Joseph S. Renzulli believes the purpose of gifted education is to increase the reservoir of creative and productive young people who will make innovative contributions to the arts, sciences, and all other areas of human knowledge and productivity and that these contributions will be guided toward making the world a better place for all people. He…

In this article, I describe a few personal favorite contributions of Dr. Marcia Gentry, one of the most successful graduates from our doctoral program at the University of Connecticut, as well as a dear friend and collaborator. Marcia focused her life's work on the need to serve underserved and often-neglected populations in our field and…

This article describes current attempts and steps to expand both services and research about gifted education and talent development programs and educational opportunities for academically talented students in Italy. The laws, procedures, and policies that have been essential to this process are described, as is the outcome, which is the…

Providing challenging and engaging learning opportunities is one way to motivate students to learn. In this article, we discuss the contributions of the gifted education field to the development of enrichment pedagogy and identify several different types of these engaging instructional strategies, including interest-based learning pedagogy,…

Why and how should a society devote special resources to the development of giftedness in young people for the twenty-first century? If we agree that the goals of gifted education and talent development are to maximize young people's opportunities for self-fulfillment and increase society's reservoir of creative problem solvers and producers of…

In this article, I describe a series of Five Core Competencies that gifted education specialists should consider integrating into their teaching to respond to the many changes that are taking place in technology, work, and career preparation. Although the focus of this theory is on high- level jobs usually pursued by college graduates and advanced…

Changing demographics in schools around the world have raised questions about the nature and role of gifted education programs. An intense interest in the underrepresentation of students from low-income families and minority groups in gifted education programs has caused the field to re-examine both identification and services. In this article,…

Why and how should a society devote special resources to the development of giftedness in young people for the twenty-first century? If we agree that the goals of gifted education and talent development are to maximize young people's opportunities for self-fulfillment and increase society's reservoir of creative problem solvers and producers of…

This article includes an introduction to the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM), with its three components: a total talent portfolio for each child, curriculum differentiation and modification, and enrichment opportunities from the Enrichment Triad Model. Also included is a brief history of the SEM and a summary of 30 years of research underlying…

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, originally designed for academically gifted students, is currently used to develop the gifts and talents of a much wider pool of students. One SEM component, the Total Talent Portfolio, focuses attention on student interests and learning-style preferences. This article explains how SEM, combined with curriculum…

This article describes an enrichment cluster approach designed to create highly challenging learning opportunities that allow high potential students to identify themselves. The enrichment clusters focus students' attention on authentic learning applied to real-life problems. Guidelines for enrichment clusters are discussed, along with the teacher…

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model is a blueprint for total school improvement that stresses flexibility and creativity and promotes challenging, enjoyable learning across all school types, levels, and demographic differences. The model combines organizational resources with three service-delivery components: the total-talent portfolio,…

This article describes the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) and examines the relationship between gifted programs and total school improvement using the SEM. Goals of SEM include a school SEM specialist, a strong research base, a broadened conception of human potential, and educational experiences grounded in a high-end theory of learning.…

Explores the multifaceted nature of giftedness and describes the Total Talent Portfolio (TTP), a framework for talent development of gifted students that requires giving equal attention to interests and learning styles as well as to cognitive abilities. Explains the major dimensions of the TTP. (CR)