Theoretical approaches, societal issues, and practical implications for school-based and extracurricular talent development: Outcomes of the Inaugural European–North American Summit on Talent Development (Part II)

Abstract

Gifted Child Quarterly and High Ability Studies collaborated on this pair of special issues resulting from the Inaugural European–North American Summit on Talent Development. The summit, held in Washington, DC, in April 2016, had two main goals. The summit aimed, first, to increase researchers’ awareness of work on talent development being carried out in different countries by bringing together scholars working in Europe and the United States. The summit’s second aim was to initiate a new format for small, collaborative conferences at which participants present ideas they are working on – in medias res, so to speak – to all the other participants in order to receive feedback before they have completed their research. The event was made possible through the generous financial support of the American Psychological Association, the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, the Center for Talent Development of Northwestern University, and the Academic Talent-Development Program at the University of California, Berkeley. The two-day event consisted of clusters of presentations on eight topics. In each cluster, three researchers (two from American institutions and one from a European institution) presented their work and discussed future directions and possible implementations. Thanks to editors Betsy McCoach, Del Siegle, and Albert Ziegler, all participants were invited to submit manuscripts for publication based on their presentation. The resulting articles on work presented in the first four talent-development clusters (theoretical perspectives, societal participation, the context of school, and outside of school) make up the special issue of Gifted Child Quarterly. Manuscripts arising from presentations in the final four talent-development clusters (outcomes, psychosocial factors, adaptive and maladaptive learning, high achievement and performance) comprise the special issue of High Ability Studies.