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Being Myself In School: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Historically Underrepresented High Ability Middle School Students, Melanie Joy Lichtenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Chimamanda Adichie (2009), Nigerian novelist, warns the “danger of a single story” is that it becomes the only story. Current scholarly research often features the stories of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students through deficit-lens while focusing on underrepresentation, underachievement, and undernomination. This deficit experience unfortunately becomes the “single story” for many high-ability and high-potential culturally diverse children in school. This phenomenological study aimed on centering the personal stories of middle school high-ability young adolescents who are members of historically underrepresented populations to answer the question: What is it like to be high-ability and a member of an underrepresented population …