This article introduces the Special Class for the Gifted Young (SCGY), an early college entrance program in mathematics and science in China, which has been a focus for media coverage and public discussion of accelerated education in China. We first describe the admission policy and academic programming of SCGY and delineate its distinct features.…

Asynchrony is a theoretical construct that views the intellectually gifted child as inherently vulnerable because of disparities arising from the mismatch between his or her chronological age and mental age. Such disparities, for example, between wanting to belong but being intellectually out of step with peers, are said to give rise to a…

This article examines the underrepresentation of African American and Hispanic students in gifted education, proposing that social inequality, deficit thinking, and microaggressions contribute to the inequitable segregated programs. Underrepresentation trends are presented, along with methods for calculating underrepresentation and inequity.…

The author--artist, scientist, educator, and visual-spatial thinker--describes the genesis of, and provides insight into, an innovative, strength-based, visually dynamic computer-aided communication system called Chandelier©. This system is the powerful combination of a sophisticated, user-friendly software program and an organizational…

Over the past two decades a wealth of research data on perfectionism has drawn increased attention to the nature and impact of perfectionism on many aspects of student development. Much of the research has explored perfectionism in the gifted student population, but few studies have considered how perfectionism could be perceived differently in…

Does gifted education affect societal inequality, and does societal inequality suppress and/or distort the development of high ability? Drawing from several academic disciplines and current political discourse, a differentiated use of terms used to describe the highly able is explored in this article. A social evolutionary framework is proposed as…

Research literature concerning gifted male readers relies primarily on more extensive bodies of work regarding gifted males and male readers. Studied as a whole, the two halves portray a worrisome state of affairs for gifted male readers, who lag behind their female counterparts in the same patterns found across the ability spectrum. This literacy…

This article revisits the 1986 Feldhusen, Proctor, and Black recommendations on grade skipping. These recommendations originally appeared as 12 guidelines. In this article, the guidelines are grouped into three general categories: how to screen accelerant candidates, how to engage with the adults in the acceleration process (e.g., teachers,…

Researchers of the gifted have traditionally advanced the theory, though they are often without data to support it, that an association between intellectual and/or creative giftedness and mood disorders exists. This assumed association is often referred to as the "mad genius theory." This article explores the origins and development of…

Severe socioeconomic inequality strongly suppresses and distorts the discovery of aspirations and the concomitant development of talents among the gifted. More comprehensive understanding of this suppression and distortion is available through a wide-ranging interdisciplinary search for research findings and theories that illuminate economic,…

Attention has been drawn to the persistent underrepresentation of underserved populations in gifted education programs. Though a small number of working-class students, students of color, recent immigrants, and students with limited English proficiency attend these programs, access to gifted education remains closely linked to White and…

Researchers and advocates who argue for increased recognition of gifted students with learning disabilities (G/LD students) often frame their arguments in terms of the need to increase the diversity and inclusiveness of gifted education. However, the criteria used to identify G/LD students are sufficiently vague and fluid that the G/LD category…

This article reviews seven different theories of giftedness that include creativity as a component, comparing and contrasting how each one conceptualizes creativity as a part of giftedness. The functions of creativity vary across the models, suggesting that while the field of gifted education often cites the importance of creativity, the…

Despite being plagued by serious conceptual problems, underachievement ranks among the most popular constructs in research on the gifted. Many of its problems have their roots in the use of the IQ as the supposedly best method of measuring ability levels. Only a few decades ago the opinion was still widespread that the IQ-based construct of…

Above-level testing (also called "out-of-level testing," "off-grade testing," and "off-level testing") is the practice of administering a test level that was designed for and normed on an older population to a gifted child. This comprehensive literature review traces the practice of above-level testing from the earliest days of gifted education…