Matthew Makel

• PhD
• Professor at University of Calgary

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...

Making policy decisions based solely on independent studies has limitations. Previous calls for replication and acknowledging effect heterogeneity have generally been unsuccessful. In this essay, we propose team science through systematic replications as a productive path forward. We explore (a) basic team science and its value; (b) the need for sy...

According to a 2017 article by Peters and colleagues, millions of students have already demonstrated they know the material slated to be taught that year. Consequently, grade-level standards are unlikely to be appropriately challenging for these students. In this paper, we conceptually replicated and extended this prior study. Using data from schoo...

The ability to effectively identify students for advanced learning opportunities has been an ongoing issue within the field of gifted education. Common criteria to guide the design and evaluation of identification systems has been essentially non-existent. In this article we provide a practical guide for evaluating and reflecting on the effectivene...

Students who are Black or Hispanic have long been disproportionately represented in K–12 gifted and talented services. However, there are schools that have diverged from this trend by identifying atypically high numbers of Black and Hispanic students. In this conceptual replication of Peters and Johnson, we present predictors of whether a school of...

Universal screening is one of the most-common topics and well-accepted best practices within the field of gifted and talented education. There appears to be little disagreement that universally screening all students as part of a gifted and talented identification process results in fewer missed students. But surprisingly, there is little guidance...

Finding all the “gifted” students who would benefit from a gifted and talented service is a perpetual concern. In this article, we focus on how to effectively implement multiple criteria in identification. First, we provide some broad background before introducing three different ways to combine multiple data points (AND, OR, and MEAN) when identif...

According to Peters, et al. (2017), millions of students have already demonstrated that they know the material slated to be taught that year. Consequently, the grade-level standards are unlikely to be appropriately challenging for these students. In this paper, we conceptually replicate and extend this prior study. Using data from schools that admi...

Parent-led, home-based education, or homeschooling, has grown rapidly over recent decades with participation rates increasing more than 100-fold to now nearly one in 25 students nationwide in the United States. However, the research base has not grown correspondingly, and homeschoolers remain understudied. We systematically surveyed a population of...

Gifted and talented services have a long and tainted history. Since their inception, they have not served a student population that mirrored the racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic diversity of the nation as a whole. But this need not be the case. Contemporary approaches to gifted education can advance the goals of equity and school integration. In sh...

Students who are Black or Hispanic have long been disproportionately underrepresented in K-12 gifted and talented services. However, there are schools that have diverged from this trend by identifying atypically high numbers of Black and Hispanic students. In this paper we present predictors of access to and equity within gifted and talented popula...

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...

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness and reproducibility of research, characterized by increased interest and promotion of open and transparent research practices. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approach can be embedded into undergradu...

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...

Finding all the “gifted” students who would benefit from a gifted and talented service is a perpetual concern. In this article, we focus on how to effectively implement multiple criteria in identification. First, we provide some broad background before introducing three different ways to combine multiple data points (AND, OR, and MEAN) when identif...

Debates over identification procedures for gifted and talented students dominate the field and serve as the topic of many of its internal and external debates. We believe this is due to a lack of commonly accepted criteria for how to evaluate identification procedures. In this article, we present the Cost, Alignment, Sensitivity, and Access (CASA)...

Debates over identification procedures for gifted and talented students dominate the field and serve as the topic of many of its internal and external debates. We believe this is due to a lack of commonly accepted criteria for how to evaluate identification procedures. In this paper, we present the CASA criteria, a framework to evaluate identificat...

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness, and reproducibility of research, characterized by higher standards of scientific evidence, increased interest in open practices, and promotion of transparency. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approa...

Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on embedding open and reproducible approaches into research. One essential step in accomplishing this larger goal is to embed such practices into undergraduate and postgraduate research training. However, this often requires substantial time and resources to implement. Also, while many pedagogical resourc...

Background: Students vary in their initial achievement when they enter school and their rate of academic growth as they move through school. These differences have implications for classroom instruction and educational policy. Although previous research has examined initial achievement and growth differences, a gap remains in understanding how ini...

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...

Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on embedding open and reproducible approaches into research. One essential step in accomplishing this larger goal is to embed such practices into undergraduate and postgraduate research training. However, this often requires substantial time and resources to implement. Also, while many pedagogical resourc...

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...

Conversations over who should be identified as gifted continue perpetually both within the field and in the popular media. In this article, we focus on the use of local norms as one approach to gifted identification that can increase the equity of advanced educational programs and services while also better achieving their stated purpose of providi...

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...

Research concerning beliefs about the malleability of personal characteristics has recently turned to a focus on heterogeneity, including the exploration of moderators of intervention effectiveness and construct-specificity of implicit beliefs. This moving beyond a mean-level approach can provide insight into the differential types of implicit beli...

Schools exist to educate, yet the emphasis on age-based, grade-level standards fails to account for the wide range of academic readiness that exists in every classroom. Special education programs exist to meet student needs; gifted education should be no different. The authors, all gifted education researchers, present a vision for a model of gifte...

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...

Existing research practices in gifted education have many areas for potential improvement so that they can provide useful, generalizable evidence to various stakeholders. In this article, we first review the field’s current research practices and consider the quality and utility of its research findings. Next, we discuss how open science practices...

Conversations over who should be identified as “gifted” continue perpetually both within the fieldand in the popular media. In this paper, we focus on the use of local norms as one approach togifted identification that can increase the equity of advanced educational programs and serviceswhile also better achieving their stated purpose of providing...

Some areas of human performance have clear outcome metrics-such as chess or running-which ease the testing of expertise models. However, there are areas of expertise (which may lead to eminence) where cultural context and other factors may have varying levels of importance, but where expertise models should still be tested to inform more comprehens...

Robert Sternberg (2019) provides a critique of our work that is more of a commentary or reflection, because he is not in disagreement with us but simply has a different point of view. We appreciate that Sternberg, a scholar who has contributed prolifically to the literatures on intelligence, creativity, and expertise, is thinking deeply about our w...

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...

Concerns about the replication crisis and unreliable findings have spread through several fields, including education and psychological research. In some areas of education, researchers have begun to adopt reforms that have proven useful in other fields. These include preregistration, open materials and data, and registered reports. These reforms o...

The purpose of education research is to better understand educational phenomena to inform policy and improve practice. Forward progress within any field is based on the validity and credibility of that field’s research base - educators cannot make informed decisions based on anecdotal evidence, opaque research practices, or on studies that cannot b...

Students have numerous opportunities to learn outside the classroom. However, with great choice comes great variability of both quality and of intent. To evaluate the effectiveness of out-of-school programs generally - as well as individual programs specifically - we must know their intended effects (program goals) as well as their actual effects....

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...

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...

Concerns about the replication crisis and false findings have spread through a number of fields, including educational and psychological research. In some pockets, education has begun to adopt open science reforms that have proven useful in other fields. These include preregistration, open materials and data, and registered reports. These reforms a...

In this manuscript, we (a) briefly describe proposed open-science practices to increase transparency of research in special education and related disciplines, and (b) provide recommendations for research funders, professional societies, journal editors and publishers, and individual researchers to support awareness, exploration, and adoption of ope...

In this manuscript, we (a) briefly describe proposed open-science practices to increase transparency of research in special education and related disciplines, and (b) provide recommendations for research funders, professional societies, journal editors and publishers, and individual researchers to support awareness, exploration, and adoption of ope...

In response to concerns about the credibility of many published research findings, open science reforms such as preregistration, data sharing, and alternative forms of publication are being increasingly adopted across scientific communities. Although journals on giftedness and advanced academic research have already implemented several of these pra...

Educational psychology is replete with verbal or qualitative definitions through which students can be considered members of categories, such as learning disabled, autistic, or gifted. These conceptions carry quantitative implications regarding the incidence rates of the phenomena they describe. To be scientifically useful, such definitions should...

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...

In response to concerns about the credibility of many published research findings, open science reforms such as preregistration, data sharing, and alternative forms of publication are being increasingly adopted across scientific communities. Although journals in giftedness and advanced academics research have already implemented several of these pr...

The open science movement is rapidly changing the scientific landscape. Because exact definitions are often lacking and reforms are constantly evolving, accessible guides to open science are needed. This paper provides an introduction to open science and related reforms in the form of an annotated reading list of seven peer-reviewed articles, follo...

Few scientific developments are as divisive as the increasingly popular Open Science movement. Because exact definitions are lacking and reforms are constantly evolving, accessible guides to Open Science are needed. This paper provides an introduction to Open Science and related reforms in the form of an annotated reading list of 8 peer-reviewed ar...

More and more psychological researchers have come to appreciate the perils of common but poorly justified research practices and are rethinking commonly held standards for evaluating research. As this methodological reform expresses itself in psychological research, peer reviewers of such work must also adapt their practices to remain relevant. Rev...

This paper briefly reviews the current state of meta-analytics research and suggests two innovations for dramatically increasing the efficiency and robustness of meta-analytic practice while simultaneously extending meta-analyses’ “shelf life” in the face of continually accumulating evidence.

Current practices in study design and data analysis have led to low reproducibility and replicability of findings in fields such as psychology, medicine, biology, and economics. Because gifted education research relies on the same underlying statistical and sociological paradigms, it is likely that it too suffers from these problems. This article d...

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...

A quantitative theoretical model of academic achievement, based on the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is used to explore the origin and development of achievement discrepancies via the phenomenon known as the Matthew effect. This paper applies the model to explore the potential impact of various types of educational interventions...

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...

Sex differences in cognitive ability level and cognitive ability pattern or tilt (e.g., math > verbal) have been linked to educational and occupational outcomes in STEM and other fields. The present study examines cognitive ability tilt across the last 35 years in 2,053,221 academically talented students in the U.S. (SAT, ACT, EXPLORE) and 7,118 st...

The ruinous consequences of currently accepted practices in study design and data analysis have revealed themselves in the low reproducibility of findings in fields such as psychology, medicine, biology, and economics. Because giftedness research relies on the same underlying statistical and sociological paradigms, it is likely that our field also...

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...

There are several influential conceptions of giftedness that drive scholarship and educational practice. They generally define giftedness as some combination of high ability, high performance, or superior levels of other characteristics, operationalized by stated or implied cutoff levels (e.g., “top 10%”) of these features that must be met in order...

Male–female ability differences in the right tail (at or above the 95th percentile) have been widely discussed for their potential role in achievement and occupational differences in adults. The present study provides updated male–female ability ratios from 320,000 7th grade students in the United States in the right tail (top 5%) through the extre...

Two second-order meta-analyses synthesized approximately 100 years of research on the effects of ability grouping and acceleration on K–12 students’ academic achievement. Outcomes of 13 ability grouping meta-analyses showed that students benefited from within-class grouping (0.19 ≤ g ≤ 0.30), cross-grade subject grouping (g = 0.26), and special gro...

The educational, occupational, and creative accomplishments of the profoundly gifted participants (IQs ⩾ 160) in the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) are astounding, but are they representative of equally able 12-year-olds? Duke University’s Talent Identification Program (TIP) identified 259 young adolescents who were equally gifted....

Increased calls for rigor in special education have often revolved around the use of experimental research design. However, the replicability of research results is also a central tenet to the scientific research process. To assess the prevalence, success rate, and authorship history of replications in special education, we investigated the complet...

In their National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, “Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students?” Card and Giuliano (C&G) made an enormous splash in not just gifted education but also the world (e.g., The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Five Thirty Eight). In this commentary, we highlight what we think C&G have done well, what th...

Using survey responses from students who participated in the summer programs at two university-based gifted education institutions, this study examined changes in gifted students’ perceptions of their learning environments, accelerated summer programs and regular schools, and social support in lives after participation in the summer programs. Our s...

Growing attention is being paid to individuals’ implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence. However, implicit beliefs about giftedness are currently underexamined. In the current study, we examined academically gifted adolescents’ implicit beliefs about both intelligence and giftedness. Overall, participants’ implicit beliefs about giftednes...

This methodological brief introduces readers to replication methods and their uses. Broadly defined, replication is the duplication of previously conducted research to verify or expand the original findings. Replication is particularly useful in the gifted education context because so much education theory and research are based on general educatio...

Despite growing concern about the need to develop talent across the globe, relatively little empirical research has examined how students develop their academic talents. Toward this end, the current study explored how academically talented students from the United States and India spend their time both in and out of school. Indian students reported...

Despite increased attention to methodological rigor in education research, the field has focused heavily on experimental design and not on the merit of replicating important results. The present study analyzed the complete publication history of the current top 100 education journals ranked by 5-year impact factor and found that only 0.13% of educa...

Psychology has been criticized recently for a range of research quality issues. The current article organizes these problems around the actions of the individual researcher and the existing norms of the field. Proposed solutions align the incentives of all those involved in the research process. I recommend moving away from a focus on statistical s...

Modern conceptions of creativity differentiate it from novelty, yet many researchers focus solely on novelty when considering contributions of research, belittling the role of replication. In this rejoinder, we respond to commentators while augmenting arguments for replication, clarifying how it differs from meta-analysis, and providing examples of...

By studying samples of intellectual outliers across 30 years, researchers can leverage right-tail data (i.e., samples at or above the 95th percentile on tests of ability) to uncover missing pieces to two psychological puzzles: whether there are sex differences in cognitive abilities among smart people, and whether test scores are rising (a phenomen...

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...

We were thrilled to see an article focusing on giftedness, written by such thoughtful and well-respected researchers as Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, and Worrell (2011). The expansive scope of their synthesis is so impressive that it could serve as a crash course introduction to gifted education. In our commentary, we focus specifically on the pers...

Gender differences in interests and preferences are among the currently accepted potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In an attempt to analyze the development of such preferences, gender differences expressed in essays written by gifted elementary students we...

Big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) research (e.g., Marsh & Parker, 1984) has found that perceptions of academic ability are generally positively related to individual ability and negatively related to classroom and school average ability. However, BFLPE research typically relies on environmental differences as a between-subjects factor. Unlike mos...

This study considered how three groups of academically talented high school students—those who attended an academic summer program (TIP), those who qualified for the program but chose not to attend (QNA), and those who did not qualify (DNQ)—spent time outside the classroom. These groupings differentiated students by ability (QNA vs. DNQ) and attend...

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the br...

One factor in the debate surrounding the underrepresentation of women in science technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) involves male–female mathematical ability differences in the extreme right tail (top 1% in ability). The present study provides male–female ability ratios from over 1.6 million 7th grade students in the right tail (top 5%...

Questionnaires were given to students prior to testing for giftedness to assess how the gifted identification process changes attitudes toward gifted programs and parent-child relationships. After those identified as gified had been participating in a pullout gified program for one semester, another questionnaire was administered to all original pa...

I propose suggestions for how creativity can be fostered in the classroom and what creativity researchers can do to facilitate creative growth in students. Suggestions include closing the creativity gap between current education policy and current societal values of creativity, better training of teachers on how to teach creativity, creativity rese...

Creativity is arguably among the most important—yet least understood—psychological constructs. Creativity is often conceptualized as an engine of economic development as well as the impetus behind technological advances, workplace leadership, and life success (see Amabile, 1998; Davila, Epstein, & Shelton, 2006; Kappel &Rubenstein, 1999; Stevens &...