National Center for Research on Gifted Education logo to the left of an image of four elementary students sitting at a table learning from a student teacher.

"Every Child Has a Right to Learn Something New Every Day"

— NCRGE Research Rationale

Policymakers, educators, and parents want assurance that all of the nation’s gifted and talented students receive instruction that is sufficiently challenging and that will allow these students to reach their full potential.

Unfortunately, two crucial issues continue to plague gifted education:

  1. Underrepresented populations continue to be under identified as gifted and underserved by programs for the gifted.
  2. Research on best-practice interventions for gifted students and outcomes of gifted programs and services is sparse.

Our Center researchers are conducting three secondary studies and one randomized control trial (RCT) to provide stakeholders with tools to better recognize and harness untapped talent and increase our understanding of the outcomes of gifted services.

Two Current Research Opportunities

Study of Subject Acceleration Practices – Seeking Interview Participants

The National Center for Research on Gifted Education is conducting a study to document and disseminate information on how school districts implement subject acceleration (i.e., advancing students in one or more subject areas without whole-grade accelerating the student; may exist in combination with whole-grade acceleration procedures). We are seeking responses from school districts who have systematic procedures in place for subject acceleration. Our study goal is to describe common procedures in place in districts across the country as guidance for districts considering how to approach this practice.

Participation in the study will involve an online interview of a knowledgeable member of the district staff (e.g., gifted program coordinator, director of advanced academics) with the study team. We expect the interview to last approximately 1 hour. Participants will receive questions in advance and will also have the option of submitting responses in writing.

Learn more by reviewing the consent form below or by reaching out to Catherine Little at catherine.little@uconn.edu or 860-486-2754.

UConn IRB Protocol X23-0389 Approved July 13, 2023

Review the Consent Form

Study to Identify Gaps in Practitioner Knowledge Future Research Directions

The field of gifted education and talent development plays a crucial role in nurturing the potential of exceptional learners. Despite ongoing efforts and advancements, there remains a need to identify gaps in practitioner knowledge and determine future research directions. The National Center for Research on Gifted Education is developing a survey to review the current landscape of gifted education knowledge and highlight areas requiring further exploration. 

The first section includes open-ended questions about gifted education knowledge and research needs. The second section asks about respondent's knowledge in various areas of gifted education and invites them to rank knowledge and research priorities. We anticipate launching the survey in February 2026.

Our Latest Research Finding

Identification systems typically involve conjunctive ("And"), disjunctive ("Or"), and compensatory ("Mean") rules for combining multiple measures. As correlations among assessments decrease, conjunctive and compensatory systems identify fewer students (unless the cut-off for the mean score is adjusted for shrinkage), while disjunctive rules identify more students for programming. However, both researchers and practitioners in gifted education often assume that correlations among multiple identification measures are the same for students from different backgrounds. We addressed this issue recently in an AERA paper presentation titled "Could 'Or' Give Us More? The Equity Implications of Combination Rules When Correlations Vary Across Groups." If correlations among measures are lower for one group than another, the group with lower correlations would be disadvantaged by conjunctive (AND) and compensatory (MEAN) rules (unless the compensatory rule computes shrinkage factors separately for each subgroup). Conversely, they would be advantaged by disjunctive (OR) rules. We demonstrated how correlations among identification assessments vary across demographic subgroups and how this influences the representation of those groups under the AND, MEAN, and OR rules. The key takeaways from this paper presentation were:

  • Different combination rules can be implemented to identify similar overall percentages of students.
  • Correlations among identification measures do appear to vary somewhat across demographic groups, and this has implications for how combination rules can be expected to perform.
  • No combination rule can create parity when mean score differences across subgroups are substantial.