In this essay, the authors explore the critical role of above-grade-level testing in identifying and supporting academically advanced students in their areas of strength. It presents the Talent Search model as a proven, research-based approach to creating optimal learning environments through differentiated assessment and instructional planning. The authors share ideas and arguments for broader adoption of these practices in schools to ensure equitable access to talent development opportunities, including academic acceleration.

This meta-analysis explored a total of 230 effects that were extracted from 20 empirical studies on overexcitabilities (OEs) to study the relationship between giftedness and OE. Variables studied included operationalization of giftedness, use of explicit benchmarks for identifying giftedness, type of OE instrument, gender, developmental level of participants, and national setting and timing of study. Overall, there was a positive and significant relationship found between OE and giftedness with the strongest relationship being with Intellectual OE and the weakest with Sensory and Emotional OE. However, the strength of the relationship varied significantly by operationalization of giftedness, being strongest when giftedness was operationalized as previous identification as gifted and non-existent when operationalized as general intelligence or cognitive ability. In addition, when no explicit benchmarks were employed for gifted identification, there was no evidence of such a difference between the gifted and non-gifted. When comparing gifted to non-gifted students, differences were found only for high school-aged students, but not for elementary and/or middle school age or adults. The differences obtained in OE between the gifted and non-gifted are likely to be overestimated due to a presence of publication bias, that is, an overrepresentation of studies with relatively small sample sizes. Recommendations include caution about assumptions regarding the prevalence of OEs among gifted students, using OEs as indicators of giftedness in school-based referral and identification processes, and for designing affective education curricula and services targeting gifted students.

We report on a qualitative study about the presence and role of insider knowledge in the lives of talented adolescents. Several themes emerged from the interviews: career aspirations of the participants; sources of knowledge about colleges and choosing a college; sources of knowledge about STEM careers; anticipated challenges; required skill sets; and types of support needed to address challenges. Participants received college guidance from school counselors and used the Internet as a primary source for STEM-related activities and information. Participants formed their ideas on what life is like for a STEM professional based on people they knew, TV shows, and social media, with more realistic notions acquired by students with a family member in STEM. Commonly experienced and anticipated challenges were competition in school and in college admissions. Time management was identified as a necessary skill, and the most frequently cited support needed was guidance with respect to career paths.

Talent development as a framework for services for advanced learners has gained traction within schools, but there are challenges that remain. In this paper, we address some of these, including identification systems that are consistent with a domain focus and geared towards the stage of talent development; exceptional abilities that are often ignored by schools but could be identified and cultivated; programming that is continuous, articulated with the school curriculum, with defined outcomes for growth and performance; better understanding and use of data for identification and monitoring of progress; and policies that support acceleration and advanced learning options. The major challenge for schools is the potential to bifurcate services into talent development for underserved learners versus gifted services for high achieving students, rather than providing multiple pathways for learners with different needs that lead to high achievement for all.

Spatial thinking permeates much of our lives and is an asset when solving problems involving well-structured visual information or imagining solutions in physical or digital space. However, an estimated three million US school children have spatial talents that go unrecognized because of the tools commonly used for identification of academic talent. For decades, educational and psychological research has explored the range of spatial thinking skills that are demanded by many career fields, including science, engineering, and mathematics. Spatial thinking has been found to be particularly important to early mathematical thinking. In this article, we explore what spatial thinking entails, where it is important in the curriculum, and how we can begin to develop spatial literacy and identify spatial talents in our K-12 classrooms.

Talent development addresses important components and stages of domain trajectories from childhood through adulthood, with the goal of providing opportunities for achieving creative productivity for those with abilities and aspirations to pursue that goal. The talent development megamodel (TDMM) identifies the interaction of domain specific abilities, learning, mentoring opportunities, and psychosocial skills as central features of the model. We discuss domain specific abilities, both physical and cognitive (e.g., spatial reasoning), that drive possibilities for fulfilling talent in STEM, dance, and sport. A deeper look at these domain abilities introduces concerns for needed research especially as fields transform and evolve over time.

In this article, we describe a collaboration between a university and school district aimed at preparing more students who are typically underidentified and underserved in gifted programs for advanced STEM coursework in high school. Features of the collaboration included early intervention, significant outside-of-school programming and coursework in STEM through elementary and middle school (over 400 h), tutoring, and support for families. Data included scores on two standardized achievement tests for 14 cohorts of students who self-identified as African American and/or Hispanic (361 total students) as they progressed from Grade 3 to Grade 8, placement in accelerated mathematics courses in Grade 9, and college matriculation. Comparisons were made to data for comparable demographic groups within the school district. Results showed greater growth in reading and mathematics compared to demographic peers in the district reaching achievement levels comparable to the highest-scoring students in the district. There were significant increases in the percentage of students entering high school with advanced placement in mathematics as well as improvement over multiple cohorts in matriculation at more selective institutions of higher education. Results are discussed with respect to best practices for the identification of students with potential STEM talent, effective university–school partnerships, and STEM-talent development pathways.

Insider knowledge is critical information about how to achieve success that is not available to the general public but is relatively well-known to individuals within the domain and to those who have access to those individuals. The goal of this study was to examine the perceived role of insider knowledge in a sample of highly accomplished American professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We asked participants explicitly if insider knowledge had played a role in their talent development trajectory from K-12 education to their current creative work, with questions related to experiences at the undergraduate and graduate level and during their careers. The study was exploratory, so no formal hypotheses were put forward. Given the lack of research on the topic of insider knowledge as defined in this paper, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a select group of individuals who had successful careers in STEM fields, both to see if insider knowledge was something that they considered important and to see if they felt that insider knowledge had played a role in their educational and career trajectories. Our hope is that the results of this paper will inform future in-depth studies on the topic of insider knowledge.

The foundation for talent development as a framework for gifted education can be found in a synthesis of the psychological literature on creativity, eminence, giftedness, and high performance. The talent development framework acknowledges the contributions of both general cognitive ability and domain-specific abilities to achievement, as well as the malleability of these ability constructs. Talent development is also consistent with research on the contributions of non-cognitive or psychosocial factors to school achievement, as well as studies on factors that influence the attainment of scholarly productivity and artistry within specific domains of non-academic talent. Although there are several theoretical frameworks and models of giftedness, talent development, ability, and intelligence, each with varied areas of emphasis and desired outcomes, the research base and practical applications for the talent development megamodel (TDMM) can serve as a guide to leaders and school administrators in making fiscal and programmatic decisions that maximize short- and long-term impacts for individuals and society. In this article, we discuss some of the practical implications of the model for assessment, curriculum and instruction, and psychosocial development within a school context.

In this article, we describe a collaboration between a university and school district aimed at preparing more students who are typically underidentified and underserved in gifted programs for advanced STEM coursework in high school. Features of the collaboration included early intervention, significant outside-of-school programming and coursework in STEM through elementary and middle school (over 400 h), tutoring, and support for families. Data included scores on two standardized achievement tests for 14 cohorts of students who self-identified as African American and/or Hispanic (361 total students) as they progressed from Grade 3 to Grade 8, placement in accelerated mathematics courses in Grade 9, and college matriculation. Comparisons were made to data for comparable demographic groups within the school district. Results showed greater growth in reading and mathematics compared to demographic peers in the district reaching achievement levels comparable to the highest-scoring students in the district. There were significant increases in the percentage of students entering high school with advanced placement in mathematics as well as improvement over multiple cohorts in matriculation at more selective institutions of higher education. Results are discussed with respect to best practices for the identification of students with potential STEM talent, effective university-school partnerships, and STEM-talent development pathways.

Design-based research is characterized as a methodology where the “outcomes” of research include new or (hopefully) improved interventions in addition to contributing to the development of theory. Rather than developing an intervention in isolation (“in vitro”) and then “piloting” the intervention to evaluate its efficacy, design-based research in education develops interventions significantly “in vivo,” and directly engages stakeholders such as learners, teachers, and local administrators, in the research and design process as collaborators (van den Akker, 2007). Project OCCAMS, an acronym for “Online Curriculum Consortium for Accelerating Middle School,” is a collaboration between university-based centers for gifted education and talent development and a diverse urban school district which adopted this approach in pursuit of a shared goal of increasing access to advanced learning opportunities for low income and diverse students in middle school and providing a new pathway for successful participation in college-level coursework in high school. The articles in this special issue collectively tell the story of the development of a novel language arts curriculum which compacts three grade levels of curriculum standards into a 2-year course of study. The program facilitates academic acceleration of many students otherwise ineligible for traditional gifted education services with a goal of placing bright but underserved students in diverse schools on a path that narrows achievement gaps with more advantaged subgroups and creates time in high school for learners to take fuller advantage of advanced learning optionsmorewidely available in high schools. The authors of these articles bring both higher education and K12 perspectives. They describe the evolution of Project OCCAMS from an experimental intervention originally perceived as somewhat radical to some practitioners to an institutionalized model that has become sustainable and has continued to grow its impact beyond the life of the grants that supported its early development. In the introductory article, Calvert, OlszewskiKubilius, Cross, and Cross describe the goals of Project OCCAMS and its theoretical underpinnings in research on academic acceleration (Steenbergen-Hu et al., 2016), talent development (Subotnik et al., 2021) and the Integrated CurriculumModel (VanTassel-Baska &Wood, 2010). The authors also describe how the features of Project OCCAMS respond to specific policy and structural barriers minoritized and low-income students face to participation in advanced learning opportunities. These barriers are identified through analyses of public data and state and local policies that unintentionally contribute to the persistent underrepresentation of diverse and lowincome learners in gifted education services and advanced coursework in secondary schools. In their article describing the content, development, and revision of the Project OCCAMS Accelerated Language Arts curriculum, Robins, Sanguras, and Carpenter describe how the Integrated CurriculumModel was combined with curriculum compacting strategies (Reis et al., 2021) and culturally responsive instructional design frameworks (Gay, 2018). The authors also describe how input and feedback from participating students and teachers contributed to the evolution of the curriculum over two cycles of testing and iteration.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to inform readers about the nature of talent development prior to post-secondary education; describe the obstacles that individuals face because of poverty, racism or geography; and recommend asset-based approaches that can enable more individuals to be prepared to make significant contributions to society within their domain of talent. Design/methodology/approach The methodology used was to review research from the fields of education and psychology about talent in varied domains of sport, academics and the arts, as it relates to key components (domain pathways, opportunities and psychosocial skills) of the talent development megamodel proposed by Subotnik et al. (2011). Findings Findings include a delineation of the challenges that many nations face in cultivating talent among its young citizens particularly related to their socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity and geography. Findings include recommendations for new approaches to identification; a substantial increase in school and community-based, domain-specific opportunities; teacher training; and deliberate cultivation of psychosocial skills that can support achievement. Originality/value This paper emphasizes the importance of focusing efforts on talent development at earlier stages, which is critical to creating pathways for marginalized youths to maximize their potential and contributions to the workplace.

Insider knowledge is critical information about how to achieve success that is not available to the general public but is relatively well-known to individuals within the domain and to those who have access to those individuals. The goal of this study was to examine the perceived role of insider knowledge in a sample of highly accomplished American professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We asked participants explicitly if insider knowledge had played a role in their talent development trajectory from K–12 education to their current creative work, with questions related to experiences at the undergraduate and graduate level and during their careers. The study was exploratory, so no formal hypotheses were put forward. Given the lack of research on the topic of insider knowledge as defined in this paper, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a select group of individuals who had successful careers in STEM fields, both to see if insider knowledge was something that they considered important and to see if they felt that insider knowledge had played a role in their educational and career trajectories. Our hope is that the results of this paper will inform future in-depth studies on the topic of insider knowledge.