Neurodiversity Symposium Shines Light on Equity in Gifted Education
The University of La Verne LaFetra College of Education, in collaboration with the Center for Learning and Innovation (CLI) and the Center for Neurodiversity, Learning, and Wellness (CNLW), have announced their upcoming Neurodiversity Symposium titled, “Equity in Gifted Education and Neurodiversity.” The symposium is scheduled for Saturday, April 20, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Sara and Michael Abraham Campus Center and aims to address inequitable issues in gifted education and provide actionable strategies for creating inclusive and sustainable services.
Three keynote speakers will join the event and are each experts in gifted education. These individuals include gifted program coordinator Dina Brulles, senior research scientist Jack Naglieri, and former executive director of the Herberger Young Scholars Academy Kimberly Lansdowne. Together, they discovered that 1.2 million non-white gifted students who were previously unidentified as gifted students. They each have dedicated time, education, and experience to identifying historically marginalized gifted students to create a more equitable program for all.
During the event, two separate break-out group sessions will commence, covering topics such as identifying twice-exceptional gifted students and building inclusive programs for gifted learners using local norms. Also, the speakers will present their new collaborative equity-based student ability tests called the Naglieri General Ability Tests, which aim to better identify and support historically marginalized students who have been underrepresented in gifted education.
“We’ll be talking about this suite of new tests that we created, which are an extension of the work that I’ve been doing for decades with my non-verbal tests,” Naglieri said in a video introduction for the event. “It became really clear to me that the nonverbal test was helpful, but we wanted to have a verbal and quantitative piece as well. So, we’ve created what I think of as a second-generation general ability test with the goal of [creating] equity across those three dimensions.”
Brulles, Lansdowne, and Naglieri’s book, Understanding and Using the Naglieri General Ability Tests: A Call for Equity in Gifted Education, is a companion to the Naglieri General Ability Tests and offers new, culture-sensitive methods for identifying historically marginalized students.
The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 20, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Sara and Michael Abraham Campus Center. Lunch will be provided. Interested professionals and individuals can purchase tickets for breakout group A or B during the event today by visiting this link here.
