Jonathan Plucker

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Johns Hopkins University

Recent controversies in psychology have spurred conversations about the nature and quality of psychological research. One topic receiving substantial attention is the role of replication in psychological science. Using the complete publication history of the 100 psychology journals with the highest 5-year impact factors, the current article provide...

A recent study in the USA documented the existence and growth of “excellence gaps” among students. These gaps are similar to the minimum competency achievement gaps that proliferate in policy discussions in many Western countries, but excellence gaps focus on the highest level of achievement rather than minimum competency. We extend this research u...

Excellence gaps are differences in advanced education outcomes among student groups. This study replicates and extends an earlier study on the prevalence and magnitude of excellence gaps based on student sex and immigrant status using Grade 8 TIMSS data. Data were included for the 12 countries that have participated in each TIMSS administration fro...

Both questionable (e.g., p-hacking) and open research practices (e.g., preregistration) are prevalent in education research. We sought to understand the explanations given by educational researchers for why either should or should not be used. Two teams of researchers independently analyzed open-ended survey responses from 1,488 education researche...

The term giftedness is often used to describe exceptional ability compared to peers of the same age, environment, and experience; however, there is substantial variance in how people conceive and measure the construct of giftedness. Clarity about this construct can help those seeking to develop talent among people across different ages and domains....

Automatic enrollment is a straightforward education reform that facilitates both educational excellence and equity in K-12 schools. By automatically placing highly qualified students in advanced coursework, this low-cost, bi-partisan strategy creates opportunities for high achievement for all students, with low-income, rural and small town, and und...

Higher education may be well-suited for efforts to teach students transformational creativity. This chapter describes two efforts to promote development of positive forms of creativity and innovation and avoid malevolent creativity. The first, developed at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, involves a large-scale reimagining of the undergraduate l...

Confucianism is often criticized as a disincentive for creativity and innovation. This article investigated Confucian conceptions of creativity and innovation from a sociocultural perspective using Glăveanu’s Five A framework. Confucian aims of creation and innovation were lofty, but the range of people who could create was exclusionary, pathways t...

Creativity is a critical aspect of academic achievement, talent development, and adult professional accomplishments, which makes identifying and developing creativity- and innovation-related skills an important focus across several life stages. Assessing creative potential and performance can provide educators and employers with data to guide the d...

School-based learning experiences are often designed with the “typical” student in mind. However, this may not be an optimal approach, given the variability of prior learning that exists in most classrooms. We investigated the variance in achievement within U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade mathematics classrooms using Trends in International Mathemati...

Misalignment between the mandates and structures of formal schooling and the developmental needs of boys, particularly in the humanities, is receiving increased levels of public and scholarly attention. The problems may be especially acute for low-income and minoritized children. But little guidance for identifying and implementing best and promisi...

Unequal access to advanced learning opportunities is among the most complex and controversial issues in American K–12 schools. Interventions that address policy, programming, and instruction can provide opportunities for students with advanced learning needs in school systems that prioritize minimum grade-level standards. Excellence gaps are differ...

Talent development is an approach to education for advanced achievement. Traditionally, many models of advanced education focus on the identification of young people who are already performing at high levels, interpreting that performance as evidence that the student needs additional advanced services. In contrast, talent development focuses on pro...

In a rapidly changing world, it can be hard to know where to invest resources in K-12 education to prepare students for the future. Educators are pulled in many different directions as they try to address course content, local curriculum, state standards, and accountability testing in a very limited amount of instructional time. Integrating creativ...

Identification for gifted and talented services is governed by state and local policies. Inclusive, student-centered policies can support equity and excellence by ensuring that all students have access to appropriate levels of academic challenge. Gifted programming standards, evidence-based interventions, and emerging strategies can provide guidanc...

In 1998, Plucker and Runco provided an overview of creativity assessment, noting current issues (fluency confounds, generality vs. specificity), recent advances (predictive validity, implicit theories), and promising future directions (moving beyond divergent thinking measures, reliance on batteries of assessments, translation into practice). In th...

In recent years, state and local support for academic acceleration has created opportunities for students with advanced learning needs to move through their education at a pace that matches their abilities and may be faster than their same-age peers. As a result, it is not uncommon for exceptionally bright students to complete their high school gra...

Artificial intelligence (AI), which enables machines to learn to perform a task by training on diverse datasets, is one of the most revolutionary developments in scientific history. AlthoughAI, and especially deep learning, is relatively new, it has already had a transformative impact on medicine, biology, transportation, entertainment, and beyond....

Artificial intelligence (AI), which enables machines to learn to perform a task by training on diverse datasets, is one of the most revolutionary developments in scientific history. AlthoughAI, and especially deep learning, is relatively new, it has already had a transformative impact on medicine, biology, transportation, entertainment, and beyond....

Using TIMSS 2019 mathematics data, we investigated the variance in achievement within U.S. fourth and eighth-grade classrooms. Approximately 23% of students in a typical grade four classroom are expected to score at or below the low benchmark whereas 14% meet or exceed the advanced benchmark; these numbers are 35% and 14% for grade eight classrooms...

The goal of gifted education is to serve the needs of individuals with high potential and advanced ability. However, the term “gifted” can create barriers in the minds of the public and policymakers, effectively framing these advanced learning opportunities as inequitable and inaccessible. Excellence gaps, or differences in advanced performance amo...

Social, Psychological, Academic, Environmental, and Cognitive Supports for Gifted Students’ Scale

Previous studies on poverty within the gifted population have shown that economically vulnerable gifted students are underrepresented in gifted programs. Moreover, the majority of published studies on this topic were conducted in Western cultures. We explored the psychological, cognitive, academic, social, and environmental supports for economicall...

Previous studies on poverty within the gifted population have shown that economically vulnerable gifted students are underrepresented in gifted programs. Moreover, the majority of published studies on this topic were conducted in Western cultures. We explored the psychological, cognitive, academic, social, and environmental supports for economicall...

This textbook is a systematic and straightforward introduction to the interdisciplinary study of creativity. Each chapter is written by one or more of the world's experts and features the latest research developments, alongside foundational knowledge. Each chapter also includes an introduction, key terms, and critical thought questions to promote a...

Replication is a key activity in scientific endeavors. Yet explicit replications are rare in many fields, including education and psychology. In this article, we discuss the relevance and value of replication in educational psychology and analyze challenges regarding the role replications can and should play in research. These challenges include ph...

Concerns about the conduct of research are pervasive in many fields, including education. In this preregistered study, we replicated and extended previous studies from other fields by asking education researchers about 10 questionable research practices and five open research practices. We asked them to estimate the prevalence of the practices in t...

Due in large part to technological advances, society has changed in unprecedented ways and at a breakneck pace. Yet conceptions of giftedness and models for gifted education have not kept pace with these changes. One conceptual change widely applied to other fields is the use of sociocultural theories, which are rarely applied to the study of and e...

Talent development plans are well-articulated representations of a district’s or school’s advanced learning opportunities. These plans show how a bright student progresses through the available programming and provide families with information about their child’s options and opportunities. In addition to reviewing the basic pieces of a talent devel...

In the 21st century, what does a defensible, equitable model of gifted and talented student identification look like? For too long, gifted education’s reason for being has been unclear, and the students it has served have been from too narrow a segment of the student population. With renewed attention to equity and personalized learning, gifted edu...

There is substantial evidence on the effectiveness of many forms of advanced education, especially various approaches to acceleration, ability grouping, and curricular innovations such as structured curriculum and enrichment. Nonetheless, additional research on the ways in which advanced education impacts the learning and lives of students across t...

Replicability and the importance of enhanced research rigor are foundational issues across the social sciences, and educational psychology is no exception. Yet strategies for increasing research quality are not widespread in the field, including the use of replication studies. In this manuscript, we examine the nature and scope of replication probl...

Discussions of how to improve research quality are predominant in a number of fields, including education. But how prevalent are the use of problematic practices and the improved practices meant to counter them? This baseline information will be a critical data source as education researchers seek to improve our research practices. In this preregis...

Despite considerable reform activity surrounding K-12 education over the last 20 years, racialand socioeconomic disparities among students who achieve at advanced levels have receivedlittle attention. This study examined how excellence gaps, defined as differences in performanceat the 90th percentile of subgroups, change over time and their potenti...

Este manifiesto, discutido por 20 académicos y académicas que representan diversas líneas de investigación sobre la creatividad, marca un cambio conceptual dentro de los estudios de este campo. Los enfoques socioculturales han hecho contribuciones sustanciales al concepto de creatividad en las últimas décadas y hoy pueden proporcionar un conjunto d...

Despite considerable reform activity surrounding K-12 education over the past 20 years, racial and socioeconomic disparities among students who achieve at advanced levels have received little attention. This study examined how excellence gaps, defined as differences in performance at the 90th percentile of subgroups, change over time and their pote...

Gough’s Creative Personality Scale (CPS) has been very widely used to assess creative personality characteristics, and many researchers have argued that it is associated with strong reliability and validity evidence. However, findings vary considerably across the samples used in each study, suggesting that an analysis using the item response theory...

Meeting the intellectual needs of high-ability students does not end upon graduation from high school. However, limited attention is paid to the important topic of postsecondary advanced learning in the research literature. In this systematic review, we identified 52 empirical studies published during the past 15 years. Results suggest various cogn...

The Center for Open Science (COS) will create an ECR Data Resource Hub to facilitate rigorous and reproducible research practices such as data sharing and study registration. The Hub will integrate training materials, infrastructure, community engagement, and innovation in research to advance rigorous research skills and behavior across the STEM ed...

Creativity, as one of the key 21st century skills, has become increasingly important. Yet despite the huge volume of research on creativity in the past 60 years, a fundamental debate about the nature of creativity still remains unsolved: Is creativity domain specific or domain general? In the present study, multilevel explanatory item response theo...

Educators have sought to understand and address the disproportional representation of students from certain student subgroups in gifted education. Most gifted identification decisions are made with national comparisons where students must score above a certain percentage of test takers. However, this approach is not always consistent with the overa...

The past half-decade has seen the applied sciences in the throes of acute growing pains. In what has become known as the replication crisis, widespread failures to replicate prior findings have shaken several fields, including medicine, psychology, management, and economics. Fortunately, the systemic problems brought to light by the replication cri...

We examined the applicability of the hybrid model of creativity, which specifies distinct domains that all express an underlying general creativity factor, in data from representative samples from Central Russia and the North Caucasus (N = 2,046). Using multigroup confirmatory analysis, Study 1 supported the invariance of a model with the six unifa...

Although a theoretical link between positive schizotypy and heightened creativity has been established in the literature, little empirical research has been conducted to examine the underlying cognitive processes that contribute to this association. In addition, previous studies found a negative relationship between positive schizotypy and cognitiv...

Creativity is increasingly identified as a key educational outcome at the local, regional, and national levels in several countries. Yet one key issue about the nature of creativity remains controversial: Whether creativity is domain specific or domain general. Resolving this issue would significantly impact the way creativity is identified, nurtur...

Creativity has been identified by many as an important indicator of giftedness. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the field of creativity. The chapter begins with a definition of creativity, followed by classic theories that reflect the history of creativity research. We then review and critique creativity assessments, an area of the f...

This study investigated change in divergent thinking (DT), an indicator of creative potential, at two gender-specific residential summer camps. Additionally, this study examined whether the change in DT varied by gender and by the type of activities campers self-select. Quantitative methods, using a quasi-experimental design was used in order to un...

An emphasis on design thinking is increasingly prevalent in both professional and educational settings. From maker spaces to prototyping labs to the infusion of creative design thinking into K-12 instruction, principles of design thinking are making their way into a range of educational contexts and interventions. Many of these initiatives are base...

The past 50 years have seen a tremendous strengthening of the field of creativity studies. Developments over the past couple decades, in particular, have led to a burgeoning science of creativity. But major methodological and substantive issues remain and must be addressed in order for the science of creativity to reach its potential to improve the...

The number of economically vulnerable students in the United States is large and growing. In this article, we examine income-based excellence gaps and describe recent controversies in the definition and measurement of poverty, with an eye toward their application to gifted education and meeting the needs of talented, economically vulnerable student...

As the awareness of the existence and negative effects of excellence gaps has grown among educators and policy makers, so too has a desire for research-supported interventions to reduce these gaps. A recent review of research related to promoting equitable outcomes for all gifted students identified six specific strategies for reducing excellence g...

Replication is a hallmark of science. In recent years, some medical sciences and behavioral sciences struggled with what came to be known as replication crises. As a field, criminology has yet to address formally the threats to our evidence base that might be posed by large-scale and systematic replication attempts, although it is likely we would f...

The question of whether gifted students learn differently from other students has long plagued the psychology and education communities. On the one hand, the field of gifted education has promoted special programs that capitalize on gifted children's individual abilities and needs. At the same time, evidence from rigorous studies has supported the...

Five possible relationships between creativity and intelligence have been proposed, with empirical support for each relationship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between these constructs with a Korean sample. Previous research with Asian samples provides evidence of more overlap between creativity and intelligence impl...

Creativity can be assessed from four different perspectives—creative product, process, person, and environment. Popular methods of assessing creative products in education, psychology, and business range from rater-based techniques, such as the Consensual Assessment Technique, to self-reported measures, such as the Creative Behavior Inventory (Hoce...

Few topics have garnered more attention in preservice teacher training and educational reform than student diversity and its influence on learning. However, the actual degree of cognitive diversity has yet to be considered regarding instructional implications for advanced learners. We used four data sets (three state-level and one national) from di...

Policy research in gifted education has occurred at much lower rates than other areas of research within the field, such as identification and talent development. However, without changes and implementation of these policies, systematic change is unlikely to occur. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to argue that policy research should be a...