Every country--and even every community--has populations of students who severely underperform relative to other groups and to their own potential. These performance differences are generally called achievement gaps, and they tend to focus on gaps at basic levels of academic proficiency. But such gaps also exist among the highest levels of…

This article argues that research and educational practices relating to gifted students can highly benefit by linking up more closely with the mainstream of research on learning and instruction. The CLIA-model for the design of powerful learning environments that consists of four interconnected components (Competence, Learning, Intervention, and…

Ziegler and Phillipson make a strong case for the need to reconsider traditional models of gifted education. Although their evidence and argument are compelling, the reviewers argue that several additional steps are needed to justify the theoretical foundation of the theory in order to facilitate its evaluation by researchers. First, Ziegler and…

A. Ziegler and S. N. Phillipson draw upon the Actiotope Model of Giftedness (AMG) to give an overview of a systemic approach to gifted education. They argue the value of such a systemic approach for understanding the development of exceptionality. The reviewers certainly agree that the achievement of excellent performance is not only the result of…

Eight years ago, the authors carried out a study on scientific creativity. Thirty-four eminent scientists, who had gained great creative scientific achievements in five fields--mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and life science--were chosen and interviewed. In the study, the authors tried to find out what made a person demonstrate…

In this target article, we argue that current approaches to gifted education are based on the erroneous view that to understand the development of exceptionality we need to understand firstly the components of giftedness, including cognitive such as intelligence and non-cognitive factors such as motivation. In contrast, systemic approaches to…

In this commentary on Ziegler and Phillipson's article, "Towards a Systemic Theory of Gifted Education" (this issue), the author commends their attempt to discuss gifted education from a systemic and contextual perspective, which she considers inspiring in terms of theoretical advancement and practical reconsideration. However, Cheng finds the…

In this commentary on Ziegler and Phillipson's article, "Towards a Systemic Theory of Gifted Education" (this issue), the author states her opinion that their alternate way of viewing gifted education is pedagogically sound. What Ziegler and Phillipson propose is creating a system where the interaction between action repertoires and the…

Ziegler and Phillipson (Z&P) advance an interesting and ambitious proposal, whereby current analytical/mechanistic theories of gifted education are replaced by systemic theories. In this commentary, the author focuses on the pros and cons of using systemic theories. He argues that Z&P's proposal both goes too far and not far enough. The future of…

In "Towards a systemic theory of gifted education", Ziegler and Phillipson offer a useful critique of current research and the current paradigm in gifted education. They provide an interesting and useful merging of systems theory with their actiotope model, and using this paradigm they suggest many fruitful areas for future research. However, the…

As an alternative to the current paradigm of gifted education, Ziegler and Phillipson proposed a systemic approach and argued that factors in the current mechanistic model of giftedness are not good predictors for exceptionality. They pinpointed that a single factor identified as an indicator of giftedness, ineffective measures, inappropriate…

In their commentary, from the very start, the authors welcome the opportunity to face the inefficacy of the currently existing educational paradigm gifted people. For many years, they have verified and supported the difficulties of a paradigm whose philosophy and anthropological foundation are incapable of guaranteeing the promotion and…

Without a doubt the authors' proposal of viewing gifted education in systemic terms is a promising one. In fact, it is most refreshing to read something eclectic like this with an aim to synthesize a field of research and practice which for too long has lacked consensus in both practice and theory. The author agrees with them that a mechanistic…

The commentaries to our target article "Towards a systemic theory of gifted education" differed in their assessments of the various arguments we put forward. Of the more than 40 responses to our target article, 27 responses were chosen as being representative of all commentaries. We grouped the responses according to the main points in our target…

A recent study in the USA documented the existence and growth of "excellence gaps" among students. These gaps are similar to the minimum competency achievement gaps that proliferate in policy discussions in many Western countries, but excellence gaps focus on the highest level of achievement rather than minimum competency. We extend this research…