A Study on the Gifted and Talented Education Curriculum Model “U-STARS~PLUS”:

Focusing on the Underrepresentation of Minority Students in Gifted Education

Abstract

This paper examined U-STARS~PLUS (Using Science, Talents, and Abilities to Recognize Students ~ Promoting Learning for Underrepresented Students), a gifted and talented education curriculum model recently developed in the United States, focusing on efforts to assuage racial discrimination in gifted and talented education from the viewpoint of curriculum development.

In discussions that use the development of U-STARS~PLUS as a background, I determined the current state of access inequality in gifted and talented education programs in the United States; this enabled me to confirm that the participation of minority children, mostly black and Hispanic, in gifted and talented education programs is at an unusually lower rate compared with white children. Among the factors that have particularly caused this issue to come to the fore in recent years, I identified an increasing number of racial minorities in public schools, as well as the actualization of inequality due to the expansion of gifted and talented education since the 1980s and the recognition of unfair access to gifted and talented education programs as a serious policy issue in gifted and talented education.

Subsequently, I examined the shared characteristics of curriculum models intended to expand minority access, indicating that minority underrepresentation is an issue of unfairness exclusively while acknowledging talented children. The results revealed that such curriculum models were expanded models that targeted not only children formally recognized as gifted but also all other children; further, it was also observed that most of these models had been developed to enable the gradual implementation of advanced investigational activities for determining children’s abilities.

Additionally, I outlined the development process and basic structure of U-STARS~PLUS, which was developed through funding from the federal government. It is indicated that U-STARS~PLUS places special emphasis on the systematic observation of children with potential ability, using Teacher’s Observation of Potential in Students (TOPS) to remove teacher bias against minorities and incorporating TOPS into the RTI model for the gifted, which is a new practical framework for gifted and talented education to ensure that U-STARS~PLUS develops into a more effective curriculum model.

Finally, I examined the effectiveness of TOPS based on the results of the inspection of the U-STARS~PLUS Project, which was implemented over 5 years from 2003 to 2008 and verified its results by fairly recognizing latent abilities in minority children. Consequently, I considered issues in the implementation of U-STARS~PLUS, which emphasizes finding solutions to the underrepresentation of minority students in gifted education.