In their target paper, "Towards a systemic theory of gifted education," A. Ziegler and S. N. Phillipson present a long awaited call for a paradigmatic shift in thinking within the field of gifted education. The paper considers how educators and researchers within the field could bring about such a change. They challenge the prevailing conceptualization of gifted and talented education and rightly call into question the hitherto accepted methodology for selecting students who are already, or have the potential to, demonstrate high ability. The opening sections of the paper thus set the scene for the possibility of some radically different thinking. The hypothesis presented within the paper is one which the reviewer would generally support. However, for her, an overriding shortfall throughout the article is the lack of reference to how the issues raised articulate with wider discussions within general education. Issues and possible ways to address them are looked at only through the lens of gifted education. There is no cognizance, within this paper, that these issues pertain to the effective learning and teaching of all children or to education systems as a whole. Rather, the paper concentrates on those considered to be highly able or in need of an "individualized learning pathway." While the reviewer accepts the paper is looking specifically at issues within gifted education the danger is that unless one looks beyond such narrow fields of research the ideas put forward will languish in the academic arena, being debated and discussed at gifted and talented conferences while practice remains firmly rooted in the old paradigm. The article challenges some long held assumptions within the field and indeed within education. For any such challenges to result in the paradigmatic shift the writers call for these changes cannot simply take place within the field of gifted education but must occur across education and herein lies the difficulty. If these changes occur only within gifted education then surely one has merely tinkered at the edges. Is education ready for such a change? The reviewer is not sure. "A real danger of the paradigmatic shift is the overwhelming sense of inertia and apathy that we may feel as we discover the vast quantity of definitions and methodologies that must be rethought" (Poplin, 1988, p. 401).