This volume is constructed around several significant questions, relevant to every honors program and national perspective. These questions are: “How do various nations view honors education?”, “How do ideas about honors achievements compare internationally?”, “Who defines honors education in each nation and how similar are those definitions from place to place?”, and “What do nations consider most significant when an undergraduate is said to “graduate with honors”?” The cross-disciplinary, intersecting epistemology of honors education stands out worldwide. No matter whether it is known as “honors”, “honours” or “talent-development”, honors education is associated with a student-centric ethos of attainment-setting, and with comprehensive and often creative approaches to teaching and learning. Today, in our more globally connected world, there is good reason to closely and critically consider how an exploration of honors education worldwide can empower both educators and students to match personal and communal aspirations with educational outcomes.

This volume is constructed around several significant questions, relevant to every honors program and national perspective. These questions are: â oeHow do various nations view honors education?â , â oeHow do ideas about honors achievements compare internationally?â , â oeWho defines honors education in each nation and how similar are those definitions from place to place?â , and â oeWhat do nations consider most significant when an undergraduate is said to â oegraduate with honorsâ ?â The cross-disciplinary, intersecting epistemology of honors education stands out worldwide. No matter whether it is known as â oehonorsâ , â oehonoursâ or â oetalent-developmentâ , honors education is associated with a student-centric ethos of attainment-setting, and with comprehensive and often creative approaches to teaching and learning. Today, in our more globally connected world, there is good reason to closely and critically consider how an exploration of honors education worldwide can empower both educators and students to match personal and communal aspirations with educational outcomes.

Higher education, further education, vocational education and continuing education all refer to progression to a third educational step. That is, a step beyond secondary education, which itself is a step beyond elementary or primary education. While optional, continuing beyond secondary education most often suggests some form of need ‘to acquire advanced knowledge’. But advanced in what way? Advanced in focus? Advanced in depth? Advanced in application? Advanced in the range of knowledge of those who teach in it? Advanced in expectation? Honors education, which is present globally and is highlighted in the United States through a distinctive 100-year history, has reflected on, and continues to reflect on what ‘advanced’ higher education might entail. Consequently, here in Advancing Honors Education for Today and Tomorrow contributors consider some of the interests that strike them as significant in the present and future of advanced learning.

In education, sorting students according to attainment is common. Such sorting clearly sets up the potential for exclusion, based on the attainment ideals and on the modes of selection. Ideals of inclusion suggest diversity, and those of equity, by reference to impartiality, suggest freedom from bias. Honors education, which celebrates excellence, and references “honor” and all that word and concept infers, heightens and promotes the principled recognition of attainment, giving rise to questions of diversity, equity and inclusion. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), in its Ten Steps to Equity in Education, notes that inclusion is intertwined with fairness. How can honors education—and in the case of the discussions in this book, largely honors in US higher education—promote fairness, be diverse, and support equity? If it does not do so, how can it at all claim to be offering a principled version of what the National Collegiate Honors Council (USA) says are “opportunities for measurably broader, deeper, and more complex learning-centered and learner-directed experiences for its students”? In 2015, the National Society for Minorities in Honors (www.nsfmih.org) was launched in the USA to specifically explore, support and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in and across honors colleges and programs. The first annual NSFMIH conference was held at Oakland University, Michigan. This book began at that inaugural conference, and has been enhanced by enthusiastic contributions beyond that event as well.

Critical Issues and Practices in Gifted Education is the definitive reference for a summary and evaluation of the literature on giftedness, gifted education, and talent development. This third edition: Presents more than 40 summaries of important topics in the field. Features updates to all topics. Introduces new topics, including neuroscience and the roles of leaders in the field. Dives into the latest research. Explores how the research applies to gifted education and the lives of gifted learners. This book also provides an objective assessment of the available knowledge on each topic, offers guidance in the application of the research, and suggests areas of needed research.

This book examines the much-debated question of how to unleash the potential of young people with promising intellectual abilities and motivation. It looks at the increasingly important topic of excellence in education, and the shift in focus towards the provision of programs to support talented students in higher education. It provides a systematic overview of programs for talented students at northern European higher education institutions (HEIs). Starting in the Netherlands, where nearly all HEIs have developed honors programs over the past two decades, the book explores three clusters of countries: the Benelux, the Nordic and the German-speaking countries. For each of these countries, it discusses the local culture towards excellence, the structure of the education system, and the presence of honors programs. In total, the book reviews the special talent provisions for nearly four million students at 303 higher education institutions in eleven countries. In addition, it offers an analysis of the reasons to develop such programs, a look into the future of honors education and a practical list of suggestions for further research. The Sirius Program assigned Marca Wolfensberger to carry out this research.

Present Successes and Future Challenges in Honors Education is the first volume in an edited series examining the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education. While honors education has become ubiquitous in American higher education, this transformation has happened without systematic attempts to align what honors means across institutions, and absent a universally agreed upon definitions of what honors is and what it might aspire to be in the future. This generates possibility and flexibility, while also creating rather serious challenges. The contributors document the decades-long structural transformations that led to the rise of honors education while also providing perspective on the present and future challenges in honors education. The chapters address such issues as ensuring equity in honors, how we ought to think about student success and frame this for external stakeholders, and how the diffusion of honors-inspired pedagogies elsewhere in the university forces us to rethink our mission and our day-to-day practice. Throughout, their investigations are grounded in the present while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.