Matthew Worwood:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And this is our first debrief episode of 2025 and our first debrief of season 10. And it certainly is going to be a special debrief because we are debriefing three special episodes, aren’t we, Cindy?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, we are. So Matt and I actually traveled to Seattle, Washington, for the national association for Gifted and Talented conference. And while we were there, we presented on the podcast and some of our key insights, as well as inter three people that you can now see on YouTube. Three of our guests. And we interviewed Dr. Jeb Puryear, who is an associate professor of gifted education at the University of Montana. We talked to him about creativity, metacognition, and gifted education. Then we spoke with Dr.

Cyndi Burnett:
Austina DeBonte about creativity, twice exceptional students, and gifted education. And then finally we had Dr. Aaron F. Floyd, who talked to us about diversity and equity in gifted education and creativity. So it was three amazing episodes. And Matt, I don’t know about you, but I remember leaving that day and I was, like, so inspired. I had learned so much about gifted education and creativity, and I was just so excited to share these episodes with our audience.

Matthew Worwood:
So was I. And I kind of liked also how each of our interviews kind of built on each other. I don’t know if it was because we probably started to increase our knowledge of some of the topics around gifted education, but I don’t want to spoil too much because I’m sure we’ll get into it. But even the fact that there’s different names for gifted education, and it’s something that I’ve always been aware of, being able to ask an expert in this space on the history and context of those names was also something that I greatly cherished. So, Cindy, what was your first takeaway from our first interview with Jep?

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, I had three big takeaways, and some of them are overlapping. So my first one was all around creativity and gifted assessment. So how do we assess for gifted students? And, you know, we’ve talked to some schools, and some schools look at one measure. Maybe they look at the IQ as a measure for gifted. But what I learned from both Jeb and Austina and Erin is that we should be looking at multiple ways to assess for gifted education. So in the case of Austina, I remember her talking about, if we’re talking an English teacher and a student is gifted in math, that English teacher might not see that that student’s gifted in math. So it’s not just one way to assess students for gifted, but multiple ways. And I do remember as well that Jeb mentioned that we should allow things like we should give students different interventions all around creativity, and then see where those students rise up and assess for gifted education in that way.

Cyndi Burnett:
So looking at more than just one way to assess students was my first big takeaway. Did you have that as one of yours?

Matthew Worwood:
I did, I did. I mean, I, I have. First of all, I, I probably am approaching this very similar to you. It’s very. It is actually quite hard to separate these three interviews. And I think we should probably recognize that as we’re doing this debrief that we probably are going to bounce around a lot, because ultimately we went into these three episodes knowing that you and I were going to have an opportunity to take a deeper dive into gifted education at this conference. And obviously we became more informed as the interviews progressed as well. But I also certainly, I think it was referred to as the.

Matthew Worwood:
Or the. Or assessments. Right. So it’s this or another one. And if you score high on one, you’ve, You’ve. You’ve demonstrated some level of giftedness or being highly capable in that space, and that’s. That has value. That’s something we have to recognize.

Matthew Worwood:
And you might not necessarily now have to go and take another test. So I believe some of the conversations we’re talking about how we’ve began to see an increase in the number of students who have been identified as gifted by doing these assessments. I don’t want to get into the diversity piece yet. I think it should be a topic on its own. But obviously, obviously by doing that, that also widened the pool of students that were identified. But, but to your point with Jeb, I did find it notable and also to a certain extent connected to another conversation we had with Jonathan Plucker, which is that I don’t know if I’m doing justice in how Jonathan phrased it in when we were speaking about this, but this idea of, like, why make these tests necessarily, or even these learning experiences, you know, just exclusive to a small group, why not engage everyone in these types of projects? And what you probably will then find in those is those gifted students are going to kind of rise to the top. And these kind of small micro. I almost saw them at times as kind of like being micro projects that you can implement in the class that are specifically targeted gifted students, even though you may not know who they are, is one way to do that.

Matthew Worwood:
And I just felt also that it’s. It feels like a lot more of an easier way for schools to engage gifted education and identify students in their classroom environment. I don’t know if you felt that as well, because some of it’s about lowering those barriers to entry.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, I think it is about lowering those barriers. And I think if we look at just specific measures, if we look at the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, that’s just one way to assess for creativity. And sometimes things might be in the way of students reaching high levels in the Torrance test. Or on the flip side, you have parents who literally. And I’ve heard this from gifted educators prepping their students to take the Torrance test so they’ll get in the gifted program and the problems that can come with that as well. So really looking at different identifiers, and I remember Erin Floyd mentioned Mary Frazier’s work and how she has different ways. And, I mean, we met with Todd Lubart in a different episode back in. What was it, two seasons ago, and he talked about different ways to measure creative potential.

Cyndi Burnett:
So I think we really need to go in with a holistic view and really look for those students who are standing up and rising above others in a specific area.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And I think connecting back to Jeb before we do move on, you know, because I think Austina was. Was the person who was talking about the fact that you can go into certain affluent school districts, and it might be you’ve got lots of parents that are kind of like, prepping their students to take these tests to score high so they can get entry into these gifted education programs. And obviously, there’s some parents that just aren’t even aware of that these programs exist or aren’t necessarily prepping those students. And so sometimes it might actually just be a test issue, but their student actually perhaps, maybe, dare I say, might be more deserving or. Or at least more likely to benefit from these programs, but they get missed. But I think going back to Jeb, the idea of these different modalities as well, I think is. Is really important.

Matthew Worwood:
And again, that was. I think that was something that he was constantly thinking about, is. Is addressing those modalities and making sure that ultimately the experience of g education is being more readily available to a larger population of students.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, let’s hear your first one.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I mean, again, they were all very different. I think that with Jeb, I had the opportunity to get into the weeds about some of the challenges with identifying gifted students, which I think you’ve addressed a lot. So I don’t want to kind of like, revisit That I think for me, the twice exceptional piece was something that I found really fascinating. And you know, if you haven’t checked out Austina’s episode, she talks a lot about twice exceptional learners and particularly talking, you know, she spent some time talking about things like adhd. I think she said something along the lines of, you know, might look like and sound like ADHD and may even come up as ADHD if you were to go and do a psych eval on that particular student, but actually might be a sensory processing issue. Or, or it might be that the child just isn’t. Is having disruptive sleep and some type of disruptive sleep disorder. And believe it or not, although that’s small, I think that’s kind of important because we’re going to be talking with.

Matthew Worwood:
Who’s your friend again? Jonathan. Right. Because in the season we’ve got an interview with your colleague and friend, Jonathan Guerra, and in that episode he talks about sleep and then I get excited and I want to talk about sleep. But, you know, even though it’s not related to gifted education, if you’ve got a highly capable student, of course it’s related to gifted education. What I’m talking about, if you’ve got a really highly capable student who’s not getting enough sleep and perhaps other challenges, right. Perhaps they’ve got kind of external challenges that exist outside that are maybe having an impact on anxiety, maybe there are some challenges in terms of food insecurities. But there’s all these different factors that might mean a student doesn’t necessarily perform really well on the test or to a certain extent might be that type of student that is perceived as being disruptive. And, and how we perceive children in the class is also another barrier sometimes to these students being identified as gifted students.

Matthew Worwood:
Even though, you know, I recognize that the challenges of adhd, it does make me think how many times are we labeling students because of, to a certain extent, a lack of knowledge that we have, simply because of the fact that they may just be not having a good night’s sleep. And I think what’s bugging me a lot with that is feels like something we could address. Like, I’m kind of going off on a tangent here, but the idea of a lack of sleep potentially causing so much problems and then being labeled as adhd, that was something that I took away with Augustina’s episode and I do want to highlight she also referenced a lot about sensory disorders as well, which I found fascinating. So that twice exceptional piece and ultimately the misdiagnosis at times of students. And therefore, as Augustina said, they may not respond to medication and it might be better sometimes for them to, you know, focus on getting a good night’s sleep.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I’m going to build on that because it directly relates to what you’re saying. One of my key insights really comes from Dr. Aaron Floyd and how she talked about gifted kids are not necessarily and probably aren’t your well behaved kids. And because teachers haven’t been trained to identify gifted kids, they look at their students and they say their gifted students are, you know, A, B and C. And those are the students that come in. And she even says they dress nice, they act nice, they play well with others, they’re listening, they’re sort of the teachers, you know, one of the teacher’s favorite students. But that doesn’t mean that they’re gifted or highly capable as we’ll, I’m sure we’ll talk about as well. And so one, in that what I see is we need to do better, more training with teachers in their teacher training around gifted ed and how to identify gifted students in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
And two, we need to look at those students that might be twice exceptional, that might have learning challenges, but are exceptional in an academic area or exceptional in an area and see how we might better identify those in the classroom. And Matt, it reminds me, I went into this classroom and there was a student, the teachers told me, like this student, he’s really problematic. He’s had a lot of issues. He’s not very good listening. And I was watching him and he, we were doing like inventions. And the inventions he was coming up with were mind boggling. I was like, oh my gosh, the student is definitely gifted. Like, I was watching him in comparison to his classmates and he was so exceptional in the way he was coming up with inventions.

Cyndi Burnett:
But the way they projected him to me was that he was a problem student. And so if you only see students as a problem and you don’t see that exceptionality, then you might be missing out on really cultivating that creative potential in the student.

Matthew Worwood:
It is so hard to kind of, you know, focus specifically on one of our conversations because as we said, it’s gifted ed and they were, many of them were talking about different things. A lot of them shared similar approaches, similar perspectives. You know, some of the interviews went into a little bit more depth than others. But just referencing what you said, I felt Austina did a really good job of just kind of highlighting the challenge with kind of like a paper test where you’re kind of responding to questions. If you’re not familiar with the language, if the language, you know, if your first language is in English and you’re taking the test in English, then actually what you might find is that the student doesn’t do well on the test simply because of the fact they weren’t able to decode the language. And you’re not really being able to kind of find out actually how they may have responded to that question had they been more familiar with the language and been able to comprehend what was being asked of them. And that’s just an obvious example. So if you’re in your score and you only use the single test, and, you know, my boys go to a school and they just use the Iowa tests, that that’s pretty much the only test that they use, then that’s a problem.

Matthew Worwood:
So. So I never really necessarily saw that as an issue, but these conversations allow me to see it as an issue, and I think it does speak to what you’re discussing. And again, going back to what Jeb. Having different modalities, to where this creativity can bubble to the service. Because the example that you’re sharing is that clearly there is a learning activity that’s taking place in the classroom that allows that child to be able to express that gift that. That they may have. To that end, it makes me think about also the importance of working closely with parents and. And how we might potentially educate parents to sometimes identify giftedness in their children.

Matthew Worwood:
For example, playing the piano. Like, there’s a lot of times we can stereotype giftedness on things like the piano and have conversations about Mozart, for example, but how many children actually interact with a musical instrument? Right? Or perhaps don’t interact with a musical instrument? And therefore, how do you actually get to know whether or not they’re good or not good? And I think that also comes back to conversations that we’ve had with Todd Lubart, is how do you get to actually evaluate all of the kind of potential giftedness that might exist in your classroom? Because it is very difficult. So I probably want to highlight that it is challenging, but currently we are so narrowly focused on how we evaluate gifted education. And then to your other point that you referenced and all three of them that discuss this, we aren’t doing a good job of training educators to identify that. And as you referenced with Erin Floyd, I think she did a really good job of that. We probably do have preconceived views of what is a gifted child. And I know on. On previous episodes, you know, I’ve shared the fact that I’ve got a family member who is incredibly gifted with engineering, electronics, just loves to take things apart, build things, but that never gets expressed in the classroom.

Matthew Worwood:
And the conversation, for the most part, has always been how they do in math and reading. And because they’ve got a challenge with math and reading, that has always been the focal point. And therefore they don’t have a lot to offer in the classroom environment. And so I don’t necessarily know how we get to facilitate learning experiences that can help identify all of the different talents that may exist in a. In a classroom environment. But I do think that not only better educating teachers to be aware of the preconceptions that they may have about what gifted ed looks like, but also how we might build a better relationship with parents who might be able to express some of the talents that they think they’re observing. And therefore, with that information, perhaps it’s an opportunity for a teacher in a classroom or someone who’s coordinating a gifted program in their school to say, let me go and check this out. Because if they actually are showing potential for giftedness with this particular modality, then maybe I need to think about how I can kind of support that.

Matthew Worwood:
There’s so many different elements to this. Which brings me. If you got. If you got a full on, because otherwise it’s going to bring me to the biggest challenge that I really learned.

Cyndi Burnett :
Okay, now go for it. Go for it.

Matthew Worwood:
All right. Which brings me to my final challenge before. And I do want to talk about diversity as well, but before we get onto that, there’s no kind of like national. I mean, it’s interesting because of everything we’re going through at the moment, but there’s like, no, there doesn’t seem to be much leadership. So it was, it was. I love the fact that Austin has said that in Washington they use highly capable. And I said, why do you refer to it as highly capable? And it’s because, well, that’s how we use it in Washington state. So you’ve got it being called highly capable in one state, gifted education in another state, talented and gifted in another state.

Matthew Worwood:
I have no doubt that there’s probably some other kind of variations on what it’s called, because you don’t have this kind of, you know, national leadership. We’ve got the nagc, obviously, but you don’t necessarily have any kind of federally mandated program that’s kind of governing everything. So all of the states are kind of doing their own thing. So that creates its own challenge. Because, you know, if we don’t have an agreed system for identifying gifted students, and then we’re not holding schools accountable for engaging in that. Then I just don’t know how you can begin to address all of the challenges that we’re talking about, to be honest with you. Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett:
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Matthew Worwood:
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Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So, Matt, one of the things that you mentioned around high capability, it reminds me of one of my big insights was I like this language of high capability versus gifted and talented because as Austina had mentioned, having a gift, having a gifted and talented, it’s almost like, number one, being a parent as well. You say the word gifted and someone’s eyes roll because they’re like, oh, you think your kid is so great. And it’s not that they’re great, it’s that they have something that’s different. In the same way that students that require special education or an iep, they require different services. So do highly capable or gifted students. They require additional assistance in order to really thrive in education. And the thing that bothers me is that, you know, I look at education as we want individual excellence.

Cyndi Burnett:
We want all of our students to thrive. And right now, I don’t think as a country, as the U.S. because I’m not familiar with outside of the U.S. in terms of gifted or highly capable students, I don’t think we’re doing as good of a job as we could be doing. And I don’t think it’s about, you know, parents or teachers not being passionate. I think it is about policy. I think we do need to have some policies in a place. And I think one of the things that that bothers me and this is sort of twofold because it goes both ways.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so go with me on this. Number one, we think creativity belongs in gifted education. And I believe all three interviews said creativity belongs everywh. Okay.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, number one, I think that creativity belongs everywhere. I agree with them wholeheartedly that every child needs to know creative thinking and to create and to have creative problem. Solving in their curriculum. So that’s one side. The other side is there are gifted students that need more support, and we need to find ways to really cultivate that. Because on the flip side of it, I’ve been into schools who have said, oh, no, we don’t do gifted. We don’t believe in gifted. Okay, so you don’t believe that there are students that have certain capabilities.

Cyndi Burnett:
Are you really connected with your students? Because if you’re connected with a group of students, you will see those students who say things that no one else says, who’s not afraid to take risks, who comes up with ideas that when they say things that you go, wow, I had never thought about it that way. And I’ve been teaching this for 20, 30 years. Right. So there are students out there that aren’t getting the services they need to really thrive. So, as if we look as a society, we really need to be focused in on the policies that we can create to support these gifted ed, which leads us to diversity. So why don’t you go there?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I think we started to reference it. Right. You know, and. And I think that Erin was touching on this as well. In fact, all of them were talking about it that if you’ve got a school, in essence, they’re saying gifted is not a priority. And, you know, I don’t want to stereotype, but that suggests that, oh, all of the students in my. In my school have other things that we need to be focused in on at this time. My concern about that is that probably that means that some school districts are more likely to get, you know, these services when compared to others.

Matthew Worwood:
And, you know, as we learn, that tends to happen. You know, inner city schools, for example, are less likely to have these gifted programs because they’ve got, again, it comes back to national policy. They’ve got all these other things that they’re having to prioritize unless there is a mandate that says you’ve got to. And I know that there are some. We should note, there are some state mandates. But what was also interesting is that there were references that, you know, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re being carried out successfully or being conducted well. So really what I’m saying is, you know, gifted education should probably be at a level as all of the other competencies that we set out. Like, they must be at this level.

Matthew Worwood:
They must be at this level. They must be at this level. And we need to make sure that you also are doing this for gifted education. And I think that, you know, going to the Diversity piece. In particular, Corey Gray, another guest that we’ve had on the podcast, is talking a lot, a bit about this, but it was a little bit uncomfortable to hear, you know, some of the. You know, I’m talking a little bit, I think, with Corey Gray’s episode now, but just hearing about some of the roots of gifted education has always benefited, you know, particularly white, affluent people who perform well on a particular set of tests than others. And that’s kind of like, really kind of disturbing when you consider the demographic of where the country is at this time, and you just think about all that potential that we’re losing because they’re not getting the appropriate support. And I remember when I interviewed Joseph Renzulli for that film I produced in 2013, Creativity in Education, Exploring the Imbalance.

Matthew Worwood:
Joe Renzulli. You know, I don’t. I’ve quoted this before, but. But ultimately, what he was saying is we’re always typically talking about the greatness of a few individuals. When you consider all of the people who we’re missing. Right. In terms of kind of gifted education, we’re missing opportunities to talk about so many more people. And when you think about these massive contributions that these highly gifted people have made, then what other kind of contributions are we missing? Is it a cure for cancer? You know, it’s just huge.

Matthew Worwood:
And the whole problem, I think, around diversity is that we’re missing too many students because of these kind of systems that we’ve got that are kind of just old and dated. And to a certain extent, dealing with the bias, as we referenced, already referenced this idea of what’s your vision of a gifted student? All that being said, though, to turn this on a positive, it sounds like the field is highly aware of this.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
And it sounds like the field itself is moving towards making this a priority. And so hopefully we can assume that already. And in fact, you know, Austina noticed this in her dissertation study. Already we’re seeing an increase in the number of students who are being identified as gifted education or qualifying for these programs to support their creative potential as a consequence of these changes that are happening. But obviously, more needs to get done. And I keep coming back to the idea of, I feel like we need a national mandate and make this a national priority.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And more teacher training. Because it does remind me of our interview with Jonathan Plucker when he said he was going into some urban schools, and the teacher said, we don’t have any gifted students here, but when they did test them, they found a lot of students that. That were gifted. But they had never been identified as such. So think of all that potential that we could be missing. I really genuinely feel like I’m just so grateful today for this opportunity to talk with Aaron and Austina and Jeb and all the other gifted specialists we’ve had. And just as a reminder, if you haven’t seen our website feeling creativity podcast.com, we actually have a whole collection of interviews we’ve done around gifted education and creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
So re watch those episodes, get yourself involved, read some books. We’ll put some a link to some good books to become more aware about gifted education. If you aren’t aware and get involved.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And do you know what I think become more aware of gifted ed is a great place to start. If you’re a teacher right now and you’re not familiar with gifted ed, do go to our website, check out some of the episodes or follow up on some of the names or people that we’ve interviewed, because these are leaders in the field. And I think I would also say challenge your stereotype. You know, like, if you’ve never thought about gifted ed before, what do you have a bias to what you think gifted ed looks like in your classroom and challenge it? Is that accurate? Are you potentially missing the creative potential of other students in that space because of that bias? And then the other piece that I would say is, if you’ve got a gifted coordinator at your school, take some time. One of our tips is initiate discussions, have conversations with that gifted coordinator so you can learn a little bit more about their role in your school and some of the things that they do to support existing students in your school that have been identified as gifted. And then to your point, Cindy, if you don’t have a gifted coordinator, then perhaps inquire as to why that might be. And I’m not looking to throw anything more on very busy teachers, but maybe invite a conversation at your school to say, you know, what might we do to support gifted kids? And as we outlined in all three of these episodes, and I think this is where we go back to Jebs, There are activities that you can still do with your students that everyone can benefit from, but there are ways to go and kind of continue to cultivate and nurture that creative potential for gifted students, even if you don’t have a gifted program.

Matthew Worwood:
So. And I know Joe Renzulli also has got a whole bunch of these micro activities on that. In fact, he spoke a lot. I’ll tell you what, shout out to Joe Renzulli’s episode as well, because he speaks a lot about small little activities that you can integrate to address the specific problem that I’ve just spoken about.

Cyndi Burnett:
And that concludes our special gifted education series. Matt. I have really enjoyed this little miniseries. And a special shout out to Katherine Fu, who organized all of this, our special producer on the series. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood