Equity and Excellence: Gifted Education in Schools
Program Overview
Same age does not equal same learning needs. Just as students vary in their shoe size, so too do they vary in their learning needs. Unfortunately, identifying which students have varying learning needs, what those learning needs are, and how to best serve them is not as straightforward as measuring their shoe size. Fortunately, researchers and practitioners have been working for over a century to identify gifted students and meet the needs of all students.
Program Details
Courses in this program are offered online. Courses are held in both an asynchronous environment (D2L) and a synchronous (real-time) environment (Zoom) which allows instructors to virtually meet and talk with students and experience a live exchange of ideas, hear class presentations and do group work with access to a whiteboard. For additional information regarding online delivery, refer to the eLearn website.
These courses will provide you with knowledge, tools, perspectives, and experiences to return to your classrooms, communities, and schools ready to act. Ready to identify, serve, teach, assess, review policies, and collaborate with colleagues to help gifted students flourish.
Individuals engaging in this program as learners will be supported in their knowledge, understanding, and ability to act on:
- History of the field
- Justifications and rationale(s) for services
- Differing conceptions of giftedness and talent
- Various goals for gifted services
- Various service options across domains and level of intensity
- Identification tools and strategies
- Affective needs and twice-exceptionalities
- Achieving equity and excellence
- Classroom level instructional strategies and their expected effects
- School level service strategies and their expected effects
- Program design
- Student assessment
- Program evaluation techniques
- Advocacy
- Empirical research findings
- Individual student readiness and learning needs
- Working with families and community members
Equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility are values and considerations that are intentionally woven through all four of the courses. Similarly, student exceptionalities and how they interact with giftedness are also a throughline throughout all four courses.
Experiential learning is learning by doing that bridges knowledge and experience through critical reflection. This program offers the following kinds of experiential learning opportunities:
- Develop (and revise) personal vision statement and philosophy of gifted education
- Craft a rubric for assessing gifted identification practices
- Create a toolkit for serving gifted students in classrooms
- Cultivate communication messaging to community partners about gifted programming
This four-course M.Ed. option engages teachers, administrators, and community members in a journey of reframing educational perspectives, assessing claims, evaluating evidence, and articulating goals for success for gifted students in education.
A registration package will be sent to new students after they have been admitted. Registration for the summer term will be available in late winter. Fall and Winter registration opens in the spring. Your Graduate Program Administrator will send more information about registration to you.
Fee details are available on the Faculty of Graduate Studies website.
The University of Calgary offers multiple ways to meet the cost of your education. Please refer to the Awards, Scholarships and Bursaries page to learn more about options available to students. For additional information, please contact Student Financial Support.
Please refer to Admission Requirements for Master's Programs.
Program Schedule & Course Descriptions
- Program begins each July (summer term 1)
- Outlines are normally available 1-2 weeks prior to the start of term in D2L
- 3 units per course
Term 1 - Summer
Identifying Giftedness: Modern Methods
This course introduces the concepts of academic giftedness, talent, and advanced academic needs. It overviews historical origins while focusing on current conceptions, varying identification practices, and assessment methods.
Key ideas and topics: Justification(s) for giftedness, conceptions of giftedness, identification practices, universal screening, local norms, equity and excellence, nominations & referrals
Term 1 - Summer
More Than A Brain: Psychology of Giftedness
Students who are gifted are still students with needs, flaws, and struggles like all students. This course covers how they experience the world beyond being academically advanced. Who are they and what are their needs? This course features their social-emotional needs, twice-exceptionalities, identity development, and other psychological factors of gifted individuals.
Key ideas and topics: Social-emotional needs, psychosocial development, asynchronous development, over-excitabilities, twice-exceptionality, identity development
Term 2- Fall
Instructional Strategies: Adapting for Giftedness
This course provides an in-depth examination of methods for adapting the curriculum and/or educational environment to match the demonstrated learning needs of gifted students.
Key ideas and topics: Classroom level strategies (differentiation, enrichment, grouping); School level strategies (acceleration, grouping), as well as how other service models (extracurricular activities, mentoring, credit by demonstrated mastery, dual enrollment); Curriculum development, Rubrics, Standards
Term 3 - Winter
Building a Program for Giftedness
Gifted programs efficiently and effectively tie together school goals, conceptions, identification practices, and services.
Key ideas and topics: Assessments, program evaluation, professional learning, community outreach, partnerships, equity and excellence