Rena F. Subotnik’s research while affiliated with University of California, Berkeley and other places

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Publications (120)


Talent Development as a Framework for Gifted Education: Implications for Best Practices and Applications in Schools
  • Book

October 2018

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517 Reads

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39 Citations

Rena F. Subotnik

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Paula Olszewski‐Kubilius

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"Talent development” is a phrase often used in reference to the education of gifted children. Recently, it has been presented by researchers to refer to a specific approach to the delivery of gifted education services. Much of this discussion has been at the conceptual level, and there is a need for translation of the model into concrete practices and examples that enable educators to better serve gifted children within their schools and districts. This book addresses that need. The research behind the talent development framework is briefly reviewed, followed by practical implications for identification and program design within domains of talent. To illustrate successful approaches, the authors draw on examples from academic domains, as well as performance fields such as sports and music, to help teachers, school administrators, school psychologists, social workers and counselors, graduate students, and parents develop gifted students' talents.


Mentors’ impact on majoring in STEM for students with or without a parent in a STEM field
  • Poster
  • File available

October 2018

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103 Reads

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1 Citation

Growing up with a parent working in a STEM field and having a STEM mentor enhance the likelihood of completing a university STEM degree (Almarode et al., 2014; Subotnik, Tai, Almarode, & Crowe, 2013). The current study explores whether mentors serve an outsized role for retaining students who do not have a parent in STEM, and which categories of mentors (e.g., parents, teachers, or researchers) are most influential. Preliminary analyses of data from a National Science Foundation–sponsored survey of selective public science, mathematics, and technology high school graduates in the United States indicate that the impact of mentors on students’ later majoring in STEM is even greater for students who did not have a STEM parent, compared with students who did. The study relates to the conference theme by examining the influence of mentors for a specific group—students of science, mathematics, and technology high schools. As students attending such high schools often come from STEM-friendly home environments and show greater STEM interests and abilities than students attending non-specialized high schools, the finding indicates that providing more mentoring support can be especially important for bright and interested students without a parent employed in a STEM field. Identifying strategies used by mentors to replicate the attitudes, experiences, and values inculcated in homes with STEM professionals will also benefit students beyond those found in selective STEM high schools. The finding and its implications are relevant for policymakers, STEM educators, and mentors.

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Transition Practices into Kindergarten and the Barriers Teachers Encounter

June 2018

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195 Reads

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16 Citations

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Vincent C. Alfonso

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[...]

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Rena F. Subotnik

A child’s transition to Kindergarten is a critical time to establish a positive school trajectory. This chapter presents results from a survey of 484 Kindergarten teachers across the United States who reported on their transition practices and the barriers to using those practices. Results indicated teachers’ primary strategies for transition involved communicating to the parents of the entire class by way of newsletters, by emails, or by hosting open houses. Teachers viewed parents and school structures as key barriers to implementing transition practices.


Reconfiguring the “Top 20 Principles for PreK–12 Education” by Basing Them in the Dynamics of the Class and Extending Them to Higher Education

April 2018

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12 Reads

To address the gap between the importance of the behavioral sciences to teaching and learning and the diminishing role of such sciences in teacher-leader preparation, the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education (CPSE) developed the “Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK–12 Teaching and Learning” (2015) as a resource for pre- and in-service teachers. This chapter presents an extended view of the principles in two ways. First, the principles are cast into a new organizational structure that reconceptualizes their application to teaching and learning in five areas. Discussed are how these behavioral science principles are grounded in psychological science theory and research and can be used to (1) empower students to facilitate their own learning, (2) implement teaching as a social-interactive process, (3) understand learning as taking place in situational contexts, (4) identify what teachers need to know about assessment, and (5) articulate how teacher expectations are critical to student learning. Second, their application to education and schooling is now extended to include illustrations of their use in the higher education setting, as well as the K–12 education setting.







Universal Principles of Learning Require Unique Applications for Gifted Students

August 2017

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223 Reads

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6 Citations

Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne

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 notion that gifted children, like their age peers, learn optimally in classrooms that apply proven psychological principles. Are gifted students unique, or not? In this commentary, we rely on two versions of recent publications on teaching and learning to make the case that gifted students may be simultaneously unique from-and the same as-typical students. Gifted students are the same as other students in that their learning hinges on general psychological learning principles. However, to be effective, the application of those principles may be different for gifted students than for their classmates. We use four examples of the varied ways in which psychology promotes the application of principles based on the needs of special groups of learners.


Citations (80)


... Gifted education in South Korea has grown rapidly with support for the domains of mathematics and science because it was founded with the specific goal of developing future mathematicians and scientists. Also, science high schools are the most prestigious and competitive of the specialized schools that Korean adolescents may attend, and as such, these schools may be considered to be key gifted education schools across the country (see Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2021). In Australia and the U.S., teachers who had experience teaching gifted students were recruited with the help of two of the co-researchers for this study. ...

Reference:

A comparative study of teachers’ beliefs about gifted students’ leadership talent
Sociocultural Perspectives on the Talent Development Megamodel
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2021

... Gagné (2018) described talent development as concerned with achievements in their own right without any particular reference to natural affinity, indicating that a person possessing a natural quality of giftedness is not precluded from actively developing their knowledge and skills in analogous ways. Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, and Worrell (2018) went further, suggesting gifted achievement is reliant on an underlying gift being actively developed. Moreover, it has been argued this development transcends natural affinity as gifted individuals require organised external support to remain motivated (Burns & Martin, 2021) in either case. ...

Talent development as the most promising focus of giftedness and gifted education.
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2018

... However, no talent is fully developed by school programs alone [36]. Research shows that schools can use outside-of-school time to increase learning opportunities for learners in poverty, enabling them to catch up in their achievement [13,37]. In a qualitative study of highly successful individuals in STEM fields, it was found that almost all had pivotal experiences in science or math outside of school, including working in laboratories or participating in specialized summer programs. ...

The role of insider knowledge in the trajectories of highly accomplished scientists

... TD is an overarching framework that includes services, based on research-based best practices, for learners who enter school already advanced and ahead of their age-peers (i.e., learners who demonstrate high achievement and ability on traditional tests), as well as students with high potential that is not obvious yet in high achievement (e.g., children from poverty, English learners) and who need additional learning opportunities to demonstrate their abilities and achieve at levels commensurate with their potential. Multiple and differentiated services are needed for these diverse gifted learners, all of whom are served within a TD framework [16]. ...

Transforming Gifted Education in Schools: Practical Applications of a Comprehensive Framework for Developing Academic Talent

Education Sciences

... This program acknowledges the role played by future leaders who wish to develop and innovate and, therefore, achieve progress and the development of the country (Misk, 2022). This support keeps pace with the latest trends in gifted education to nurture giftedness, and further with the more recent support that has been geared towards developing transformational giftedness, i.e., talent investment for the development of human life and society (Dai, 2022;Reis & Renzulli, 2022;Subotnik et al., 2022). ...

Channeling Gifted Abilities into Transformative Creative Productivity
  • Citing Chapter
  • April 2022

... 86). This is partly why a number of recent, prominent explanations have turned from emphasizing how to measure giftedness and talent, to devising general talent development frameworks (such as TAD, the Talent Development in Achievement Domains) that can be used as a tool in the education of learners with high potential in music or other fields (Müllensiefen et al., 2022). ...

Talent Development in Music
  • Citing Article
  • January 2022

... The internal components encompass general and specialized capabilities within the field, as well as social and psychological skills, and growth experiences [51]. ...

Domain-specific abilities and characteristics: Evolving central components of the talent development megamodel
  • Citing Article
  • October 2022

High Ability Studies