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…

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…

A major controversy facing the field of gifted education is the underrepresentation of low income, minority, and dual language students. Strategies for addressing this challenge have been to use universal screening and local norms; however, these useful recommendations continue to focus on traditional testing procedures that measure what students…

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,…

One component of the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act was provision for research on a national scale. In response, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT) was created to design and implement a research portfolio. Based on emphasis in the Javits Act on underrepresented populations, on issues of…

The diversity of skills, talents, and interests of students that we serve in our schools requires a remarkable range of teachers' skills, time, and resources. This brief article focuses on differentiation and the ways that teachers can adapt and differentiate the regular curriculum to meet the academic needs of all of their students. Challenges…

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…

A critical need exists in engineering education to draw on the non-traditional divergent thinking and risk-taking necessary for making radical technological breakthroughs. Literature suggests that individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) characteristics demonstrate unparalleled creativity and risk-taking potential. While…

It is difficult to say exactly when or how ideas originate and if and why they earn acceptance, but this author believes his theories evolved because of his background as an educator and a pragmatist who believes "validating" an idea through practical implementation is as important as the idea itself. For the author, there are considerable…

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…

At the 2006 National Association of Gifted Children Conference, a panel presentation addressed the importance of providing gifted children with opportunities to take positive social action through service-learning; this article is a result of that discussion. The Future Problem Solving Program (among others) has a community problem-solving…