“Talent” and the Misrecognition of Social Advantage in Specialized Arts Education

Abstract

Attention has been drawn to the persistent underrepresentation of underserved populations in gifted education programs. Though a small number of working-class students, students of color, recent immigrants, and students with limited English proficiency attend these programs, access to gifted education remains closely linked to White and upper-middle-class populations. The question remains: how, in a system that claims to be committed to achieving equity, do such disparities come to be and, furthermore, how are they justified? In this article we attempt to make sense of this phenomenon by examining how discourses of talent are mobilized within the context of a particular kind of gifted education program: a specialized arts program within a Canadian public secondary school.