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The underrepresentation of Black girls in gifted programs has received attention in both education and counseling literature. Nevertheless, scholars have given less emphasis to the intersections of intellectual ability, race, gender, social class, and place, particularly the idiosyncratic experiences of gifted Black girls from rural, economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The authors of this chapter discuss this unique positionality, with a focus on historical segregation and exclusionary practices within the American educational system. The authors discuss the tenets of critical race feminism and identify factors that may foster educational resilience for Black girls from rural, low-income communities. Recommendations are provided to address pertinent issues related to structural educational reform and inclusive gifted education. The chapter concludes with a call for education and counseling professionals to fundamentally change the systems and processes that perpetuate systematic inequity for this underserved population.

Purpose – The present article explores a relatively new way for consumers to dispose of items they no longer use, namely free recycling websites. Online recycling is based on an encounter with an unknown recipient to give something away ‘in person’.

Methodology – A phenomenological approach was used to understand the meaning of giving through free recycling websites. Placing the focus on the donor's perspective, we analysed Internet postings and conducted 27 in-depth interviews.

Findings – Our research shows that (1) when the object is given, the online giver is less concerned about the risk of refusal, since the recipient has deliberately made the choice to take the item; (2) when the item is received, the encounter with the recipient removes the anonymity of charities and (3) in return, the encounter with the recipient offers the giver acknowledgement for the gesture without committing them to a relationship with the recipient in the way a gift to kith or kin might do.

Research implications – While former literature has highlighted certain tensions in the gift economy, this study shows how free recycling websites can help to alleviate such tensions.

Social implications – The research highlights how this system of object disposition enhances social interactions between two strangers that share an interest in the same object.

Originality – The article shows how this new form of gift-giving relationship is both rewarding and liberating: it is rewarding thanks to the interaction with the recipient (unlike donations to charities) without necessarily creating a bond of dependence (unlike giving to someone you know).

Gifted education suffers from the lack of a legal definition of giftedness and federal mandate for the provision of services in schools, and also from a lack of any federal funding to provide services. These lead to a situation characterized by extreme inconsistency in provision of educational services across locations, sometimes even within the same school district. We offer a historical perspective on these issues and a view of the current status of gifted education services, followed by discussion of relevant legal issues in this context.

This chapter focuses on dispelling popularized educational myths by providing “lively personal accounts” of the experiences of culturally and racially diverse families who are raising high ability/gifted children and youth or who have completed the task with outstanding proficiency and remarkable skill. Through vignettes, parents reveal how they experienced their children’s giftedness in the context of the home and community. In a concluding lessons learned section, an analysis of themes generated is shared based on input from the families. Recommendations for further research and considerations for school practice are also provided.

Similar to other parts of the United States, its southern region is still wrestling with the implications of the resegregation of America’s schools. Unlike other parts of the country, however, the Deep South demons are rooted in a vastly different historical context. This chapter offers an historical analysis of the educational problems in the Deep South, with strong emphasis on gifted programming. Further, in this chapter, we present and describe a framework that could guide educators as they strive to identify giftedness among children of color and implement programming in a culturally responsive manner.

Placing gifted and talented students together organizationally is not a substitute for appropriate services. The placement or program model fundamentally serves as a vehicle to group or organize students together but programming, in practice, sometimes referred to as a service delivery model, is not the same thing as service. Placement is a management strategy. It must be coupled with curriculum and instructional modifications in order for substantial and positive academic and social–emotional effects to occur for gifted and talented students. Specifically, the program placement model is only as good as the curriculum and instructional models provided within that placement. This chapter provides descriptions and research evidence of the macro program models used for serving gifted students and more commonly used program placement models for grouping gifted students together within the traditional school day and beyond. Non-negotiable components and future directions are also discussed within the context of placement.

The purpose of the chapter is to engage with the relationship between the gift and the market in the context of philanthropic micro-lending. We seek to move beyond theorizing separate, ex-ante gift or market regimes and transactors who independently navigate between oppositional modes of transaction.

We turn to recent efforts of hybridizing charity and venture finance, exemplified by microfinance platforms such as Kiva.org. We combine data from an existing study of Kiva and its online community, with additional participant observation and third-party accounts detailing the evolution and workings of microfinance.

We illustrate how market-like elements are productively and problematically deployed in philanthropic giving and address the need to consider a broader range of socio-material relations involved in the framing of transactions.

A complex network of actors and (trans)actions needs to be assembled for the philanthropic loan to be enacted. We touch upon the making and role of the socio-material devices that actively participate in such enactment only tangentially. Further research is needed to flesh out the respective transaction complex, taking additional note of the work of borrowers, local loan officers, and other less visible actors.

Organizations need to recognize and creatively address the complex interplay of gift and market elements. They need to pay attention and take advantage of the tensions and synergies emergent in hybrid gift-market contexts.

We engage with a complex, less studied transaction context. The chapter shows that philanthropic gift relations can be reproduced through market-like elements and arrangements. Such production entails complex socio-material networks mobilizing a broad array of human and nonhuman actors.

The nature of rural living is often characterized as remote, limited in social and academic experiences and opportunities, and predominantly White and low income. For Black gifted students, these characterizations define daily isolation and alienation, accompanied by racially oppressive conditions that cause stress and give constant reminders of their oppressed group status, despite their high intellectual, academic, affective, and creative potential. These conditions, coupled with the misnomer that being a rural student means that one must be from the dominant culture, render them invisible on many social and demographic variables. Most scholarly research related to rural education focuses on one demographic – poor White students from Appalachian, Midwest, or Southern communities. While most of the literature focuses on this demographic, the majority of Black gifted students living in rural areas are located in the southern region of the United States. The Black rural community, including Black gifted students, is almost invisible in literature explicating the conditions of rural education in America. This chapter takes an updated look at Black gifted students in rural America based on our previous work on this population. We explore where these students reside, the traits that make them unique, which includes attention to culture, and make recommendations for future research and programming to meet their intellectual, academic, creative, and psychosocial needs with attention to access, equity, and excellence.

This chapter examines underrepresentation among African American and Hispanic students in gifted education using the perfect storm analogy, arguing that social inequality, elitism, and colorblindness are three forces that contribute to the poor presence of these groups in gifted education. Underrepresentation trends are presented, along with methods for calculating underrepresentation and inequity. Underrepresentation is placed under the larger issues of achievement gaps, and inequitable school practices, specifically de jure segregation. Models and discussions of social inequality, elitism, and colorblindness are presented to explain that the magnitude of underrepresentation is beyond statistical chance and a function of decision makers’ attitudes and beliefs grounded in deficit paradigms. The primary theses and admonitions are that gifted education underrepresentation is counterproductive in such a culturally different nation, and that desegregating gifted education is nonnegotiable. Suggestions for desegregating gifted education and eliminating inequities are provided.

Inclusion, defined as nondiscriminatory education for all, involves embracing gifted students whose special needs should be considered in curriculum planning and in the teaching methods used. However, inclusion has often been connected with disability and special needs education. It has been claimed that inclusion neglects the needs of the gifted. This chapter identifies ethical challenges in inclusive education, with gifted students as a case example. Several critical misconceptions about gifted students and gifted education are identified as leading to ethical challenges for teachers. These misconceptions are discussed in the ethical framework of distributive justice in teaching, and recommendations are given for ways to support teachers in meeting the needs of gifted students in inclusive educational settings.