This paper delineates the rise, fall and re-emergence of "tongshi" education in Chinese higher education history, and in doing so hopes to reveal the underlying forces behind the two waves of "tongshi" education and capture their important 'Chinese' characteristics. Based on a comparative-historical examination of the Chinese…

A recent study claiming to provide a basis for gifted education to drop the construct of overexcitabilities in favor of the construct of openness to experience and align itself with the Five Factor Model and a talent development perspective on gifted education is shown to be without merit. An analysis shows that the study supports the conclusion…

In a 2006 report, MDRC comparatively analyzed its evaluations of three comprehensive interventions -- Career Academies, First Things First, and Talent Development -- to identify strategies that address five critical challenges to reform: (1) creating a personalized and orderly learning environment; (2) assisting students who enter high school with…

This article identifies the problem that an instrumentalist mode of thinking dominates China's contemporary education practice and suggests that the dichotomy between the "small self and big self," a notion that has been present throughout modern Chinese history, exacerbates this instrumentalism. It parallels the loss of China's…

When used informally, talent development refers to the deliberate cultivation of ability or giftedness in a specific domain. However, recent discussions have used talent development to refer to a particular framework for viewing giftedness and the education of gifted children. In this article, the authors will present their views on the meaning of…

This article reviews seven different theories of giftedness that include creativity as a component, comparing and contrasting how each one conceptualizes creativity as a part of giftedness. The functions of creativity vary across the models, suggesting that while the field of gifted education often cites the importance of creativity, the…

This paper describes how the global talent pool is changing. The expansion of higher education in rapidly-developing G20 nations has reduced the share of tertiary graduates from Europe, Japan and the United States in the global talent pool. If current trends continue, China and India will account for 40% of all young people with a tertiary…

The current study fills a void in the literature that investigates the factors required for elite athlete development. Previous studies have (a) illustrated psychological and physiological differences between elites and non-elites; "or" (b) described the psychological and physiological developmental experiences of elite performers. The…

For some time there has been debate about differing perspectives on musical gift and musical intelligence. One view is that musical gift is innate: that it is present in certain individuals from birth and that the task of the teacher is to develop the potential which is there. A second view is that musical gift is a complex concept which includes…

The focus of the study is the comparison between the musical abilities of 11-year-old children on the island of Martinique and in Slovenia, and finding out to what extent their development of musical abilities is influenced by musical and cultural family background, music school attendance, choral singing and playing orchestral instruments. Our…