Leading the Way Toward the Future: An Interview With Marcia Gentry

Marcia Gentry, PhD, is the director of the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute and Professor of Educational Studies at Purdue University. Her research has focused on cluster grouping and differentiation; the application of gifted education pedagogy to improve

teaching and learning; and underserved populations. Marcia developed and studied the Total School Cluster Grouping Model and is engaged in continued research on its effects concerning student achievement and identification and on teacher practices. She is past chair of the AERA SIG, Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent; actively participates in NAGC; frequently contributes to the gifted education literature; and regularly serves as a speaker and consultant.

Henshon:

What led you to the field of gifted education?

Gentry:

I taught science and math to middle school students at the beginning of my career. My students wanted more than the curriculum, and together we developed gifted services at my school. Later, as a young teacher, I was offered the opportunity to coordinate gifted programs for a regional service center in Michigan, which led me to a conference in Connecticut that Joseph Renzulli called Confratute. It was there that I learned about the field, per se and, despite already having earned a master’s degree, it was there I decided to continue my education with a 6th year diploma through UConn’s three summers program. The notion that we could focus on students’ strengths, interests, and talents—something I had been doing in my own practice—resonated with me. And as a science teacher, the research, the methods, and the scholarship drew me to learn more.

Henshon:

Can you describe a defining moment in your own professional journey?

Gentry:

There have been many defining moments in my career, most centered around making a difference for students. First, learning that I could complete a PhD in a program I admired and then pay that forward with my own students has been life changing and defining. Being honored by NAGC with its Distinguished Scholar Award (2014) was an event made even more special because at that same meeting, one of my graduates, Scott Peters, received the Early Scholar Award, and one of my doctoral students, Jiaxi Wu, received the Doctoral Student Award. Knowing my work matters is humbling, and knowing my doctoral students carry on and develop their own important work brings me great joy. Beyond that, receiving the Gifted And … Diversity Award (2015), now called the Alexinia Baldwin Award, from the Special Populations Network was incredibly gratifying, as this award recognized my work with underserved populations. Too many colleagues and students said too many nice things about me and my work. It was overwhelming, and I am grateful for their support and kindness.

Henshon:

What is the connection between creativity and intelligence?

Gentry:

I think we know that intelligence is needed for creativity to manifest; but intelligence alone does not a creative person make! Beyond that, however, is the fact that both are latent constructs, difficult to measure fairly and across different populations, but necessary when manifest, to solve important problems. I believe we focus too much on defining, measuring, and categorizing, trying to predict, if you will, and not enough on understanding, developing, and enhancing human intelligence and creativity. People become so enamored with the measure, they forget the person, ignore how many so-called-average students went on to greatness, and become too confident in their ability to tell who is and who is not “gifted.” I am in awe of the human spirit and the capacity of people over a lifetime to apply their interests, strengths, and talents to contribute to society. I believe as educators, it is our job to help students develop and apply their creativity, to learn about their strengths and talents, and to find their place in the world to lead creative and productive lives.

Henshon:

What are some of the challenges of working with diverse and underserved populations? What are some of the rewards?

Gentry:

I believe the most important issue facing our field is continued underrepresentation of students from certain populations in gifted programming; namely, youth who come from low-income families, youth who are Black, Latinx, or Indigenous; youth who are learning to speak English, and youth who have disabilities. We just completed analysis of 4 waves of Office of Civil Rights census data, meaning we examined data from every child in every public school in the nation for access, equity, and missingness. Sadly, we found continued and pervasive underrepresentation of these populations of youth across the country. This report, Access Denied/System Failure (Gentry, Gray, Whiting, Maeda, & Pereira, 2019), together with a report card for every state, can be found at www.purdue.edu/geri. In this work we report status and trends, but we also make recommendations that can help mitigate the unacceptable findings.

So, to the question about the challenges of working with diverse and underserved populations, I find very few challenges working with these students. At our center, the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute (GERI), we engage in programming for students and research on talent development. We have an initiative titled DIGS (Diversity Initiatives for Gifted Students) and research/programming conducted under the umbrella of Project HOPE (Having Opportunities Promotes Excellence, (both made possible with funding from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and from corporate and private donors), and we find when youth from underserved populations are given opportunities they do very well. Each summer for the past decade, we have provided a third of the participants in our summer youth programs with scholarships, and as a result, our programs are more diverse, benefitting every student, counselor, and teacher in the program. Our summer residential program typically involves students from 5 Native American communities, 25 states, and a dozen countries. And it is an exemplar of how including underserved youth in programming for talented students can be done successfully. My challenge is always funding, more students exist who would benefit from these opportunities than I have funds to sponsor, the challenge is never with the students. They are fantastic.

Beyond funding, the challenges really exist in the system. Some people believe that students from these populations are simply not as smart as other students who come from more wealthy, White and Asian families. These beliefs are reinforced by heavy reliance on standardized intelligence and achievement measures with national normative scores applied to all students regardless of their opportunities to learn and without regard to whether the measures being used were developed fairly for use with the populations to which they are being applied. Program administrators operate with limited budgets, and as a result, they limit the number of students who can qualify for and receive services. This limitation is of course detrimental to equity within programs, privileging some students over others. Schools need to be in the business of talent development, and this means that all educators need to understand how to develop students’ potentials by focusing on their strengths, interests, and talents. Truth is, we simply do not know who is going to grow up to accomplish what when they are children, so we must remain open to the possibility that each student is capable of greatness. We intend for educators to use our report, Access Denied/System Failure (Gentry et al., 2019), as a reason to examine their own data, then to take steps to mitigate underrepresentation, one school, one teacher, one student at a time. Knowing and understanding the extent of the problem in each school is the first step toward solution.

Additional challenges exist such as a primarily white, middle class, teaching force, which is not reflective of the student populations; we need culturally competent and culturally diverse teachers. Until educators decide that underrepresentation is unacceptable, we risk what is happening in Seattle (Furfarro & Bazzaz, 2019) and New York (Shapiro, 2019), the elimination of programs in the name of equity. Such program elimination hurts all students, including those who are underrepresented. Many scholars in the field have written eloquently about how the elimination of these programs would be a terrible move. Some critics have compared gifted programming to redlining; however, when redlining occurred, mortgage lending was not stopped, practices were reformed. Those of us in the field of gifted education need to be part of this reform, and the timing is urgent.

Henshon:

What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned from a mentor?

Gentry:

I have been blessed over my lifetime with many incredible mentors. My grandmother was a teacher, and she made it OK to become a teacher; she taught me unconditional love and compassion. My father was an incredible human, and he taught me many things. Among them were how to look, listen, and laugh and how in his view everyone is worth one (he believed people could be less than one by their deeds, but no one was worth more than one, and he treated everyone accordingly). My mother shared with me passions outside of work such as gardening and horses. Bill Tracy, my superintendent, taught me how schools and the people who run them work, and again, the power of observation and listening. Bessie Duncan taught me about confidence and race. Sally Reis taught me the power of being a productive woman and of being honest, kind, and thoughtful. She taught me how to mentor my own graduate students. Joseph Renzulli shared his love of scholarship and creative productivity, and in doing so encouraged me to ask important questions and not to worry about what is popular. Susan Baum taught me generosity and the wonders of other cultures while she modeled caring independence. Robert Gable taught me how to connect with graduate students and how to publish my work, while helping me understand and the value of good instrumentation. From these people and many others, I have learned to give, care, and to maintain high standards and expectations. I am blessed to have a wonderful cadre of giants upon whose shoulders I can stand as well as a beautiful collection of friends whose love sustains me.

Henshon:

What individuals both in and outside the field of gifted education have exerted the strongest impact on your thinking?

Gentry:

Joseph Renzulli for his view that giftedness is something that can be developed, that giftedness is a behavior that occurs in certain people, at certain times, under certain circumstances. He is an incredible thinker and scholar, and this view enables me to believe that as educators and researchers we can, indeed, make a difference in our field and in the lives of students and their teachers.

Sally Reis for her unwavering support of me and others. She is truly selfless. Her work ethic and her regard for others continue to influence how I conduct my own life. She is a model for women everywhere, and her work about women has been personally enlightening and inspirational to me. To have her as a mentor and a friend has enriched my life.

Barbara Kerr for her Smart Girls: A New Psychology of Girls, Women, and Giftedness (2005), a book that touched so many of us at a time when we did not really understand our own power.

Bessie Duncan for believing that diverse children from poverty mattered, and for showing us how to develop programs to uncover their talents.

Langston Hughes for powerful and beautiful words that were honest and conveyed hope in a time before civil rights. “Gather out of stardust, cloud dust, storm dust, and splinters of hail, one had full of dream dust, not for sale.” I find solace in his words and often imagine him, against all odds, actualizing his talent. He inspires me to work on behalf of students who might be overlooked, but who have unlimited potential just waiting to be nurtured.

Henshon:

What other concepts have held your interest over the years, and how have they evolved?

Gentry:

I am interested in student perceptions of their educational experiences and how these differ from educator perspectives. I used to be interested mostly in student perspectives, and then we compared them with their teachers and found little relationship between them (Gentry, Rizza, & Owen, 2002). Students and teachers were each measured using good instruments, and neither were lying; yet they viewed their experiences in the classroom differently. This led me to wonder about how we evaluate teachers, because there are differences in big-people and little-people perspectives. Most evaluation is done from big-people perspectives; however, the students see things differently, so maybe we are missing out. In another study of exemplary teachers (Gentry, Steenbergen-Hu, & Choi, 2011), one-third of these teachers, who were identified as exemplary by their students, were not respected nor viewed as good teachers by their administrators. So, my “evolved” thinking is that students’ perceptions are important and too frequently overlooked when we seek to identify, develop, and retain quality teachers.

I am interested in Indigenous youth and how we can help ensure that they are included in educational research, as they are often eliminated due to their small numbers. Given that Native peoples experienced genocide (which is why their numbers are small), it seems to me to be super-important they be included in all we study. We have partnered with several Diné, Ojibwe, and Lakota communities and with the help of the JCKF provided 436 scholarships to 284 students since 2011. We call these students HOPE+ Scholars (Wu & Gentry, 2014). I am investigating, longitudinally, how this intervention and access to programming and identification affects these students’ educational pathways and career trajectories.

I have long been aware of underrepresentation in the field. Early on, I thought of it as an artifact of poverty or opportunity, as something benign, not intentional, unfortunate and needing to be addressed. I have since come to realize that charges by others of classism, elitism, and racism in our field are justified, and this makes me sad as well as determined to be part of the movement that creates changes and brings equity to the present. I am not saying that everywhere there is underrepresentation there is racism, but I am saying that this issue is pervasive and all too common system-wide to simply be explained by poverty and opportunity. With our recent work, Access Denied/System Failure (Gentry et al., 2019) on the status of access, equity, and missingness, I intend for educational leaders at the national, state, and local school levels to examine current status, take note of how little has changed, and take action to mitigate this longstanding and systemic problem in gifted education.

We have done work on a teacher rating scale, The HOPE Scale (Gentry, Peters, Pereira, McIntosh, & Fugate, 2015), to help teachers identify academic and social components of giftedness. We advocate for universal screening; the use of local and local group norms; and for multiple pathways to program entry (Peters, Gentry, Whiting, & McBee, 2019). We recognize the need for a more diverse teaching force and for teachers who are culturally competent and who have the skills to be developers of student talent. We suggest implementing a continuum of services well aligned with selection methods (Gentry, 2009), and not making a standard score the most important data point for program entry. We suggest using scores for means of inclusion but not as a cut-point for exclusion. We suggest creating strength-based enrichment programs in an effort to serve to identify rather than identify to serve. I believe the knowledge and tools exist to fix much of the problem, now we need the will to stop doing what we’ve always done and replace it with proactive measures from which all students and teachers will benefit.

Henshon:

What research are you currently working on?

Gentry:

I am currently completing my last study on the Total School Cluster Grouping Model (Gentry, Paul, McIntosh, Fugate, & Jen, 2014). I have to say I am pleased to see others using it and studying it, and I look forward to their findings. I am also working on the federal data on underrepresentation, with an eye toward finding places that are exceptions to the abysmal findings that pervade the country. I believe some places are “getting it right,” and we can learn from them. We are also engaged in studying how our youth programs affect students who attend, and this includes our longitudinal work with our HOPE+ Scholars. Finally, I have 6 doctoral students currently finishing their degrees (and another 4 heading in that direction), so I am doing a fair amount of work in their interest areas, which include art talent, foster parents, racial equity, wisdom, STEM talents, underachievement, and intercultural understandings of youth, among other topics.

Henshon:

If you are to give someone advice on things to do or not do in their research, what might your advice be?

Gentry:

My best advice is to ask important questions; use robust methods to answer those questions; report your findings ethically and honestly; acknowledge your limitations; credit those who came before you; learn to take feedback and improve your work; and work well with others. Be true to science, and do not become caught up in trying to prove a point. In other words, let the findings provide the evidence, and report findings that are nonsignificant or different from what you sought. Too often in academia, egos get in the way, and research can be trivial. If one is going to spend time on research, then that research should be important, it should matter, and hopefully it should make a difference.

In summary, I came from a small town in Michigan. Neither of my parents attended college. Somehow, through serendipity and opportunities along the way, and people like Sally Reis and Joseph Renzulli, who opened doors for me, I am now privileged to contribute to our field, even to be asked for this interview. I feel pretty blessed each day to direct the GERI center at Purdue University, where they pay me to work with our graduate students—some of the smartest young scholars from around the world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the interviewer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzanna E. Henshon

Suzanna E. Henshon earned a PhD at The College of William & Mary in 2005. She writes full-time and has 370 publications. In 2019, she published Teaching Empathy: Strategies for Building Emotional Intelligence in Today’s Students with Prufrock Press. Email: [email protected]