https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6556-4734
Gilman W. Whiting, PhD, is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, where he directs the Scholar Identity Model Community Outreach Initiative (SIMCOI). He serves as the CEO of the National Black Student Achievement Association. Whiting is a versatile scholar, author, and advocate for marginalized youth and their families, boasting an extensive array of interests encompassing educational equity, curriculum development, history, sociology, sports, gender-related issues, and research methods.
Dr. Whiting conceptualized the scholar identity model™ (SIM) and the Scholar Identity Institute (SII) as a response to the academic apathy faced by young students. For nearly two decades, students from all backgrounds have benefited from intensive summer and yearly training sessions that cultivate a scholar identity. This pioneering psycho-social framework revolutionizes approaches to nurturing and empowering young scholars.
Whiting has written in journals such as the Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal for Advanced Academics, Journal for Secondary Gifted Education, and Roeper Review. Recognized for his exceptional dedication and impact, Whiting has earned honors and accolades from various organizations.
With a rich history of consultancy spanning 30+ years, Dr. Whiting has provided invaluable guidance to hundreds of school districts and programs worldwide. He has expanded the reach of his scholar identity model™ internationally, conducting transformative work in India, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Bermuda, and South Africa. Dr. Gilman W. Whiting continues to be a driving force pursuing educational equity and social justice on a global scale.
What led you to the field of gifted education?
In the mid-1990s, while working on my master’s degree in African American Studies and Urban Planning, my research looked at the formations of segregation and gentrification in dividing America’s urban centers with highways and bridges and the multiple causes and effects of discriminatory legal policies maintained well past the eras of Jim Crow and Brown v. Board of Education. The work led to the consideration of how mass media had significantly more negative features on TV and in newspapers on violence in Black and Brown communities. I noted the massive billboards that littered underserved communities with advertisements for legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco) and the consumer consumption lifestyle (clothing, sneakers, cars, and unhealthy foods). These research strands shaped my perspectives on pathways out of poverty—education, opportunity, and self-efficacy.
I took a hard look at the mass media’s portrayal of violence and inner-city schools. The research encompassed northeast cities: Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; and three cities in Southern Florida: Pompano Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami. All were inner-city schools, all Title I schools. These schools were as different as one would expect. The commonalities are financial struggles, truancy, and fighting. But they also had accolades relating to academic honors and athletics. All these schools had students enrolled who had won state championships not only in sports (e.g., basketball or football or regional honors in track and field) but also boasted national chess finalists; several students won science-related competitions, poetry, and mechanical design awards. The positive accomplishments received recognition within these schools’ walls but little to no recognition in the media.
During the same period, I reviewed hundreds of news reports, where the headlines and the overwhelming majority of the reportage covered gang violence in schools and the neighboring communities. Before anyone leaves this conversation, I am clear that addressing issues of gang violence and fighting in schools is paramount. Still, I believe that highlighting the good that was going on at the schools and in the community would provide some children with other points of pride and give them something else to aspire to other than the oversimplification of what was covered in the mass media. I decided to add what I saw was missing by writing.
After several refusals, I learned of an African American newspaper. It was the oldest and only African American newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island. I pitched the idea to the editor and said I would call it Community, Health, and Sports. At the time, it was my belief and still is, that health, fitness, and nutrition are as crucial to success in school as math and study hall. The many students and numerous teachers, administrators, community leaders, political representatives, and family providers I interviewed relayed two significant messages:
Mass media helped shape their perceptions of students who attended Title 1 schools, as well as shaped young students’ identities.
Too many students were not developing an academic identity.
Many saw themselves as entertainers, athletes, budding musicians, social butterflies, etc. It’s easy and fun; it almost comes “naturally,” to many students, my younger self included. You just told a joke; that’s all you had to do. You learned a new dance move or wore fashionable clothing or shoes, especially a popular basketball sneaker. Billboards and media advertisements made being popular seem easy: In the 80s, it was Calvin Klein or Gloria Vanderbilt. Today, it’s Gucci, Prada, Fendi, and Jordans again.
In the early 90s, I exited the military and decided to work with inner city youth while pursuing my master’s degree. While engaged in community service work, it became clear that many kids who had stopped/opted out or dropped out of school were as intelligent, creative, and capable as anyone. Most of these students were in their teens with little to no support from home and community; instead, they were bombarded with the proliferation of drugs and alcohol, the rise of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and lacked focus. Many were street kids. They could be counted among the millions of missing Americans living between the streets, hospitals, jails, and gangs.
I worked closely with a program called Occupation and Academic Success In Sight [O.A.S.I.S.]. It was a triage program for youth who often belonged to the class of hidden homeless. Many were young enough and still eligible to attend middle or high school but lived in the streets or between friends, family, and the occasional person they met that day. We were often just interested in getting the kids into shelters at night and off the streets. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs frequently danced around in my head. Many believed that school was not for them and would not get them anywhere. Education was not serving their needs. Whether it was too easy or difficult did not matter; it wasn’t part of their identity.
At O.A.S.I.S. I was the Director of Education Programming and Community Outreach for several dozen teen students. We provided them with basic assessments: standardized academic and vocational interest evaluations. Surprisingly, many of the young folks I worked with had occupational aspirations that were out of sync with their long-term goals, and based on their test scores, chose jobs that would bore them. They needed something that would challenge them. According to their test scores, many of them were highly intelligent. However, neither they nor others perceived them as such. A Diamond in the rough is an idiomatic expression that suggests the recognition of hidden or suppressed talent or potential in someone who may appear unrefined and ordinary on the surface. This colloquialism aptly described many of these students. After 2 years of working with the newspaper column and O.A.S.I.S., I completed my master’s degree and moved to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Describe a defining moment in your career.
There are numerous moments in my career that I consider defining, from completing my PhD to publishing my first article (about my daughter) to seeing my scholar identity model™ adapted and used by PhD candidates at colleges and universities across the country as well as the model being considered when developing the ScHOLA2RS House at the University of Connecticut. However, my most defining moment came in 2004 when I joined Vanderbilt University. I knew I wanted to continue my work with families, schools, communities, and mentors of Black, Brown, and Indigenous children. I was interested in self-efficacy, motivation, identity development, appreciation for creativity, athletics, and sacrifice. I believed these constructs to be crucial to academic achievement and long-term life success. I believe self-advocacy development is needed for social-emotional balance. I knew of the variations in test scores but never ascribed to the term “achievement gap.” I studied what the system of education, along with the historical oppression that continues to impact marginalized groups disproportionately, was designed to do and produce the exact results that we are seeing. For my work to progress, I had to practice those beliefs of self-advocacy, social-emotional balance, self-efficacy, and motivation that I had researched. As with my PhD committee, in my first few years, I found few scholars at my new location who showed an interest in my work. A crystallizing moment came after rereading Jonathan Kozol’s classic Savage Inequalities. When visiting an elementary school, Kozol noted the children would say a daily mantra: “If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.” I understood that the PhD was my license and obligation to be another voice for millions of students with potential but no opportunity.
What is the most important thing you have learned about talent development and how it can be nurtured in the classroom?
I was first introduced to the concept of talent development (TD) in 1981. I went to college on a full athletic scholarship; my coach told me something that reminded me of a conversation Malcolm X recalled he had with an elementary school teacher in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm was in elementary school (7–8 years old), and the teacher asked the students what they wanted to be when they grew up. When he got to Malcolm, Malcolm explained, “I wanna be a lawyer,” the teacher replied, “That ain’t no job for no n***er; you are good with your hands; you should be a carpenter; Jesus was a carpenter.” My coach told me that my scholarship required that I only maintain a 2.0, a C average, and I’d be fine. In my first year, I earned a 2.0.
Meanwhile, many other student-athletes were part of a TD program. The program assisted underprepared students or the struggling student. My brother was a part of TD. It was a program run by an all-White staff, helping mostly Black students. I recall believing that you were not smart if you needed help from TD. The negative stereotype attached to being associated with the program was embedded culturally. Once visiting the center with my brother, I felt more at home and welcomed.
Low expectations are what the coach had for me. Like Malcolm, he could not see me as a lawyer or even encourage me to excel academically beyond the bare minimum for eligibility to participate in sports. Talent development begins with nurturing. Nurturing begins with seeing students as your raison d’être for being an educator. Children see life through their families, communities, and mass media; school becomes an unwelcome chore if what is often communicated is not academically focused. Parents, teachers, administrators, etc., cannot abdicate their roles as guidance counselors, advisors, academic coaches, and, most importantly, cheerleaders. Then we can see and nurture the potential and talent. In my experience, once a student understands you care, talent development can truly begin.
How can we better serve gifted African Americans in our classrooms?
No race is a monolith. White children in California differ from those in Florida, New York, or Iowa. Indigenous children in Wyoming are different from those in Narragansett, Rhode Island. That’s just geographical differences. Culture, the educational values of caregivers, and geography (urban, suburban, rural) are all factors in a student’s identity. Most schools draw students from local zip codes, and income levels segregate them; the more accurate question is, “How can we better serve students at X school?” How well funded ($ per pupil per year) is the school? What is the student-teacher ratio? What are the academic credentials of those leading instruction? What professional development has been offered to teachers working with this population? Is the school more focused on child development or test scores? All these questions and dozens more apply to all good school practices. Performance outcomes match school funding and intersect with underprepared instruction. Black students, like all students, require the support of a family, the love of a caregiver, and the motivation of someone who believes in the unseen tapped potential that exists in equal measure in all children.
You are currently at Vanderbilt University as a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of African American and Diaspora Studies. You have had an amazing career. You are a world-class athlete, a United States Army officer, a Visiting Scholar in India, a black belt Hall of Fame martial artist, and even a producer of several films and videos. Can you describe your career trajectory and what you have learned along the way?
When my life is summed up in a question like this, it appears as one long line of accomplishments when, in fact, for every highlight, there were missteps, struggles, and moments of not knowing what was next. Whether I am jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, simultaneously training at two to three martial arts, or producing videos highlighting the lives of young, marginalized students. I am still figuring out ways to help children, families, teachers, whole school districts, the nation, and the world. My eclectic life has taught me to do what I am genuinely interested in, to help others along the way, and that life will always be a fantastic journey filled with triumphs, including setbacks. But the wisdom is to know that they are the same. Each setback is a lesson that creates a layer of resilience for the next opportunity or challenge. I learned that, unlike redlining and gentrification (zip codes), genius is not determined by the level of melanin in one’s DNA. The so-called achievement gaps, underachievement, at-risk, and minority (marginalized) are all concepts that have, for too long, given adults a convenient scapegoat for not trying harder, for writing off kids like me, and for thinking that families from lower socioeconomics do not care. ALL children are created equal!
Early in your academic career, you developed the scholar identity model™. Can you tell us about this model?
I would have to return to the multiple life lessons (vicarious, observation, ethnographic, and the emic) and research (programs, teaching, lectures, and writing) that led to the conceptual model that would become the scholar identity model™. The research side of the equation began in 1997. I worked at a college in Indianapolis, Indiana, when a good friend and colleague informed me about The Fathers and Families Resource Program (FFRP). I was asked to give a presentation for young fathers. The FFRP had an ongoing series called “Living Legend” luncheon speakers. I thought I was too young (then) to be a legend, but I was honored to be a part of it. The then director, who also received his PhD from Purdue University, asked if I could give a general motivational talk on whatever topic I chose. It would be for approximately 40 young fathers or fathers-to-be on the value of education in general and either their GED, high school diploma, or some level of college. The fathers ranged in age between 14–24 years old. Many of them had more than one child, and most had a child with more than one person. They were not financially stable, and many had legal cases pending.
The position for many of these young Black and Brown men was strangely familiar. I had grown up seeing these exact life situations in my community and my family. I knew at least one of the common denominators that impacted many of these young men was a lack of educational attainment. Historically, many folks from humble beginnings (read poor) have acquired tremendous success once they have an education. That one presentation led to years of working with and developing strategies for success. My work with FFRP became the research for my doctoral dissertation, which was the foundation of the scholar identity model™. I am not naïve enough to think that education is ALL that is needed, or that it is equitable, or that once a Black, Brown, or Indigenous person has earned a GED, high school diploma, or a bachelor’s degree, they are all set. But I know an education broadens one’s options in the long run. And those who achieve it earn more and live healthier lives. In America, education is still the great equalizer. The Fathers and Families Resource and Research Center (they added research to their mission due to my 345 dissertation) is now in its 30th year. It is still very active, and I am still involved.
What are some of the most important things you have learned from a mentor?
When I think of a mentor, I think of someone who motivated me to do what I didn’t know was possible; I think of someone who saw potential in me before I knew what the word meant. Someone I could go to for advice and feel that even if I messed up, they would let me know it, but also had the wisdom to guide me to learn from the misstep. There are nine constructs in the scholar identity model™ (a) self-efficacy, (b) future orientation, (c) willingness to make sacrifices, (d) internal locus of control, (e) self-awareness, (f) achievement > affiliation, (h) academic self-confidence, (i) race and cultural consciousness, and (j) gender-related issues. There are also four pillars: family involvement, school relationships, community support, and mentoring/sponsorship. I here extend the idea of mentoring to sponsorship.
What individuals both in and outside the field of gifted education have exerted the strongest impact on your thinking?
In academia, I’ve been fortunate to have many Drs., Roger Harris, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Donna Y. Ford, and Joe Renzulli. My best example, is my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Marica Gentry; she exemplified the idea of a mentor and sponsor. I am pleased that I was able to tell her so. She would take her doctoral students (at one point 18) to the National Association for Gifted Children’s annual conference for years so they could participate, present, lead, and be introduced to faculty at colleges and universities worldwide. She would write letters of recommendation for jobs and continued to support students well past their doctoral graduation. I’ve learned over the years that the mentor does not choose—the mentee does. Being a mentor is both an honor and a tremendous responsibility. I sincerely appreciate those who have trusted me as a mentor and have taken me on as a mentee.
What might your advice be if you had to give someone advice on things to do or not do in their research?
Find your why? Why are you doing what you are doing? Does long-term impact matter? Research is a process. I mean the word process to be understood as time, structure, organization, and consistency. The most important is time. The most difficult is consistency. The time it takes to do what lasts, not just what is trendy, also is important. Once engaged, research can be thought of in phases:
What are you thinking about writing or conducting research into?
What are you currently working on?
What research do you have in the publication pipeline?
Dos and Don’ts are both structural and timely. This means many journals and publishers have consistent publication standards and styles, such as APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. But then there are special issues and invited submissions that follow most but not all the rules. But in all writing:
Do – Understand that you are leaving a mark for the future.
Do – Follow whatever the scientific/methodological process your work calls for.
Do – Cite resources or references used.
Most importantly, citing tells your audience you have done due diligence and are an expert worth listening to. It provides a trail for future researchers who will inevitably cite your work. It gives credit to those whose research shoulders we all stand on, and professionally, it protects you from claims of plagiarism. And finally, find something you can be passionate about.
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Gilman W. Whiting
Suzanna E. Henshon earned a PhD at The College of William & Mary in 2005. She writes full-time and has over 500 publications. In 2019, she published Teaching Empathy: Strategies for Building Emotional Intelligence in Today’s Students with Prufrock Press. E-mail: [email protected]