Some days (okay, most days) I am focused on students working at their highest academic and executive functioning level in the current moment. I want them to pursue their great ideas in collaboration with classmates today, buoyed by missteps and the learning process throughout.
And on other days, I think about their futures. How can my decisions now impact their potential in high school? College? Careers?
In the latest Gifted Child Quarterly, an open-access article looks at the career aspirations of 18 girls at highly selective secondary schools with the hopes of understanding what impacts these students and how we can address the gap between males and females in career “eminence” worldwide.
Takeaway 1: Research suggests that gifted students can face additional hurdles when it comes to following their talents and advanced ability in less esteemed fields of interest, such as the arts. In addition, if their interests are highly advanced and specific, they are unlikely to have a mentor at hand to encourage and challenge them. For this reason, gifted students require additional supports to meet their highest career potential in their specialized areas of interest.
Takeaway 2: Providing students with additional connections to career experiences and mentors provides a greater crystallization of interests. “In this study, participants described how domain-relevant opportunities helped to reinforce their career-related values, strengths, and interests, and assisted them to narrow and crystallize their chosen career aspirations.” These included formal and less formal “… opportunities for domain-relevant engagement, sometimes as modest as meeting a role model for a short time in a workplace environment or having a particularly insightful career-related conversation” (Discussion, paragraph 6).
Takeaway 3: Career exposure will be most effective for high-ability girls when it is personalized, providing broad exposure to a range of careers in the context of mentoring relationships and authentic experiences within various fields.
Takeaway 4: Access to leadership opportunities is key for our gifted females. It is proposed that, due to social conditioning, identity development, and other factors, girls often lower their own ambitions. When opportunities to lead in their current school environment are included in their experience, they are more likely to see themselves as leaders in a future role.
Resources
Napier, R. D., Jarvis, J. M., Clark, J., & Halsey, R. J. (2023). Influences on Career Development for Gifted Adolescent Girls in Selective Academic Programs in Australia. Gifted Child Quarterly, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00169862231201604
Gifted Weekly 