How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice

Katie Lewis; Angela Novak

doi:10.5281/zenodo.15395939

How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice

Abstract

Effective equity-driven professional learning (PL) is one strategy to work against the disproportionality of marginalized populations in gifted and talented programs. This professional learning should be steeped in equity and culturally responsive practices, ongoing, job-embedded, collaborative, sustained, and operationalized within the context of the educators’ lived and work experiences. In a critical convergent mixed-methods research design, we, as university researchers, partnered with a gifted coordinator in a large Texas school district, providing equity-focused professional learning to gifted resources teachers (GRTs), and asking GRTs to pass this training on to other educators, on characteristics of students identifying as Latiné, bilingual, and gifted to determine the impact of the PL on GRTs’ sense of cultural awareness and knowledge of gifted characteristics for this population of learners. We collected pre- and post-PL quantitative data on two instruments to measure GRTs’ perceptions, as well as qualitative data on PL exit surveys, GRTs’ logs of training other educators, an interview of the gifted coordinator, and researchers’ notes. Quantitative findings included short-term positive changes on GRTs’ cultural self-awareness, but without consistent long-term changes on the same measure. Additionally, GRTs showed growth in identifying characteristics of gifted Latiné bilingual students. Qualitative data resulted in four themes: understandings, outcomes, barriers, and needs. Mixed methods analysis contributed to the discussion of white exceptionalism and adult learning theory. Results provide continued empirical support for the Four Zone Equity-Driven Professional Learning Model (4ZEPL).

Keywords

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Special Talented Education

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Katie Lewis ^*
0000-0003-1398-5673
United States

Angela Novak
0000-0002-8257-4731
United States

Early Pub Date

May 13, 2025

Publication Date

June 30, 2025

Submission Date

December 7, 2024

Acceptance Date

May 3, 2025

Published in Issue

Year 2025 Volume: 12 Number: 1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15395939

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA48AN35RJ

Cite

RIS / Bibtex

APA

Lewis, K., & Novak, A. (2025). How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice. Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity, 12(1), 23-53. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15395939

AMA

1.Lewis K, Novak A. How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice. JGEDC. 2025;12(1):23-53. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15395939

Chicago

Lewis, Katie, and Angela Novak. 2025. “How Professional Learning Impacts Gifted Educators’ Perceptions and Practice”. Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity 12 (1): 23-53. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15395939.

EndNote

Lewis K, Novak A (June 1, 2025) How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice. Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity 12 1 23–53.

IEEE

[1]K. Lewis and A. Novak, “How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice”, JGEDC, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 23–53, June 2025, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15395939.

ISNAD

Lewis, Katie - Novak, Angela. “How Professional Learning Impacts Gifted Educators’ Perceptions and Practice”. Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity 12/1 (June 1, 2025): 23-53. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15395939.

JAMA

1.Lewis K, Novak A. How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice. JGEDC. 2025;12:23–53.

MLA

Lewis, Katie, and Angela Novak. “How Professional Learning Impacts Gifted Educators’ Perceptions and Practice”. Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity, vol. 12, no. 1, June 2025, pp. 23-53, doi:10.5281/zenodo.15395939.

Vancouver

1.Katie Lewis, Angela Novak. How professional learning impacts gifted educators’ perceptions and practice. JGEDC. 2025 Jun. 1;12(1):23-5. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15395939