Building Knowledge Bridges: Synthesising Early Years and Gifted Education Research and Practice to Provide an Optimal Start for Young Gifted Children

Early Childhood Gifted Education

“…Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is the education of young children from birth till 8 years of age. There is evidence in the literature to support the financial returns over a lifetime to providing young children with quality ECEC before they enter school (Sutherland and Stack 2019). While ECEC may vary tremendously in academic focus, quality programs in the early years provide young children with formative experiences for establishing the foundations of academic achievement throughout a lifetime.…”

“…Therefore, provisions of ECEC from a Western perspective fail to give due consideration to cultural and contextual differences. Sutherland and Stack (2019) illustrate this argument by defining the Western perspective of ECEC as positivist and socially constructed, which then brings in the argument of how one should effectively measure contextual, personal, and cultural values and beliefs about good quality ECEC.…”

“…Interestingly, largely missing in the literature of ECEC are studies in early childhood gifted education (Kaplan and Hertzog 2016;Kettler et al 2017;Sutherland and Stack 2019), in particular studies related to gifted provisions, policy, and practice (Kettler et al 2017). This could be partly due to the fact that in most countries around the world, gifted education is generally started after second grade because that is the time when children would have undertaken standardized achievement tests (Kaplan and Hertzog 2016).…”

“…Indeed, identifying and meeting the needs of young gifted children requires adequately skilled educators able to address the needs, strengths, and interests of these learners (Hertzog et al 2018;Kaplan and Hertzog 2016;Kettler et al 2017;Sutherland and Stack 2019;Wellisch 2020). Many educators often experience difficulty in identifying the characteristics of gifted young children and the types of appropriate learning accommodations beneficial to them.…”

“…While many educators seem to be aware of the need to identify young gifted children early, they seem to be unable to recognize signs of giftedness (Wright and Ford 2017). This dichotomy stems from the fact that many early childhood educators have little or no formal training in identifying young gifted children and designing learning opportunities for them and so, young gifted children's needs are often not well understood and they are not offered the right provisions early enough (Kettler et al 2017;Sutherland and Stack 2019;Wellisch 2020). Such findings highlight the need for early childhood educators who are adequately trained to recognize giftedness and to provide differentiated services for young gifted children.…”