This qualitative study broadly aims to develop an understanding of the enablers and barriers to successful education pathways for multi-culturally diverse, gifted students living in economically vulnerable circumstances. The study administered an online questionnaire to fifty young, gifted adults currently enrolled at university or post graduate; followed by semi-structured interviews with eleven of the young adults; and finally a focus group discussion with seven of the participants. The study is a retrospective analysis of their school experience as young adults. Their perspectives provided valuable insight into the hidden rules of their home and school situations which made their experience as gifted students challenging, as well as the internal and external factors that enabled them to achieve education success. A reimagined collaborative ethnography approach yielded unique insights into their intrapersonal capacities that acted as protective factors within environments that were more or less supportive of their education. An inductive and exploratory approach to analyzing the data demonstrated the critical role of the teacher in understanding, recognizing and supporting culturally diverse gifted students; the criticality and nature of intrapersonal skills, notably motivation and volition; the impact of heterogenous cultural backgrounds; and the power of peer relationships with others who truly understood their experience of living at the intersection of giftedness, cultural diversity and low SES. Critically, the culturally nuanced notions of giftedness described by participants challenged textbook conceptions of giftedness. This study adds to the scarce but growing body of research into culturally contextual conceptions of multiple presentations of giftedness by exploring how this group of successful learners relates to the label "gifted" and internalizes the hidden rules of education in schools in low SES locales and beyond.
