Using Funds of Knowledge to Identify Bilingual Students' Gifts and Talents: The Role of Home Visits

This paper argues that home visits can play a critical role in identifying gifts and talents of bilingual students through students' funds of knowledge. Underrepresentation of students who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), particularly bilingual children, in gifted programs has been a long-term concern in education. One problem of underrepresentation of bilingual students in gifted education is rooted in teacher under referrals of bilingual children for screening. Bilingual students exhibit gifted characteristics in differing ways than their peers from non-diverse backgrounds (Esquierdo & Arreguin-Anderson, 2012). Students' funds of knowledge frame their patterns of learning, knowing, and doing around their unique cultural and linguistic experiences and can serve as a valuable resource in the gifted and talented screening process. The purpose of the paper is to promote the use of home visits as an alternative talent screening approach to assist teachers in the identification of bilingual students' potential characteristics of giftedness through students' funds of knowledge.