The Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock
The Science and Art of Developing Talents in Students in Teachers
Developing academic talents in children and adolescents is a complex process that involves schools, families, and communities. For schools, the development of talent should be a thoughtful and deliberate process with a generous awareness that precocious children exist and should be afforded the opportunity to learn something new every day. Every child deserves to learn something new and exciting each day they are in the classroom. How educators think about, spot, and develop talents in their students is a key feature of gifted education.
The Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education was founded to support and advocate for gifted education. We focus on four areas- professional development and graduate education for teachers and schools through online graduate programs and Advanced Placement Summer Institutes for teachers, programs for talented youth such as Summer Laureate University for Youth, curriculum development through the Blueprints for Biography series, and research on talent development. STEM Starters+ is one such research project developed by the Center and funded by the US Department of Education Jacob K. Javits Gifted Students Program. STEM Starters+ investigates the effectiveness of creative and rigorous curricula with a focus on science and engineering and companion teacher professional development to talent-spot and serve children from low-income and ethnically diverse households.