Volume 31 Number 1
October 1991

Elizabeth Ann Hartley, Ph.D.

Gifted education has been perceived as available only to the elite. Over the last three decades, demographic trends have indicated significant under-representation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, American Indian students in particular, in gifted programs (Chinn & Hughes, 1987).

Information from the Navajo educational community indicated that Navajo students were proportionally underrepresented in gifted/talented (G/T) educational programs. Prevailing factors which have traditionally influenced CLD students' under-representation in G/T educational programs include: (a) use of inappropriate or inadequate standardized psychometric measures (Bernal, 1974; Clark, 1983; Gallagher, 1985), (b) the level of acculturation of American Indian students relative to the Anglo middle-class educational system (McLoughlin & Lewis, 1986; Padilla, 1980), and (c) differing values toward and perceptions of giftedness across cultural systems, particularly between mainstream United States culture and American Indian cultures (Gardner, 1983; Tonemah, 1987).

Persons concerned with the education of Navajo youth identified a lack of information about Q/T characteristics of Navajo children. This information would have been useful in order to facilitate the identification of and educational planning for G/T Navajo children. Despite this lack of information, the firm belief was evident, in these communications, that there were indeed G/T Navajo students who needed appropriate educational services. In particular, one Navajo board of education administrator expressed concern that G/T Navajo students should be identified for appropriate educational programming very early in school.

This research was designed to investigate the similarities and differences among Navajo and Anglo community and school definitions of giftedness and talent. The influence of acculturation on these definitions was a primary concern.

In an effort to understand the effects of the factors listed above, six questions were examined. Null hypotheses were then generated from these questions for the purposes of analysis (see Appendix for the complete list).

Three communities of parent and teacher respondents were selected for the study - two communities from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and a white middle-class community from eastern Colorado. For this paper, the terms used to identify the respondents from each community were "Acculturated" and "Traditional" and "Anglo" (see Note 1) respectively. A rationale for these labels follows in the End Notes section.

The Acculturated Navajo community was an eastern border town of approximately 56,000 inhabitants. The school sites consisted of two public elementary schools and one middle school enrolling a total of about 2100 K-8th students.

Six-hundred inhabitants comprised the Traditional community spread out in a high desert valley in east-central Navajo. The BIA boarding school enrolled approximately 144 students, grades pre-kindergarten through 6.

The Anglo community was located in central Colorado with approximately 350,000 residents. The target schools were 3 elementary schools, enrolling approximately 500 students each, in a district of 10 elementary, 3 middle and 2 high schools.

The Traditional community, in this study, exhibited a marked retention of traditional Navajo values and ways and only marginal integration and/or assimilation to the mainstream society. The Acculturated community exhibited marked levels of integration and assimilation within the context of the dominant Anglo culture. The Anglo community's composition was predominantly white, middle-income exhibiting values that were largely representative of mainstream culture. The author recognizes the complexity and subtlety of the acculturation process. The labels Acculturated, Traditional and Anglo are generalizations used in this study to assist clarity in the discussion of the results.

These distinctions were supported by data gathered on parent respondents' occupations (see Featherman & Stevens, 1981 and Reiss, et al., 1961 for descriptions of the occupational indices). The average socioeconomic index score for the Traditional respondents was 25.51. For the Acculturated and Anglo parent groups, the scores were 34.83 and 35.33, respectively. These scores indicated that the latter two groups were more similar to each other socio-economically than the Traditional group was to either of them–thus, reflecting differential levels of acculturation to the mainstream society between the Traditional and Acculturated communities.

The study was an exploratory study, using small samples, survey research and ethnographic description.

Survey and interview forms or protocols were used for gathering data. Both protocols included the ten G/T subscales developed by the researcher for this study:

Each subscale included three to seven items. In addition, open ended questions were included and demographic information was requested.

Demographic questions included teacher's status as a teacher, type of classroom, years of teaching experience, degree held, ethnicity, respondent's relationship to child in school, age, gender, and occupation.

The interview and survey protocols were developed by the researcher and edited to avoid culturally and linguistically inappropriate items. This was done through the advice of an expert panel, by pilot testing the instruments in Colorado and field testing the instruments on the Navajo reservation.

Teacher and Anglo parent respondents returned the completed surveys to the researcher in person, through the school, or by mail. Navajo parent respondents were interviewed by the researcher using an interpreter as needed.

The following statistical and ethnographic procedures were used in the analysis of the surveys. Distributional measures were skewness, kurtosis and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality of response distributions. These were used to determine the reliability of the survey instrument. Cronbach's Alpha, one and two factor ANOVAS, Sheffe's pairwise follow-up, Hotelling's T and Levene's t-test, univariate t-tests and Discriminant Analysis were statistical measures used to determine the significant differences in response among the survey response groups.

Participant observation and ethnographic description (described in Spradley, 1979 and Wilcox, 1982) were used to describe the communities and provide a socio-cultural background for comparison and analysis of the similarities and differences among and between parent and teacher groups.

The study, as noted before, was exploratory and used small samples. The survey returns are reported in Table 1.

As seen in Table 1, parent interview returns were a respectable 50%, 60%, and 49% in the Traditional, Acculturated, and Anglo communities, respectively. All the Traditional teachers and aides responded to the survey. The Acculturated and Anglo teacher/aide respondents numbered 35% and 37%, respectively. Twenty-two percent of the Anglo parent respondents were administered a follow-up phone interview.

(Note: The following information represents a synthesis of extensive survey and interview data. This is in an attempt to provide the most salient findings to the reader. Detailed information is available from the author.)

The study findings are presented below with respect to the six research questions outlined earlier in the paper under the section Research Concerns.

TABLE 1

Survey / Interview Returns

Many G/T characteristics were described that were similar or universal across the communities - particularly those dealing with the school environment (e.g., some school academic skills, thinking skills, and physical/athletic abilities). Additional reported traits were culturally bound and/or influenced by culture (e.g., language, attitudes on the part of teachers, willingness to exhibit giftedness, learning styles, and some leadership skills).

Listed below are characteristics of gifted Navajo students, identified by respondents, which tended to differ from those expected of gifted Anglo students. The opposite traits of those described below can be considered those that would be expected of Anglo gifted students (Bernal, 1976; Gallagher, 1985: McLoughlin & Lewis, 1986). It was found that the more Traditional (less acculturated to the mainstream school setting) a Navajo student was, the more likely they were to exhibit these traits.

A gifted/talented Navajo student:

1. may be humble (not boastful or assertive about one’s accomplishments),
2. aural/oral memory may be better than visual memory,
3. may be quiet,
4. may not be competitive with peers for leadership roles,
5. may need more concrete situations in which to learn,
6. may use traditional ways of dealing with personal issues (e.g., a sing, using a medicine man and other methods unconventional by white middle-class standards),
7. may not assertively or readily suggest better ways of doing things,
8. may not readily or openly express feelings,
9. may have difficulty overcoming peer pressure, may not look one directly in the eye–it is considered impolite (a non-Navajo teacher may misconstrue this behavior as non-attentive or rude),
10. family and religious or spiritual activities may take precedence over school functions,
11. may not challenge something they know is incorrect,
12. may prefer to do some work with others but to practice independently,
13. may not be comfortable with public speaking,
14. may not have strong reading environments at home,
15. may not have a strong first (native) language background,
16. may not ask a lot of questions–just enough to get the necessary information,
17. may need instruction and training in all learning modalities, particularly kinesthetic,
18. may need time to reflect and practice before they produce,
19. may be fluently bi- or trilingual.

Implicit in the Acculturated and Anglo schools' G/T programs were the characteristics that mainstream education has defined as exemplifying giftedness. Culture and language were only summarily dealt with and many of the above characteristics were ostensibly ignored. Many Navajo students in the Acculturated school district may have been overlooked for placement due to diverse cultural, linguistic, environmental and/or socio-economic conditions.

The Acculturated school district had a pull-out advanced placement program for the gifted at the middle and high school and a pull-out enrichment program at the elementary school. Content areas were math/science and English/social studies. The assessment process included standardized cognitive ability measures and screened for a pool of students scoring at the 95th percentile or better.

The Anglo school district had an after school G/T program for grades 2-12. The program was academically based. Screening instruments were standardized achievement and/or aptitude measures with scores accepted at or above the 8th stanine.

The Traditional school provided no educational program for the gifted. Individual teachers provided enrichment for all their students when possible.

Navajo and Anglo groups (combined parent and teacher) were markedly different in their perceptions of giftedness. Most notably, Traditional respondents were influenced by the values and beliefs of the immediate community (e.g., need for talents to directly benefit the family and community; not appearing to "stick out" from others). Traditional responses held little similarity to Anglo responses, even though many of the Traditional teachers were Anglos. Traditional respondents demonstrated more similarity to the Acculturated group. This was partly due to the fact that the Acculturated community included both very traditional Navajos and mainstream Anglos. Thus a range of perceptions were described with which the Traditional respondents held more similarities than with the more limited range of responses from the Anglo community.

The Acculturated community was similar to both the Anglo and Traditional communities in perceptions of gifted characteristics. It was evident that this community was in the throes of acculturative stress. Much "fence-riding" was evident in responses. Some Acculturated respondents, both Navajo and non-Navajo felt the "white way" of showing giftedness was most appropriate and others felt that the Navajo or Indian ways were more appropriate venues for children to display giftedness. However, there was a definite trend in response favoring Anglo definitions of giftedness (e.g., superior academic skills, standing out from others, assertiveness).

The Physical/Athletic Abilities subscale presented the most unified trend in perceptions of giftedness among parent groups. In addition, almost all parents in the three groups believed that everything a child can or will become is based on what and how they learn at home. Similar beliefs about expectations, courtesy, and consideration were expressed by all groups.

The differences between perceptions among parent groups were predominantly defined by culture and language. Traditional parents often had difficulty comprehending the concept of giftedness. In fact, in the Navajo language, there was no single word that meant "gifted". Frequently, concepts had to be couched in contexts that were familiar to the respondents. Instead, the term "outstanding abilities" for each subcategory was used. The term "exceptional abilities" was often confused with handicapping conditions.

Traditional parents expressed the desire for their children to do well in school, as long as they didn't brag about it and, thus, stay out of trouble. Traditional parents' goals were to have their children lead a good life and help their people, but not be overly dependent upon their family. Outstanding behaviors were perceived to be acceptable if they remained in harmony with the functioning of the community.

Acculturated parents exhibited various stages of the acculturative process in their responses. Most understood the concept of "giftedness" and were anxious to have their children work towards these goals. However, many Acculturated parents also felt that gifted children should be careful lest their gifts get them into trouble. A goal evident in many Acculturated parents' responses was that their children grow up and go away to school to "make something of themselves." Returning to the community was perceived as a desireable option.

Anglo parents exhibited more similarities in responses to the Acculturated group of parents than with the Traditional group of parents. Anglo parents' perceptions of Anglo children's giftedness matched mainstream definitions.

Traditional teachers' perceptions of gifted behaviors differed from both Acculturated and Anglo groups. On some sub-scale items, many Anglo teacher responses from the Traditional community resembled the Anglo group (e.g., perceiving athletics as being competitive v. cooperative and gifted students as frequently expressing strong feelings).

Acculturated teachers were a mixed group. Some teachers appeared quite sensitive and interested in their students' cultural milieu and some did not. Some of the Acculturated teacher responses did not coincide with either the Anglo or Traditional responses. It was significant that Acculturated teachers, as a group, did not resemble the Anglo group as closely as expected. Nor did the Acculturated teachers significantly resemble the Traditional teachers. These differences reinforce the acculturational distinctions among the communities set forth earlier in this paper.

Anglo teachers tended to concur on most survey items which predominantly focused on Anglo attributes of gifted/talented children (e.g., high test scores, open criticism of teachers and competitiveness). Their responses were more variable on the less stereotypical behaviors (e.g., using maps and language skills). Anglo teachers' responses demonstrated more commonalities with the Acculturated group than with the Traditional group.

Most Traditional teachers were aware of the small community's perceptions of G/T characteristics. This was evident in the way outstanding students were encouraged to be part of the group instead of being separated for additional instruction.

Acculturated teachers were moderately attuned to the cultural milieu of their community. Often, parents and teachers had differing perceptions concerning Navajo student G/T characteristics. Parents and teachers in the Acculturated community agreed more consistently on the categories of giftedness than did the Traditional teachers and parents–perhaps because the definitions were more accessible to the Acculturated parents.

Teachers from the Anglo community expressed a high level of congruence with the cultural milieu of their students. Anglo teacher and parent responses frequently resembled each other concerning Anglo G/T characteristics.

In summary, although Navajo and Anglo perceptions of gifted behaviors fit into the broad categories in the study, cultural differences in perceptions of G/T characteristics among and between groups were evident. The level of acculturation of the respondents seemed to be greatly responsible for the expressed differences in perceptions.

Specifically, the more Acculturated Navajo parent respondents resembled the Anglo parent respondents. Teacher respondents varied in sensitivity to their respective community values. Anglo teachers were the most congruent in comparison with their community. Traditional Navajo respondents showed the greatest between group differences in G/T definitions.

1. The level of acculturation to Anglo mainstream society affected the manner in which parents and teachers perceived and treated the concept of giftedness. The more traditional the respondents, the less similar the perception of gifted/talented abilities were to Anglo definitions and assumptions.

Teachers need to become aware of the effect of acculturation on students' performance in school. It is difficult for many Navajo students to succeed in a largely mainstream educational system that does not account for this. In such instances, Navajo students are less likely to be found in G/T programs.

2. In the Navajo language there was no general term for "gifted". The term "outstanding" was used in conjunction with a specific ability. The very concept of giftedness differed dramatically between the Anglo and Navajo cultures. This difference was most noticeable between the two groups of Navajo parent respondents.

Language carries with it the values of a community. With awareness of differing values, teachers have the responsibility to search for the common ground from which both they and the student can work–linguistically and culturally. In this way, foreign behaviors are not forced upon the student and the teacher does not have to struggle unnecessarily.

3. The 10 G/T subscales in this study were perceived by most parents and teachers to be areas in which a child could demonstrate outstanding abilities. However, cultural differences existed between each community's perceptions of the ways in which G/T abilities could be manifested within each subscale.

The cultural and linguistic milieu from which a student enters school will influence their success. The more a teacher looks for student skills and abilities beyond the traditionally academic and intellectual, the more likelihood the Navajo child will find success as a gifted student.

4. Navajo students' abilities in learning a second language, leadership and problem-solving/reasoning may be overlooked by their teachers during the identification process for G/T programs. Navajo students' physical/athletic abilities and skills in creative expression were those outstanding abilities typically singled out by teachers of Navajo students–sometimes to the point of stereotyping.

Multiple-criteria assessment can be effective for G/T instructional placement if methods are used that are not language and/or culture dependent. Looking beyond stereotypical G/T behaviors for other levels of giftedness is an additional challenge for teachers.

5. Many Navajo students learned best by watching and having something explained in detail (learning styles). They then needed a period of time to think about, practice, and "perfect" the task before it was performed for others.

Even in G/T education, the hands-on method still works the best. Navajo students should have time to absorb and practice, a task before they are asked to perform it for evaluation.

6. Learning the English language was perceived as difficult for the Navajo speaking child. Being bilingual was considered to be an outstanding ability for Navajo students. Continued practice with and use of both languages at home and at school was cited as a way to enhance a Navajo child's linguistic abilities.

Knowledge about the effects of Navajo students' linguistic background and skills is critical to the assessment process. Many G/T Navajo students "fall through the cracks" for G/T placement when standardized measures and reading skills are used as screening criteria. This is due to the language differential inherent in the process.

7. Characteristics of gifted Navajo students which differed from those expected of gifted Anglo students were described under Question 1 in the findings section. Educators must constantly remind themselves that not all students perform according to established criteria and that the criteria differ for each community they work in. Ideally, gifted education should allow all students to take advantage of enriched education.

Differential education continues to affect Navajo students. With greater teacher awareness of the acculturative and linguistic influences on school performance, the inadequacy of many standardized assessment measures for placement into G/T programs can be mitigated. As the educational community reexamines its attitudes and values with respect to giftedness, perhaps a more equitable and relevant education will be provided for Navajo students in the future.

1. The terms "Acculturated," "Traditional," and "Anglo," in this study, were descriptive terms used to identify each community as a whole. The terms were not used to indicate the background or ethnicity of the individual respondents.

2. For this study, given the understanding that the acculturative process is quite complex, the following two types of acculturation or culture change were used, as defined by Padilla (1980):

To all my friends and colleagues who supported, encouraged and made this study possible, I express my deepest gratitude.

This paper is a summary of the doctoral thesis completed while Dr. Hartley was a Title VII Doctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Department of Education. The original title was: "Searching for Balance: A Comparative Examination of Navajo and Anglo Gifted/Talented Characteristics as Perceived by Parents and Teachers."

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Bernal, E. (1976, March). Gifted programs for the culturally different. NAASP Bulletin, 67-76.

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1. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities identified by the three parent groups in the given categories.

2. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo children as identified by Traditional and Acculturated parents in the given categories.

3. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo and Anglo children as identified by the Traditional and Anglo parents in the given categories.

4. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo and Anglo children identified by the Acculturated and Anglo parents in the given categories.

5. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo children identified by Traditional parents and teachers in the given categories.

6. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo children identified by Acculturated parents and teachers in the given categories.

7. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Anglo children identified by Anglo parents and teachers in the given categories.

8. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities of Navajo and Anglo children identified by the three teacher groups in the given categories.

9. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities for Navajo children between Acculturated and Traditional teachers in the given categories.

10. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities for Navajo and Anglo children between Traditional and Anglo teachers in the above categories.

11. There are no expressed differences among the characteristics defining exceptional/outstanding abilities for Navajo and Anglo children between Acculturated and Anglo teachers in the given categories.