Valued Actions and Identities of Giftedness in a Mathematical Camp

This study follows a mathematical camp for high-school students identified as gifted, and examines it with a socio-cultural lens. Our goal is to examine the identities of students in the camp and the valued actions according to which these identities were authored, both by the students and by their instructors. Data was collected from three rounds of summer camp sessions and included recordings of lessons, staff meetings, and ceremonies. Findings point to identities of competent or “gifted” participants being evaluated according to the valued actions of quickness and ease in problem-solving, “brilliant” ideas or questions, persistence and coping with challenges, and intensive engagement with mathematics, beyond the official requirements of the camp. They also suggest that most of these valued actions were only implicitly communicated in the camp, although some of them, for example writing correctly and justifying statements logically, were stated explicitly. We focus on one student, Jasmine, who was identified as particularly gifted. We examine an episode of fierce mathematical argumentation between her and the instructor (2nd author), and the identifications that accompanied it, relating them to the valued actions in the camp. We discuss the findings with relation to existing literature on the identification and education of mathematically talented youth.