Examining the Intercultural Understandings of Adolescents With Gifts and Talents Attending a Multicultural Summer Enrichment Program

Scholars in the field of gifted education have identified that summer enrichment programs can have academic and socioemotional benefits for adolescents with gifts and talents. Although some studies have pointed to the intercultural benefits of such programs, few have focused directly on the intercultural benefits multicultural enrichment programs can provide.

This mixed-methods study had three purposes: (1) to identify and adapt an instrument capable of measuring cultural responsiveness in adolescents with gifts and talents, (2) to examine if adolescents with gifts and talents change in cultural responsiveness over the course of a multicultural, residential summer enrichment program, and (3) to explore effective pedagogical strategies for teaching multicultural groups of adolescents with gifts and talents.

The Miville-Guzman Universality Scale-Short (Fuertes et al., 2000) was selected as the instrument of focus. The instrument was piloted, and the data analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis. Cognitive interviews with participants were also used to revise the items. A combination of canonical function analysis and qualitative responses were used to analyze participants’ (n=308) growth in cultural responsiveness over the course of the summer enrichment program. Finally, interviews with teachers and open-response answers from students were used to find the most effective pedagogical strategies for educating multicultural students.

Findings include a revised M-GUDS-S instrument for adolescents with gifts and talents (AM-GUDS-S), evidence that multicultural enrichment programs can have a positive effect on student intercultural relations with profiles for how those relations develop over a two-week period, and a series of pedagogical strategies that can be used by educators to facilitate learning for groups of domestically, internationally, and linguistically diverse students.