High ability studies

With this new issue of High Ability Studies, I commence the first editorship of my professional career. It is a real honor for me, and I am deeply grateful to the General Committee of the European Council of High Abilities (ECHA) for this opportunity. I feel genuinely overwhelmed by your confidence in me, and this incredible opportunity to lead such a prestigious journal in the field of giftedness and talent.

I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. Albert Ziegler, the last Editor-in-Chief of the journal. I fondly remember our first meeting in Nuremberg, during my academic stay at your university in 2016. Since then, I feel extremely fortunate to have known a fantastic person like you, even beyond our research collaborations. Further, I extend my gratitude to Manuel Hopp, who is the Assistant Editor of the journal and was also one of my partners during my stay in Nuremberg. Both of you have ensured the smooth transition of the journal’s editorship. In fact, all the contributions of the present issue have been processed under Dr. Ziegler’s editorship.

This journal has experienced significant growth since its inception. During my doctoral thesis apprenticeship about underachievement in secondary education, High Ability Studies had a great impact on me. Through the journal, I discovered crucial contributions that shed light on the international community. In my opinion, the journal has achieved three important advances: (1) the establishment of a consistent and dynamic theoretical perspective regarding giftedness and talent; (2) an open perspective concerning high abilities in formal and informal contexts; and (3) the application of distinct methodologies in specific domains, such as STEM, sports, or arts. In conjunction, these achievements invest in the expected communion between theorists and practitioners. Given my experience as an educational counselor in both primary and secondary education, I think that we should continue to progress in this direction. Thus, empirical studies should be the basis to construct a more solid and dynamic theory. As a clear example of this goal, it is important to mention the journal’s latest issue on self-regulated learning (SRL) by gifted, talented, and high-achieving learners. I sincerely believe that these contributions will have a consistent impact on effective SRL systems in different contexts.

As has been illustrated, the ECHA is committed to a modern and pluralistic view of high abilities. During this difficult global pandemic, we cannot succumb to misinformation. Now, more than ever, scientific research is the most powerful tool to ensure academic equity and support. Further, the high ability contexts that come from other backgrounds should be considered for them to progress as well. We have to facilitate the practical application of advanced methodologies, which will provide a sustained and connected basis for deep implications in a multicultural reality.

The current issue presents 6 international articles. In what follows, I will briefly highlight the main findings of each contribution.

• Miller, Chow, Wampold, Hubble, Del Re, Maeschalck, and Bargmann provide a theoretical and methodological interpretation of the real need to consider the adequate relevance of deliberate practice on performance, despite it controversially being given insufficient importance in a recent meta-analysis and other empirical studies.

• The study by Lee, Matthews, Shin, and Kim reveals that there are important differences in the types of gifted and non-gifted secondary students in social purpose. Moreover, they consider a cross-cultural perspective by identifying the differences between Korean and American students.

• Crawford, Snyder, and Adelson provide a valuable theoretical review to substantiate that Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory is the most suitable framework for identifying gifted and talented students from underrepresented minority groups and addressing their challenges.

• Paz-Baruch’s empirical study serves as a relevant mediation study that analyzes the interaction of important contextual and individual variables on scholastic achievement, under the Actiotope Model of Giftedness framework. Its results illustrate a significant percentage of explained variance in predicting scholastic achievement. Additionally, the study demonstrates the mediation effect of Learning Capital in the relation between Educational Capital and scholastic achievements.

• Lee, An, and Choe explore the predictive power of personality types on psychiatric symptoms in a sample of gifted middle-school students. Their results reveal that introversion and intuition are the personality types with more severe psychiatric symptoms. Gender differences are also detected in both the introversion and perception personality types, in addition to the moderating effects of the giftedness type.

• Faber, Liu, Cece, Jie, Martinent, Schorer, and Elferink-Gemser explore the age effects in different categories in highly competitive table tennis. Within-year and between-year effects were detected in some categories from age, national, and international ranking lists.