Motivation and Opportunities

Excellence gap among gifted and talented students has existed for many decades, but has not been adequately addressed yet. High potential of gifted children from economically disadvantaged families, multicultural families, or with disabilities are easily overlooked due to educators’ deficit thinking and low expectation, or low performance. Social provision of opportunities for the under-represented gifted to be supported and challenged and their achievement motivation are crucial at every stage of the talent development process, since talent development requires intense experiences, learning, and practices throughout a life time. Most of the under-represented gifted students have had limited opportunity with high, low, or undetermined motivation for talent development. Motivation is determined by expectancy (I can) and value (I want). To increase expectancy and value of working on challenging tasks, recognition of students’ strengths and rewards for efforts and improvement, higher expectation from parents and teachers, and differentiation are recommended. In order to expand accessibility of gifted education programs for the under-represented gifted students, universal screening, creating a talent pool using multiple paths, and creating a preparatory program and identification using a local norm are suggested.