This study explored factors associated with the life satisfaction of gifted students using PISA 2015 data and identified heterogeneous sub-profiles within the gifted group. 356,544 students from 50 countries were analyzed, with gifted students defined as the academically top 5% within each country. Student final weights were applied throughout, and all analyses were repeated across 10 Plausible Value sets and integrated using Rubin’s rules. Weighted t-tests revealed that gifted students had higher socioeconomic status, home educational resources, and achievement motivation, and lower test anxiety, but no significant differences in life satisfaction. Weighted K-means cluster analysis (k = 4) yielded four sub-profiles: Holistically Thriving, Resilient Low-SES, Resource-Rich Disengaged, and Isolated & At-Risk. Permutation importance from a weighted random forest identified school belonging as the most important variable associated with high life satisfaction, followed by test anxiety and teacher support. These findings highlight the importance of relational experiences in understanding gifted students’ well-being.
This study examined the relationship between creativity and intelligence in a non-Western sample using linear, nonlinear, and segmented regression approaches. The participants comprised 682 students randomly selected from 30 schools in Oman. After data cleaning procedures, the final analytic sample consisted of 657 participants. The instruments included the Comprehensive Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence (CTONI-2) and Profile of Creative Abilities (PCA). The overall results showed a weak linear association, with some evidence of nonlinear variation across levels of intelligence. For the segmented regression, the correlation inside the interval of the breakpoint IQ = 101 and IQ = 119 was relatively low but statistically significant (r = .110, p = .042), while for the breakpoint (IQ = 119), the correlation was statistically significant and negative (r = −.214, p = .028). For females, the correlation within the breakpoints of IQ = 101 and 119 was relatively low and not statistically significant. For males, the correlation within the breakpoints of IQ = 101 and 119 was statistically significant.
This study explored the influence of enabling factors on the perceived outcomes of summer enrichment programs (SEPs) for student learning, based on the perspectives of parents in Saudi Arabia. The researchers employed a correlational–exploratory research design to investigate the impacts of SEPs on students’ learning. A comprehensive sample of 1,571 parents of gifted students were included in the survey. The authors found that 11 enabling items accounted for approximately 62% of the variance in the impact factor score, encompassing aspects, such as content delivery, holistic experience, cost, timing, resources, and family communication. Moreover, when the demographic variables (gender and grade level) were controlled for, the number of enabling items increased to 12, with the proportion of variance remaining consistent. Notably, mothers and fathers demonstrated distinct priorities; fathers placed greater emphasis on facilities and communication, whereas mothers prioritized fairness in admission criteria and the opportunity to visit the program site.
Universal consideration and group-specific norms have been recommended to address the underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups in gifted education programs. The current study evaluated these methods with 7,148 first through sixth-grade students from a single district in the Midwest who were administered academic achievement and cognitive ability measures. Representation indices (RIs) were calculated to measure the impact of local-building norms and different score combination methods. Black and Hispanic students were underrepresented relative to their proportion in the sample for all identification methods (RI <0.80). Asian and White students were well-represented or overrepresented using all identification methods. However, using local-building norms or different score combination methods resulted in meaningful increases in RIs for Black and Hispanic students, without corresponding decreases in RIs for Asian and White students.
Not long ago, the ability to truly understand why a mathematical truth holds — not just that it does — was a reliable sign of genuine mathematical talent. That game has changed. AI can produce sophisticated mathematical proofs and explanations on demand, without developing any of the thinking those outputs once required. My central claim is precise: AI has not, strictly speaking, broken the link between mathematical output and mathematical understanding; rather, it has decoupled them as objects of inference, so that the production of a sophisticated output is no longer reliable evidence of the cognitive development that previously produced such an output. A five-level model is proposed that describes what students are actually doing cognitively, rather than what outputs they produce — and what that distinction means for identification, curriculum, and teaching in an AI-saturated classroom.
In Chile, approximately 10,000 children participate in youth orchestras. Furthermore, a law for gifted children is currently being debated in the National Congress. This study aimed to understand care practices within the ecosystem of children gifted for music. A multiple case study was conducted, including episodic interviews using multimodal tools with five girls between the ages of 8 and 17, nominated by their teachers for their high musical aptitude and participating in the Foundation of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Chile (FOJI), as well as with their parents, educators, and institutional representatives (11 adults). Four categories of care practices were identified: basic needs and rights, learning and education, emotional support, and musical development. Deficiencies in care reflect structural power dynamics and insufficient societal commitment to children’s development. This study contributes to the identification of critical areas and provides information for the design and evaluation of programs for gifted children.
This article develops a conceptual framework for aesthetic care in gifted music education, integrating care ethics and Foucault’s notion of aesthetic existence. Recognizing that children and adolescents gifted for music face heightened performance pressures, perfectionism, and identity-related vulnerabilities, the study foregrounds the ethical and relational dimensions of music pedagogy alongside technical skill development. Drawing on philosophical, theoretical, and critical literature, and informed by Engeström’s Activity Theory, it conceptualizes aesthetic care as a relational, perceptual, and ethical orientation that cultivates gifted students’ aesthetic sensitivity, reflective engagement, and moral-aesthetic discernment. The framework articulates ten pedagogical principles: dialogic aesthetic engagement, ethical relational care, co-agency in aesthetic creation, culturally mediated experiences, responsive attunement, multi-voiced participation, reflective aesthetic consciousness, developmental differentiation, integrative musicianship, and transformative aesthetic encounters. By linking ethical attentiveness with aesthetic cultivation, this conceptual-theoretical study positions music education as a site for holistic artistic and personal development, offering music teachers a lens to nurture sustainable identities, relational competence, and flourishing musical lives.
In this interview, Dr Steven Pfeiffer responds to questions about his career in gifted education, and the assessment and identification and nurturing of gifted students. Readers may recognize that Dr. Pfeiffer is a popular speaker, scholar, and internationally recognized authority on talent development and gifted. He is a licensed board-certified clinical psychologist whose work has focused on gifted identification and the unique social-emotional needs and character development of high ability children and youth. Dr. Pfeiffer is one of only a handful of authorities in the gifted field who is not an educator by background or training Rather, he was trained and has worked for over 40 years as a clinical psychologist. Dr. Pfeiffer received his doctoral training at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Following his internship in clinical psychology, he completed postdoctoral training in family therapy at the Philadelphia Child and Family.Therapy Training Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Gifted and talented (GT) students are widely recognized for their academic strengths, yet less attention is given to their social-emotional experiences. Hope, a cognitive-motivational construct reflecting perceived ability to set meaningful goals, identify pathways to achieve them, and maintain the motivation to pursue those pathways (Snyder, 2002), has been linked to academic and psychosocial functioning but remains underexplored in GT students. In this study, we examined hope profiles in 194 Turkish adolescents attending a residential high school. Using latent profile analysis, two distinct groups emerged: a Hopeful profile characterized by slightly above-average hope scores and a Low Hope profile with substantially below-average scores. Students in the Hopeful profile reported higher positive affect, self-esteem, and well-being, as well as lower depressive symptoms and psychological distress, compared to peers in the Low Hope profile. Findings highlight hope as a meaningful psychosocial resource for GT adolescents and underscore the importance of fostering hope to support talent development.
Cognitive, behavioral, and social-environmental characteristics are essential foundations for career and talent development among gifted and talented students. This research examines how cognitive flexibility mediates the relationship between perfectionism, career and talent development self-efficacy, and whether socioeconomic status (SES) moderates this mediation among gifted and talented students. The study analyzed data from 382 gifted students enrolled in Turkish Science and Art Centers. Using SPSS and the PROCESS macro, mediation and moderated mediation analyses showed that cognitive flexibility significantly mediates the relationship between perfectionism and career and talent development self-efficacy. Furthermore, SES emerged as a moderator: higher SES amplified the influence of perfectionism while attenuating the effect of cognitive flexibility on career and talent development self-efficacy. These findings suggest that implementing differentiated career development programs, counseling services, interventions, and providing SES-sensitive, personalized career guidance may substantially enhance career and talent development self-efficacy among gifted students.
This editorial introduces the Special Issue, “Care Ethics in the Education of Children Gifted for Music,” addressing the tension between accelerated, performance-driven training and the holistic, socio-emotional flourishing of young musicians. Specialised music education, often content- and mastery-focused, has been criticised for neglecting children’s rights and contemporary understandings of well-being. In response, this Special Issue presents five articles that centre Care Ethics as a relational and structural framework for transformation. Drawing on Gilligan, Held, Noddings, and Tronto, these contributions explore care across four dimensions: theoretical critique, systemic analysis of global institutional practices, relational ecosystems of family and community, and innovative pedagogical approaches. Together, they show that moving beyond high-pressure conservatory models requires shifting from technical detachment to “ecosystems of care” that protect rights, agency, and authentic aesthetic flourishing. The Issue asserts that technical excellence and ethical care are inseparable, co-constituting a sustainable, meaningful musical life.
This study examined whether aligning gifted education instruction to students’ cognitive reasoning strengths is associated with improved academic achievement. Using a quasi-experimental design with overlapping cohorts, outcomes for gifted students in Grades 3–5 from one large urban school district were compared across two academic years. The comparison cohort included 2,836 students from 47 schools, and the intervention cohort included 2,735 students from 48 schools. The intervention cohort participated in the Stretch or Support (SOS!) program, which uses cognitive reasoning profiles to guide instructional grouping and differentiation based on students’ relative verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal strengths; the prior-year cohort served as a comparison group. Academic growth was assessed using fall-to-spring i-Ready Reading and Mathematics scores and analyzed using descriptive statistics and hierarchical modeling. Results indicated that students in the intervention cohort showed significantly greater growth in both reading and mathematics, with larger and more consistent differences observed in mathematics. Findings suggest that participation in instruction aligned to cognitive reasoning strengths was associated with higher academic growth among gifted learners.
Moral giftedness is a highly superior level of knowledge, abilities, and attitudes that are required to apply universal principles of right and wrong to life problems, including personal, collective, and societal ones. Giftedness can be morally value-neutral. Or it can be transactional, in which case what is moral depends upon a transaction between oneself and either oneself, others, or both. Transformational moral giftedness is moral giftedness exercised to make the world a better place—to create, through moral behavior, a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. Pseudo-transformational giftedness is the pretense of moral giftedness that in fact serves only oneself or members of one’s preferred group, usually at the expense of others. We need to develop transformational moral giftedness in young people while there still is time in the world to do so.
This study aimed to develop and validate the Ethics of Care Scale for Parents of Musically Gifted Children (ECS-MGC), grounded in Tronto's ethics of care, to assess caregiving behaviors of parents of musically gifted students enrolled in Turkey’s Science and Art Centers (BİLSEM). Data were collected from 493 parents using a 5-point Likert-type questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis based on a polychoric correlation matrix supported a five-factor structure, which was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis using the WLSMV estimator. Item refinement yielded a 22-item scale comprising Caring About, Caring For, Care Giving, Care Receiving, and Caring With. Model comparisons indicated that the five-factor structure fit the data better than one-factor and higher-order alternatives. Reliability was supported by internal consistency, composite reliability, and test–retest coefficients. While four dimensions demonstrated strong reliability, Caring About showed lower yet acceptable reliability. Use of the ECS-MGC should be limited to similar BİLSEM parent populations.
This narrative inquiry explores how intersecting identities of giftedness, being Latina, and deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) shape educational experiences. Using self-narrative methodology with reflective journaling and Clandinin’s three-dimensional framework, we examined a 22-year-old Mexican American graduate student’s educational journey. Four themes emerged: (1) bidirectional masking effects and environmental adaptation, where hearing loss obscured giftedness while academic success masked accommodation needs, and environmental factors profoundly influenced both identification and performance; (2) advocacy as both individual burden and family intervention; (3) cultural navigation across linguistic and socioeconomic contexts; and (4) resilience through intersectionality transforming challenges into professional strengths. Despite consistently high performance, delayed gifted identification until fourth grade resulted from compounded barriers at identity intersections. Findings reveal systemic gaps in recognizing twice-exceptional students from culturally diverse backgrounds, emphasizing needs for proactive identification practices, environmental optimization, and culturally responsive supports that address unique manifestations of giftedness in students navigating multiple marginalized identities.
This comparative quantitative study examined the worries and concerns of parents raising gifted (G) and gifted twice-exceptional (G/2e) children. A total of 847 parents of children ages 6-18 participated in an anonymous online survey designed to identify and compare areas of worry and concern among parents of G and G/2e children. The survey included demographic items and Likert-scale questions addressing academic, social-emotional, motivational, behavioral, and future-oriented concerns. Participants were recruited through self-selection after viewing study invitations shared via social media and gifted associations. Data analysis revealed several areas of significant findings, as well as common areas of worry and concern across groups, with parents of G/2e children reporting heightened concerns. Findings underscore the importance of integrated support structures for families navigating the complexities of raising gifted and gifted twice-exceptional children. Implications for educators, administrators, and counselors are discussed, with attention to improving family-school partnerships and access to specialized services.
This study investigates the existential experiences of mathematically gifted students within neoliberal, performance-driven schooling systems. The sample included 25 mathematically gifted students who completed an online qualitative questionnaire capturing first-person accounts of success, failure, and meaning-making. A thematic analysis identified four main themes. First, performance pressures and recognition practices shaped students’ identities, stabilizing but also rendering fragile a “math person” self-concept. Second, students largely adopted external metrics of success, yet often experienced such success as hollow or routine. Third, participants searched for existential meaning through mastery, creativity, and contribution, despite feeling that commodified success diminished authentic engagement. Finally, students reported stress, responsibilisation, and isolation, alongside protective factors such as creative problem-solving and aesthetic appreciation of mathematics. These findings underscore the need for educational practices that support healthier identity development, broaden definitions of success, and foster meaning-making for mathematically gifted learners.
This study aims to explore in depth the educational services provided to gifted students in general education schools based on teachers’ experiences. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven teachers working with gifted students and analyzed via content analysis. Four main themes and thirteen subthemes emerged. Findings revealed that gifted students differ from their peers in cognitive characteristics, personality traits, and behavioral patterns, leading to various challenges in inclusive settings. These challenges were grouped as teacher difficulties, student-related problems, classroom factors, and systemic issues regarding educational placement. The study also found that both pre-service and in-service teacher training remain inadequate to address gifted students’ needs. Participants emphasized the necessity of differentiated instruction, enhanced professional development, stronger support services, active parental involvement, and improved collaboration among specialists and guidance units.
This qualitative study investigates the perceptions, identification, and support of talents in deaf students by two key stakeholder groups: mothers and teachers in Egypt. Through the utilization of semi-structured interviews conducted with five mothers and fifteen teachers, the research applied thematic analysis to elucidate patterns regarding the recognition and nurturing of talents such as artistic expression, mechanical proficiency, and academic capabilities—within both domestic and educational contexts. The results indicate that although both stakeholder groups recognize the varied competencies of deaf students, their endeavors are frequently hindered by systemic obstacles, including insufficient teacher training, absence of specialized resources, communication barriers, and socioeconomic challenges. Mothers assume a pivotal role in providing emotional and material support; however, numerous individuals encounter impediments such as illiteracy and financial constraints. Teachers, while perceptive of students’ strengths, often lack the necessary resources and institutional backing to effectively cultivate talent.
