Abstract:
In this qualitative study, I used portraiture to share the experiences of three Black women who as Black girls participated in gifted education. Homogeneous purposeful sampling was used to select three participants that met the criteria for the study. Participants were asked to share their educational experiences before, during, and after enrollment in gifted programs in rural South Georgia. Through Seidman’s (2013) three interview structure, data was obtained. After the interviews, data was analyzed using Saldaña’s (2016) two-cycle coding. First cycle coding included attribute, in vivo, and magnitude coding. Second cycle coding included pattern coding. Portraiture was used as a method to guide data gathering, analysis, and portrait construction in order to share the participants’ stories. Four themes were constructed from the data analysis to address the experiences participants had before, during, and after enrollment in gifted programs. Critical race theory (CRT) and Black feminist thought (BFT) served as guiding theories for the work and the clear connections between constructed themes, which included: family expectations fueled their positive outlook on the special privileges experienced because of the gifted program, White privilege influenced the overall enrollment in the gifted programs, teachers’ suppositions and subsequent behaviors made everlasting impressions on participants that impacted not only their performance in gifted programs, but their views on education overall, and school employees need to learn how to better communicate with the families of Black students.