Excellence Gaps in Education

Jonathan A. Plucker is the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hopkins University, with a joint appointment at the Center for Talented Youth and School of Education. He is one of the original developers of the concept of excellence gaps and first wrote about them in the report Mind the Other Gap (2010) and then in Talent on the Sidelines (2013), in addition to several other studies and papers on the topic. In addition to more than $30 million in externally funded research and over two hundred publications, he has edited or authored the books Critical Issues and Practices in Gifted Education: What the Research Says (with Carolyn Callahan), Essentials of Creativity Assessment (with James Kaufman and John Baer), Intelligence 101 (with Amber Esping), Doing Good Social Science: Trust, Accuracy, Transparency (with Matthew Makel), and Creativity and Innovation: Theory, Research, and Practice. He is a recipient of the National Association for Gifted Children’s Distinguished Scholar Award and American Psychological Association’s Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creativity Research and an elected Fellow of the APA and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia and has previously taught at the University of Maine, Indiana University, and the University of Connecticut. Professor Plucker currently serves on the NAGC board of directors. Scott J. Peters is an associate professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. He received his PhD from Purdue University, specializing in gifted and talented education and applied research methodology. His research focuses on educational assessment, identification of student exceptionalities (particularly those from low-income or underrepresented groups) and gifted and talented programming outcomes. He has published in Teaching for High Potential, Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal of Advanced Academics, Gifted and Talented International, Gifted Children, Journal of Career and Technical Education Research, Educational Leadership, Education Week, and Pedagogies. He is the recipient of the Feldhusen Doctoral Fellowship in Gifted Education, the NAGC Research an Evaluation Network Dissertation Award, the NAGC Doctoral Student of the Year Award, the NAGC Early Scholar Award, the Michael Pyryt Collaboration Award, and the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Innovation and Outstanding Research Awards. He has served as the program chair of the AERA Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent SIG; on the board of the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted; and as the National Association for Gifted Children Research and Evaluation Network Secretary. He is the lead author of Beyond Gifted Education: Designing and Implementing Advanced Academic Programs (with Michael Matthews, Matthew McBee, and D. Betsy McCoach) (Prufrock Press).

"By focusing on excellence gaps, Plucker and Peters create an argument that goes beyond increasing the talent pool of US students, making a strike for educational equity and opportunity." —M. Jayne Fleener, Teachers College Record