Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 00(0), 2012 C  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pits DOI: 10.1002/pits.21627 GENDERED PRACTICES IN THE EDUCATION OF GIFTED GIRLS AND BOYS BARBARA A. KERR, M. ALEXANDRA VUYK, AND CHISTOPHER REA University of Kansas Gifted girls and gifted boys are more alike than they are different, although researchers remain fascinated with sex differences. Small differences between gifted boys and girls in achievements, interests, careers, and relationships can become exaggerated through gendered educational prac- tices. Kindergarten “red-shirting” of boys and the denial of early admission to girls can cause gifted children to be out of step throughout their academic careers. When gifted children are not actively encouraged to participate in talent searches and after-school and summer programs, whether be- cause of overprotection of girls or the insistence on athletic activities at the expense of academic activities for boys, they lose the opportunity for challenge, friendships, and community. When boys are not supported in their interests in creative careers and girls are not supported in their interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers, they may enter occupations that will not offer them the sense of purpose and meaning they might have otherwise had. It is in the area of gender relations, however, that long-term consequences of gendered practices are most apparent for gifted individuals because both gifted boys and girls need to plan for balancing family and career. C  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Gifted girls and boys are more alike than they are different in intelligence, creative abilities, and psychological adjustment. For a century, it has been observed that, as children, their play and friend- ship interests are more similar to each others’ than they are to those of average boys and girls (Gross, 1989; Terman, 1925), and as adolescents, their career aspirations are more alike than different (Kerr & Sodano, 2003). Even in the areas in which they have differed, such as math performance at the very highest levels of ability (Hyde & Linn, 2006), the gaps are closing. If the difference between gifted boys and girls is so small, why is the literature on sex differences among gifted children so large? One reason might be the continued observations of the “leaky pipeline” of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), in which women fail to achieve at the highest ranks and levels of performance as males (National Science Foundation, 2008), as well as the differences in salary and recognition of men and women at the highest levels in academe, government, and the arts. Too often, influential voices such as those of Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, have suggested that innate differences between men and women were the cause of these differences in recognition and reward, despite the fact that meta-analyses of sex differences in cognitive abilities have persistently shown that sex accounts for only a small fraction of the variance in measured abilities (Halpern et al., 2007). Another reason might be simply that scholars, as well as the general public, are intrigued by the seeming polarities of males and females on a number of traits and behaviors, such as acts of violence or interests in nurturing. The evidence, nevertheless, in all these cases, is that gendered practices interact with individual variables to produce eventual differences in interests, achievements, and well-being. What are gendered practices? First explained by Martin (1992), gendered practices are all the processes by which gender is brought into social relations through interaction. Often, gendered practices are unconscious; teachers, for example, may call on boys more often not because they wish deliberately to silence girls’ voices, but simply because the boys are calling out for attention (Sadker & Sadker, 1995). These practices, however, do seem to have the result of increasing the differences in outcomes of education for girls and boys, some for better and some for worse. There are also gendered practices in gifted education. Whenever educational practices are based not on Correspondence to: Barbara A. Kerr, 616 JRP, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. E-mail: bkerr@ku.edu 1