November 1, 2013, Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) and Center for the Study of Giftedness (CBO), Nijmegen, The Netherlands
On 1 November, 2013 the Center for the Study of Giftedness (CBO) and the Behavioural Science Institute of the Radboud University Nijmegen organized an international conference in the Nederlands on the 25th anniversary of the foundation of CBO.
The conference offered the possibility to internationally known researchers to show their latest research findings concerning excellence and talent development, and to all the participants to hear about these findings and to make discussions with researchers, other experts and each other.
After the opening ceremony the professional program started with Prof. Nicolas Colangelo’s (University of Iowa, USA) engaging keynote speech about the research, beliefs and practices of the acceleration of gifted students. Acceleration has been one the most controversial issues in gifted education for well over the past 25 years, research results are often in contrast with the beliefs and practices. The presentation highlighted these inconsistencies and provided a guide for the future based on best practices. After the keynote speech Lianne Hoogeveen, head of the CBO presented the last 25 years of the Center from its foundation to nowdays.
The following lectures were given in parallel sections. Margaret Sutherland (University of Glasgow, Scotland) spoke about the idea of education for all, and the necessity of including the needs of gifted and talented young people into education, while Erik Plug (University of Amsterdam) talked about enriching the gifted, and introduced an enrichment program in secondary education.
The topic of self-regulated learning strategies in potential development and gifted education was presented by Christian Fischer (University of Münster, Germany), and at the same time linguistic bias in the assessment of intellectual abilities in bilingual high-achieving students were highlighted in the presentation of Eliane Segers (Radboud University Nijmegen). An interesting initiation concerning e-mentoring for girls in STEM was introduced by Heidrun Stoeger (University of Regensburg), while Carla van Boxtel (University of Amsterdam) was speaking about enhancing the development of motivation, self-regulation and achievement for potentially excellent students in mathematics and history education.
In the last session we could hear Mojca Jurisevic (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) about gifted students' motivation to learn at school and Stephanie van der Berg (University of Twente) about giftedness, genes and twin studies, as well as Sheyla Blumen’s (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) enthusiastic speech about creativity, technology and talent development towards excellence in education and Tessa Kieboom (CBO Antwerpen) about IQ and giftedness.
The conference allowed the participants to get acquainted with recent research results and to broaden their knowledge in the topic of giftedness, and was a worthy celebration in tribute to the Center for the Study of Giftedness (CBO) on its 25th anniversary.
