The author finds Roland S. Persson's (2012a) paper to be timely, fascinating, important and powerful. At risk of mixing metaphors, it provides much food for thought and a penetrating lens through which all those vested in the optimal realisation of human potential would be prudent to review their own perceptions, boundaries of belief and…

Dr. Persson's (2012a) target article addresses a number of key points that will greatly impact the study of giftedness, gifted education, and talent development in the "flat" world of the 21st century and beyond. Research in these areas needs to continually reflect upon changes in the social world outside its narrow purview to validate its…

The author recognises the fact that knowledge of cultural diversity and its implications is growing in the field of giftedness research and practice. In some ways, the target article could therefore be considered "old news." The author contends that his effort to address culture variation and its problematic impact on research, however, is not to…

The commentaries on my article contain a number of points with which I disagree but also several with which I agree. For example, I continue to believe that the existence of many cases in which between-person variability does not increase with age indicates that greater variance with increased age is not inevitable among healthy individuals up to…

Narrative research in TESOL still remains very much in its infancy. And the predominant mode of narrative research in TESOL--following the trend in educational research, as well as in other social sciences--has clearly been that of narrative inquiry, with its concomitant privileging of autobiographical "big stories", or researcher-elicited…

Universals were said to exist if superordinate variables can be established that are parallel in several individuals or groups of individuals. In addition, these variables can be shown to exhibit dimensional identity in the sense that their relationships with other latent variables are not conditioned on individuals or membership in groups of…

Direct (systematic) observation has been a mainstay of my research for over three decades. I believe it is an important tool for assessing physical activity, because it can simultaneously provide contextually rich data on the setting in which the activity occurs. It is particularly useful for those interested in using ecological and…

Non-medical research involves the same issues of justice, beneficence, and respect for persons that apply to non-medical research. It also may involve risk of harm to participants, and conflicts of interest for researchers. It is therefore not possible to argue that such research should be exempt from ethical review. This paper argues that…

This article presents a commentary exchange between authors Laurie Grobman and Richard C. Raymond regarding Raymond's article "Re-placing Lit in Comp II: Pragmatic/Humanistic Benefits." Grobman said that in her brief commentary on Raymond's article, she chooses not to explicitly address his thesis that literature belongs in a research-based…

A recent large-scale meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies indicated that shared environmental influences make important contributions to most forms of child and adolescent psychopathology (Burt, 2009b). The sole exception to this robust pattern of results was observed for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which appeared to be…

In the May 2010 issue of "Psychological Bulletin," R. E. McGrath, M. Mitchell, B. H. Kim, and L. Hough published an article entitled "Evidence for Response Bias as a Source of Error Variance in Applied Assessment" (pp. 450-470). They argued that response bias indicators used in a variety of settings typically have insufficient data to support such…

A disconnect exists between teaching and research; and it has become easy, if not automatic, for K-12 teachers to be enthusiastic about teaching and less supportive of research. As a student teacher, the first author found herself adopting the stereotype that research is associated with the sciences and is less pertinent to K-12 education. She…

While research by scholars has contributed greatly to an emerging knowledge base on Black children and mathematics, there continues to be a dire need for insightful research that de-centers longstanding accounts that have contributed to the construction of Black children as mathematically illiterate and as less than ideal learners relative to…

While interest in the voice of children and young people has grown alongside concern for their rights and participation, for those excluded from mainstream education or with a label of behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, the issue of student voice takes on particular relevance. Yet the voices of these young people, and particularly…

Comments on the original article, "Many forms of culture," by A. B. Cohen. Cohen offered an eye-opening review of how culture means much more than ethnicity within a nation or differences between nations. After developing a much-expanded definition of culture, he concluded, "I have lamented the fact that psychology has focused on some important…