The purpose of this study was originally to create an operational definition of the "appearance of competence" to design valid questions for educational professionals supporting twice-exceptional (2e) learners to create a testing instrument. Through the methodological process of grounded theory, a replacement research question emerged as…

The dialogues, debates, and even arguments resulting from misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and mishandling of programs and people associated with the term "giftedness" are longstanding. Despite many years of efforts to assuage concerns of equity and need--many of which are legitimized by research evidence, the terminology continues…

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…

Theoretical and practical work in gifted education has been dominated by mechanistic precision in measurements designed to select students for gifted programs and guide them through their development. Too much faith in mechanistic precision can become a form of dogmatism that obscures very important, less-measurable dimensions of human ability.…

Despite multiple edited volumes dedicated to the various theories and conceptions of giftedness and talent that have been published over the past 40 years, the field of gifted education is still definitionally and paradigmatically fractured. These differences have led to a misunderstanding about the social and emotional experiences of gifted…

The concept of twice-exceptional is used to define individuals who are gifted or talented in one or more domains while having disability, disorder or difficulty in certain areas. This situation has made the definition and acceptance of the concept difficult since giftedness and disability are mentioned together. In order to clarify current…

Academic disciplines and professional fields need to engage in ongoing evaluation of their purposes and conceptual frameworks. The complex field of gifted education can benefit from such evaluations, and the refinements that can emerge from them. This article is a discussion between two of the most prominent scholars in the field. The discussion…

The aim of this study is to highlight the current status of gifted education in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Based on articles, books, and projects on gifted education published in these countries, besides relevant information gleaned from semi-structured interviews with 120 gifted education teachers (male = 53, female = 67), the…

The Marland Report included many correct observations about gifted education. Some findings, for example, were based on Project Talent, a large-scale population representative longitudinal study of the US high school population. This paper uses the intersection of cognitive aptitudes and gifted education as a framework and synthesizes studies…

Associate Professor Margaret Plunkett, Federation University, Australia, has over 30 years' experience in education. She currently coordinates and lectures in a range of courses and programs in both secondary and primary education, related to gifted education and professional experience. Margaret has won a number of awards for teaching excellence…

Although writers have advocated a shift from the gifted child to a talent development paradigm, changes in methods for identifying and cultivating talent in STEM are needed. We present evidence that using a talent development paradigm supported by differentiation with an organicist rather than a mechanistic perspective was effective in identifying…

The history of giftedness pertains to historical changes regarding how giftedness is conceptualized and defined, and how it serves the practical purpose of identifying gifted children and providing them an appropriate education. The past century has witnessed debates and controversies about what constitutes this elusive human quality we deem…

The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore how gifted girls perceived and coped with loneliness and the relationship between loneliness and giftedness from their perspectives. Participants were four middle-school gifted girls. A loneliness scale was used to select gifted students with a high level of loneliness experience. In-depth…

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) believes it is essential to define giftedness in a way that both reflects best thinking in the field and moves beyond a focus on identification criteria to a deeper understanding of the complex nature of giftedness and the multi-faceted approach to services required to appropriately serve…

Educational psychology is replete with verbal or qualitative definitions through which students can be considered members of categories, such as learning disabled, autistic, or gifted. These conceptions carry quantitative implications regarding the incidence rates of the phenomena they describe. To be scientifically useful, such definitions should…