Gifted education in Australia has a story punctuated by four senate inquiries initiated by either state or federal governments, and a Commonwealth commissioned report, each charged with investigating the education of gifted and talented children across Australia. A related document is a position paper produced by the Australian Association for the…

The purpose of this article is to assist classroom teachers in discerning qualitative differences between a student-written report and student-led research. There are many connotations to the terms "report" and "research," and they can have implications on how teachers effectively or ineffectively differentiate instruction to…

In 1988, Van Galen proposed two distinct categories to describe homeschooling parents -- ideologues and pedagogues. Her model has been widely cited in the homeschooling literature. In the 30 years since the introduction of these identifiers, homeschooling in the United States has experienced tremendous growth due to a number of intersecting…

Definitions of rurality in education research are inconsistent, making generalization across studies difficult at best. We review published research in rural education between 2005 and 2015 (n = 17) and characterize the way each defined rural. A common technique for classifying rural schools is the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)…

As our country's need for highly skilled professionals in every field continues to grow, the "2014-2015 State of the States in Gifted Education" report provides a glimpse into a system where many high ability and high-achieving learners must fend for themselves, leaving success to chance. While there are individual areas of progress, the…

How can parents and teachers foster individual abilities and facilitate foundational supports so children will flourish? There is no fast or flawless formula. However, readers can use these F words to flesh out, fill in, fine-tune, or formulate a particular framework of factors they might want to think about in relation to supporting and…

For the past several decades, issues such as underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority students in gifted programming, as well as the widening of the existing achievement gap between specific minority and majority groups have persisted. The majority of gifted education researchers studying underrepresentation in gifted programming focus on…

In this chapter, we focus on research that is most pertinent to gifted education. We begin with an overview of the constructs (organized within the three original pillars of positive psychology) relevant to youth, education, and gifted education. First, we offer a working definition of giftedness and gifted education. [This paper was published in:…

There are many "E" words that relate meaningfully to giftedness at home, school, and beyond. In this article, the author expands upon some explicit examples--with an emphasis on the essence of giftedness, and on external and experiential elements.

In this commentary on Ziegler and Phillipson's article, "Towards a Systemic Theory of Gifted Education" (this issue), the author commends their attempt to discuss gifted education from a systemic and contextual perspective, which she considers inspiring in terms of theoretical advancement and practical reconsideration. However, Cheng finds the…

The issue of underrepresentation in gifted and talented (GT) programs has developed into a critical educational concern. At the core are ambiguous identification assessment practices, especially for bilingual students. To illustrate, this article reports data from the last decade that supports the underrepresentation of gifted Hispanic bilingual…

In this article the author's research reports that giftedness is a combination of advanced development and creativity. It is developmental in nature in that it begins as potential (generally in young people), evolves into achievement within recognizable domains during the school years, and becomes increasingly advanced (compared with peers)…

Definitions of what constitute students who are gifted and talented as well as policies and procedures to identify these high-ability students play a critical role in determining which individuals actually receive gifted services. This article reports on a national survey of how state policies and practices define giftedness, identify gifted…

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a comprehensive yet detailed account of the current giftedness and gifted education situation in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. It is concerned with four main research questions: (1) How is "giftedness" defined in German-speaking countries? (2) How are gifted children…

As school psychologists, educators and parents most often approach us with questions relating to a concern. We have the privilege of serving students in their natural learning environment where skills and behaviors can be observed and analyzed, where interventions can be created and tested, and, hopefully, where a positive change can be made…