Gifted Education in Transition: From Elitist Enclave to Promising Opportunities for Empowerment and Inclusion

Gifted education has a troubled history. It has been attacked justly as an elitist enterprise that entrenches existing inequities. At the same time, however, those who have studied giftedness, creativity, and talent development for the past several decades have learned a lot about how people's abilities develop. By applying this knowledge more broadly across the population, every child can be given what she needs to find and develop her abilities. In the move away from notions of the innate genetic superiority of a few chosen individuals, toward an appreciation of environmental and psychosocial factors interacting over time, giftedness, creativity, and talent become less mysterious and exclusive. Rather than working to entrench an inequitable status quo, then, gifted education has the potential to transform educational opportunities and affordances across racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and other kinds of diversity. Gifted education today, as it incorporates current knowledge about human development, provides an exciting opportunity for creative empowerment for diverse individuals.