported. Ahern (2015) further explains that the lack of
federal definition and policy leaves many districts to not identify gifted students because the
identification process costs money and time. With lack of funding for schools, school
administration and the board often choose to cut budget from the GATE programs which is
optional rather than cutting funding from servicing underachieving students which is mandatory
(Kaya, 2015). With the current educational system protecting the underachieving students
through an IEP process and resource teachers servicing them, it may be more difficult to make
decisions to support gifted identification procedures and programs (Renzulli & Park, 2000).
Every year, teachers are challenged to identify the specific learning needs of each student
and provide differentiated instruction, so each child has the opportunity to achieve at high levels
(San Jose, 2018). Student learning outcomes improve when teachers create a proactive classroom
environment, communicate with parents, teach math content through the lens of math practices
(San Jose, 2018). Early identification of deficiencies and follow-up interventions are essential to
filling the learning gap for students (Buffum & Mattos, 2011). Current policy does not require

28
districts to set aside funding for the high achieving students. Gurlen (2017) notes that different
education and training programs are needed for talented children. The Gifted and Their Training
(as cited in Gurlen, 2017) found that educational programs for the gifted must be organized in
such quality, diversity and flexibility that they meet different levels of talent as well as various
fields of talent. When looking at programs for gifted students, schools need to take individual
differences into consideration (Gurlen, 2017).
Currently, 30 out of 50 states recognize intellectually gifted students and these states have
different methods of identifying gifted students (Ahern, 2015). In California, according to the
California’s Department of Education, starting 2014, California’s Local Control Funding
Formula legislation redistributed state funding from several categorical programs into the general
funds provided to the district. What this means is that each district can make decisions about how
to allocate the funds to meet the needs of their student population and does not require school
districts to set aside funds for supporting gifted students.
To support GATE, educators need to understand that gifted and talented students will
exhibit their talents not only in a domain, but also within a specific area of interest (Johnsen,
2009). Many teachers do not have any training in gifted education and working with gifted
students, teachers do not understand the needs of gifted programs and education (Kaya, 2015).
According to Johnsen (2009), when there is a lack of understanding of what it means to be
gifted, there is a lack of interest in supporting gifted students. The purpose of gifted education is
to support the development of excellence in students, however with the lack of clear guidelines,
there is a lack of equity in gifted education (Peters & Engerrand, 2016). Peters and Engerrand
(2016) and Kaya (2015) found that teachers perceive creating challenging materials and
providing individual services to gifted students as something that is a burden rather than

29
unconsciously discriminating towards the brightest students. When there is a culture of allowing
academically gifted students to do independent work through enrichment study packets, gifted
students lose interest in learning (Renzulli & Park, 2000). Westberg, Archambault, Dobyns, and
Salvin (as cited in Hertberg-Davis, 2009) found that teachers in heterogeneous classrooms tend
not to include gifted students in the group of students they believe most need differentiation.
Hertberg-Davis (2009) also found that when teachers differentiate, they tend to focus their efforts
on the more struggling learners in the classroom believing that gifted students do not need
differentiation.
There is little research concerning teacher beliefs as related to gifted education and
working with gifted students. Since teachers play a critical role in educating all students, it is
important to study what is the gap between servicing all students to meet their educational needs
and what beliefs teachers have in supporting high achieving students. According to the 2012,
Keeping Pace study of online and blended learning across the United States, incorporating online
programs to work with diverse learners have been effective and can be a resource to teachers.
The report estimates that in 2012, two thirds of school districts in the United States offered at
least one online program (Swan et al., 2015). Unfortunately, McCoach and Siegle (2007) found
in their study that teacher candidates hold a very egalitarian conception of gifted students and do
not find acceleration for gifted students necessary.
Without teachers’ enthusiasm to support all learners, even when online programs have
been purchased through the district, students will not have an opportunity to use them in an
effective way (Swan et al, 2015). There are many ways to support gifted learners, but without
teachers’ understanding of gifted and talented students, there will be lack of support for them
(McCoach and Siegle, 2007). According to Reis and McCoach (2002), underachieving gifted

30
students are caused by slow-moving classroom experience, peer pressure to be like everyone
else, feeling lonely, depression, perfectionism, low self-esteem, nontraditional gifts, and deficits
in self-regulation. Reis and McCoach (2002), further explains that being a gifted child does not
mean everything is easy and they have personal struggles through social immaturity, avoiding
failure, or have difficulty setting achievable expectations.
Lack of Identifying Gifted Students
Currently, the American public’s consensus on gifted education has been a constant
struggle in beliefs between superiority and equality (Gallaher, 1994). Education equity has been
a conversation discussed in many board meetings and funding for the gifted programs have been
a challenge (Gallaher, 1994). Borland (2005) confirmed that this belief aligns with the hesitancy
to identify and program students with gifted abilities. Gifted students are often viewed as
academically successful, therefore when discussing educational equity gifted learners were not
often favored in terms of receiving more services or needing more resources (Borland, 2005).
Consequently, when there is no support to identify gifted students and fund gifted programs,
teachers are responsible for providing gifted services and the majority of teachers do not feel
they are able to support gifted learners at their instructional levels (Deemer, 2004). Teachers
need to know what the process is of identifying gifted students and what resources are out there
for the teachers and the students.
The purpose of NCLB was to ensure that all students would perform at grade level and
schools were held accountable when students did not meet their grade level standard at the end of
the school year (Swan et al., 2015). NCLB forced districts to make a conscious effort to support
underachieving students because not moving these students forward on state testing means,
districts would lose their funding (Swan et al., 2015). Since NCLB, more scrutiny has been

31
focused on high achievement and academic rigor and less attention on disparities in uniformity
of educational rights.
With the shift of focus from supporting all students to helping the lowest performing
students in school, schools left their brightest students behind because when gifted education
became optional and there was no accountability to move brightest students forward, districts cut
funding to support the gifted (McCoach & Siegle, 2007). Pfeiffer (2002) explained that currently,
schools are doing a disservice to gifted and talented students because schools are not identifying
them, and identification is the first step of recognizing students’ needs. NCLB’s accountability
centered on pushing underachieving students forward that meant decisions had to be made about
setting goals in schools, allocating resources to support at risk students, and the brightest students
had to suffer (Swan et al, 2015). Pfeiffer (2002) further explained that one issue facing the gifted
field is that definitions of gifted and talented students are inconsistent across states. Districts
have adopted different versions of the federal definition, which first appeared in The Education
Amendments of 1969.
Pfeiffer (2002) concluded that examples of behaviors that intellectually gifted students
display with a higher than average frequency include becoming easily bored with routine class
work, focus intently on one subject often to the neglect of other assignments, and like to correct
others. Pfiffer (2002) further shared that gifted students tend to monopolize conversations or
preach about topics, dislike or resent working with others who are not equally competent, have a
tendency to offer overly passionate political, social or moral views. Therefore Pfeiffer (2002)
explained that gifted and talented students also have emotional and social needs.
To understand what gifted and talented means, people need to understand that gifted is
not always about academic giftedness. Specific academic ability is considered a type of

32
giftedness by 33 states, creative ability of type of giftedness by 30 states, and leadership as a type
of giftedness by 18 states (Pfeiffer, 2002). Lynette et al. (1999) explained that gifted
identification requires multiple measures and districts should also consider social and emotional
needs as well, gifted students like special needs students have emotional struggles because they
can be perfectionists, highly sensitive, or are afraid to ask questions.
Recent studies on the human brain have shown that experiences given to individuals early
on in life contribute to the growth of the brain and its development in certain fields, but the
absence of such experiences affect development adversely (Lynette et al., 1999). Lynette et al.
(1999) found that gifted children were found to display better performance when involved in
learning activities that nurture their gifts and without training teachers to understand the needs of
the gifted, these learning activities cannot be implemented in schools. Furthermore, studies have
shown that these academically gifted children have decreased interest in academic work and tend
to hide their gifts to look similar to normally developing children in the school environment
because they do not want to stand out. Alodat and Zumberg (2018) argued that the main purpose
of the gifted identification process is discovering and selecting students with specific aptitudes
and developing their talent.
Many studies have proven the necessity of the early identification process in order to
provide service and determine eligible students as early as the preschool level (Alodat &
Zumberg, 2018). Ibata-Arens (2012) shared that United States gifted and talented students were
not being met with current practice, neither in terms of government policy mandates nor
sufficient budget allocations. Nearly two decades later, the United States still lacks a
comprehensive national policy on gifted education (Ibata-Arens, 2012). Without early

33
identification of the gifted and talented students, students lose interest in learning and will not
meet their fullest potential.
Parent Pressure
It is a known fact that parent education is important in predicting children’s achievement
and according to Corwyn and Bradley (2002), educated parents, especially mothers’ education
shaped students’ home environment, parental beliefs and expectations, parental behaviors, and
students’ achievement. Even though many educators believed that parents’ socioeconomic status
had an impact on students’ educational success, Corwyn and Bradley (2002) found that parents’
education level mattered more than how much parents earn.
Study conducted by Corwyn and Bradley (2002) also found that the amount of schooling
parents received influenced how they structure their home environment as well as how they
interact with their children in promoting academic achievement. The researchers found that
parents who are well read and well informed had a more realistic vision of their children’s
academic goals. The study further found that when parents are successful in providing an
emotionally stable and stimulating environment, students performed better in schools. That
means parents helped students to work through challenges and made students feel successful.
However, parent involvement can also have a negative impact on children if parents bring
negative consequences for students’ academic performance and sends inconsistent messages
(Corwyn & Bradley, 2002). Watson (2020) explained that parents are becoming more vocal to
their children’s teachers by demanding teachers to change the pacing guide, place their children
in higher math classes, criticizing teachers’ teaching ability, and asking to have their children
retake exams.

34
Research in different cultures indicates that school teachers are one of those professions
with the highest level of job stress and one of the reasons for stress includes parent-teacher
relationship (Stoeber & Rennert, 2008). Researchers found that continuing exposure to
challenging behavior from parents can deplete the teacher’s emotional and physical resources
which could result in loss of job satisfaction (Prakke, Peet, & Wolf, 2007). Prakkle et al. (2007)
stated that teachers want to have a positive relationship with their students’ parents, therefore
when parents criticize, teachers questioned their competency and resulted in lack of confidence
in their work. Seligman (2000) observed that difficult parents are problematic because of the
teacher’s reaction to them. Seligman (2000) found that when teachers are stressed, teachers
minimized their interaction with the challenging parents and also made decisions favored by
parents to have less conflict which could have a negative effect on the students like inflating
grades or reducing assignments.
Parents of academically talented children have been accused of pushing their children to
achieve at unrealistically high levels. There is concern that parents’ unrealistic expectations
create pressure and foster performance anxiety in their children. Weissbourd (2011) found that
more than one-third of the 40% middle school students surveyed in his study identified getting
into a good college was more important than being a good person. When this data was shared
with teachers at the school, teachers felt that the numbers were far too low. More than 50% of
teachers shared that they receive monthly verbal harassment from parents via email or in person.
Weissbourd (2011) explained that parents contradict themselves when they tell their children that
they want their children to be happy. But then parents enroll students in multiple academic
classes and hire an expensive tutor to provide extra support. Gurlen (2017) writes that parents are
aware of social and emotional difficulties as gifted and gifted children experience much more

35
awareness than their peers’ reactions to errors in a social setting which may increase anxiety and
hinder social development. Gurlen (2017) notes, “some underachievement in the gifted may be
due to learning disabilities or other exceptionalities, which can make the giftedness and result in
the student being overlooked” (p. 206). Therefore, the parents of gifted children are important
sources of information since they experience these hardships together with their children and
teachers need to take parental involvement in a positive way (Chitwood as cited in Gurlen,
2017).
CogAT Test
Students with gifted characteristics need to be identified in order to receive services.
Being gifted does not mean students are good at every academic subject (Pfiffer, 2002), therefore
when there is an assessment, clear criteria, and training for all stakeholders, schools will have a
starting process to service students who can benefit through a gifted program. Some states have
clear guidelines for the screening process but not all states have a process in place for the gifted
identification process (Johnsen, 2004). In some states, parents, teachers, or administrators refer
students to take an exam and some states all students take a gifted test one time by the school
district (McBee, 2006). Research conducted by Brown et al. (2005) has shown that strategies for
identifying gifted and talented students should include the following: individual expression
criteria, ongoing assessment, and multiple criteria for identification. Brown et al. (2005)
concluded that asking teachers to refer students for gifted services was ineffective. Teachers
needed criteria that is not subjective (Brown et al., 2005).
Callahan et al. (2000) and Han and Marvin (2000) suggested that a successful
identification process needs to take into consideration a clear definition of giftedness, the
multiple manifestations of giftedness, and administer assessments over time to identify additional

36
gifted students. Han and Marvin (2000) found that without a clear criteria of identifying gifted
students and without having a clear criteria of who can receive gifted services, schools cannot
really provide meaningful support to their students.
In the United States, districts make their own decisions to identify gifted or not, one test
that has been successful in identifying academically gifted students is the Cognitive Abilities
Test (CogAT) (Warne, 2015). The Cognitive Abilities Test is a widely used test for students
from kindergarten through high school. The test measures student’s reasoning abilities that are
considered a crucial factor to distinguishing gifted learners (Warne, 2015). Warne (2015) further
explained that developing the latest edition of CogAT took more than nine years. To develop a
valid and reliable test, the seventh edition of CogAT sample contained 65,350 students from
American K-12 schools representing all areas and ethnic groups.
Lohman (2005) shared that any studies have proved the validity of using the CogAT test
in identifying gifted children, especially at early ages. Lohman (2005) noted that CogAT is used
to identify GATE students and the test measures student’s reasoning abilities that cannot be
measured through a classroom or a state assessment. Unlike typical state assessments, CogAT
focuses on how students think and approach problems (Lohman, 2005). When state tests focuses
on asking students to answer facts, CogAT test asks students to solve patterns, puzzles, and
identify what is missing in a photo. The CogAT test will help teachers understand how students
think and solve problems. There needs to be a federal policy that mandates all schools to identify
gifted and talented students using the same test. School Districts need to have an identification
process that is clear.

37

Figure 2. CogAT Bell Curve (Education for Gifted Children, 2020)

When identifying gifted students, CogAT considers students scoring Standard Age
Scores (SAS) of 128-150. CogAT tests reasoning skills and questions focus on making
inferences, making deductions, and classifying and categorizing.
Here is an example of a CogAT question, see Figure 2. This type of questions are on a test for
primary grades, 1st and 2nd grade.

38

Figure 3. CogAT Sample Question. (Testing Moms, 2020).
Effective Programs for Gifted Students
After students have been identified, schools need to have gifted programs in place to
support gifted and talented students. According to Guez, Peyre, Cam, Gauvrit, and Ramus
(2018), gifted children may be at greater risk for specific kinds of social-emotional difficulties if
their needs are not met. Many gifted students struggle with social and emotional issues such as
perfectionism, depression, and anxiety (Doss & Bloom, 2018). According to Doss and Bloom
(2018), these conditions can create a cycle of stress rooted in nervousness, agitation, and
compulsive thoughts. One recommendation made by Doss and Bloom (2018) is that all schools
incorporate and teach students about mindfulness, provide daily guided meditations, and teach
students to apply the techniques in their everyday lives. Doss and Bloom (2018) found that when
students learn how to monitor the physical and emotional challenges, students, especially gifted

39
students were able to stay focused in schools. Mindfulness is the practice of being consciously
aware of the present moment (Burke & Hawkins, 2012). Through medication, students learned to
observe, participate, and accept each moment with calmness and kindness (Burke & Hawkins,
2012). Doss and Bloom (2018) found that mindfulness training in schools successfully reduced
impulsivity and aggression.
Gifted students not only have emotional challenges, they also struggle to keep engaged in
schools. Ibata-Arens (2012) states that gifted learners start the school year already knowing the
academic content and gifted learners learn up to eight times as quickly as an average learner.
This means that with the right kind of teaching, gifted learners can further their studies. Guez et
al. (2018) further explained that with the right kind of support, there is a positive relationship
between IQ in grade 6 and achievement in grade 9.
Pfeiffer (2002) explained that American society today does not feel an urgency to nurture
and protect its most talented young, even though they will be tomorrow’s leaders. Pfeiffer (2002)
further explained that 99% of special education funding goes to the lower end of the ability
continuum and only two cents out of every $100 allocated for education is directed to gifted
students. Thirteen states follow the same policy and procedures for the gifted and for students
with disabilities (Pfeiffer, 2002). Through the use of state testing guidelines as imposed by
NCLB, gifted students were perceived as already achieving at an acceptable standard and,
therefore, not the focus of improvement (Beisser, 2008). As teachers are focused on teaching
grade level standards, they are responsible for ensuring their students’ proficiency at grade level.
Standards for all students need to be radically elevated (Little, 2012). Gifted students
frequently spend large portions of their school time in heterogeneously grouped, general
education classrooms, where evidence suggests that little differentiation of curriculum and

40
instruction occurs (Little, 2012). Research has revealed that gifted students are not realizing their
potential (Karnes, 2003). Gifted students are often working with curriculum that is not
challenging for them and that therefore may not really offer opportunities for learning (Little,
2012). Lack of challenge by such features as slow pace, too much repetition, inability to move
forward after achieving mastery, and lack of opportunity to pursue personal interests or to focus
on thinking skills rather than mastery of facts. None producers indicated that they were
unmotivated by unchallenging school experiences, they actually resented the lack of educational
value presented to them by those experiences (Little, 2012). Successful gifted education
programs are those that align identification processes with academic expectations and teachers
have positive beliefs regarding identification and programs for gifted students (Landrum, 2001).
There are underperforming GATE students in the United States and without a strong support for
GATE education, schools will continue to produce underachieving gifted and talented students.
Table 2
California GATE Standards (California Department of Education, 2020).

California GATE Standards
Acceleration: Acceleration of thinking involves differentiating the core curriculum to provide
challenges beyond the core content.
Depth: Differentiation using depth involves studying a topic in greater detail.
Complexity: Complexity involves moving beyond a surface level understanding.
Novelty: Novelty provides inquiry and exploration into the core curriculum.

Table 2 is an example of California GATE standards recommended by the California
Department of Education to be used when supporting gifted students. In California's GATE

41
standards, teachers are recommended to use acceleration, depth, complexity, and novelty as a
strategy to work with gifted students.
Gifted Students are Special Needs Students
According to Cross (2014) all people go through life experiencing some degree of
malnourishment in some areas. In some ways, not getting everything you need can help people
learn to be independent. It is a life skill. However, a few people deal with the degree and chronic
nature of educational malnourishment as do gifted students (Cross, 2014). Cross (2014) further
explains that gifted students do not get what they need in schools and this threatens their
psychological well-being which makes them special needs students. Yeung (2014) explained that
special education is often justified with language that focuses on the special needs these children
have to reach their full potential and to contribute to society in the most valuable way possible.
Yeung (2014), further explained that the same argument has and should be used in support of
gifted children. It is not one size fits all. Gifted children should be considered as special needs
students (Yeung, 2014). Cross and Coleman (2005) further argues that chronic malnutrition, lack
academic support, places the gifted student at serious risk for long-term underachievement,
problems with self-concept, reduction in agency, increase in self-doubt, and more emotional
challenges.
Gifted students are special needs students and teachers need to provide accommodations
for GATE students. When most educators use terms such as special education and exceptional
children, they are referring to students at the lower end of the ability’s continuum (Sternberg,
1996). Pfeiffer (2002) explained that it is important that educators and psychologists gain
familiarity with gifted children and their families to recognize the multiple manifestations of
giftedness. Without understanding and recognizing the developmental nature of talented

42
development, people will not see any value in supporting them (Pfeiffer, 2002). Pfeiffer (2002)
argued that identification is not the answer and after identification of the gifted, schools need to
also provide intervention for them.
Little (2012) recommends specific strategies for helping students to develop a sense of
utility value or intrinsic value in classroom-based tasks. Little (2012) explained that schools need
to help students develop short-and-long term academic goals and to explore the relationships
between these goals. With proper training of teachers, Little (2012) believes that schools can
provide authentic choices, learning about students’ interests and incorporating those into the
classroom, and communicating support and feedback. One way of supporting gifted students is a
pull-out program. Pull-out program is defined as a program in which students are removed from
the regular student population and receive a type of advanced learning opportunity from a gifted
education teacher (Delcourt, Cornell, & Goldberg, 2007). This program allows gifted students to
work with other gifted students. Another way to support gifted students is through accelerated
learning. Neihart (2007) defines accelerated learning as placing a student at their appropriate
grade level in academic classes not based on their age, but rather based on their ability. Students
can be accelerated by subject areas or for core subjects (language arts, math, and science). To
have successful support for the gifted students, additional educators like a gifted teacher or a case
manager needs to be assigned to help with the process (Chapman, 2009). If pull-out service or
accelerated programs are not an option, Little (2012) also shared that schools need to increase the
relevance of the curriculum for individual students and groups because gifted students need to
find purpose in what they are learning. There are many different ways to support gifted students,
teachers need to know what options they have in their schools and need ongoing professional
development opportunities to better support GATE students. The current practice at Emerson

43
does not have a clear criterion for pullout referral services and students are not working in
homogeneous ability groups which is recommended for the gifted students (Cross, 2014).
According to Callahan (2001), effective schools have a clear identification in place and there is a
consistent policy in placing students into advanced academic programs.
Professional Development for Teachers to Support Gifted Students
Even if we have strong gifted programs in place for schools, teachers need to find value
in gifted education. It is imperative that educators and psychologists gain familiarity with gifted
children and their families (Pheiffer, 2002). Elhoweris (2008) explained that for the past several
decades there has been a general perception that teachers are poor at identifying gifted and
talented students and teachers also had their own bias about gifted students. Teachers’
conceptions of giftedness and perceptions of their students’ special needs may lack
understanding about how cultural and environmental factors affect the expression of giftedness
among gifted diverse students (Kaya, 2015). Elhoweris (2008) also found that teachers in high
socioeconomic status schools had higher or greater expectations for student academic
achievement than did their counterparts in low socioeconomic status schools. Hardre and
Sullivan (2008) identified less than six percent of studies focused on rural schools on gifted
education and found that students from low socio-economic backgrounds had less exposure to
enrichment classes and less chance in being identified as gifted. Researchers found that it was
more common to find gifted programs at higher socioeconomic status schools, which also brings
up the questions of equity for all (Elhoweris, 2008). It is a concern that minorities and children
from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are underrepresented in gifted programs. Furthermore,
Kaya (2015) summarized several studies that found teachers’ expectations and perceptions of

44
students’ abilities and performances to be based on students’ race, social class, background, and
ethnicity.
Dixon et al. (2014) concluded that school districts when planning professional
development needs to not only introduce the topic of differentiation, but they need also allow
teachers to practice the strategy in a workshop setting in which the “coach” helps them write and
review their own lessons, assuring them of greater success in the classroom. Since teachers are
often the main identifiers of giftedness, Johnsen and Ryser (1994) concluded that teachers need
additional training in order to observe specific gifted characteristics that may be expressed in
different ways by certain groups of students. Dixon et al. (2014) believed that teacher education
programs should provide education about the philosophy behind the process of differentiation of
instruction so that beginning teachers may enter the classroom ready for learning diversity and
see the value in differentiating. Matheis et al. (2017) found negative attitudes toward fostering
gifted children as teachers indicated limited support for the main gifted education provisions,
when working with parents of the gifted, teachers felt parents of gifted were demanding and also
found these parents to be pushy. Teachers in teacher education in gifted education were more
likely to have favorable attitudes toward gifted education (Matheis et al., 2017). Researchers
found that having an opportunity to learn more about the needs of gifted allowed new teachers to
appreciate and find compassion for the gifted students (Dixon et al., 2014). Dixon et al. (2014)
found that fostering the adequate inclusion of gifted students in mixed-ability classes involves
the strengthening of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs about teaching the gifted. Matheis et al.
(2017) recommends that teacher education programs need to instruct them on how to foster
students with diverse intellectual abilities and curriculum like this is essential in all teacher
preparation classes. When teachers see and understand what it means to be gifted and how

45
teachers can provide services for the gifted, teachers will be able to have less negative views on
working with gifted students.
Teacher Training and Preparation
Differentiation for many levels of learners in one classroom requires extensive
knowledge, training, and planning on the part of the teacher and this is very challenging work for
teachers (Hertberg-Davis, 2009). Teachers are asked to support all learners and districts are
working with limited programs and resources. Dixon et al. (2014) explained that one size does
not fit all when instructing students because students differ in a number of ways. To meet student
needs, teachers need to adjust both curriculum and instruction for various groups of students and
this is challenging when the achievement gap of students from gifted to at risk students are huge
(Dixon et al, 2014). Researchers found that teachers who had more professional development in
differentiation, regardless of what school he or she was teaching, felt more efficacious in
differentiating instruction in their classes because of the training the teacher received (Dixon et
al., 2014). Peters and Jolly (2018) explained that the majority of teacher training focuses on
helping struggling learners and district professional development focused on providing
intervention for academically struggling students.
Peters and Jolly (2018) found that teachers are the most significant influence on student
achievement and student’s love for learning, which suggest a need for greater attention in teacher
preparation. Peter and Jolly (2018) concluded in their research that Nevada is the only state that
requires a separate course in gifted education at the pre-service level and those teachers who
received in-service professional development and worked in schools with an attention to gifted
and talented education produced the most significant positive results associated with teacher
attitudes. This finding from Peter and Jolly (2018) is a great indicator in why teacher training is

46
important to serve all students. The researchers believe that pre-service teachers’ understanding
of gifted students' needs increased after a nine-week course on a Saturday enrichment program
for gifted students (Peter & Jolly, 2018). Dixon et al (2014) concluded that teacher training on
gifted education will provide support teachers need in order to support their gifted and talented
students.
Through the identification process, Robinson (2002) explained that even gifted students
have varying backgrounds and different learning styles from each other. There is a lack of
understanding about what it means to be gifted. Without a clear federal policy mandating
identification of gifted students, educators will continue to struggle to meet the needs of gifted
students. Programs for gifted students can be a complex task as resources, school district
policies, and teacher education may dictate certain programs and lack of support on other
programs. Gifted programs need to provide an appropriate and equitable education for gifted
students by matching their needs to what the district can provide. One of the main factors in
providing diversified educational programs is teacher awareness and perspective about gifted
students and effective programs. According to Johnsen and Ryser (1994). Teachers can provide
more individualized services for the gifted, but they also need to understand how to work with
them. Proper teacher training programs will help teachers more prepared to work with gifted and
talented students as well as help students’ teachers feel more prepared to provide differentiated
instruction in the classroom.
Clark and Estes’ (2008) Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences Framework
The framework by Clark and Estes (2008) model is a research-tested problem-solving
model that focuses on the knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational influences
required for managing successful organizational change. Knowledge and skills development

47
support teachers in handling complex and changing environments that affect how teachers
support gifted students on campus (Clark & Estes, 2008). Through understanding what
knowledge and skills teachers have on gifted education, it enables the capacity to solve novel
problems and challenges by generating new conceptual knowledge and skills of tasks that
increase teachers’ understanding of gifted education and identification process (Clark & Estes,
2008). Mayer (2011) described motivation as an internal state that begins and maintains behavior
aimed at reaching a goal. Motivation is an influence in organizations trying to reach their goals
(Clark & Estes, 2008). Organizational factors such as work processes, material resources,
system, political system, and organizational structure also impact the alignment between desired
and actual performance (Berger, 2014). As a result, it is necessary to understand teachers’
knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences in providing gifted programs and
identification processes at Emerson.
Stakeholder Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences
This review of scholarly research focuses on the knowledge and motivation influences
required for teachers at Emerson School District to have in order to achieve their performance
goal of adopting a school board approved policy to identify and support gifted students in grades
3
rd
to 8
th
at Emerson School District by June 2022. Currently, Emerson School District does not
identify gifted students and teachers use different criteria to refer students to see a GATE
consultant once a week for 30 minutes.
Stakeholder Knowledge
The applications of knowledge related to gifted education are needed for Emerson
District teachers to act toward achieving the performance goal are factual, procedural, and
metacognitive. Without having an understanding of what it means to be gifted and how

48
differentiation occurs in a classroom, Emerson School District cannot meet the performance
goal. Rueda (2011) stated that having appropriate knowledge and skills are prerequisites to
achieving any type of goals. Without having the background knowledge on gifted education,
Emerson District stakeholders may not find value in meeting their performance goal. Once the
knowledge and skills have been identified, Emerson School District needs to consider two other
factors, motivation and organizational influences.
In order to close the performance gap, the school district needs to assess the relevant
knowledge influences and corresponding knowledge types. Krathwohl (2002) identifies four
types of knowledge. They are factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive. Factual, the
first knowledge type, is having basic facts, information and terminology related to a topic.
Conceptual, the second knowledge type is knowledge of underlying categories, principals,
structure, or theory of an area or field. Next is procedural, which is knowledge of the skills and
procedures involved with the task, including techniques, methods, and necessary steps. Lastly,
metacognitive is the ability to reflect on and adjust the necessary skills and knowledge including
general strategies, assessing demands, planning one’s approach and monitoring progress.
Krathwohl (2002) expanded upon Bloom’s 1950’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
to expand knowledge from three to four subcategory types. Krathwohl (2002) added
metacognitive knowledge, which is a necessary component to have. Without stakeholders
reflecting and adjusting their knowledge, Emerson District cannot move forward with changing
the way they support gifted students. Based on a review of current research, three primary
knowledge influences impact Emerson District’s performance goal.

49
Factual Knowledge
Recognizing the needs for identifying gifted students. The first knowledge influence that
the classroom teachers need to achieve their performance goal is introducing the facts about
gifted education in the United States. Factual knowledge and conceptual knowledge are usually
discussed together as declarative knowledge (Ravada, 2019). Clark and Estes (2008) explained
that in a knowledge-based economy, improving human performance is the highest leverage
activity available to a company. They further explain that performance improvement products
need to be targeted at the root causes of performance problems. Factual knowledge is the actual
knowledge that individuals need to know to do the job (Anderson & Krathwohl, as cited in
Ravada, 2019).
Currently, there is no federal policy that mandates the school district to identify and
service gifted students. When districts have so many policies to follow, but gifted education is
not mandated, gifted education will be pushed aside (Rainy, 1996). When there is no funding for
gifted education, gifted education will not happen. Without funding for gifted programs, teachers
cannot receive proper training to work with gifted students and teachers do not have the tools to
support their gifted students. Without identifying gifted students, Emerson District cannot make
a recommendation to service academically gifted students in their district.
In order to support gifted learners, first, Emerson District needed to understand what their
stakeholders knew about gifted students, how gifted students were identified, and what gifted
programs have been successful. People assume that gifted students are motivated, perform
academically high, and are successful in life (Konstantopoulos et al., 2001). According to
Konstantopoiolos et al. (2001) that is not always true. Gifted students are often left to work
independently or are used as tutors to help academically struggling students (Seedorf, 2014).

50
Most gifted students do not receive special education services and often have a hard time
connecting with their peers (Rainy, 1996). Gifted students struggle in schools because they find
schoolwork to be boring and not meaningful (Pheiffer, 2001). It is important to identify gifted
students at an early stage in order to prevent students from losing interest in learning.
When educators and schools have more knowledge about how gifted students are not
meeting their needs, school districts will be more open to supporting them. One way to support
gifted students is to have an assessment tool and use the assessment to identify gifted students.
Even if students are not identified as gifted, this assessment will help teachers understand more
about their students. It is a way to collect data. The knowledge of lack of mandated policies by
the federal government and what is currently being used in other school districts are important
information Emerson teachers need to have. Without having a true knowledge of gifted students’
struggles and needs, teachers cannot understand how to help them.
Emerson District needs to assess what their community already knows about gifted
education and differentiating instruction. Knowledge and skills are critical to determine whether
people know how to achieve their performance goals. Often people do not know their
weaknesses and without all the facts laid out, people do not have clear information to address the
performance gap (Clark & Estes, 2008). McCoach and Siegle (2007) found that gifted students
may not perform at their highest level possible if teachers are also giving lower level work. The
study concluded that students’ academic performance was significantly influenced by their
teacher perception and expectations.
Procedural Knowledge
Practicing and Analyzing CogAT to understand the needs of gifted students. The
second knowledge influence Emerson District’s teachers need is procedural knowledge. To

51
achieve their performance goal, teachers need to understand how to administer CogAT (The
Cognitive Abilities Test) as a tool to understand the needs of gifted students. Currently, there is
no assessment being used at Emerson District to identify gifted students. CogAT is a multiple-
choice K-12 assessment that measures reasoning skills with different types of verbal,
quantitative, and nonverbal questions. Some schools in California use CogAT assessment data as
a way to accept students into their gifted and talented programs or into a private school.
This procedural knowledge is a necessary step to achieving Emerson School District’s
performance goal. The teachers need to understand and practice using CogAT data to drive
instruction in the classroom. Organizations invest billions of dollars in training each year, but
many report that these training sessions do not transfer (Grossman & Salas, 2011). Without
giving enough support to make teachers proficient in analyzing and understanding the data,
teachers will not be able to use the information they have to support their students. Without
having proper training that is focused on producing permanent cognitive and behavioral changes,
these training sessions will be ineffective (Grossman & Salas, 2011). The connection between
teachers’ knowledge on gifted education and how their knowledge impacts student experience is
evident. That is why it is important for Emerson district to know what teachers know about
gifted programs, gifted policies, gifted identification process, and gifted students’ needs.
Metacognitive
Reflecting on teachers’ own abilities in the classroom. The third knowledge influence
Emerson District’s teachers need is metacognitive knowledge. This is self-awareness and
understanding of the role that teachers need to be reflective of their teaching abilities in the
classroom (Ravada, 2019). Mayer (2011) explains that in order for learning to happen, one needs
to look at how learning is transferred. In order to improve differentiation, teachers need to reflect

52
on their own work. Like students, teachers also need a well-sequenced professional development
to ensure that they are building from the prior knowledge of working with students with special
needs including the gifted students.
Teachers’ ability to reflect their work is having metacognitive knowledge. Mayer (2011)
refers to metacognition as knowing what they already know. Mayer further explains that there
are two components of metacognition: one is being aware and knowing how one learns and
another is being in control and knowing how to monitor and control one’s learning. This
knowledge influence is metacognitive knowledge as it emphasizes teachers’ ability to reflect
what they are able to do and what they need to work on.
Table 3 illustrates the organizational performance goal and stakeholder goal aligned to
the knowledge influences essential to meeting both goals. Additionally, the table identified the
knowledge type and the associated assessment mechanism for exploring the knowledge influence
for the stakeholders as discussed in the previous sections.
Table 3
Knowledge Influences, Types, and Assessments for Analysis
Organizational Mission
The Mission of Emerson District is to meet the needs of all students academically, socially,
and emotionally.

Organizational Global Goal
Emerson District’s organizational global goal is to prepare all students to be successful beyond
their K-8
th
experience in the 21
st
Century.
Organizational Performance Goal
By October 2023, Emerson District will adopt an assessment plan to identify gifted students.
All 3
rd
grade students will take an assessment in the fall to determine who is qualified to
receive gifted and talented education support.

53
Knowledge Influence Knowledge Type Knowledge Influence
Assessment
Teachers need knowledge of
what policies exist regarding
gifted students.

Factual
Teachers were asked to
answer factual
information about gifted
and talented policies,
tests, programs, and
training.
Teachers need to understand
what it means to be gifted
and what needs gifted
students have.
Factual
Teachers were asked to
define what “gifted”
means.
Teachers need to know how
gifted students are identified.
Factual
Teachers were asked to
identify gifted students
they work with.
Teachers need to know how
CogAT is administered and
how to analyze the data.
Procedural
Teachers need to have
time to practice
reviewing the CogAT
data and work with their
team to make actionable
goals through
professional
development training.
All teachers will be
required to attend.
Teachers need to be
reflective
of their own abilities to
provide differentiated
instruction.
Metacognitive
Teachers were asked to
do a self-reflection
survey answering
questions about their
work in the classroom.

Stakeholders’ Motivation
Motivation is the internal, psychological process that gets one going (Clark & Estes,
2008). Without motivation of stakeholders wanting to achieve the organization’s goal, Emerson
School District cannot achieve their performance goal of supporting all students academically.
For Emerson teachers, teachers need to see the value in differentiating instruction for gifted

54
students and teachers need to believe that they are capable of effectively differentiating
instruction for all students. Without expectancy value theory and self-efficacy, Emerson teachers
will not have the motivation to provide support for the gifted. According to Pintrich (2003), in
self-termination theory, there are three basic needs. People need competence, autonomy, and
relatedness to be motivated. Teachers play the most critical role in educating and supporting
students.
The three motivational components of starting, continuing, and completing tasks critical
to the stakeholder success in achieving their goals also reflects the beliefs of the individual about
their own abilities (Rueda, 2011). Motivation is, therefore, an important element to assess and
measure when looking at the organizational goal. Clark and Estes (2008) also emphasizes that
many organizational performance gaps are due to motivational causes. Having active choice
means, one can choose to accomplish the performance goal. For this problem of practice, this
means, teachers are motivated to provide support for gifted learners. Being persistent refers to
not giving up and continuing to advocate for all learners. When schools hold back students to
achieve more, that is a learning discrimination. Teachers need to see and believe that they can
embrace all learners to grow and support all learners to be challenged. According to Pintrich
(2003), there are six motivational theories, self-efficacy, value, interest, attributions, goals and
goal orientation, and emotions. For Emerson elementary teachers, the identified motivational
influences are expectancy value theory and self-efficacy theory.
Expectancy Value Theory
Teachers need to find value in supporting high achieving students. The first
motivational influence Emerson teachers need in order to meet the performance goal is
expectancy value theory. Believing and anticipating that one’s actions will achieve the desired

55
results is an important motivational influence. Wigfield and Eccles (2000) found that ability
beliefs are defined as the individual’s perception of his or her current competence at a given
activity. Pintrich and Schunk (as cited in Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) stated that beliefs about one’s
ability play a prominent role in different motivation theories and to increase results, people need
to believe that they can do the work and that the work is important. Eccles (2006) explains
expectancy value theory as people being able to ask themselves if they are able to do the task and
if they want to do the task. If one answers no to one of these questions, that person is unlikely to
fully engage in learning opportunities in schools and in organizations. An individual who
believes that they can perform will have greater motivation to perform (Rueda, 2011). The value
and meaning an individual ascribes to an activity also drives interest which influences motivation
(Mayer, 2011). Higher levels of motivation that result from greater interest and participation also
lead to increased performance (Alexander et al., 2010). Teachers are more likely to succeed if
they value the shared group and organizational tasks linked to the district’s mission and vision
and are able to truly understand how to use their knowledge and skills, which increases their
feeling of expectancy value theory.
According to Eccles (2006), fully engaging learning at school requires a desire to do the
work. Without wanting to do the work, schools cannot motivate their students. This means,
teachers at Emerson District need to have intrinsic value in what Emerson District is trying to
accomplish. Eccles (2006) explains intrinsic value as something one needs to have to stay
motivated. According to Eccles (2006), intrinsic value is highest when one is doing tasks they
enjoy or tasks that are personally meaningful. When people have a desire to learn and see their
work as having a utility value, there will be a more positive outcome.

56
Teachers have an indispensable role in the education of students (Kaya, 2015) and with
the right kind of support for teachers, teachers can create well-developed lessons to support the
characteristics and the special needs of gifted and talented students. Emerson Elementary
teachers need to feel more confident in supporting highly academically gifted students. If
teachers do not feel confident and students cannot receive quality education. Teachers may feel
more confident as they gain more experience in teaching. Teachers may also feel more confident
in their ability by receiving more positive feedback from their mentors and coaches.
Self-Efficacy Theory
Teachers need to believe that they can support gifted students. The second motivational
performance influence Emerson Elementary teachers need is self-efficacy. Kellar (2012) defines
self-efficacy as a “one’s belief in her capacity to effectively improve organizational practice as
perceived by her capacity to effectively improve organizational practice as perceived by her own
psychological capabilities, leader attributes, and developmental experiences” (p. 105). Machida
and Schaubroeck (as cited in Kellar, 2012) explained that developmental experiences can occur
in three areas: feedback, challenges, and support. Kellar (2012) found that feedback can increase
one’s self-efficacy as one is able to obtain information that may find helpful to his or her.
Research indicates that self-efficacy aids in motivating teachers to believe their capabilities can
effectively contribute to successfully achieving goals (Rueda, 2011). The support teachers
receive, both early in and throughout her career, can have a large impact on improving one’s
self-efficacy (Machida & Schaubroeck as cited in Kellar, 2012). Teachers need to believe they
are capable of effectively differentiating lessons for all students including the academically high
achieving students. Pajares (2006) explains that self-efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for
human motivation, well-being, and personal accomplishment. At the core of social cognitive

57
theory is self-efficacy. People have judgment on themselves about their capabilities to learn or
perform at designated levels. As expected, some people have high self-efficacy and some people
have low self-efficacy.
It is important to note that individuals tend to select tasks in which they feel competent
and avoid those where they do not. This is called motivational consequences of self-efficacy
beliefs (Pajares, 2006). There is little incentive to engage in a task unless they believe they can
achieve desired outcomes. These outcomes may be short-term goals or long-term goals. Self-
efficacious students have been found to work hard, have greater optimism, lower anxiety, and
achieve more. Even though IQ (Intelligent Quotient), a total score derived from several
standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence, has been the most powerful predictor of
achievement, self-efficacy is the most powerful and independent contribution to the students’
academic performance (Pajares, 2006). Differentiating instruction is a skill and when teachers
believe that they are able to do this, there will be motivation to try. According to Hertberg-Davis
(2009) differentiation of instruction calls on a teacher to recognize that the students in his or her
classroom differ from one another in a variety of ways including readiness levels, interests, and
learning profiles. Tomlinson (2003) further explains that differentiating learning experiences for
gifted students include principles of providing not only challenges generally considered
beneficial for gifted students through depth and complexity, novelty, and acceleration but
curricular and instructional modifications geared toward individual student needs.
With self-efficacy, teachers will take their role in supporting gifted students more
seriously. There is a mindset of focusing on academically underachieving students. However,
without challenging the gifted students, these gifted students have a high chance of academically
underperforming as well. Maia-Pinto and Fleith (2002) determined in their study that teachers

58
possess superficial ideas and outright misconceptions pertaining to the concept of gifted and lack
information about the identification of students with gifted abilities. The study also found that
teachers saw off task and talking a lot in class as a deterrent when identifying giftedness. This is
also from lack of understanding about gifted students and characteristics of gifted students.
Table 4 depicts the organizational performance goal and stakeholder goal aligned with
the assumed motivational influences essential to meeting both goals. Additionally, the table
identified the motivational theory or research area and the associated assessment mechanism for
exploring the assumed motivational influence for the stakeholders as discussed in the previous
sections.
Table 4
Motivational Influences and Assessments for Analysis
Organizational Mission
The Mission of Emerson District is to meet the needs of all students academically, socially, and
emotionally.

Organizational Global Goal
Emerson District’s organizational global goal is to prepare all students to be successful beyond
their K-8
th
experience in the 21
st
Century.
Organizational Performance Goal
By October 2023, Emerson District will adopt an assessment plan to identify gifted students.
All 3
rd
grade students will take an assessment in the fall to determine who is qualified to receive
gifted and talented education support.
Assumed Motivation Influences Motivational Influence Assessment
Expectancy Value Theory: Teachers need to believe
the value in differentiating instruction for gifted
students.
Teachers were asked to answer:
I want to learn more about supporting
all learners.

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Do you believe school districts in the
U.S. need to identify gifted and talented
students?
(Strongly disagree-Strongly agree)
Expectancy Value Theory: Teachers need to want to
pull small groups, assess students, plan lessons based
on student performance, and provide rigorous
curriculum for all.

Written survey item, “It is important for
me to differentiate instruction for our
gifted learners.”
(Strongly disagree-Strongly agree)

Self-Efficacy Theory: Teachers need to believe they
are capable of effectively differentiating instruction
for all students.
Written survey item, “I feel confident
about my ability to differentiate
instruction for all learners.”
(Strongly disagree – Strongly agree)

Do you agree with the statement,
"teachers are the most significant
influence on student achievement and
student’s love for learning, which
suggest a need for greater attention in
teacher preparation."
(Strongly disagree – Strongly agree)

Self-Efficacy Theory: Teachers need to feel
confident in their ability to differentiate instruction
for all students.
In your classroom, do you use Depth
and Complexity, Acceleration, and
Novelty? If so, how often do you use
Depth and Complexity, Acceleration,
and Novelty?
(Strongly disagree-Strongly agree)

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Organizational Influences
Rueda (2011) stated that “there are a variety of approaches that suggest that
organizational factors are important to consider in school outcomes and discussions of student
achievement” (p. 52). In addition to knowledge and motivation influences, organizational
support and barriers are related to performance. Culture is a powerful influence in performance
and it exists within an organization at the environmental, group, and individual levels (Clark &
Estes, 2008). Culture, which is often thought of as pertaining to individuals rather than
organization is difficult to define (Rueda, 2011). Misalignment between organizational goals,
policies, or procedures with organizational culture can create performance gaps (Clark & Estes,
2008). Schools and educational organizations are a complex system in which one part of the
system is tied to another. Unlike other systems, schools have more emotional strings attached
because the wellbeing of children is inextricably tied to the success of failure of the systems
(Rueda, 2011). Clark and Estes (2008) explained that there are three causes of performance gaps,
people’s knowledge and skills, their motivation to achieve the goal, and organizational barriers
such as a lack of necessary equipment and missing or inadequate work processes.
Organizational influences refer to work processes, material resources, and value streams
(Clark & Estes, 2008). Work processes means how people, equipment, and materials need to link
and interact over time to produce a desired result. Material resources means what supplies are
available for the employees and what can be designed to complete the work that needs to be
done. Value streams are a form of analysis that describes how an organization’s departments and
divisions interact and what processes are implemented. This section of the review will examine
the cultural models and setting of Emerson District that influence the ability of teachers to
support gifted learners. First, a brief introduction to cultural models and settings literature is

61
reviewed. Then, the organizational context on learning culture and organizational readiness
teachers need to address is explored. And lastly, the organizational context influences table is
presented.
Cultural Models and Cultural Settings
Culture is the most important work process because it dictates how people work together
(Clark & Estes, 2008). According to Clarn and Estes (2008), culture is difficult to see. Through
understanding the culture, one can understand the core values, goals and beliefs of an
organization. For teachers at Emerson, the current practice of delivering grade level standards
and nothing more has been a culture that has been practiced for a long time. To understand how
one can change the current practice of only delivering grade level standards, the organizational
culture needs to be analyzed.
When considering culture, one needs also look at culture in the environment, culture in
groups, and culture in individuals. Culture in groups means understanding and viewing each
department, team, and group of working together rather than individual. Culture in individuals
looks at how each person in the organization is expected to perform and how individualism
affects the organization. All these qualities need to be understood and analyzed to identify what
organizational gaps still exist in order to achieve the stakeholders’ goal (Clark & Estes, 2008).
For this section, the study will focus on organizational influences that will affect and
could be barriers of having policies in place to identify gifted students. According to Schein
(2017), if people understand the dynamics of culture, people will be less likely to be puzzled,
irritated, and anxious when people encounter the unfamiliar and seemingly irrational behavior of
people in an organization. An organization’s culture is created over time and culture dictates how
staff at Emerson performs their duties and responsibilities (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Culture is an

62
important component to consider when evaluating the current state of an organization. Culture is
difficult to see but can be changed through a focus on climate (Schneider, Brief, & Guzzo, 1996).
According to Schneider, Brief, and Guzzo (1996), if people do not change, there is no
organizational change. An organization’s culture can be analyzed based on the cultural setting
and cultural models that exist in it (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). For the Emerson School
District, all stakeholders (school board, parents, teachers, and administrators) need to see the
importance of differentiating instruction in the classroom for all students, including the high
achieving students. Cultural setting occurs whenever two or more people come together, over
time, to accomplish something. Both cultural models and settings are constrained and enabled by
the ecological niche in which they reside (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). The researcher needs
to understand how cultural settings at Emerson evolved to have the current state of
organizational influence of not identifying and not having programs for the gifted. When these
organizational influences have been identified and addressed, Emerson teachers will be able to
state what organizational factors have been barriers to supporting all students.
Cultural models are values, beliefs, and attitudes which are more difficult to see and take
time to truly understand and settings are policies and programs that have been in place in the
organization (Clark & Estes, 2008). Ultimately the common goal of educators is the development
of learners who are engaged and motivated (Rueda, 2011) and for Emerson, students may
already receive what they need through current programs and practices. Cultural settings are
visible and understood social contexts made up of organizational policies and practices, therefore
the current structure of having a gifted consultant may be what Emerson school needs. Settings
can impact behaviors (Rueda, 2011), therefore understanding the gaps of cultural models and
setting will help Emerson School District identify what gaps need to be addressed.

63
Cultural Model
Needs Willingness Amongst Teachers to Support Gifted. The cultural model Emerson
District needs is the willingness from their teachers to support gifted students. Equity and access
are arguably among the most critical issues in the field of education in the United States and
schools are still struggling to provide educational equity for all students (Kettler, T, Russell, J, &
Puryear, J, 2015). For gifted students, even after identification, there are disparities of available
educational opportunities based on race, economic disadvantage, or geography (Kettler, T,
Russell, J, & Puryear, J, 2015). Schein (2010) points out that a major building block for
organizational culture is attributable in the early decisions founders make about structures and
organizing principles. When there is a lack of understanding of gifted learners because the
districts do not have a gifted program, gifted consultants, gifted identification process, teachers
are consumed with needs they need to address like a new curriculum, students with dyslexia,
students with a learning disability, or students needing emotional support. Kezar (2001) explains
how organizations manage change over time to survive and adapt to what is occurring externally.
For school districts, trying to meet the state requirement of having all students perform at grade
level has evolved teachers to focus only on moving underachieving students forward. It is
necessary to recognize the development nature of talent development (Pfeiffer, 2002). Teachers
need time to understand how gifted students need to be supported and what it means to be gifted.
With lack of training for teachers, teachers do not fully understand that it requires years of
cultivation, systematic study, hard work, and support to develop gifted students to meet their full
potential (Pfeiffer, 2002). A superintendent and the school board needs to give opportunities for
teachers to understand the needs of academically gifted students and they need to possess a wide
range of skills in order to be successful in education today (Bolman & Deal, 2008). When the

64
organization provides an opportunity for teacher growth, teachers will be more willing to help
the gifted students. This cultural model is important to meet the organizational goal.
Culture of Trust. The first cultural model Emerson District needs to meet the
organizational goal is having a culture of trust. According to Hurley (2006), trust is the measure
of the quality of a relationship-between two people, between groups of people, or between a
person and an organization. Trust is built or undermined through specific exchange between
individuals as they come to understand each other’s goals and intentions (Korsgaard, Brodt, &
Whitener, 2002). To meet the stakeholders’ goal, teachers need to trust the administration that
they can openly share what support they need and what they do well. The fear of negative
feedback or consequences can hold people back from making progress towards their goal
(Hurley, 2006). When teachers can work in a safe environment to make mistakes or to try
something new, teachers will be more willing to try academic differentiation in the classroom
and ask for more help from the administration (Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). This trust
also has to come from the school board and the administration. School board and the
administration need to also be willing to take feedback from the teachers because top managers’
fear of receiving negative feedback needs to be addressed (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Often,
feedback is only given from authorities to their employees. If Emerson teachers want more
support in providing differentiated instruction to all learners, teachers need to feel comfortable
speaking up.
The lack of trust in culture holds organizations back from making progress (Korsgaard,
Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). Also, the pressure to improve test scores has put pressure on teachers
to focus on underachieving students. Without the administration and school board
communicating to the teachers that all students have the right to be challenged and all student

65
growth matters, teachers may not feel comfortable asking for help to challenge the high
achieving students. Empirical findings suggest that a relational dynamic of the superintendent
and board president based on respect and trust is essential for effective school governance and
progress toward educational reforms (Peterson & Short, 2001). Often, people in organizations do
not speak up because employees need to feel safe to do so (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).
Therefore, without trust, teachers will not feel comfortable sharing their knowledge in gifted
education to improve their support for all students.
Cultural Setting
Funding to Support Gifted Programs. Another cultural setting Emerson district needs is
funding. Johnsen (2009) stated that when funding is not mandated by the state, districts do not
prioritize gifted and talented programs. Without funding, districts cannot offer training, gifted
identification assessment, and pay for programs. In the states that have mandates for gifted
education, local districts need to find ways to fund them and Zirkel (2005) found that only
twenty states require some form of certification to teach and work with gifted students. There is a
clear lack of funding to support teachers who work with gifted students.
Even for people with top motivation and exceptional knowledge and skills, missing or
inadequate processes and materials can prevent the achievement of performance goals. To
administer and identify gifted students at Emerson School District, the district needs to set aside
money to pay for these assessments. Administration of CoGAT will need funds to pay for the
test, time to administer the test, and personnel to run and score the test. That is not all. After
gifted students have been identified through a clear process, teachers need ongoing training to
improve their practices and learn to use the most up-to-date research-based curriculum for
identified gifted students. This means, the organization requires tangible supplies, funding, and

66
equipment to achieve its goals (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Emerson District may need to hire
someone to be the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) coordinator or to be a lead GATE
teacher. This will require school board’s approval and that means the parent community need to
also support the school board to make this decision to set aside funding for the GATE program.
To summarize, various organizational influences affect the stakeholder goal of
identifying and supporting gifted students at Emerson School District. Table 5 provides an
overview of the assumed organizational influences and potential organizational influence
assessments.
Table 5
Organizational Influences and Assessments for Analysis
Organizational Mission

The Mission of Emerson District is to meet the needs of all students academically, socially,
and emotionally.

Organizational Global Goal

The purpose of Emerson District is to educate, empower, and enable all students to become
caring, contributing citizens who can succeed in an ever-changing world. Emerson District is
committed to focusing on high expectations and individual academic success and to creating a
community of respect and responsibility.

Stakeholder Goal (If Applicable)

By October 2023, Emerson District’s School Board will approve the funding to pay for the
administration of the new adopted district test to identify gifted students in grades 3
rd
to 8th.

Assumed Organizational Influences

Organization Influence Assessment
Cultural Model Influence 1:
The Organization needs an acceptance of a culture
of willingness to learn about supporting gifted
students.
The District needs to provide
professional development to teachers on
supporting gifted students. Teachers
need to learn more about what gifted
education means. The researcher will
use the survey data result conducted by
the district each year and review the data

67
from parents and students 4th through
8th grade responding to how gifted
students and/or academically high
achieving students should be receiving
services on school campus. The survey
is conducted each year in the spring term
and the result of the data is shared with
parent leaders and administration. This
artifact is available to all stakeholders
each year and questions are generated by
the School Site Council members.
Cultural Model Influence 2:
The Organization needs a culture of trust.
The District needs to do a survey asking
teachers more about what is happening
in their classrooms and what
professional development classes will
help them. Staff need to feel comfortable
speaking up and asking for help meeting
the needs of all students.
Cultural Setting Influence 1:
The Organization needs to prioritize funding to
support gifted student programs.
The District needs to gather input from
all stakeholders through the School Site
Council annual survey to see setting
aside funding for the gifted
identification process and gifted
programs are what the district needs.

Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Stakeholders’ Knowledge and Motivation and
the Organizational Context
Yeung (2014) explained that Americans are hesitant to reward excellence and are
unaware that many gifted students do not excel. To truly understand the needs of gifted students,
Emerson district will need to refer back to the research questions and examine the conceptual
framework. Conceptual framework is a conception or model of what is out there that one plans to
study (Maxwell, 2013). It is a tentative theory of the phenomena that the researcher is
investigating. It is the system of concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs, and theories that
supports and informs research (Maxwell, 2013). Merriam and Tisdell (2016) explained that a
theoretical framework underlies all research. It is the underlying structure, the scaffolding or

68
frame of one’s study. In the prior section of the research, the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational context influencers have been analyzed and presented independently with the
focus on achieving the organization’s goal. However, these influencers need to be reviewed
interdependently. In this section, the conceptual framework model will demonstrate how these
are interdependent through graphic and narrative explanation.
1. What are the teacher’s knowledge and motivation in relation to identifying gifted and
nongifted students to differentiate instruction accordingly in K-8 classrooms?
2. How do teachers’ knowledge and motivation affect the district’s ability in adopting an
identification process to support gifted students to meet their full academic potential in
K-8 classrooms?

69

Figure 4. Interactive Conceptual Framework

70
The research problem of practice is the lack of support for gifted and talented students in
the public schools of the United States. The research problem reflects the conceptual framework,
focusing on research questions, data collection, and plays an important role in guiding the entire
process of the research study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). There are four main sources for the
modules that one can use to construct a conceptual framework for a study, a) your experiential
knowledge, b) existing theory and research, c) your pilot and exploratory research, and d)
thought experiments (Maxwell, 2013). The researcher’s basic assumptions support the belief that
even though gifted students are considered having special needs, special education funding has
been used for academically underachieving students. Therefore lack of support for training
teachers in differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all students, academically gifted
students are currently working in a classroom environment that is not challenging.
Figure 4 visually represents the relationship between organizational factors and teachers’
knowledge, skills, and motivation related to achieving the stakeholder’s goal of identifying and
supporting gifted students. Prior theory and research indicate that there are academically
struggling gifted students and there is a lack of funding for gifted programs in the United States
(McCoach & Siegle, 2003). There are also many researchers indicating the lack of identification
in minority students, especially students who are English Language Learners (Pfeiffer, 2002).
Many researchers argue that equity and access are among the most critical issues in the field of
gifted education because there is a lack of focus on pushing high achieving students forward
compared to helping underachieving students to perform at a grade level (Dai, 2013: Jolly &
Kettler, 2008). NCLB has shifted focus for schools and had a tremendous effect on supporting
high achieving students (McCoach & Siegle, 2003).

71
Accountability is the key concept that is needed to meet the stakeholder’s goal. Without
federal mandate to keep all districts accountable to support all learners, districts are not obligated
to have a program for gifted education. When teachers are asked to push underachieving students
forward and the focus is not pushing all students forward, teachers will focus on underachieving
students (McCoach & Siegle, 2003). In order to keep everyone accountable, there has to be a
clear guideline of assessments being implemented and intervention plans taking place.
Accountability has changed in many ways and more assessments are used to measure
student progress than ever before (Conner & Rabovsky, 2011). Districts have mandated
assessments to measure progress, but currently at Emerson, there is no assessment being used to
understand students’ reasoning skill. Without Emerson valuing the needs of serving all students
and teachers being on board with the identification process and using the assessment data to
support students, there will be no way to achieve the stakeholders’ goal. Research shows that
many districts in the United States are examining the effects of different dimensions of
instructional leadership on student learning and people are finding that strong school leadership
is a great indicator of successful schools (Lee & Ling, 2012). Therefore, teacher leaders need to
be utilized to help all staff understand the value of gifted education. Discrepancies in funding and
staffing across school districts can be indicative of variance in educational opportunity (Baker,
2001a; Ford, 2011). When organizations can fill the gaps of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and
motivation as well as reviewing what are the barrier influences within the organization, Emerson
School District can achieve having a policy to identify and support gifted students.
Conclusion
The purpose of this research project was to examine the role of the teachers at Emerson
School District in identifying and supporting gifted students. In this chapter, a review of the

72
related literature provides the reader insights into challenges of gifted students in the United
States. Challenges today include the lack of federal policy in supporting gifted students and
having gifted programs. Furthermore, readers can learn about why not all gifted students are
identified, how the lack of gifted programs affect gifted students, and the importance of school
districts providing continuous teacher education. This chapter concludes with a review of the
knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences that affects the ability of Emerson School
District to have a policy to identify and provide support for gifted students. The next chapter will
focus on methodology, participants, and setting.

73
CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
Purpose of the Project and Questions
Drawing from Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis model, this study included a needs’
analysis in the areas of knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational resources necessary
to reach the organizational performance goal. This analysis began by conducting a survey to all
teachers at Emerson School District to assess how much teachers knew about the gifted and
talented identification process, gifted programs, challenges for the gifted, policies to support
gifted students and education, and best practices in schools.
As such, the questions that guide this study were the following:
1. What are the teachers’ knowledge and motivation in relation to identifying gifted and
nongifted students to differentiate instruction accordingly in K-8
th
classrooms?
2. How do teachers’ knowledge and motivation affect the district’s ability in adopting an
identification process to support gifted students to meet their full academic potential in
K-8
th
classrooms?
Methodological Approach and Rationale
The design of the methodology for this project needs to take into account that the
purpose of this research is to start the identification process of GATE students at Emerson
School District starting year 2023-2024. In order to start the process, the district needed to find
having a GATE identification process and GATE programs to be valuable and needed. Before
schools can administer the district adopted gifted identification test to the students in grades 3rd
through 8th and train classroom teachers to understand what the GATE identification test means,
the researcher needed to also take into account that a KMO gap analysis of the efficacy of the
stakeholders at Emerson exists. Without understanding the needs of Emerson School District

74
using the data from their own community, there will be no desire from the district to adopt an
identification process of GATE and to further utilize the data from the GATE assessment. After
the needs have been identified and communicated to all stakeholders, the study conducted a
survey to understand the attitudes, opinions, and knowledge of teachers at Emerson on GATE
programs and GATE students as well as 4 to 6 qualitative interviews from classroom teachers at
Emerson. At the end of the survey, observation, and interviews, the researcher may find that
having an identification process in place for the gifted may not be the district’s priority or needs.
As explained by Creswell (2014), survey questions help researchers answer three types of
questions: descriptive questions, questions about the relationships between variables, and
questions about predictive relationships between variables over time. For this study, all three
types of questions were used to further understand the need of supporting GATE students and
GATE programs at Emerson. An interpretation of the results will be shared with the community
and this mixed methods study was used to provide clear data point for the administrative team at
Emerson to understand why there is a lack of support for GATE students in the United States and
what action steps the district needed to take to move all students forward with their academic
progress.
The initial phase of the study was observing how much differentiation was happening in
the classroom. During the observation, the researcher observed how teachers differentiate their
curriculum for students with different academic abilities. According to Evans and Waring
(2019), differentiation is defined as a central inclusive concept integral to a teacher’s thinking,
learning design and delivery. It involves the proactive creation of related learning activities that
accommodate variances in the interest, readiness, and learning profiles of all learners and
teachers. Evan and Waring (2019) further explained that differentiation is about creating

75
challenging lessons to support the learners in his or her development strategies to cope in
learning situations that are not always comfortable. Unfortunately, Hertberg-Davis (2009) found
that when teachers do differentiate, they tend to focus their efforts on the more struggling
learners in the classroom, believing that gifted students do not need differentiation because the
gifted learners have mastered the grade level standards.
The researcher looked for depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration as a way to collect
data in how much differentiated instruction was happening in classrooms. Acceleration can take
the form of an advanced curriculum or a faster pace of learning. Through acceleration, gifted
learners can learn a higher-grade level content. Differentiating curriculum through depth requires
students to uncover more details and new knowledge related to the topic, recognize new
perspectives and to examine the topic by determining the facts, concepts, generalizations,
principles, and theories related to them (Kaplan, 1994). This process helps students to go deeper
in their content standard than their peers in the classroom.
Complexity involves making relationships between and among ideas, connecting other
concepts, and layering a why or how interdisciplinary approach that connects and bridges to
other disciplines (Kaplan, 1994). Novelty focuses on the student’s unique approach to learning.
When teachers differentiate through novelty, the students make personal meaning of their
learning (Kaplan, 1994). Kaplan (1994) discussed the importance of using acceleration, depth,
complexity and novelty to differentiate curriculum for gifted students. These four elements along
with the GATE standards lay the foundation for how teachers should be differentiating their
curriculum, for gifted students.
The researcher observed 3 classroom teachers from Kindergarten through 5
th
grade
classrooms and documented how lessons were differentiated and what evidence supports

76
differentiation in classrooms. The next phase of the research was to receive direct feedback
regarding teachers’ beliefs in having gifted programs and a gifted identification process from all
52 teachers in the district through a quantitative survey that was given at the same time. These
questions helped the researcher understand what teachers already knew about gifted education
and what gaps needed to be filled at Emerson School District. The purpose of the survey was to
understand teachers’ beliefs and their understanding of supporting gifted students.
The last phase of the study was 1:1 interviews of teachers at Emerson School District. All
Emerson teachers were asked to participate in the survey and the researcher interviewed 4 to 6
volunteers to further understand if there was a lack of interest and enthusiasm to identify and
support gifted students at Emerson. The researcher also interviewed a cabinet member from the
district and asked 10 questions to receive a deeper understanding of how gifted education aligns
with the district’s strategic plan of meeting the needs of all students. The researcher conducted
the interview by explaining the protocol, reviewed the consent form, and asked the interviewee if
the interview can be recorded. The researcher asked 20 questions and the interview was less than
an hour. After the interview, everything during the interview was transcribed and the interviewee
was given the transcription to verify everything the researcher had collected was an accurate
representation of the interview.
Assumptions
For the purpose of this study, three assumptions are made. First, it was assumed that
responses gathered from the 1:1 interviews with the six teachers and one administrator were
truthful and represented their knowledge of questions that were asked during the interview.
Second, it was assumed that the lessons, interactions, behaviors, preparation, and dialogue
observed during classroom observations were typical on any given day. Third, it was assumed

77
that quantitative surveys result in true reflection of what teachers believe and know about gifted
education and that participants carefully read each question and answered in their best ability.
Interview and Survey Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. Full-time credentialed classroom teachers will be asked to participate in the
study.
Criterion 2. Teachers who have more than three years of teaching experience. These
teachers have cleared their Beginning Teacher Induction Process and are considered experienced
teachers.
Criterion 3. Teachers who have received quality professional development through their
district office in math differentiation and in creating special accommodations for special needs
students. These teachers have experiences in receiving training through their work and could
provide insight on what they need and what the district is not providing.
Administrator Participant Criteria
Criterion 1. An administrator with more than three years of experience.
Criterion 2. A site leader who attends school board meetings regularly.
Interview and Survey Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
In developing a sampling for a quantitative study, it is imperative to have a larger sample
in the study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). For this study, all 52 teachers, general education
teachers and specialists, in the district will be asked to participate in the survey to gather wider
data. Emerson teachers are all credentialed, have received district professional training, and have
cleared their preliminary credential status. Johnson and Christensen (2014) explained that quota
sampling is when the researcher determines the appropriate sizes or quotas for the groups
identified as important and takes convenience samples from those groups. Johnson and

78
Christensen (2014) further explained that in a quantitative study, the larger the sample size, the
better. Therefore, to get the best understanding of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and motivation of
meeting the stakeholder’s goal, all teachers will be asked to participate in the study to have the
most samples available for the researcher to analyze the survey results.
This sampling supports the conceptual framework, seen as a key task that identifies
something that is going on in the world that is problematic (Maxwell, 2013) because when
comparing teachers at Emerson School District to other teachers nationally, they are typical of
teachers who work in a public school in the United States. Public schools in the United States
have varying levels of education, participate in a required student teaching experience, have
taught multiple grade levels, and have attended some outside professional development training.
Like other public schools in the United States, Emerson School District has teachers who have
received in-service education through the district office, a few have obtained a master’s degree in
education, and have completed the Beginning Teacher Induction Program. Also, Emerson School
District teachers use curriculums that are nationally used like Harcourt, Foss, EnVision, and
Teachers College. Fink (2013) explained that when you decide to sample, one needs to ask, how
many people should be included, how quickly are data needed, what type of survey is planned,
and what resources are available. To understand the needs of the district and to have the largest
data possible, all teachers were asked to complete an online survey distributed at a staff meeting
to ensure the highest participation possible. With the online survey, the result will be immediate,
and the results of the survey will be shared with all stakeholder groups through several meetings,
including: school board meeting, staff meeting, school foundation meeting, School Site Council,
and Parent Teacher Association meeting.

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For the study, having a site administrator with the knowledge of the district’s board
policies and decision-making process would bring more information to this study. Therefore, one
administrator was selected to participate in the study.
Table 6
Different methods of data collection, participants number, and time of data collection
Sampling Strategy and Timeline

Sampling
Strategy
Number in
Stakeholder
population
Number of
Proposed
participants
from
stakeholder
population
Start and
End Date
for Data
Collection
Interviews: 1:1 One-hour
interview
32 classroom
teachers
4-6 general
education
teachers

1
administrator
April 2020
Observations: Curriculum
Differentiation
22 Elementary
classroom
teachers
3 elementary
school
teachers
April 2020
Surveys: Online survey
will be given
All
credentialed
teachers
(52)
All Teachers
will be asked
to participate
March 2020

Data Collection and Instrumentation
This research study employed a mixed method approach utilizing both quantitative and
qualitative data collection to understand the above research questions stated above (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). For the study, the researcher included observations, quantitative staff survey, and
qualitative interviews. This data collection was the primary tool utilized to collect data from
participants to understand the lack of support for the gifted learners at Emerson School District.
Classroom observations were conducted first to see how classroom lessons are differentiated in

80
elementary school classrooms from Kindergarten to 5
th
grade students. All middle school classes
were already grouped based on the ability of students therefore observations took place in the
elementary school classrooms only. Currently, at Emerson School District, there are 22 general
education classrooms in the elementary school. Each classroom consists of students with special
learning needs, English Language Learners, and students performing at different academic
levels.
To provide a full understanding of teachers in implementing gifted programs and in the
identification process, the researcher wanted to include a quantitative survey from all staff and a
qualitative interview from a few teachers. The combination of a quantitative survey of all
teachers and individual interviews provided both a wide and focused perspective on the issue of
supporting academically high achieving students. Data triangulation, the ability of multiple data
collection methods to support each other’s strengths and weaknesses, is well supported through a
mixed methods approach and this process increases both credibility and validity of the research
(Maxwell, 2013). Through the triangulation process, the researcher hoped to increase credibility
and validity of her work.
The staff survey created by the researcher was given to all teachers at Emerson School
District. The researcher provided a list of questions with a matrix scale to understand the
knowledge and motivation of stakeholders in providing differentiated programs for students. The
quantitative survey was less than 20 minutes and was voluntary. Lastly, the researcher
interviewed 4 to 6 classroom teachers to further understand the knowledge and motivation,
teachers needed to provide more support for gifted learners in their district. There was an
additional interview of a cabinet member from the district and the researcher asked 10 questions
to understand the district’s vision regarding gifted identification and programs. The purpose of

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conducting the three types of information gathering methods was to gather a variety of data that
will give a more in-depth insight of teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards supporting gifted
learners. The mixed methods approach of this study provided an opportunity to assess various
aspects of the research questions. In the following subsections, the three methods were discussed
in greater detail. Collecting data from the individual participant allowed for cultivating a deeper
understanding into the individual’s behavior, attitudes, and perceptions that influence the actions
and practices associated with leadership to support organizational improvement (Yin as cited in
Kellar, 2012).
Observation
Observation allowed the researcher to collect evidence in a naturally occurring setting
and capture a firsthand encounter of the teachers and students in a classroom setting (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). To complete a needs assessment of how much differentiation is happening in the
classroom and what is being taught in the classroom, the researcher needed to see and observe
the work that is happening in the classroom. Observations provided insights to motivation,
knowledge on the topic, whether teachers are ready to identify and implement gifted programs
and if teachers valued the change. The researcher focused on 3 classrooms in grades
Kindergarten through fifth grade. Observations took place one to two hours a day for two weeks
in April of 2020. Each classroom visit was for one period. For Kindergarten, the observation
was 20 minutes. First and second grades, the observation was 30 minutes. Third through Fifth
grades, the observation was one full period which was 43 minutes. The researcher observed how
subjects were differentiated in Kindergarten through fifth grade classes at Emerson Elementary
School. Observations are considered the physical environment, providing context to the meeting
and describing the setting (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). During the observation, the researcher

82
took notes as she watched the teacher’s demonstrated an introduction of the lesson, connected
students’ prior knowledge of the standard, explained the lesson objective, provided a structured
guided lesson, gave students time to do independent work, and finally checked for understanding
from the students through an assessment or an exit ticket. During observations of lessons from
elementary school classes, notes and pictures were taken and student work samples were
collected and reviewed with the classroom teacher. In March, 2020, COVID-19 pandemic hit all
over the world and Emerson School District transitioned on campus learning to distance learning.
Therefore, the researcher joined Zoom live sessions and reviewed Google Classroom
assignments assigned to students.
Interviews
The researcher’s goal was to interview 4 to 6 classroom teachers for an hour each to
further understand Emerson teachers’ organizational goal. Before the interviews began, the
researcher reviewed the protocol of the interview with each interviewee. The researcher was on
time to greet the interviewee as well as was respectful during the interview through being
mindful of the researcher’s nonverbal body language. The researcher explained the purpose of
the study, answered any questions the interviewee had, and also reviewed how many questions
will be asked in an interview. The researcher also described what will happen at the end of the
interview. Each interview was scheduled for an hour but took less than an hour to go over all 20
questions. Standardized open-ended questions focusing on teachers’ beliefs about how resources
should be allocated, what it means to be referred to as special needs, what is his or her definition
of being a gifted student, and what training teachers need to have to successfully support
academically high achieving students were asked. The researcher asked for permission to record
the interview and explained how recording helps the researcher to accurately note information

83
from the interviewees. The researcher explained that audio recording of interviews will help the
researcher focus on active listening and also share that the interview will be transcribed. To
really capture the interviews well, notes were taken during the interview as a supplement to the
audio recordings. Once the audio recordings have been transcribed, the interviewee had an
opportunity to review his or her interview to validate the integrity of the material collected from
the interview.
Interview Procedures. Interviews are considered one of the most important sources for
data collection within a study (Merriam, 2009). The study’s qualitative interviews probed deeper
into how the stakeholders understand the needs of supporting gifted learners at his or her school.
A quantitative survey took place before the qualitative interview.
Interviews were set for a day and time that was convenient for the interviewee to
maximize focus and limit distractions. These protocols supported the collection of data to
address the research questions most effectively by providing the teachers the opportunity to share
and describe their knowledge, motivations, and organizational influences as they experience
them. According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), a semi-structured interview format provides
consistency among interviews and also gives the researcher the flexibility to probe into emerging
insights. The study’s interviews included 20 open-ended questions in a semi-structured format.
The interview began with getting to know questions about the teacher to ease the interviewee and
to connect with the interviewee. When interviewing a cabinet member, the procedure was the
same but the time allotted for the interview was shorter.
Surveys
To gather a large amount of data, a survey was given to all teachers at Emerson School
District with a matrix scale. The purpose of the quantitative survey was to understand the

84
knowledge and motivation of teachers on implementing an identification process for the gifted
and their willingness to support programs for gifted students. The survey took about 20 minutes
and was emailed to the staff at Emerson individually with the personalized message from the
researcher.
Survey Procedures. Participants received an email about the purpose of the study with
the link of the survey. All participants were told that this was voluntary, and their answers will
be kept confidential. Participants knew that the survey should take less than 20 minutes and the
due date of the survey. One day before the survey, the researcher sent a reminder about the due
date. If the participants did not complete the survey by the set date, the researcher sent a follow-
up email reminding the participants to please complete the survey. The researcher also shared in
her email that all participants will receive a copy of the result from the survey and can ask the
researcher any follow up questions after the survey. The researcher reminded the participants in
the initial email that no participants will need to write their name unless they want to further
discuss the study with the researcher.
Credibility and Trustworthiness

The credibility of a research study’s data is closely associated with the ethics of the
researcher and it is an important component of a research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Reflection
and regularly checking for bias of beliefs that would influence the data collection during this
study needs to be employed. For this study, the researcher’s hopes or plans about her goals for
the gifted students were not discussed or shared during the duration of her research. The
researcher did not want to influence her bias with her staff when the quantitative survey and
qualitative interviews take place. The researcher wanted the result to be honest and accurate.
Maxwell (2013) stated that producing research results that are credible and trustworthy is

85
the responsibility of the researcher. The researcher used triangulation by collecting documents,
observing classrooms, and collecting data through a survey. Internal validity can be ensured by
observing participants for a period of time and the researcher observed classrooms for three
weeks (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The researcher has been a school administrator for the last
seven years and is familiar with the observation process and will take notes without biases. The
researcher has been trained to only write down what she sees and hears without her personal
opinions added to the observational notes. The expectation of the research has been
communicated to the participants and the researcher clearly shared through verbal and written
communication to the staff that the primary interest from the research was learning more about
their viewpoints and opinions regarding their role as a teacher and providing differentiated
instruction at school.
Researcher bias was not problematic as long as the researcher accounts for any
preconceived assumptions about the research study and disclosed any biases that could influence
data results (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). As a gifted and talented teacher in the past, the
researcher has a biased opinion that all gifted students should be treated and considered as
special needs students. That means that the identified gifted students should receive extra
services through a gifted teacher or a consultant. Internal validity of the study was addressed
through triangulation, large data collected from staff, and multiple documents. The mixed
methods approach to this study using multiple methods of data collection was one step towards
enhancing credibility through the use of triangulation to validate findings.
Validity and Reliability
Reliability refers to repeatability of the research findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Validity in a qualitative study is important as the use of multiple strategies in a case study’s data

86
collection process can assist in increasing accuracy among the findings (Merriam, 2009;
Creswell, 2009). In this study, to increase the validity of the data, all district teachers were asked
to participate in the study. The research with more data can help produce the most accurate
reflection of the participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). To increase participation, the survey
was emailed to each teacher with a personalized message from the researcher. This allowed more
staff to participate in the study. Through the triangulation process of collecting documents,
assessment data, and surveys, there were many ways to gather information about the lack of
support for the gifted students at Emerson.
Reliable research is a study that can be done in multiple school districts but will have the
same results. The researcher sees Emerson School District as similar to many school districts in
the United States. Currently many districts do not have gifted programs and do not identify gifted
students. Also, no district is required to fund gifted programs in the United States. Like most
school districts, Emerson has credentialed teachers teaching self-contained classes. These
teachers teach multiple subjects and have students with different ability levels, different
demographics, and different learning needs. Triangulation of the study’s methodologies was
utilized to improve reliability and consistency of the data.
Ethics
According to Patton (2015), when researchers are asking for participants for his or her
research, researchers need to think about the following: a) explain the purpose of the inquiry and
methods to be used, b) explain what’s in it for the interviewees and the issues of compensation,
c) promises researchers make, d) risk assessment, e) confidentiality, f) informed consent, g)
ethical versus legal. With increased awareness of ethical issues, researchers have responsibilities
to fulfill, to be respectful to participants and to make ethical decisions (Glesne, 2011). During the

87
research process, the researcher needed to keep her bias in mind, and it was crucial to consider
the stakeholders’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors to complete an objective
study (Clark & Estes, 2008).
For this research of understanding why Emerson School District does not identify and
support gifted learners, the researcher needed teacher participants from the school district to
provide their feedback. The first step was to create a letter explaining the purpose of the research
and what was expected from the participants. In the letter, the researcher stated the purpose of
the study, reiterated that participation was voluntary (Glesne, 2011), informed participants that
all information shared with the researcher will be confidential, and also shared that staff who
participated in the study will get a copy of the final report. The letter also outlined the purpose of
the study and stated that the study be submitted to the University of Southern California’s
Institutional Review Board (IRB) to follow all rules and guidelines to keep the research ethical.
The School Board and the superintendent at Emerson School District have already given
permission for the researcher to do her study at the site. The researcher is no longer employed by
the school district but has a close relationship with the staff at Emerson, therefore the
personalized message in an email to participate in the survey and to participate in the qualitative
interview resulted in higher participation. Since the researcher was not the direct supervisor or an
evaluator of the staff at Emerson, explaining that the data collected will be anonymous to their
supervisors and the school board members helped teachers feel more comfortable to accept or
reject being part of the study (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). To respect everyone’s time, the researcher
asked for one week to complete the survey and communicated clear end time and the average
time to complete the survey (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). At Emerson School District, teachers felt
that they do differentiate all lessons and that they are currently meeting the needs of all students.

88
During observation, the researcher worked with the classroom teacher to ensure that all
differentiated portions have been recorded in the researcher’s notes and asked follow up
questions after the observation. The goal of the study was to understand teachers’ knowledge in
gifted education, programs, and policies (Clark & Estes, 2008). The researcher did not have
ethical questions about administering the survey. The researcher kept all data confidential and no
names of participants will be released in the future.
Limitations
The limitations of this study included the size of the school district for the study. The
school district that participated in the study has one elementary and one middle school. Also the
six teachers who participated in the qualitative interview are teacher leaders who lead
committees and workshops. These six teachers may not truly represent the average teachers in
schools districts. Lastly, due to COVID 19, all observations were done online. Teachers who are
new to online teaching may not have been able to demonstrate what they really do through
distance learning.
Summary
This mixed method study examined teacher perceptions regarding supporting gifted
students and gifted education in a suburban school district in Northern California using a
quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, and classroom observations. Chapter 3 presents a
detailed account of the research methodology used to conduct the study. The research design
utilized and drove from an adaptation of the Clark and Estes (2002) gap analysis framework to
identify what knowledge teachers have, what motivations teachers lack, and what organizational
barriers teachers have in supporting all gifted learners in Emerson School District. Procedures
and processes were implemented to increase validity and reliability of the study. Data was

89
collected and analyzed by the researcher. This study examined what teachers believe in
supporting gifted learners and what teachers do to support their learning. The next chapter
detailed the results of this study. The purpose of the study was to ensure that teachers in Emerson
School District are meeting the needs of all students.

90
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND FINDINGS
This study employed a mixed methods design to ascertain teacher beliefs pertaining to
working with and supporting gifted students in their schools. The first three chapters of this
dissertation offered an introduction of the problem surrounding lack of support for gifted
students in the United States, a review of the literature surrounding gifted education and gifted
policies, and the methodological design that was utilized for this study. This chapter will now
present the findings that emerged from the data collected and analyzed using the conceptual
framework that was constructed for the purpose of this study.
A pseudonym for the school district was used and participants' names were not
mentioned to ensure that all participants’ identities are kept confidential. Each teacher
interviewed for the study will be referred to as Interviewee one, Interviewee two, Interviewee
three, and so forth. Each classroom observed will be referred to as Class one, Class two, and
Class three. For quantitative survey data, all data was collected anonymously, and participants’
names were not asked in a question, therefore no pseudonym is needed for the participants of the
online quantitative survey.
The objective of this study was to determine what knowledge and motivation of teachers
at Emerson contribute to the gifted identification process in the school district. The Clark and
Estes (2008) framework for reviewing gaps within the organization has been applied. Chapter 4
reports the results of Emerson School District’s teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and
organizational performance gap in supporting identification of gifted students in their school
district and shares findings of what gaps exist in meeting the organization's goal of meeting
academic needs of all students by identifying gifted and nongifted students.
The study centered on the findings of two research questions. These questions attempt to
answer what knowledge and motivation Emerson teachers have in relation to identifying gifted

91
and nongifted students as well as how do teachers’ knowledge and motivation affect the district’s
ability in adopting an identification process to support gifted students to meet their full academic
potential. For this study, mixed methods of quantitative survey to get a variety of sense of
teachers’ knowledge and motivation regarding these research questions, one-on-one in-depth
interviews with elementary school teachers, middle school teachers, and site administrator to get
a better sense of their beliefs and understand of gifted education, and lastly a total of 3 classes
were observed for 3 weeks to see how much differentiation is happening in class.
This chapter details the results from both the quantitative survey, qualitative interviews,
and classroom observations of three classes in Emerson School District. Findings have been
developed from collected and analyzed data, and have been categorized into themes that
correlate with knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences. By using interviews,
observations, and a survey, the validity of assumed causes and influences listed in Chapter Three
will be demonstrated.
Research Questions
The following research questions were examined to determine the steps Emerson School
needs to take in order to support gifted students.
1. What are the teachers’ knowledge and motivation in relation to identifying gifted and
nongifted students to differentiate instruction accordingly in K-8th classrooms?
2. How do teachers’ knowledge and motivation affect the district’s ability in adopting an
identification process to support gifted students to meet their full academic potential in
K-8th classrooms?
Participating Stakeholders
Participating stakeholders for this study were both certificated full-time teachers and a
site administrator at Emerson School District. All interviewed participants have tenure status at

92
Emerson School District and have taught in other school districts before working at Emerson
School District. All observations and interviews were collected in the English language and took
place online through Google Classroom, Zoom, and Google Hangout. Due to the COVID-19
pandemic, California’s State Public Health Officer and the Health Officer of the seven bay area
counties have issued a “Shelter-in-place” order (Health and Safety Code Sections 101040,
101085, and 120175). Seven Bay Area County health officers, in collaboration with their six-
county superintendents of schools have made a unified, regional decision to extend school
closures and student dismissals from regular school attendance. School closure started on March
13, 2020 in California and continued until the last day of school on June 5, 2020. Therefore, all
data collection, classroom observations, and interviews were conducted online.
For this study, all certificated, 52 full-time classroom teachers in Emerson School District
were asked to complete an online quantitative survey with 20 short questions. Survey questions
consisted of Likert scale questions, open-ended questions, and do you agree with this statement
questions. The survey was sent to all certificated teachers in two schools (one elementary and
one middle) at Emerson School District on four different occasions via email. The letter in
Appendix C was sent in an email with a link to the quantitative Google survey. For the
quantitative survey, a total of 49 teachers or 94 percent completed the online survey. Teachers
who participated in the survey were quite experienced, with a mean time teaching of 15.6 years.
Also, 100% of teachers have a credential that matches what grade and subject they teach. The
teachers had a range of undergraduate preparation and half of the teachers who participated in
the survey had a master’s degree in education.
For the qualitative interviews, the same 52 certificated full-time classroom teachers were
asked to participate in a 1:1 interview. The invitation to participate in the interview was
communicated in an email to all 52 teachers, letter Appendix E was included to communicate

93
about the format, the purpose, and the length of the 1:1 interview. The interview invitation email
was sent after all surveys were collected to prevent too many emails from the researcher in a
short period of time. For the qualitative 1:1 interview, 20 open ended questions were asked to
both teachers and a school administrator. Each interview lasted 30 to 45 minutes. For the
interviews, the first 6 teachers who responded to participate in the interview were selected for the
study. Since the participants of the quantitative online surveys were anonymous, the researcher
does not know if 6 teachers chosen to participate in the 1:1 interview have also taken the online
quantitative survey as well. However, it is likely that a teacher participating in the short survey is
more likely to participate in a 1:1 interview with the researcher.
For the interviews, the researcher hoped to have participants who taught in a variety of
grades during the 2019-2020 academic year. The reason for this preference was for the
researcher to have a wide representation of teachers working with different age groups of
students. Six teachers who participated in the 1:1 interview taught Kindergarten, third grade,
fourth grade, fifth grade, and middle school math. The researcher accommodated participants'
free time by working around their schedule. The researcher also asked one school administrator
at Emerson School District to participate in a qualitative interview. The administrator was given
a different set of questions because the administrator would have more insight about the work the
district is doing than the teachers. The questions for the administrator geared more towards the
role of a site leader. Questions for teachers are included in Appendix F and questions for the site
administrator are included in Appendix G. After the 7 interviews were completed, 6 teacher
interviews and one administrator interview, the researcher spent time coding the results of the
quantitative data and the qualitative interview data. The researcher looked for patterns in
teachers’ interviews. Once the analysis was completed, the researcher reached out to observe 3

94
classrooms for 3 weeks in all subject areas to understand how much differentiation is happening
in classrooms.
For the classroom observations, 6 teachers who participated in the qualitative interviews
were asked to be observed for three weeks in April and May of 2020. Three out of six teachers
agreed, and the researcher took notes, participated in live sessions, and reviewed Google
classroom assignments to see how much differentiation was happening in these classrooms. The
researcher had access to all curriculums of these three classes by being added as a student of
these classes online. All three teachers who participated in classroom observations also had a
follow up conversation with the researcher to explain and answer any questions about the lessons
or the structure of the online classroom lessons.
Data collection took place from March 2020 to May 2020. The order of data collection
was as follows: survey, interviews, and classroom observations. Survey questions were designed
independent of interview questions and results. Survey recipients were given two weeks to
complete the survey. Interviews were conducted electronically via Zoom and recorded for further
transcription over the span of the first month of data collection. Classroom observations were
also conducted via Zoom, Google Classroom, and Google Hangouts. Table 8 shows how many
staff participated in interviews, observations, and surveys.
Table 7
Shows participants of each method

How many participated
Interviews: 6 Full-Time Teachers

and

1 Site administrator
Observations: 3 Classrooms
Surveys: 49 Full-Time Teachers

95

The following table, Table 8, shows a summary of the teachers who have participated in a
1:1 interview and what grade level these teachers taught during the 2019-2020 school year in
Emerson School District.
Table 8
Grade Levels of Qualitative Interview Participants
Grade Level Taught 2019-2020 School
Year
Teacher Count
Kindergarten 1
3rd Grade 1
4th Grade 1
5th Grade 2
Middle School Math 1

Table 9 shows gender, age, and years in teaching for each teacher who was interviewed for the
study. The data shows that every teacher interviewed is a female, the average age of teachers
interviewed is 47, and all teachers are permanent teachers with many years of experience in
teaching.
Table 9
Interviewed Teachers
Gender Age Years in the
classroom
Interviewee 1 F 45-50 20 plus years
Interviewee 2 F 50-55 20 plus years
Interviewee 3 F 55-60 20 plus years

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Interviewee 4 F 50-55 20 plus years
Interviewee 5 F 35-40 15-20 years
Interviewee 6 F 30-35 5 to 10 years

Knowledge Results
Teachers’ knowledge on working with gifted students were assessed by collecting data
through surveys, interviews, and classroom observations. The researcher focused on
understanding how much teachers know about gifted students, gifted programs, and the gifted
identification process in their school district, county, and state. The results are presented for each
assumed cause within the categories of declarative factual knowledge, procedural knowledge,
and metacognitive knowledge. Table 10 shows how many gifted students are in classes at
Emerson School District.
Table 10
Following table shows how many high achieving students are in each class
Students performing above grade level in
your class
# of Students
None 3%
1 to 2 students 14%
3 to 4 students 20%
5 or more students 63%

The above data shows that 63% of teachers answered that they have more than 5 students in their
class who are performing above grade level, which is almost half of their students. At Emerson
School District, the average class size is 11 students per class.

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Teachers Lacked Knowledge of Working with Gifted Students
Sandler et al. (2013) found that beliefs about teacher knowledge shape both the policies
regulating how teachers are prepared, certified, hired, and evaluated in school districts. Saldler et
al., (2013) further noted that teachers cannot help children learn things if they themselves do not
fully understand and these findings were also the same for the parents. The results and findings
of this study indicated that teachers did not understand what it means to be gifted and why
identifying gifted students to provide differentiated instruction was important for gifted students.
The results of teacher interviews also indicated that teachers do not believe parents understand
what it means to be gifted and there is a lack of understanding on gifted students vs. high
achieving students.
From the surveys, interviews, and observations, the study resulted that without having a
full knowledge of misconceptions people have on gifted students and gifted education, teachers
were less motivated to support having an identification process. Sandler et al. (2013) concluded
that when teachers are informed and knowledge is increased, teachers were able to be more
effective in classrooms. Since there is no focus in learning about gifted education in Emerson
School District, teachers were not aware of what resources and programs are available to support
their high achieving students and underachieving gifted students.
Teachers lacked knowledge of what policies exist to support gifted students. It can be
argued that teachers among all other people in a school system, such as administrators and
counselors, are the most firmly embedded in the day-to-day practice of education and therefore
many school districts often ask classroom teachers to make recommendations on what support
students to receive (Kaya, 2015). At Emerson School District, teachers refer students to the
Student Success Team (SST) when teachers are concerned about a student’s social, emotional,

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or/and academic well-being. According to a site administrator, not one child has been referred to
the SST process for being bored or not being challenged. All SST referrals at Emerson School
District have been for underachieving students. When interviews were conducted, no teacher
was able to articulate what requirements each district had in supporting gifted students and what
guidelines the district has for supporting students who are working above grade level.
The study found that Emerson School District teachers lacked understanding of what
policies districts have or do not have in California. During interviews, teachers did not know
how gifted students work best and what are strategies teachers can use to keep gifted students
engaged. The quantitative survey data showed that 22% of teachers believed that the school
district lacks funding for gifted programs and identification processes which indicate that the
majority of teachers believed that the district does not lack funding in gifted programs. However,
when teachers were asked what programs are available for the gifted students, 100% teachers
answered that they do not know what resources are available for the gifted students. To further
understand the reasons for why teachers do not know what resources are available for the gifted
students, during a qualitative 1:1 interview, the researcher asked teachers and a school
administrator to articulate, “what programs are available for your gifted students and how is
funding allocated to support your high achieving students.” Qualitative 1:1 interviews showed
that all six teachers interviewed did not know what policies and programs existed in their school,
district, and the county to support their gifted students and high achieving students. Interviewee
one answered:
I don’t know what programs exist for gifted students. We don’t have a gifted program.
I don’t think we even test to see if students are gifted. I think it is really up to the teachers
to provide support for them. We used to test kids but parents got upset. I think all parents

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want their kids to be smart and get upset when they find out that their child is not in a
gifted program. We stopped having a gifted program because of parent pressure. Parents
wanted nongifted students getting pulled for services. (Interviewee one, 2020)
According to Interviewee one, students who were performing above grade level received once a
week pullout service from a gifted and talented consultant. Each teacher recommended a few
students, usually 3 to 5, for this special math class. When parents of non-selected students found
out, teachers were faced with answering questions regarding the criteria of the pull-out math
services. Without having a clear criteria, parents pushed back and teachers did not want to deal
with these stressful conversations. In the end, teachers started rotating all students to be pulled
out and the pullout service became a math intervention. Interviewee one added that:
I know we have a lot of people working and helping with my special needs students
(referring to the underachieving students) but when it comes to the high kids, I don’t have
anything. I don’t have anyone. We had a consultant, N. She was hired to work with our
highest math students for years. But she doesn’t do that anymore. I don’t know what she
did because she used to pull kids from my class. I would recommend 2-3 kids to go see
her once a week. But my parents got upset when their kids were not selected. Also, our
new superintendent really does not want high kids getting pulled or receiving special
support. He doesn’t want these students to come across as the elite group.
Teachers stated in interviews that teachers needed support when parents asked for services for
their high achieving students because teachers felt uncomfortable answering questions about
what programs were available for the gifted students. Teachers also wanted clear criteria, a set
assessment data or gifted identification process for these pullout opportunities. Teachers did not
feel they had enough confidence to explain to parents if a student was not chosen for the pullout

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services. Interviewee one explained that the new superintendent believes that any additional
resources or support we have on campus should be for the underachieving students. Interviewee
one noticed that since she has been a classroom teacher each school board member usually had a
goal. With new leadership, often there was a new focus. The current board members have
underachieving children at home, and according to Interviewee one, the superintendent of
Emerson is heavily influenced by the recommendations from the trustees. Therefore, the
superintendent decided not to renew the contract for the GATE consultant starting 2020-2021
school year. This decision is okay for the teachers as long as teachers are supported with training
and with a clear criteria of who is identified gifted.
Interviewee one also stated that there was a time when there was a huge emphasis on
working with gifted students but at that time, school board members had gifted children and the
board members and the superintendent were heavily invested in supporting the gifted students.
Interviewee one paused for a bit and shared that:
I think our philosophy now is that all kids get a trophy. All students are gifted. Because
of this, I have to buy my own materials and I have to give my gifted students different
work. Other teachers get mad when I pull work from a higher grade. My co-worker, G
said to me, don’t teach that. Don’t let them read that. It is because they need it for next
year.” and it takes a lot of time to find work for my high kids. So when I have materials
to help my underachieving students (can use materials teachers in younger grades taught
before), but I don’t have resources to support my high achieving students, I tend to focus
on my underachieving students. (Interviewee One, 2020)
The same question was asked to Interviewee two. Interviewee two elaborated:

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I think usually it is similar to the year before. I know that we cut the budget when things
get hard and usually the first to go is enrichment stuff like music, art, and probably
working with high achieving students. I don’t know why we are always saying that we
don’t have money. Then I read about cabinet members getting a pay raise. That is not
what is best for kids. (Interviewee Two, 2020)
After a pause, Interviewee two added that for the past 10 years, there has been an increase of
English language learners and students coming to school with less academic skills.
Teachers lacked knowledge of understanding what it means to be gifted and what needs gifted
students have. Teachers are expected to have a full understanding of giftedness and
characteristics of gifted and talented students in order to refer their students to gifted and talented
programs (Kaya, 2015). Unfortunately, the study found that at Emerson School District, teachers
did not have a full understanding of what it means to be gifted and what needs gifted students
have.
First, Interviewee three, four, five, and six also did not know if there was any funding for
the gifted students or for gifted programs. Teachers could not even articulate what gifted means.
Second, these teachers were unaware of what teaching strategies can be incorporated to help
gifted students other than giving harder work. Teachers made copies of work packets or printed
work from a website called, Teachers Paying Teachers. These worksheets on the website have
not been approved by the school district to be used as a supplemental curriculum.
Kaya (2015) found that teachers’ lack of understanding produce deficiencies in the
identification process as well students not receiving enriched education appropriately for their
special needs. In interviews, there was a greater concern for students with learning disabilities
and physical disabilities. From the survey and interviews, findings showed that there was a

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greater emphasis in ensuring that underachieving students perform at grade level by the end of
the school year. Teachers were surprised when they were told that 20% of high school dropouts
are gifted students because these teachers believed that gifted students would be more successful
in schools. Interviewee five shared that, “I want all kids to be supported but if we have to choose
which group, I have to choose my underachieving students. They need more help.” During the
interview, all six teachers indicated that gifted students have an advantage and that they are
going to do well in life. No one mentioned that gifted students are also special needs students and
that they think, learn, and connect differently than the average student. Interviewee six indicated
that, “I didn’t know that there are gifted students who struggled in schools. That is so strange.
That child should be excelling. If they are struggling, it means they are not motivated to do
work.” When the researcher shared that when students are not challenged, they do not know how
to push through and persevere when work gets hard. Interviewee six noted, “that makes sense.”
For teachers at Emerson School District, school training focused on how to access online
curriculum, how to provide intervention for kids, and strategies to include social and emotional
learning into their curriculum. These teachers were not given the knowledge and support to learn
about working with gifted students. These teachers believed that gifted students have an
advantage and if these gifted students are not successful in schools, that means these students did
not try hard which is a common misconception teachers have. Through a quantitative survey,
teachers were asked to mark if these statements were true. These questions were designed to
understand how much teachers know about gifted students. Table 11 shows what questions were
asked, if these statements are true or false, and how many teachers believe these statements to be
true. Table 11 indicates that only 12% of teachers believe that gifted students can learn up to 8
times faster than the average student, which is true. Also, 51% of teachers believe that gifted

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students have heightened sensitivity, which is true, but 49% of teachers do not believe this
statement is true. Cross (2005) found that many teachers in the United States had misconceptions
about giftedness and gifted students. Cross (2005) further noted that the lack of appropriate
teacher training caused teachers to have misconceptions.
Table 11
Misconceptions teachers have on working with gifted students
Statement True or False Result Result in %
Gifted students have
great natural ability in
academics or/and
performing arts.
(Cakir, 2014)
True 34 Teachers stated
that this is true
69%
Gifted students have
heightened sensitivity
(emotionally or/and
physically).
(Doss & Bloom,
2018)
True 25 Teachers stated
that this is true
51%
Gifted students can
learn 8 times faster
than an average
student.
(Cloud, 2007)
True 6 Teachers stated that
this is true
12%
Gifted students are
intrinsically
motivated.
(Cross, 2014)
False-depends on
what interest they
have and if they find
value in the work they
need to do
14 Teachers stated
that this is true
29%
Some gifted students
try to cover up their
giftedness in order to
be like others.
(Lynette et al,, 1999)
True 36 Teachers stated
that this is true
74%
Gifted students may
do outstanding work
True 46 Teachers stated
that this is true
94%

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in one area but only
passable work in
another area.
(Yeung, 2014)
Teachers are usually
better at identifying
gifted children than
parents are.
(Lynette et al., 1999)
False-There is no
research to prove that
teachers are better at
identifying gifted
children than parents.
15 Teachers stated
that this is true

31%

Gentry and Mann (as cited in Sawyer, 2016) emphasized that schools need to provide
training for teachers to help teachers understand more about working with gifted students, to
address misconceptions teachers have, and to increase teachers’ knowledge about providing
differentiated instruction for all students. Therefore, increasing teachers’ knowledge about what
it means to be gifted, how gifted students struggle, and how one can develop lessons to meet
their diverse learners will help all students to be more successful in school.
Teachers need to know how gifted students are identified and what being gifted means.
Pintrich (2008) described motivational theories as concerned with the movement of individuals
towards activities and tasks. McCoach and Siegle (2007) concluded in their research that
teachers have both positive and negative connotations about gifted students, therefore, each
teacher’s attitudes or perceptions of gifted students changed gifted students’ experience at
school. McCoach and Siegle (2007) found that when teachers understand gifted students’
struggles and needs, teachers were more willing to provide individualized support for gifted
students. During 1:1 interviews with 6 different teachers from both elementary and middle
school, when teachers were asked to define what gifted and talented students mean, all answered
differently. Interviewee one stated that GATE students are gifted in different ways but the
schools’ definition is students who are performing above grade level in all academic areas.

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Interviewee two also stated that GATE students excels in all academic areas and further
explained that every year Interviewee two acknowledged that there are usually 4 gifted students
assigned to her class. She indicated that she has never met a truly gifted student because these
students did not excel in all subject areas. Interviewee two’s experience with identifying gifted
students has been that students were marked gifted in her class roster, but these students did not
perform at an outstanding level compared to the rest of the students. Therefore, Interviewee two
indicated that, “I don’t think I have ever worked with truly gifted students. My gifted students
were lazy and unmotivated. They were also not good at everything I taught them.” Interviewee
three defined gifted students as, “someone who is socially awkward but really bright. Someone
who has a hard time following school rules because they have behavior challenges. Almost like
being on the spectrum or is on the spectrum.”
During 1:1 interviews, all six teachers defined gifted and talented differently and not one
was able to articulate what is the district’s definition of gifted and talented. The researcher also
looked at the district’s website to find information on gifted and talented education and support,
but could not find one. Sawyer (2016) stated that teachers have varying perceptions of what it
means to be gifted and how gifted students are identified. Gifted students are the minority in
schools and are often marginalized in ways that cause feelings of isolation and disconnectedness
from their age-mates (Davis, 2012; Jumper, 2010). Therefore, it is important for teachers to
understand what it means to be gifted and why gifted students are gifted (Stewart, 2018). From
various data, the researcher was able to conclude that teachers lacked procedural knowledge of
the gifted identification process and how to define gifted.
The researcher also asked a school administrator this question, “how does your school
identify gifted students? If students are not identified, why do you not identify?” The school

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administrator stated that the gifted identification process was not needed because gifted students
do well in school. The site administrator also shared that high achieving students’ parents often
push for special services and these requests were unreasonable. The site administrator explained
that when already successful students are requiring special privileges, it is being elitist.
The researcher did not understand what the site administrator was saying so asked the following
question, “what struggles do you think gifted students face? What if I told you there are
underachieving gifted students?” The administrator answered that if there are underachieving
gifted students, it is because their parents push school too much and students are burnt out by
school workload.
The site administrator shared that she often encountered parents who wanted their
students to do more homework or take extra academic classes after school. These requests came
from parents and not from students. Parents often also asked for students to learn more difficult
math concepts or be given harder spelling words. The site administrator learned that even if
students can do complicated math problems, students do not really understand the formula.
Students lacked foundational math skills and really explaining how the math problem was
solved. The site administrator felt that children were too scheduled and were expected to do more
schoolwork than previous generations of students. Ali (2017) found that when parents feel
inadequate about supporting their children, parents may doubt their own decisions and need
schools and other family members to help them make informed decisions for their children.
In the survey, 69% of teachers stated that gifted students have great natural ability in
academics or/and in performing arts. That means 31% of teachers may not agree that gifted
students have great natural ability in these areas which is 16 teachers at Emerson School District.
The National Association for Gifted Children (2019) defines gifted as “Students who give

107
evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or
leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not
ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.” This means that
gifted children have a natural ability than an average child to be more successful in different
academic areas as well as performing arts areas. Based on interviews and how teachers defined
what being gifted meant, it is likely to assume that when teachers think about being gifted, the
majority of teachers think about academic giftedness and not always think about students being
gifted in other areas like the performing arts, physical education, and leadership. In the
quantitative survey, when asked if teachers know about CogAT, which is a common assessment
tool schools use to identify gifted students, 75% of teachers answered that they do not know the
assessment at all.
Teachers need to reflect their own abilities in differentiating education for the high achieving
students. Earlier in this study, it was mentioned that teachers’ beliefs on student performance
affected students’ academic progress. Ali (2017) found that parents’ beliefs on student
performance also affected students’ academic progress but it was important for parents to also
have reasonable expectations for their children. When teachers set high expectations, students
performed higher (Marotta-Garcia, 2011). Sawyer (2016) found that teachers’ perceptions of
gifted students had an impact on how much differentiation happened in the classroom. Sawyer
(2016) stated that when teachers do not fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of their
students, teachers cannot meet their full potential and one way to understand students’ abilities is
giving students a variety of opportunities to try different levels of work in class and outside of
class. The surveys collected indicated that teachers had misconceptions about gifted students and
during interviews, teachers also shared those same misconceptions. 58% of teachers agreed that

108
it is important for them to provide differentiated instruction for all students, but these beliefs
were not seen during class observations. The major finding in this study showed a negative
correlation between what the teachers reported they use to differentiate curriculum for gifted
students and what was observed during classroom observations. Marotta-Garcia (2011) found
that teachers tend to report that they were differentiating instruction more than what teachers
were actually doing in class. Marotta-Garcia (2011) added that teachers cannot simply go to
professional development sessions and expect to become experts when they reenter the
classroom and need ongoing support throughout their career. Therefore Marotta-Garcia (2011)
recommended that teachers need to attend or have access to a variety of training as well as share
what they have learned from each session with the site administrator.
For the study, 3 classrooms were observed for 3 weeks. During the observations, the
researcher looked for how much differentiation is happening in the classroom, what support
gifted students receive from the teacher, is there evidence of depth, complexity, acceleration, and
novelty, and what is the teacher's beliefs about working with gifted students. Table 12 shows
how many classes were observed for the study, what each grade level was, and how many
students were enrolled in each class.
Table 12
Classes observed for the study
Class Grade Level # of Students Enrolled
Class 1 3rd grade 15 students
Class 2 4th grade 10 students
Class 3 5th grade 11 students

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In the following section, Emerson School District’s motivational gaps in achieving more
support for gifted students at the school site will be explained.
Motivation Results
Teachers’ self-efficacy and expectancy value were the focus of teachers’ motivation to
understand the lack of support for gifted students in Emerson School District. This is a high-
performing and affluent school district with strong parent support. Therefore, teachers’ self-
efficacy and expectancy value were studied to understand their motivation.
Self-Efficacy Theory
Teachers need to increase self-efficacy in providing differentiated instruction for gifted
students. The ability to be self-reflective requires an ability to engage in double-loop learning
(Kellar, 2012) where it is argued that an individual needs to look within themselves and reflect
on the behavioral practices they employ that potentially contribute to the issues prohibiting
growth and improvement. Kellar (2012) found that when we reflect and adjust our practice, we
build self-efficacy. Social cognitive theory maintains that people learn through observation.
Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory holds that individual behavior is shaped by personal,
behavioral and environmental influences. Personal influences are what Bandura defined as
having self-efficacy. Ali (2017) learned that self-efficacy is a determinant in achieving goals.
Therefore Emerson School District needs to understand teachers’ self-efficacy in working with
gifted students to determine how confident teachers feel in achieving the goal of providing
differentiated instruction for all.
In the surveys, 48% teachers stated that they needed more training from the school
district to work with gifted students. Teachers also shared in interviews that teachers have been
providing challenge packets for students to work independently when students are finished with

110
the class assignments or have given extension work to keep students challenged. Interviewee
three stated that gifted students often finished class work too quickly and Interviewee three had
work packets made with brain teasers, puzzles, and find what is missing type of questions in the
packet to provide something gifted students can do while other students still complete class
work. However, Interviewee Four and Five found that gifted students often did not complete
extra work and parents of gifted students have shared frustration with teachers that these
independent work was not meeting the needs of their children.
Interviewee four stated that students saw these assignments as a punishment rather than
finding these work rewarding. Parents of gifted students also complained that this was busy work
and students were not getting instruction from the classroom teachers. From the interviews,
teachers shared candidly about their lack of confidence in providing meaningful work for their
highest students. In the survey, 68% of teachers also shared that teachers need more
collaboration time so that teachers can share best practices, class lessons, and create extensions
activities for their gifted students. In interviews, teachers shared their frustration for lack of
collaboration time for teachers. Administrator interviewed for the study also agreed that teacher
training focuses more on working with underachieving students and providing reading
intervention for the struggling readers. The administrator recognized that there has to be other
learning opportunities for teachers and even possibly offer a menu of professional development
classes.
Expectancy Value Theory
Teachers need to increase the value of providing a differentiated instruction for the gifted
students. Eccles (2001) expanded on the Atkinson model of expectancy-value theory to propose
that two efficient motivators of career choice are expectancies and task values. Task values can

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be further categorized into four different types of value: intrinsic value, extrinsic value,
attainment value and cost value. Bandura (1997) also found that these four principles affected
self-efficacy. During interviews, teachers stated the importance of differentiated instruction for
students, but what was observed was very different. Three classrooms were observed to see how
much differentiation was happening in schools. Class one teacher often asked to meet and speak
to the researcher before school or after school to talk about what she planned or to review how
the day went. Class one teacher was very accommodating and was excited to have the researcher
be part of the class. Class two and three teachers agreed to have their classrooms observed but
there were no additional interactions before or after each lesson.
During the observations of class one in all subject areas, the researcher saw the classroom
teacher assigning group work to students that was not purposeful. When students were in groups,
Class one teacher used the random breakout feature in Zoom to divide students up into different
breakout groups and did not provide a breakout session based on interest, ability, or/and needs.
The Class one teacher assigned the same homework to all of her students, and no one was given
a different level of work in math, English language arts, social studies, and science. The
researcher did not see the teacher using teaching strategies like an exit ticket, a quiz to check for
understanding which helps teachers to determine what to teach next. All of her instruction was
for the whole class. The researcher did not observe rotation of groups and the teacher taught a
specific level of challenge to each group, which is often described as a small group instruction.
The teacher offered one office hour per day and each week, the researcher was told that only one
to two students participated in the office hour.
It was difficult for the researcher to see students’ engagement online. Often, students who
were identified as high achievers had their cameras off. The observations took place in the spring

112
of the school year and the schools in California went from on campus learning to virtual learning
on March 13, 2020. The researcher did not observe the first week of this transition and cannot
confirm that class norms during live online sessions were explained to the students. The school’s
live session norms were:
1. Dress like you are in school
2. Come to class ready
3. Be on time
4. Show active engagement
5. Have your camera on
6. Mute when the classroom teacher is giving live instruction on Zoom
Organizational Influences
To meet the organizational goal of supporting gifted students at Emerson School District,
another important factor to consider is what organizational barriers exist at their school district.
Cultural model and setting influences were examined. Clark and Estes (2008) explained that
organizational messages, rewards, policies and procedures that govern the work of the
organization are aligned with or are supportive of organizational goals and values. Therefore,
Emerson School District needs to understand what organizational barriers exist and review
administration and teachers understand what the organization is trying to achieve.
Cultural Model
The organization needs to build a culture of trust for teachers to create a culture of supporting
gifted students and being honest about what help they need. Schein (2017) defines culture as
the accumulated shared learning of a group. To understand Emerson School District’s culture,
three classes were observed for the study and there were inconsistencies in how instruction was

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delivered. For Lucy Calkins’ Writing Curriculum, there is a very specific way of delivering a
lesson. Each lesson starts with connecting students’ with prior knowledge, lesson objective is
taught by sharing a strategy students can use when they write, teachers model the strategy,
teachers practice the new strategy with his or her students through guided instruction, students
are given an independent time to work, while the teacher works in small groups, and the lesson
ends with the teacher reiterating the strategy she or he taught that day. When three classes were
observed, none of the teachers followed the curriculum and teachers were not giving enough
time for the writers to do their work.
Not only were there inconsistencies in following the school curriculum, there were
inconsistencies in collaborating amongst staff. In the interviews, Interviewee six stated that she
does not believe that teachers are collaborative at her school. Interviewee six stated that there has
been tension between teachers that created lack of trust amongst staff. One cause for the
negativity stems from parents being able to request teachers and certain teachers getting a class
full of highly motivated and well-behaved children. This process created teachers to collaborate
less and see each other as a competition. Interviewee six explained that there has to be more team
building opportunities amongst teachers to get to know each other. Each classroom is a silo and
often teachers are making decisions for their own students without having opportunities to
communicate and collaborate with his or her team.
The study also found that parents demand more and more nowadays and email
communication made it easier for parents to send more requests to teachers. These requests vary
from class placement, special education services, and less accountability for students. Teachers
interviewed explained that in middle school, usually about 10% of parents each year want
students to be placed in a higher math class even when the higher math class placement is not an

114
appropriate placement for the student. Site administrator also stated that in middle school, every
year, there are always a few angry parents trying to push their children to be placed in a higher
math pathway even though that is not the recommendation of the child’s math teacher. This also
creates distrust between the families and the school.
For Interviewee six, the lack of trust in the school’s culture makes it hard for teachers to
ask for help and for teachers to learn from each other. Interviewee six shared that she believes if
the administration can take control and class assignments are no longer dictated by parents, that
would help teachers to be more collaborative. She also shared that if administrators can stay
longer at their site and not use Emerson School District as a stepping stone to a higher position or
cannot handle very strong-willed teachers, teachers will eventually take directions from his or
her boss much better. The administrator also recognized that there is a lack of trust in their
school district. Teachers have communicated through their union representatives that
administrators do not take feedback from teachers and make decisions without really identifying
the needs at the school. The administrator who was interviewed hoped to survey teachers early in
the school year to get their feedback about how to build trust and what needs are not being met to
do their best work for the students.
Cultural Setting
The district needs to fund schools to support gifted students. Clark and Estes (2008) as well as
Rueda (2011) believe that even when individuals possess the knowledge and motivation to
achieve goals, organizational barriers will impede the successful attainment of those goals. To
understand if teachers have the resources they need to meet the organizational goal, classroom
interactions and instructions were observed. Even though the district has the funds to pay for
more teacher training, there has been a lack of emphasis on working with academically high

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students in Emerson School District. Through interviews, the researcher found that there was no
process to ask for training and what support teachers need from the administration.
In Class one, there was a student who was an outlier. Gifted student one did not turn in
assignments, rarely came to class, and his camera was off almost always. The teacher explained
to me that she has an agreement with the child. The agreement is that as long as he is not
interrupting the class lesson, he can just do what he wants to do. The Class one teacher explained
that Gifted student one stood out since he was first enrolled in Transitional Kindergarten at their
school. According to his teacher, people talked about him. He was not invited to social events
and birthday parties. People were concerned about his behavior because he often picked his nose,
blurted profanities, or broke desk items when he was on campus. She described him as a loner
but one of the smartest students she has ever worked with. Class one teacher shared that often
her experience was that the gifted child had behavioral challenges and truly gifted students were
difficult to work with because they were not engaged and were almost always off task. She saw
that truly gifted children lacked social skills like this Gifted student in her class. Table 13 shows
class assignments turned in from Class One.
Table 13
Here is a snapshot of assignments turned in by students of Class One
Y=Completed Assignment
Blank Box=Missing Assignment
L=Late turning in assignment
Student 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Gifted
One

Student Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

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2
Student
3
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
4
L Y Y L Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
5
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
6
L Y Y Y Y Y Y L Y Y
Student
7
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
8
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
9
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
10
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
11
Y Y L Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
12
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
13
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
14
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Student
15
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Table 13 shows that Gifted student one did not turn in a single assignment during 3 weeks of
distance learning. The Class one teacher shared this data with me to explain to me that there is a
lack of funding for supporting gifted students. The Class one teacher wished that the district

117
would provide an 1:1 aide for Gifted student one because he requires so much attention from the
teacher and he requires a different level of work. During interviews, Interviewee five stated that:
When you have a truly gifted child and what I am teaching is too easy for them. It would
be helpful to have someone who can help us challenge these truly gifted students. I only
know how to teach elementary school level kids. I had Gifted student one in my class two
years ago. That was the hardest year I have ever had in teaching because the student was
very distracted, parents wanted me to be this student’s personal assistant, and I still had
other students to teach. (Interviewee Five, 2020)
From the survey, 42% of teachers answered that Emerson School District provides good
education for their students, but during 1:1 interviews, all teachers agreed that the district lacks
support for gifted students and past gifted students have suffered from the district not providing
training for teachers in working with gifted children and the district not willing to have Student
Success Team meetings when the request comes from high achieving students’ parents. Even
though struggling students can have an Individualized Education Plan and receive pullout
support and push-in support from the special education department, at Emerson, there are no
additional services for high achieving students. When parents requested additional support for
the high performing students, this request was not fulfilled. The special education department has
a team of specialists like a speech pathologist, resource teachers, reading specialist, occupational
therapist, and behaviorist. These specialists only offered services to the underachieving students
and currently there is no funding for supporting gifted students.
Summary
The primary goal of this study is to determine the relationship between teacher
knowledge and gifted and talented students experience in schools. For this study, two main

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research questions were posed in response to meeting the needs of gifted and talented students in
Emerson’s School District. The questions asked about teachers' knowledge and motivation
regarding the lack of identification process of the gifted students in their school district. The
questions relate to a problem of equity and learning discrimination. This study found that the
connection between teacher perspective, beliefs, and value have an impact on students’ school
experience. These perspectives are formulated from their initial experience and we have learned
that these beliefs can change based on new information and new experiences (Sawyer, 2016).
The results from this mixed method study found that teachers need to increase value in providing
a differentiated instruction for their gifted students, teachers need to learn more about what it
means to be gifted and define gifted and talented, and the district needs to allocate funding to
support gifted programs and the identification process. The study also found that the district
needs to build a culture of trust and support teachers in increasing their procedural knowledge in
the identification process of gifted students.

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CHAPTER FIVE: RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction and Overview
Chapter four covered the knowledge, motivation, and organizational findings in the lack
of supporting gifted and talented students in the United States. Chapter 5 presents the
recommendations for Emerson School District in the area of knowledge, motivation, and
organization resources related to supporting gifted and talented students. The implementation
plan for the study’s final recommendation is to implement an identification process for the gifted
students and hire a .5FTE gifted education coach to provide training and support for the teachers.
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences
From surveys, interviews, and observations, these are the recommendations for Emerson
School District for Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational influences the organization needs
to address in order to reach the goal of meeting the needs of all students in their school district.
Knowledge Recommendation
As detailed in Chapter Three, the framework described by Krathwohl (2002) in addition
to the structure defined by Clark and Estes (2008) provide a roadmap for this research study,
predominantly as it relates to defining gaps in information at the individual and organizational
levels, and subsequently defining evidence-based recommendations for tangible and intangible
solutions. Rueda (2011) learned through his research that knowing what people know is as
important as knowing how to help people to learn what they do not know. According to Clark
and Estes (2008), knowledge and skill enhancement are required when teachers do not know
how to accomplish their performance goals. Each knowledge type falls into a taxonomic
category that provides insight into how the individual may comprehend and synthesize learning
in the workplace. These four taxonomic categories, as revised and defined by Krathwohl (2002),

120
classify statements of knowledge into factual knowledge (declarative), conceptual knowledge,
procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. To understand what teachers know about
supporting gifted students in their schools, the researcher focused on two knowledge influences,
factual and procedural. The researcher focused on those two knowledge influences because the
researcher needed to know what teachers knew about supporting gifted students and what
knowledge gaps existed at Emerson.
When all teachers at Emerson District were asked to take a quantitative survey with 20
questions, 49 teachers completed the survey. The survey asked questions on misconceptions and
factual information about working with gifted students, what is the school’s and teacher’s
definition of gifted and talented students, what programs and training are available for the gifted,
whether or not teachers have assessed students in CogAT or have analyzed CogAT, and also
asked about how funding is allocated for gifted students. The results of gap analysis will indicate
a need for a mix of information, job aids, training, and education. According to Clark and Estes
(2008), this mix must be designed, developed, and implemented to close the gap. Based on
teachers’ responses, the researcher was able to see the high probability of addressing these
influences. The researcher was able to also see that all influences were a priority because
teachers at Emerson lacked their knowledge of supporting and working with gifted students.
When the researcher collected and analyzed the data, she found that there was no identification
process for the gifted at Emerson School District, there was no program for gifted teachers
students, teachers did not know how funding was allocated for different school programs, and
were misinformed about what it means to be gifted. The researcher recommends providing
information and training to share more information about working with gifted students and what
it means to be gifted as well as helping teachers understand the gifted identification process and

121
to assess and analyze CoGAT. Table 14 below displays each knowledge influence, along with
the corresponding theoretical principles that formed the basis for the recommendations, which
are listed in the final column.
Table 14
Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Knowledge
Influence

Validate
d as a
Gap?
Yes,
High
Probabili
ty or No
(V, HP,
N)
Priorit
y
Yes,
No
(Y, N)
Principle and
Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Teachers need knowledge
of what policies exist
regarding gifted students.
(D)

HP Y If information is
learned
meaningfully
and connected
with prior
knowledge, then
new knowledge
is stored more
quickly and
more accurately
because it is
elaborated with
prior learning
(Schraw &
McCrudden,
2006)

Administrators need
to provide factual
and meaningful
information that is
relevant to teachers'
work to support
students regarding
what policies exist
for the gifted
students and connect
teachers’ prior
knowledge with the
most up-to-date
information on gifted
education policies.

Teachers need to
understand what it means to
be gifted and what needs
gifted students have. (D)
HP Y Social Cognitive
Theory: If new
knowledge
provides
experiences that
help people to
make sense of
the information,
learners’
Admin will offer
workshops and
conferences for
teachers to attend to
learn new knowledge
to help people to
make sense of
working with gifted
students and have a

122
understanding
and performance
will improve
(Denler,
Wolters, &
Benzon, 2009).

post training
discussion forum to
set goals and share
new strategies they
will try in the future.
Teachers need to know how
gifted students are
identified through CogAT
and learn how CogAT is
analyzed. (D)
HP Y Information
Processing
System Theory:
If new
knowledge is
facilitated and
there is an
opportunity to
practice using
the new
knowledge, then
it promotes
learning (Mayer,
2011)
● Admin will
provide training
for teachers to
learn how gifted
students are
assessed and
identified.
● Opportunities
will be provided
to practice taking
the exam and
have time to
review questions
and answers with
their colleagues.
● Training will also
include what the
assessment is
measuring and
explanation/practi
ce on how this
information can
be used in the
classroom when
planning lessons
to meet the needs
of all students.
Teachers need to know how
gifted students are
identified through CogAT
and learn how CogAT is
analyzed. (P)
HP Y To develop
mastery,
individuals must
acquire
component
skills, practice
integrating them,
and know when
to apply what
they have
Administrators need
to provide
opportunities for
classroom teachers to
practice taking the
test, reviewing the
questions with peers
(feedback), and using
the data to create
lessons for students.

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learned (Schraw
& McCrudden,
2006)

Teachers need to increase their knowledge about gifted education
The results and findings of this study indicated that 88% of Emerson School District’s
teachers did not know whether there is adequate funding set aside to support gifted students in
their district. Qualitative 1:1 interviews also showed that all six teachers interviewed did not
know what policies and programs exist in their school, district, and the county. During classroom
observations, there was no differentiation of lessons provided for the high achieving students and
no students were given an opportunity to work in small groups with their teachers to receive
more challenging work. Extension work was optional and teachers interviewed stated that
students did not find these extension work and challenge packets engaging. Only small group
differentiated instruction was provided for students who are reading below grade level and this
was done weekly with a reading specialist who pulls students from the general education
classrooms. This information concludes that teachers at Emerson need in-depth declarative
knowledge about what gifted policies and programs currently exist in their school district.
A recommendation rooted in information processing system theory has been chosen to
close the knowledge gap for teachers at Emerson School District. Schraw and McCrudden (2006)
found that new information is stored more quickly and remembered more accurately when
people are able to learn meaningfully by connecting their new knowledge to their prior
knowledge. This means that teachers at Emerson need to identify what they already know about
gifted policies, programs, and resources and connect their prior knowledge with the most up-to-
date information about what current policies and programs exist. These knowledge can be
obtained through schools using staff training time to teach teachers about different teaching

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strategies teachers can use to help all students. Using assessments like iReady is one way of
understanding what teaching standards students have mastered and what lessons should be
incorporated next time. Based on learning theory principles, the recommendation is for Emerson
School District to provide their teachers with training to address the lack of declarative
knowledge teachers have in supporting gifted students by providing factual and meaningful
information that is relevant to teachers’ work to support students regarding what policies exist
for the gifted students and connect teachers’ prior knowledge with the most up-to-date
information on gifted education policies.
Conceptual knowledge is usually viewed as general and abstract knowledge of the core
principles and their interrelations in a domain (Schneider & Stern, 2010). Clark and Estes (2008)
stated that organizations need to provide training to their employees to increase their
performance and to close their knowledge gap as well as need to increase their knowledge in
order to do their job well. A study in 2007 by McCoach and Siegle found that teachers support
gifted students based on how much they know about working with gifted students and what
resources are available to them. Therefore, sharing information and connecting their new
knowledge to their prior knowledge helped people to perform in a positive way (McCoach,
2007). Guerra and Nelson (2009) found that teachers’ beliefs about learning dictate how they
teach their students. Therefore, when teachers are more informed about gifted students’ needs,
teachers will spend a significant amount of time trying to address and help them (Payne, 1994).
Rueda (2011) explained that one way to close the achievement gap is to bolster and
professionalize the teaching force by providing training and setting more time for collaboration.
Evans and Waring (2019) found that trainee teachers’ skill in differentiation improved when
teachers learned more about their students through training. These training entailed

125
understanding how students learn, what motivates students, understanding different learning
needs students have, and how students learned best.
Teachers need to increase their knowledge about GATE identification procedure
The results and findings of this study indicated that 75% of full-time certificated teachers
at Emerson School District did not know the procedure of how students are identified. When six
teachers were interviewed, all six teachers stated that they do not know how students are
identified nor ever asked the district who are their gifted students. This information suggests that
the teachers at Emerson need more in-depth procedural knowledge about how gifted students are
identified and what assessment is used to identify them.
A recommendation rooted in information processing system theory has been selected to
close this procedural knowledge gap. Schraw and McCrudden (2006) stated that to develop
mastery, individuals must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to
apply what they have learned. This would suggest that providing teachers an opportunity to take
the CogAT, to review the test, and to learn how the test is scored, would help teachers
understand how gifted students are identified and educate teachers more about the type of
questions that are used in CogAT. The recommendation then is for Emerson School District to
provide training for teachers in which a certified CogAT test administrator comes to Emerson to
show the process of administering, scoring, and utilizing CoGAT to support student
achievement. Increasing procedural knowledge of the identification process will help teachers
understand more about the needs of the gifted students and how gifted students work differently
than the nongifted students.
Procedural knowledge is usually seen as knowledge of operators and the conditions under
which they can be applied to reach certain goals (Schneider & Stern, 2010). Procedural

126
knowledge can be defined as the ability to execute action sequences to solve problems
(Schneider, Rittle-Johnson, & Star, 2010). Siegler and Stern (1998) found that children first learn
procedures by means of explorative behavior and then gradually derive conceptual knowledge
from them by abstraction process. Clark and Estes (2008) explained that organizations need to
determine whether people know how to achieve their performance goals. Beuhl and Fives (2009)
discovered that often educational programs are underutilized due to the inadequately shared
information pertaining to the work teachers are doing and this lack of opportunity to practice
hinders teachers to make sense of the new information. Bandura (1989) explained that social
cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-reflective and self-regulatory
processes. Bandura (1989) further states that the only way to see results or to see changes in
someone’s behavior must include self-generated influences as a contributing factor, which means
that teachers need to take in the new information, understand why this is important to make a
change in their work. Benko and Anderson (2010) found that empowering employees through
participatory work processes and encouraging and providing opportunities for continuous
learning helped employees' behavior improve. Therefore, people need an opportunity to
understand and experience transferring their new knowledge into their day to day work (Guerra
& Nelson, 2009). For teachers at Emerson, to develop the procedural knowledge, teachers need
to learn what the CogAT is, and also learn the procedure of how the CogAT is administered,
analyzed, and used to drive instruction to meet the needs of all students.
Motivation Recommendations
Clark and Estes (2008) provide a research-based framework that helps each organization
to identify the root causes in an organization's performance gap. The motivation category is
divided into active choice, persistence, and mental effort. Table 15 represents the complete list of

127
assumed motivation influences of Emerson School District’s teachers in supporting gifted
students in their school district. The table also includes information on whether or not each
influence is validated and is a priority. Motivation types are noted below.
Table 15
Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Motivation
Influence*

Validate
d as a
Gap
Yes,
High
Probabil
ity, No
(V, HP,
N)
Prior
ity
Yes,
No
(Y,
N)
Principle and
Citation
Context-
Specific
Recommendati
on
Expectancy Value Theory:
Teachers need to believe there is
value in differentiating
instruction for gifted students.
HP Y Rationales that
include a
discussion of the
importance
and utility value
of the work or
learning can help
learners develop
positive values
(Eccles, 2006;
Pintrich, 2003)

Administrators
will discuss and
assist teachers in
understanding
the rationales of
the importance
and utility value
of providing
differentiated
instruction for
gifted students.

Administrators
will show data
and explain how
driving lessons
based on student
needs help
students achieve
greater
academic
success.
Expectancy Value Theory:
Teachers need to want to pull
small groups, assess students,
plan lessons based on student
HP Y Learning and
motivation are
enhanced when
individuals
Administrators
and coaches will
model values,
enthusiasm, and
interest in the

128
performance, and provide
rigorous curriculum for all.

model values,
enthusiasm and
interest in the
task (Eccles,
2006)

task during
professional
development
and training
workshops.

Teachers will
model to others
how they can
successfully pull
small groups,
assess students,
and plan lessons
based on
students’ ability.
Self-Efficacy Theory: Teachers
need to believe that they are
capable of effectively
differentiating instruction for all
students.
HP Y Self-efficacy is
increased as
individuals
succeed in a task
(Bandura, 1997)

Feedback and
modeling
increases self-
efficacy (Pajares,
2006)
Administrators
and coaches will
provide teachers
with specific
feedback with
evidence,
celebrate small
wins using data,
and model how
teachers can
plan
differentiated
lessons while
providing
collaboration
time for teachers
to share how
they are meeting
the needs of
their diverse
learners in their
classroom.

Increase expectancy value theory of teachers to differentiate instruction for their gifted
students
Approximately 54% of full-time teachers stated in the quantitative survey they do not use
depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration in their teaching to provide differentiated instruction

129
in their classroom. The results of data indicate that even though teachers believe that gifted
students struggle from not being challenged, only about half of the teachers in Emerson School
District use depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration in their teaching to provide
differentiated instruction for their students. From qualitative interviews teachers explained that
they want to help all students, but they did not see the value in focusing on their high achieving
students because they already met the grade level standards. This finding shows that there is a
need to increase the expectancy value of teachers in Emerson School District to provide
differentiated instruction for their gifted students.
A recommendation rooted in expectancy value theory has been chosen to close the
motivational gap in Emerson School District. Eccles (2006) and Pintrich (2003) found that
rationales that include a discussion of the importance and utility value of the work or learning
can help learners develop positive values. The recommendation is that school leaders in Emerson
District provide opportunities for teachers to understand the rationales that include a discussion
of the importance and utility value of providing differentiated instruction for gifted students.
administrators need to show data and explain to teachers how driving lessons based on students’
ability help students to achieve greater academic success and understanding. This combination of
increasing understanding and value of differentiated instruction will help full-time teachers at
Emerson to increase their expectancy value theory regarding working with gifted students.
Pintrich and Schunk (2002) defines motivation as a set of beliefs, values, and emotions
that influence how an individual tackles an activity or a goal. One perspective of motivation is
expectancy value theory. Theorists have explained that individuals’ choice, persistence, and
performance can be explained by their beliefs about how well they do on the activity and the
extent to which they value the activity (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Expectancies and values are

130
assumed to be influenced by task-specific beliefs such as “ability beliefs, the perceived difficulty
of different tasks, and individuals’ goals, self-schema, and affective memories” (Wigfield &
Eccles, 2000, p. 69). Based on these findings, one can conclude that motivation increases in
people when they find the work to be important and when people believe that they can do the
work. From a theoretical perspective, then, it would appear that increasing the expectancy value
of full-time teachers at Emerson will increase motivation of teachers to provide more
differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all students including the gifted. Based on
expectancy value theory, when teachers value differentiating instruction for their gifted students
using depth, complexity, acceleration, and novelty, teachers will utilize these strategies to
provide support for gifted students. Teachers can review these concepts with their students and
when students are showing a mastery of a lesson, add these teaching strategies to further push
their thinking and understanding of a concept.
Increase self-efficacy of teachers to increase differentiated instruction
Approximately 27% of full-time teachers at Emerson strongly believe that they need to
provide differentiated instruction for their gifted students and 14% of teachers answered that
gifted students do not need differentiated instruction.
A recommendation rooted in self-efficacy has been chosen to increase motivation for this
study. Bandura (1997) found that self-efficacy is increased as individuals succeed in a task and
Pajares (2006) found that feedback and modeling also increases self-efficacy for people.
Herberg-Davis (2009) found that teachers use gifted students as leaders in group work to make
sure the work is completed or use gifted students to tutor other students unless teachers are
supported and given opportunity to improve their work with gifted students. Marotta-Garcia
(2011) found that teachers often teach to the middle and gifted students are often doing work that

131
is not challenging for them and suggest that teachers need to increase self-efficacy in order to
actually try providing differentiation for the gifted. A recommendation to increase self-efficacy
for teachers at Emerson is that administrators and coaches need to provide teachers with specific
feedback with evidence, celebrate small wins using data, and model how teachers can plan
differentiated lessons for their diverse learners. Rueda (2011) explains that individuals with
higher self-efficacy, people with greater belief in their own competence, experience more
positive outcomes. Lazowski and Hulleman (2016) suggested that when people believe that they
can accomplish a goal, people are more motivated and persistent in their task or activity.
Bandura (1989) suggested that people’s beliefs in their capabilities affect how much effort
people put into their work as well as individual’s self-efficacy has an effect on how much stress
people add to themselves. Bandura (1989) explained that those who have a high sense of self-
efficacy visualize success and are able to achieve more. Furthermore, those with low self-
efficacy are more inclined to visualize failure and focused more on how things will go wrong
(Bandura, 1989). Therefore, increasing self-efficacy of teachers by providing training, creating
opportunities to share ideas from each other, and giving feedback to boost their confidence will
increase self-efficacy of teachers to provide more differentiated instruction for all students.
Organization Recommendations
Rueda (2011) stated that, “in thinking about organizations for our purposes, it is useful to
consider the areas of culture, structure, and policies and practices” (p. 53). To meet the
stakeholders’ goal, Emerson School District needs to understand the cultural setting and model
influences that hinder the organization from meeting their goal. The Organizational Table 16
shows organizational influences with high probability of being validated and have a high priority
for achieving the stakeholders’ goal of meeting the needs of all students. Table 16 shows the

132
recommendations for these influences based on theoretical principles. Organizational influences
are noted below.
Table 16
Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Organization
Influence*

Validated
as a Gap
Yes, High
Probabilit
y, No
(V, HP,
N)
Priorit
y
Yes,
No
(Y, N)
Principle and
Citation

Context-
Specific
Recommendat
ion
Cultural Model Influence 1:
The organization needs an
acceptance of a culture of
willingness to learn about
supporting gifted students.
HP Y Organizational
effectiveness
increases when
people focus on
the school’s
vision and align
it with
improvements in
student learning
outcomes
(Waters,
Marzano &
McNulty, 2003)

Establish
concrete goals
aligned with
the mission and
priorities of the
organization,
which is to
meet the needs
of all students
and educate all
students
academically,
emotionally,
mentally, and
socially.

Staff meetings
and team
collaboration
should focus on
how we can
support all
students,
including our
gifted students
and set goals
together
utilizing the
SST (Student
Success Team)
form.

133
Cultural Model Influence 2:
The organization needs a culture
of trust.
HP Y Organizational
effectiveness
increases when
leaders build
trust in their
team (Rath &
Conchie, 2009)

Share
information and
work
responsibilities
to make sure
everyone is part
of the decision-
making process
so that all
members feel
included as a
way to build
trust in the
organization.

To build a
stronger team,
provide time
for team
members to get
to know each
other through
team building
activities like
(Question of
the Day,
Scavenger
Hunt, Book
Talk, etc.) and
provide more
collaboration
time to plan
together and
share best
practices.
Cultural Setting Influence 1:
The organization needs to
prioritize funding to support
gifted student programs.
HP Y Organizational
performance
increases when
processes and
resources are
aligned with
goals established
collaboratively
(Clark & Estes,
2008)
School board
and cabinet
members need
to align their
spending with
organizational
goals and
review their
processes for
allocating
funding to meet

134
the needs of
their students.

Leadership
team and
cabinet
members need
to work with
the board to
identify sources
of funding for
gifted students
as well as
determine what
additional
support and
resources can
be provided to
support gifted
students from
the current
team.

Increase trust and willingness to support gifted students amongst staff
Approximately 68% of full-time teachers stated that they are not encouraged to spend
time together to collaborate and work together to meet the needs of their students. Furthermore,
48% of full-time teachers also shared in their survey that they need more training in working
with gifted students and learning to provide a meaningful and challenging curriculum for their
students. When teachers were asked in a 1:1 interview if they feel that their organization
embraces new ideas and trying new things, teachers shared that they are not included in the
decision-making process and they do not feel that the administration hears what they have to say.
Teachers also shared that they do not have time to really get to know the school’s team because
everyone is so busy trying to meet the needs of their students. Also, interviewee three shared that
there is competition amongst staff and not all teachers want to share their work because it could

135
be perceived as showing off or wanting extra recognition for being a stellar teacher. A
recommendation rooted in cultural model theory of increasing willingness to support gifted
students and building trust has been selected to close this organizational gap. Water, Marzano,
and McNulty (2013) learned that organizational effectiveness increases when people focus on the
school’s vision and align it with improvements in student learning outcomes. Rath and Conchie
(2009) indicated that organizational effectiveness increases when leaders build trust in their
team. This suggests that full-time teachers need more time to collaborate with their team and
opportunities to give feedback about what professional support and training they need in order to
better support their students. This also means that teachers need time to get to know each other
and have opportunities to do more collaboration and team building activities to increase trust
amongst their team.
Cultural models are the shared mental schema or normative understandings of how the
world works (Rueda, 2011). Cultural models are so familiar they are often invisible and
unnoticed by those who hold them (Rueda, 2011). Clark and Estes (2008) explained that culture
is powerful but difficult to identify, but changing the culture of an organization was important in
changing the performance of the people. To increase willingness of staff to support gifted
students, Kotter (1995) suggests that when trying to lead change in an organization, leaders need
to empower others to act on the vision and also ensure that all stakeholders understand what
goals the organization is trying to achieve. This means that the district leaders need to align goals
with actionable steps to meet the needs of their students and create opportunities for staff to
collaborate to support their gifted students. Another cultural model gap at Emerson School
District is lack of trust amongst staff. Trust can be defined as firm belief in the reliability, truth,
or ability of someone or something (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020). It may be the case that

136
employees’ trust in the workplace influences the behavior of employees, which in turn affects
workplace performance in a positive or a negative way (Brown et al., 2014). Hughes et al. (2018)
found that positive exchange relationships between individuals and their managers encourage
individuals to volunteer innovative activity that goes beyond role descriptions. When employees
trust their team colleagues and supervisors, they are more likely to engage in risk-taking and
innovative behavior aimed at exceeding task demands (Hughes et al., 2018). When there is no
trust, employees are also afraid to speak and ask for support when they need it (Hughes et al.,
2018).
Prioritize funding to support gifted students
Teachers stated in their survey that over 33% of students in their class are performing
above grade level. Also, 65% of teachers stated that they do not know if there is an adequate
amount of funding allocated to support the gifted students in their schools and 22% of teachers
believed that the district needed to allocate more money to support gifted students. During 1:1
interviews, all six teachers shared that they do not know how funds for programs are allocated,
what are the required resources that the county enforces for the gifted, and they do not know how
spending decisions are made in their school district. When the district administrator was
interviewed, the administrator indicated that there is $0 amount allocated to gifted students and
that the majority of the district’s funding is spent on employees’ salary and benefits. The next
biggest spending is on underachieving students which entails paying outside consultants for
vision and hearing support, increasing staffing of a special education team, and providing
training for the specialists on working with underachieving students or/and students with
disabilities.

137
A recommendation rooted in organizational change theory has been selected to close this
organizational gap at Emerson School District. Clark and Estes (2008) found that organizational
performance increases when processes and resources are aligned with goals established
collaboratively. That means for Emerson School District, the school board and cabinet members
need to align their spending with the organizational goals and review their funding allocation
processes to meet the needs of all of their students including their gifted students. Also, the
leadership team and cabinet members need to work with the board to identify sources of funding
for gifted students as well as determine what additional support and resources can be provided to
support gifted students from the current team. Instead of focusing on data of only underachieving
students, the district needs to also identify their gifted students, analyze and define their needs,
and place adequate amounts of resources to support these gifted students.
Cultural settings can be seen as who, what, when, where, why, and how of the routines
which constitute everyday life (Rueda, 2011). In trying to understand influence behavior and
thought in a classroom, school, or district, it is important to understand the characteristics of the
cultural settings that make up that entity because cultural settings can impact behavior of an
organization (Rueda, 2011). According to Clark and Estes (2008), effective organizations ensure
that organizational messages, rewards, policies, and procedures that govern the work of the
organization are aligned with or are supportive or organizational goals and values. Kotter (1995)
explained that in order to lead a change in an organization, organizations need to remove barriers
and change systems or structures that undermine the vision. One way to address the cultural
setting gap is to ensure that the organization has all tangible supplies and equipment to close
their organizational gap (Clark & Estes, 2008). If providing financial resources is not an option,
then there needs to be transparency in what priorities the district has in allocating resources and

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provide ways to address the lack of material resources (Nelson, 2003). One way to review the
budget to make decisions that are best for the organization is to do a cost-benefit analysis of the
current programs (Clark & Estes, 2008). Rueda (2011) recommends evaluating programs to see
if there is evidence that these programs actually make a difference and are effective. After
evaluating their current funding allocation and effectiveness, the school board and cabinet
members need to make an adjustment to allocate funding based on the district's needs and
priorities.
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
The model that informed this implementation to improve the support of gifted students at
Emerson School District is the New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick,
2016). The New World Kirkpatrick Model derives from the original Kirkpatrick Four Level
Model of Evaluation which was first introduced in 1993 (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006).
Unlike common practice of planning a training from the start and evaluating the effectiveness of
training in the end, the new model creates and evaluates training from working backwards. The
four levels (1 Reaction, 2 Learning, 3 Behavior, 4 Results), when planning, start with phase 4
and end with phase 1. Once training and evaluation has occurred, the levels can be evaluated
closer to their numerical order of starting from phase 1, then phase 2, phase 3, and ends with
phase 4 (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006).
The new model suggests that evaluation plans start with thinking about what is the result
you want to have from the program. The first step, Level 4, Results stage, is the development of
solution outcomes that focus on assessing work behaviors. The second step, Level 3, Behavior
stage, is assessing the degree to which participants apply what they learned during training when

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they are back on the job. It is seeing the transferring of what they learned and what they are
actually using. The third step, Level 2, Learning stage, is to evaluate the degree to which
participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment based
on their participation in the training program. The final stage, Level 1, Reaction stage is
evaluating the degree to which participants find the training engaging, helpful, and relevant to
the work they are doing. Designing the implementation and using this method will make each
step more thoughtful and also increase staff buy-in to ensure successful adaptation of the new
idea, program, and/or training (Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations
The mission of Emerson School District is to meet the needs of their students
academically, socially, emotionally, and mentally. The district has a clear goal of increasing the
academic excellence of all students and providing a rigorous academic curriculum for all. The
purpose of implementing a gifted identification process is to ensure that the gifted students
receive the support they need and to eliminate underachieving gifted students in the school
district. This research examined the knowledge and skills, motivational, and organizational
barriers that prevent Emerson School District from having a gifted identification process. The
proposed solution is for the district to adopt a comprehensive identification process through
CogAT to understand more about how their students think and problem solve to provide an
individualized learning plan for their high achieving students to increase academic progress and
to decrease the number of underachieving gifted students in their school district.
Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators
Table 17 describes the level 4 external and internal outcomes and attendant metrics and
evaluation methods that would lead Emerson School District to adopt a GATE identification

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process of their students to provide more personalized learning and support for their gifted
students. Leading indicators are “short-term observations and measurements that suggest that
critical behaviors are on track to create a positive impact on the desired results” (Kirkpatrick and
Kirkpatrick, 2016, p. 60). These indicators, when consistently practiced, will help Emerson
School District to achieve their organizational goals.
Table 17

Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes

Outcome

Metric(s) Method(s)
External Outcomes
Improved state test scores Percentage of students
performing at and above grade
level on CAASPP will increase

Yearly CAASPP data sent to
the district from the state
Improved parent
satisfaction of their
student experience

Percentage of parent satisfaction
rating improves from the yearly
required community survey
Yearly reporting from the
parent survey
Increased student
retention
Percentage of students moving
to a private schools will
decrease from lack of challenge
of their high achieving students

Yearly reporting of students’
enrollment
Internal Outcomes
Increased differentiation
(depth, complexity,
acceleration, and novelty)
for students and increased
student engagement.
Teachers teach more than 5
small group lessons per week
and student referral to the office
decreased by 10%.
Increase time in students
working in small groups

Twice a year student well-
being surveys show an
increase in student
satisfaction and increase in
students feeling supported
from their teachers.

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Increase in teachers using
assessment data to drive
instruction

Teachers use assessment data
weekly to plan lessons and
assign weekly small groups.
How many times teachers
refer to student data for
grouping and lessons
Increase in allocation of
funding to support gifted
programs and support for
gifted students
Teachers attending gifted
conferences and training
increase by 10%.

At least one gifted program is
offered.

Teacher attendance in gifted
workshops and conferences
increase.

There is a gifted program for
students.

Level 3: Behavior
Critical Behaviors. There are 3 critical behaviors Emerson School District teachers need
to demonstrate for the development and implementation of the plan to adopt a GATE
identification process. First, teachers need to use data to drive instruction and assign small
groups to allow more homogeneous learning. Second, teachers need to use depth, complexity,
acceleration, and novelty to differentiate instruction. Lastly, teachers need to show willingness in
learning about working and supporting gifted students through attending workshops, training,
and conferences. Table 18 shows critical behaviors, metrics, methods, and timing for evaluation.
Table 18

Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation
Critical Behavior Metric(s)
Method(s)
Timing
1.Teachers use data
to drive instruction
and assign small
groups based on
learning levels.

Teachers' lesson plans
indicate an increase in
using assessment data
to plan lessons and
plan small group
instructions based on
students’ learning
needs.

Teachers’ document of
lesson plans from last
year to this year.

Principal’s observation
of small group
instruction from last
year to this year.
Every Day
2. Teachers use
depth, complexity,
acceleration, and
Teachers incorporate
depth, complexity,
acceleration, and
Teachers’ collaboration
includes adding depth,
complexity,
Every Day

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novelty to
differentiate
instruction.

novelty in their
classroom lessons
daily.

Depth, complexity,
acceleration, and
novelty lessons are
observed by the
principal in
walkthroughs.

acceleration, and
novelty into their mini
lessons.

3. Teachers are
willing to attend
workshops and
training to learn
more about
working with
gifted students and
meeting their
needs.
Teachers volunteer to
attend training,
conferences, and
workshops to learn
about working with
gifted students.

There is an increase in
the number of teachers
attending training,
workshops, and
conferences for working
with gifted students.

Teachers are bringing
back what they have
learned from their
workshops/training and
using new ideas in their
classroom.

Every Month

Required Drivers. New reviewers require the support of their direct supervisors and the
organization to reinforce what they learn in the training and to encourage teachers on their team
to apply what they have learned to review the gifted identification process and provide
differentiated instruction for their gifted students. Rewards should be established for
achievement of performance goals to enhance the organizational support of new reviewers and
these drivers will work with other instructional coaches and administration to ensure that
teachers are receiving the right support. Table 19 shows the recommended drivers to support
critical behaviors of new reviewers.

143
Table 19
Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing
Critical Behaviors
Supported
1, 2, 3 Etc.

Reinforcing

Teachers review student data
and highlight what is working
to meet the needs of gifted
students.

Ongoing 1, 2, 3

Teacher collaboration time
focuses on sharing best
practices and discuss/plan
how teachers differentiate
instruction for all students
(high achieving, at,
approaching, and below)

Weekly 1, 2

Principal hires a trainer to
teach, support, and review
how to incorporate depth,
complexity, acceleration, and
novelty.

Monthly 2, 3
Encouraging

Principal and teachers
communicate via newsletter,
Zoom, and Principal’s coffee
to share student data
information and how students
receive differentiated
instruction.

Monthly 1, 2

The principal provides more
funding to support teachers to
Quarterly 3

144
attend gifted workshops and
conferences.

Rewarding

Principal gives specific and
positive feedback to teachers
after classroom walkthroughs
to highlight how teachers are
using data to drive instruction.

Weekly 1, 2

Teachers who attended gifted
workshops and training can
give presentations to staff and
show their takeaways.

Quarterly 3
Monitoring

Principal and instructional
coaches walkthrough and
observe student engagement
and how lessons are
differentiated.

Daily 1

Principal asks for feedback
from all stakeholders on
differentiation and meeting
the needs of students via
survey.

Quarterly 1, 2

Organizational Support
The school board and the administration need to show enthusiasm for teachers to learn
more about working with gifted students by providing opportunities for teachers to plan lessons,
share best practices, and use assessment data to meet the needs of their students. Also, there
needs to be an interest in allocating funding for future teacher training in working with gifted

145
students and encouraging teachers to attend these workshops. To continue providing support for
teachers, the administration and instructional coaches need to observe lessons in small groups
and provide meaningful feedback to teachers on teaching challenging curriculum for their high
achieving students.
Level 2: Learning
Learning Goals
The list that follows comprises the learning goals that are essential for the Emerson
School District’s teachers to master in order to enact the critical behaviors outlined in Table 18.
The goals below are aligned with the knowledge, motivation, and organizational barrier needed
by the organization to close the gap that was validated in the study which was described in
Chapter 4. Following the completion of the program described in the section, teachers will be
able to:
1. Distinguish between gifted and nongifted students in their class (D-C).
2. Describe educational policies for gifted students and requirements state, county,
and district must follow (D-C).
3. Clearly communicate to gifted students and parents, their needs in being
challenged in schools and what ways they are supported (D-F).
4. Implement depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration in their daily lessons (P).
5. Apply the procedure to assign small learning groups based on ability level (P).
6. Use assessment data to drive instruction (P).
7. Express confidence in providing a challenging curriculum for their high achieving
students (M).

146
8. Generate a plan focusing on individualized goals for each student using the SST
process for their high achieving students (M).
9. Indicate confidence in attending gifted education workshops and conferences to
improve their skills in working with high performing students (M).
10. Value the needs of identifying gifted students and implementing a gifted program
at their site to support gifted students (Value).
Program
The goals listed in the previous section will be achieved by the school district planning
teachers’ professional goals focusing on student engagement and feedback each year. The
principal and lead teachers can focus teacher learning to address teachers to learn more about the
gifted identification process. The purpose of the lead teachers will be to provide training to
school staff and parents and to communicate with all stakeholders on learning opportunities on
gifted education. The principal will begin having an open dialogue about underachieving gifted
students and share previous concerns that have brought to the principal’s attention on lack of
challenge for the high achieving students. The new strategic plan and focus will be posted and
the goals of the teachers will be described to all stakeholders. The school board, administration,
and teachers will work closely to close the knowledge gap by keeping Emerson School District’s
community informed with the gifted identification process, gifted policies, and being transparent
about the resources for the gifted students and programs. The lead teachers will be a volunteer
position and the district can decide how many lead teachers will be needed for the school district.
For a school district this size, two lead teachers will suffice.
The lead teachers will also continue to train other teachers in how gifted students are
identified and oversee all aspects of testing students in CogAT. Lead teachers and administration

147
will keep all stakeholders informed with information about his or her work and share what
training will be provided to the teachers. The lead teachers will also tackle in closing the
procedural gap by providing depth, complexity, acceleration, and novelty training to teachers.
The training should include an ongoing support for teachers to support one another by having
more collaboration time and having specific schedules to give each other continual support in
planning lessons and reflecting their work. There should be multiple workshops offered to
teachers based on their learning needs of providing depth, complexity, acceleration, and novelty.
For the teachers who are not familiar with this instructional strategy, there should be a workshop
for beginners. For the teachers who have been using this instructional strategy with fidelity
should be identified and given an opportunity to take more advanced courses. The principal will
observe teachers without being evaluative and be a partner in planning teachers’ instructional
lessons. The gifted training program will help teachers to have a better knowledge of working
with gifted students and will benefit all students from helping teachers to improve their craft.
Evaluation of the Components of Learning
Demonstrating procedural knowledge is important to see the progress teachers are
making in supporting gifted students. Thus, it is important to evaluate learning for both
declarative and procedural knowledge being taught. It is also important that learners value the
training and transfer their knowledge into teaching students. Table 20 lists the evaluation
methods and timing for these components of learning.
Table 20
Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program

Method(s) or Activity(ies)

Timing
Declarative Knowledge “I know it.”

148
Review the GATE identification process Beginning of the school year
Learn about what it means to be gifted and how
gifted students learn best
August of every year
Review GATE policies and requirements for the
school, district, county, and state
First Professional Development of the
Year
Knowledge check in grade level meeting and
have opportunities to talk about what they have
learned in staff meetings
Weekly grade level meeting, biweekly
staff meeting
Procedural Skills “I can do it right now.”
Demonstrate the knowledge of analyzing CogAT September Staff Meeting
Demonstrate the knowledge of analyzing data to
drive instruction
October Staff Meeting
Demonstrate the knowledge of pulling small
groups
Throughout the school year
Demonstrate the knowledge of implementing
depth, complexity, acceleration, and novelty
Throughout the school year
Attitude “I believe this is worthwhile.”
Scaled survey questions 3 times a year, each trimester
Principal observation of teachers Daily
Instructional coaches feedback of teachers Weekly
Discussion of any issues During
Confidence “I think I can do it on the job.”
Lead staff training and workshops about working
with high achieving students
Quarterly
Discussions following practice and feedback During the workshop
Survey items Following each staff meeting
Commitment “I will do it on the job.”
Gifted students are identified and have
opportunities for a small group instruction
Beginning of the school year and weekly
after that
Create an individualized work plan During the workshop

Level 1: Reaction
Level 1 Reaction is the level most familiar to learning professionals and is considered
easiest to evaluate (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) define
Level 1 Reaction as the degree to which participants find the training favorable, engaging, and
relevant to their jobs and suggest that one productive way to obtain information regarding the
training is to incorporate formative evaluation methods into the program. According to
Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016), having a formative evaluation method will help the

149
organization to determine the benefits of having the new implemented program for their
employees (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Table 21 outlines the methods and timing for collecting and evaluating Level 1 Reaction data.
Table 21

Components to Measure Reactions to the Program

Method(s) or Tool(s)

Timing
Engagement
Principal Evaluation Daily Classroom Walkthroughs
Pulse Check During the workshop
Grade Level Lead Feedback Monthly leadership team meeting
Gifted Education Coach Feedback Throughout the year
Relevance
Principal Evaluation Formal evaluations, walkthroughs
Grade Level Lead Feedback Monthly feedback from lead teachers
Customer Satisfaction
Student Engagement Survey Once a year
Parent Satisfaction Survey Once a year
Teacher training evaluation After each workshop

Evaluation Tools
Once the lead teachers are identified, the role has been defined and communicated to
teachers, and teachers were given time to take, review, and analyze CogAT with their new lead
teachers, there will be an immediate feedback of the experience. The administrative team will
work with the lead teachers to adjust the support to the teachers on working with gifted students
based on teachers’ need and teachers’ readiness. During the first workshop on reviewing the
CogAT data and learning to analyze the data, teachers will be asked to give feedback through an
online application where teachers can anonymously enter questions and comments they have
about the training. The lead teachers will also get a pulse of the teachers’ knowledge of gifted

150
students, gifted identification process, and their knowledge regarding the policies of supporting
gifted students by asking teachers to take a short assessment.
The assessment will be asked before the training starts and a different quiz will be given
after the training. The pre-training quiz will focus on what teachers know about the content that
will be covered that day. This will help the lead teachers to understand what content areas the
coach needs to focus on. The end of the session assessment will focus on the content the coach
covered that day to see how many teachers understood the content that was delivered during the
session. The lead teachers will use these data to plan future training and also model how these
data are used when planning future workshops. These tools will help the gifted education coach
to provide better training and to differentiate learners into the right workshops when planning
their future training sessions.
For Level 1, using the staff surveys during each workshop, the lead teachers will be able
to address how engaged teachers found the training to be, how relevant the work was, and how
satisfied they were with the training. The survey result will be shared with the staff so that the
team can get a pulse on how the rest of the staff felt about the staff development opportunity. For
Level 2, during the training, the lead teachers will ask questions to check for understanding of
the teachers using exit tickets to ensure that the teachers are understanding the information that is
being provided. Also, after all teachers have been taught to use the depth, complexity,
acceleration, and novelty, teachers will receive the magnetic icons for the whiteboard and the
laminated signs for the classrooms as a resource for teachers to use when implementing the
strategy.
The lead teachers will also spend training time helping teachers develop future lessons
using depth, complexity, acceleration, and novelty. After teachers are feeling confident about

151
trying this instructional strategy, teachers will be asked to implement depth, complexity,
acceleration, and novelty in their lessons and invite the lead teachers to partake in the lesson as
an observer. The lead teachers will also ask teachers to bring back work samples for their next
session and keep building on what they have already taught students so that teachers can learn
from each other and discuss what steps teachers need to take next.
Six Weeks After the Implementation of the Training Approximately six weeks after the
implementation of the training, the lead teachers will administer a survey containing open and
scaled question items asking teachers what has been successful in working with gifted students
and what challenges teachers faced in implementation depth, complexity, acceleration, and
novelty in their classroom. The survey will ask teachers how satisfied and relevant their training
is (Level 1), confidence and value of applying the training (Level 2), how often they have tried
differentiation for their high performing students and what support they need to continue
supporting their gifted students (Level 3), and what results they have been seeing (Level 4).
By this time, gifted students will be identified in the school district and teachers have had
a chance to review the assessment data. Therefore, the lead teachers will be able to help teachers
define what strengths and challenges these identified gifted students have in school. The lead
teachers will then create a plan to support the gifted students. The lead teachers can offer a
variety of services to the students like observing gifted students to see how engaged they are in
school and to ensure that these students are being challenged by their teachers. The lead teachers
can also help create project-based learning work for gifted students or even offer a pullout
session and teach a small group of gifted learners based on their interest and learning abilities.
The lead teachers will participate in walkthroughs and learn more about what teachers are
doing. These walkthroughs are non-evaluative and teachers can also volunteer to record their

152
teaching so that other teachers can watch the video lesson to improve their own teaching. The
purpose of the walkthroughs by the lead teachers is for teachers to receive meaningful feedback
from someone who does not have a supervisory role. The\lead teachers will create office hours,
lead parent meetings, and support teachers in a variety of capacities to earn trust from teachers
and to increase support for their gifted learners. The purpose of these walkthroughs will be
communicated and the focus of these observations will be on student engagement and feedback.
Data Analysis and Reporting
The Level 4 goal of meeting the needs of all students is measured by the academic
progress gifted students are making. Every 6 weeks, the district’s assessment tool, iReady will be
one way to track the progress of gifted students from the beginning of the school year to the end
of the school year. Students will also participate in a survey and students will be asked to answer
questions like how much they were engaged in school, how much support students received from
their teachers, how much they felt challenged, and if they felt they made academic progress this
school year. When teachers have their weekly collaboration meeting, the site administrator will
ask the teachers to add in their minutes a discussion of how they challenged students and what
and how lessons were differentiated.
The lead teachers, with the collaboration of classroom teachers will use iReady data,
students’ survey, and State testing data to report out the progress of the gifted identification
process and what support students have been receiving through the choosing of lead teachers.
The presentation will include what training was delivered to the teachers, what feedback was
received by teachers, and what evidence of gifted differentiation has been seen on campus. The
lead teachers will also create and present what training was offered to the teachers and what
specific knowledge teachers earned from these training. Figure 5 shows what California students

153
take each year from grades 3rd to 12th. Figure 6 shows what iReady data looks like for providing
extra support for students. iReady is not a state required test.

Figure 5. This figure represents a snapshot of what CAASPP data
would look like. (California Department of Education, 2020)

154

Figure 6. This figure represents a snapshot of what iReady data would
look like to show the academic progress gifted students are making
in a school year. (iReady, 2020)
Summary
The purpose of the study was to understand the needs Emerson School District had in
identifying and supporting their gifted students. Teachers and a school administrator participated
in the mixed methods study. From the gathering of data, it was clear that teachers needed to
increase their knowledge about identifying and understanding gifted and talented students.
Teachers also needed to find value in providing differentiated instruction for all students but
needed more collaboration time and training to do that. Teachers recognized that there is a lack
of trust amongst staff and there needs to be transparency in how budget is allocated for needs in
their school district.
The New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) was used as the
framework to implement and evaluate the researched-based recommendation supporting the
implementation of the gifted identification process of Emerson School District’s students. To

155
administer the test and to provide additional support to teachers, the recommendation is that the
district identify lead teachers to educate teachers about gifted education programs, to lead the
CogAT administration and help teachers to analyze the data, and to provide ongoing support in
planning of the differentiated lesson for the students. At Level 4, internal and external outcomes
and metrics were articulated to provide leading indicators of having a successful gifted support at
their site. Level 3 surfaced the need for members to exhibit three critical behaviors centered on
matching teachers to show these work habits to launching the gifted identification program and
the district to the need to identify their teacher leaders who can help oversee support of providing
differentiated instruction for all students. Level 2, learning goals were defined that are essential
for the Emerson District Teachers to continue supporting their gifted students. Finally, Level 1
measures were defined to gauge Emerson’s School District teachers’ engagement in and
satisfaction with the implementation of the gifted identification process and having support from
the gifted education coach.

156
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Appendix A
Document Analysis Rubric
Knowledge
Influence
Evidence Present
Y/N
Comments
Teachers need
knowledge of what
policies exist
regarding gifted
students.

Teachers need to
understand what it
means to be gifted
and what needs gifted
students have.

Teachers need to
know how gifted
students are
identified.

Teachers need to
know how CogAT is
administered and how
to analyze the data.

Teachers need to be
reflective
of their own abilities
to provide
differentiated
instruction.

Motivational
Influence
Evidence Present
Y/N
Comments
Teachers need to
believe the value in
differentiating

171
instruction for gifted
students.
Teachers need to
want to pull small
groups, assess
students, plan lessons
based on student
performance, and
provide rigorous
curriculum for all.

Teachers need to
believe they are
capable of effectively
differentiating
instruction for all
students.

Teachers need to feel
confident in their
ability to differentiate
instruction for all
students.

Organizational
Influence
Evidence Present
Y/N
Comments
The Organization
needs an acceptance
of a culture of
willingness to learn
about supporting
gifted students.

The Organization
needs a culture of
trust.

The Organization
needs to prioritize
funding to support

172
gifted student
programs.

173
Appendix B
Survey to Administer Immediately Following Initial Training

Please place X in the box to indicate the degree to which you agree with each statement.

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neither
Disagree nor
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
The training
held my
interest

I found the
value in
training I
received
today.

The
information
presented
today is
applicable to
my role as a
classroom
teacher.

I would
recommend
this training
to other
teachers in
different
school
districts.

Following questions will be asked in a Google Survey and will be emailed to teachers.

1. What part of training was most beneficial?
2. What part of training needs modification?
3. In our next session, what would you like the trainer to prepare?
4. How was the pacing of the training today?
5. From the training today, what was your biggest takeaway?

174
6. What is something you are going to try in your classroom that was influenced by today’s
training?
7. Please share additional comments you have for us to better understand your needs and
your students’ needs.

175
Appendix C

SURVEY COVER LETTER

Date

Dear Emerson School District Teachers,

Based on Emerson Community’s interest in providing more support for high achieving students
in your school district, we would like for you to participate in our research study. This study is
being conducted under the guidance of Dr. Emmy Min, as part of our doctoral studies at the
Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. This study seeks to
understand what programs and assessments should be in place to support gifted and talented
students to ensure academic success for all students.

We understand your time is extremely valuable and limited. The survey will take approximately
twenty minutes. Your voluntary participation is much appreciated and would provide an
important contribution to the research on understanding the needs of supporting gifted and
talented students in your district.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Sincerely,

Lauren Petrea
petrea@usc.edu
(925) 389-0813

176
Appendix D

SURVEY INSTRUMENT

Demographics

1. How many years have you been a classroom teacher?
a. 0-3 years
b. 4 to 10 years
c. 11 to 15 years
d. 16 years or more

2. How many students in your class(es) are performing above grade level in all
academic subjects? (K)
a. None
b. 1-2 students
c. 3-4 students
d. 5 or more students

3. Please mark statement(s) that is/are true (K)
a. Gifted students have great natural ability in academics or/and performing arts
b. Gifted students have heightened sensitivity (emotionally or/and physically)
c. Gifted students can learn 8 times faster than an average student
d. Gifted students are intrinsically motivated
e. Some gifted students try to cover up their giftedness in order to be like others.
f. Gifted students may do outstanding work in one area but only passable work in another
area.
g. Teachers are usually better at identifying gifted children than parents are.

4. Do you believe school districts in the U.S. need to identify gifted and talented students?
(K)
Yes
No

I don’t know/No Opinion

5. Is there an adequate amount of funding set aside in your school district to support
academically gifted learners? (O)
Yes
No
I don’t know

177
6. In 2015-2016, the number of students ages 3 to 21 receiving special education services
was 6.7 million, or 13% of all public-school students (National Center for Education
Statistics). According to Gagne (1993), 10% of students in the United States are gifted but
do not receive special education services because districts focus on servicing
underachieving students (Belanger & Garne, 2006). After reading this statement, do you
believe that we need to equally support and fund underachieving and overachieving
students?
Yes
No
Maybe
7. In your classroom, do you use Depth and Complexity, Acceleration, and Novelty? If so,
how often do you use Depth and Complexity, Acceleration, and Novelty? (K)
a. up to 50% of my lessons
b. up to 75% of my lessons
c. more than 75%
d. I don't use Depth and Complexity, Acceleration, and Novelty
e. I don't know how to use Depth and Complexity, Acceleration and Novelty
8. Do you agree with the statement, "Lack of challenge such as slow pacing, too much
repetition, inability to move forward after achieving mastery, and lack of opportunity to
pursue personal interests or to focus on thinking skills rather than mastery of facts have
been a struggle for my gifted students."
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree

9. The Cognitive Abilities Test is a widely used test for students from kindergarten through
high school. The test measures student’s reasoning abilities that are considered a crucial
factor to distinguishing gifted learners (Warne, 2015). Have you used CogAT and Are you
confident in analyzing the result of CogAT to support your students? (K)
a. Yes, I have used CogAT and I am confident in utilizing data from the assessment.
b. Yes, I have used CogAT but I need more training to understand the assessment.
c. No, I did not use CogAT.
d. I don’t want to use CogAT.
10. Please rate the following statement: “It is important for me to differentiate instruction
for our gifted learners and I am confident in supporting all learners.” (K)
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree

11. Please mark statement(s) that you agree with (K)
a. Gifted students do not need help. They will do fine on their own.
b. Teachers challenge all students.
c. All children are gifted.
d. Gifted education programs are elitist.

178
e. Gifted identification testing is important in helping gifted learners.
12. I would like to receive more training in supporting high achieving students (M).
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree
13. Do you agree with the statement, "teachers are the most significant influence on student
achievement and student’s love for learning, which suggest a need for greater attention in
teacher preparation." (M).
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree
14. Overall, how would you rate our district’s performance in providing differentiated
instruction for all students (K)?
Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor
15. Overall, how would you rate our district’s resources in providing differentiated
instruction for all students (O)?
Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor

16. In my district, I feel comfortable trying new things and sharing new ideas (O)?
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree

17. My students are given opportunities to learn and access extension lessons (K).
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree
18. In my classroom, I provide my students with interest-based projects and different work
to meet the needs of their ability (M).
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree
19. In our district, we are encouraged to work together and our collaboration time centers
around meeting the needs of all students and we spend equal amounts of time discussing
high achieving students and underachieving students (O).
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree
20. Check all that applies. If you are not currently meeting the needs of your class, what
support do you need (O)?
a) I need more training in supporting high achieving students
b) I need more training in depth and complexity
c) I need more training in supporting underachieving students
d) I need more training in supporting English language learners
e) I need more time to collaborate with my team
f) I need more training in social and emotional learning/social thinking
g) I need more training in working with gifted and talented students
h) I don’t need training.

179
Appendix E

INTERVIEW INFORMATION LETTER

University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study will focus on understanding the needs of gifted and talented students in grades
Kindergarten to 8th grade in your school district. This study will employ mixed methods to
understand how teachers differentiate different subject areas and what beliefs teachers have
regarding differentiation and working with academically high performing students.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
The qualitative portion will focus on veteran teachers in the school district. Teachers who have
taught 3 or more years in the school district will be asked to participate in the interview. For this
study, all middle school teachers in the district will be asked to participate in the interview and
the first 3 teachers to respond back to the researcher will be interviewed. During the interview, a
total of 20 questions will be asked, each interview will take approximately 40 minutes. This
interview will be audio recorded with participant consent.

CONFIDENTIALITY
The identity of survey participants will remain confidential and pseudonyms will be used. All
data will be kept in a secure location and destroyed after three years.

180
Appendix F

INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR TEACHERS

Lack of Support for Gifted Students in the United States

1. What is your definition of gifted and talented students and what is the school’s definition
of gifted and talented?
2. What are the different ways gifted students are identified and supported in your
classroom and in your school?
3. How does your school identify gifted students? Please share with me the step by step
process.
4. What message do you receive from your school board and/or principal regarding how
gifted students should be supported in your classroom and at your school?
5. Please describe how gifted education resources are financially allocated and how
successful this allocation is. Is it working?
6. What if I told you, gifted students are considered special needs students. However 98% of
special education funding is used for underachieving students. Do you think we need to
change how special education funding is allocated? Why or why not?
7. Does your school have a gifted program or offer services to support high achieving
students? If so, what do you know about the program?
8. What is an advantage of being a gifted student? What is a disadvantage?
9. Walk me through what you know about CogAT and how often you have used CogAT?
10. Please describe how CogAT is administered and what do you do with the data after you
have received them?
11. Do you believe CogAT is valuable? Why or why not?
12. What is your definition of differentiating instruction? Please share with me how you
differentiate in your classroom.
13. How often do you communicate to your students’ parent(s) regarding his/her academic
needs/strengths during a school year?
14. What challenges have you faced with parents when referring/recommending high
achieving students for gifted programs or/and different programs that are offered to only
a few students from your class? If you do not have special programs, what challenges did
you face collaborating with parents to meet the needs of your high performing students?
15. What instructional strengths do you bring in your classroom in meeting the academic
needs of your diverse learners? What instructional strengths does your team bring?
16. Do you know what challenges gifted students face in schools? If so, what are you seeing,
hearing, and noticing?
17. Do you think there are underachieving gifted students? If so, what do you think that is?
18. Do you think gifted students have special needs? If so, what services do you think gifted
students need?
19. Does your school have resources to meet the needs of all students? If not, what resources
are needed at your school to serve all students?
20. In your opinion, what kind of training does a teacher need to work with gifted students?
Did you receive those training?

181
Appendix G

INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR ADMINISTRATOR

1. What is your definition of gifted and talented students and does your school have a
definition of gifted and talented students?
2. How does your school identify gifted students? If students are not identified, why do you
not identify?
3. How often do you offer training for teachers on working with gifted students and/or
differentiating instruction for all?
4. How much do you allocate to support gifted programs at your site? If you do not allocate
any funds for gifted programs, what is your rationale for not supporting the program?
5. What is included in your district’s strategic plan, LCAP, and/or SPSA to support gifted
students? Are you planning to make any changes for the following year? Why or why
not?
6. How often do you see teachers differentiating classroom lessons for high achieving
students per day? Why do you think teachers differentiate % of their lessons for high
achieving students per day?
7. What struggles do you think gifted students face at school?
8. Why do you think there are underachieving gifted students?
9. How much parent input do you take when making decisions for your school’s curriculum
and programs?
10. In your opinion, what kind of training, programs, and resources students and teachers
need to be successful in your school?
11. Why do you think there are underachieving gifted students?
12. What do you think about hearing that about 20% of high school dropouts are
academically gifted students. Why do you think this is?
13. Why do you think your school district does not have a gifted program?

Abstract (if available)

Abstract In the United States, the gifted identification process and gifted programs are not required in school districts. The current federal law allows school districts to make their own decisions in how they will fund, provide support, and identify gifted learners. Therefore, there is an inconsistency in how gifted students are receiving educational services and what it means to be gifted and talented students in each school district. This paper utilizes the Gap Analysis (Clark & Estes, 2008) framework to identify what knowledge, motivation, and organizational gaps exist at a school district serving TK to 8th grade students in Northern California in supporting their gifted students. This is a mixed methods study and teachers were given a survey, teachers and a school administrator were interviewed, and classrooms were observed. The survey and interview questions focused on teachers’ knowledge and motivation on working with gifted students and what cultural setting and model barriers the organization have. The results of this study should contribute to addressing the lack of support for gifted students in school districts and help teachers understand more about working with gifted students. New world Kirkpatrick’s Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) was used to evaluate the results and to create a plan for school districts to improve their practices in supporting gifted and talented students.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Petrea, Yoonna Lauren (author)

Core Title Lack of support for gifted students in the United States

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 10/30/2020

Defense Date 10/09/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag CogAT,Cognitive Abilities Test,differentiation,enrichment,Gate,gifted,gifted and talented,gifted programs,lack of funding,low achieving gifted students,OAI-PMH Harvest,parent pressure,student achievement,Teacher Training

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Min, Emmy (committee chair), Kaplan, Sandra (committee member), Wilcox, Alexandra (committee member)

Creator Email laurenpetrea@gmail.com,petrea@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-389241

Unique identifier UC11666373

Identifier etd-PetreaYoon-9081.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-389241 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-PetreaYoon-9081.pdf

Dmrecord 389241

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Petrea, Yoonna Lauren

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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