With great pleasure Gordon Academic College of Education would like to extend you a warm welcome to join our conference, as we host the 3rd Thematic ECHA Online International Conference on teaching gifted and able students. The cooperation of the organizing institution, and support by ECHA will guarantee high quality standards of the conference.
Conference dates: 5th-7th of March, 2023.
Reasons to attend
Exposure to latest developments in teaching gifted and able students
Creating partnerships that could evolve to further studies
Creating a significant body of knowledge regarding theory and practice
Opportunity to share and discuss ideas regarding different teaching aspects with researchers, educators,
psychologists, parents, and stakeholders
Being part of creating an impact on the education of gifted and able students
you will find the call for papers, important dates, types of presentations, confirmed keynote speakers and the conference program.
Instructions on submission of abstract and a link to a Google Form are available on the website.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to use the following conference e-mail addressecha23@Gordon.ac.il
An answer is guaranteed as quickly as possible.
We kept registration fees as low as possible to enable policy makers, program coordinators, teachers, and lecturers from all around the world to join and share their knowledge on teaching gifted and able students.
As an ECHA member you will get a discount for presenting and/or participating.
This is a great opportunity to be exposed to, as well as present your professional knowledge, and discuss teaching of gifted and able students all around the world.
All conference keynotes, presentations, and materials will be available to participants for the duration of six months.
We welcome you to take part in this important conference, and are looking forward to receiving your abstract.
The Association of Hungarian Talent Support Organisations (MATEHETSZ) together with the University of Debrecen, Hungary organises the international 2nd Thematic ECHA Conferenceonline in March 2021.
The topic of the Conference is ‘Closing the achievement gap’. The persistent disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students is a topical issue in gifted education, and the achievement gap is closely related to the concept of equity, fairness in education, equal access to learning opportunities and greater equality in educational achievement, attainment and benefits, all key goals of a caring talent support system.
Our everyday life now abounds in online meetings and activities due to restrictions imposed by the pandemic. It was originally planned to receive and host attendees in Budapest, but given the global circumstances, the Conference had to be converted into an online event. The usual 1.5-2-day thematic conference has been extended a whole week, with opportunities to join it twice a day, at 10:00 a.m. and 16:00 p.m. CET. The presentations of each day will be repeated in the morning of the following day to provide comfortable access to people all over the world. Consequently, the Conference will last for an unusual six days, from 23 to 28 March 2021, so it will actually be a so-called ECHA Thematic Week.
During this week we will hear from leading researchers, keynote and invited speakers such as Márta Fülöp (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Frank C. Worrell (Berkeley, CA), Paula Olszewski-Kubilius (Northwestern University), Jonathan Plucker (Johns Hopkins University) and Tibor Péter Nagy (Hungarian Academy of Sciences).
The measures instigated to fight COVID-19 have made tackling the underprivileged situation more topical than ever. School shutdowns can deprive students of the educational opportunities they need to build a brighter future, and thereby compound disparities in learning and achievement. In addition, underprivileged students are more likely to remain remote and less likely to have access to the prerequisites of online learning such as electronic devices, internet access and live contact with teachers. Left unaddressed, these opportunity gaps would translate into even wider achievement gaps.
In view of the global economic challenges and in line with our conference topic, participation at the Conference Week will be free of charge to all, but preliminary registration is required.
ECHA members registered to the conference will later be provided access to all presentations for 6 more months.
The conference aims to connect research approaches from the fields of gifted education and gifted support with sustainability (SDGs) and the related aspect of social responsibility. A central concern are the global challenges of the 21st century (e.g. global climate and world health) and the question, how individualized talent support can prepare pupils of a new generation to meet these challenges in a dedicated, creative and constructive way. Based on these central questions, the conference, on the one hand, aims to ascertain, how the achievement-related potential of children and adolescents can optimally develop on a long-term basis and, on the other hand, how their talents can be integrated with regard to the role of civil society in shaping a sustainable future, in terms of ecology, society, economy, culture, politics, globalization and digitalization. In this context, also the function of states, or, more specifically, of educational policies (e.g. future teacher training, curriculum design and teaching methods for sustainable education) are to be discussed.
We are seeking submissions related to the following fields:
Current research on gifted education and talent support
Diagnosis-oriented and potential-oriented support
Challenging learning environments
21st century competencies
Addressing sustainability and other topics of global relevance in the classroom
Onsite and Distance Learning
Overarching question: What can educational policy contribute to a positive development in the above listed fields?
Eight years ago Professor Csermely was elected President of ECHA[1] in Münster; four years later, in 2016, ECHA’s members voted for him again. His term in office, which is no longer renewable, has expired recently. This interview is about his 8 years spent as President of ECHA and changes in his life in that period.
What did you think about the importance of ECHA eight years ago and what made you accept the post of president?
It was Franz[2] who invited me to the post. “What if I appointed you president?”, he asked without any preliminaries. An interesting invitation, considering that I had not participated in ECHA’s work before. I did write about talent support in Hungary several times, but I had no scientific publication in talent support. I believe in gradual development; I do not consider it natural to suddenly invite someone to act as president. I knew that my election could lead to a special situation, i.e. the post of president of ECHA being filled by a person hardly known to its members, with only a few exceptions.
So why did I accept the post of president in an organisation that did not know me? The networking efforts of the Hungarian Talent Point system had been remarkably successful by 2012, and I was very confident that it was worth setting up a similar network in other countries and in Europe as a whole. Organisations such as ECHA could play a potentially decisive role in this process. In fact, this was the most significant reason why I got into such a challenging situation.
As president, I had to learn a lot in the first year or two about how to run a European organisation. I had to understand the different frameworks of interpretation that stem from the diversity of European culture and make them acceptable to members to be able to work together.
ECHA has always brought together the most significant talent support researchers of Europe and the world. As president, I realised that ECHA gives little ground for my original concept, the “organisation of organisations”, due to its structure. Although the opportunity has been there, no more than 4-5 organisations joined ECHA over the years, that is, an “organisation of organisations” in talent support could and had to be created, and this is what ETSN[3] was about. By the end of the second year, we had got used to each other with ECHA, and that was when the main principles of the European Talent Support Network (ETSN) were accepted.
It is still not clear to all that, despite their similar objectives, the two organisations, ECHA and ETSN, have highly different memberships and profiles. Many keep confusing them, and they fail to understand why the second had to be set up. However, despite their similarities, both have their raison d’être. ECHA is an organisation of individuals; ETSN of organisations. The long-term cooperation agreement of the two multiply the power of both.
Do you consider organisations relying exclusively on persons, such as ECHA, outdated?
Not at all. Talent support is a highly diverse, continuously changing science and practice, demanding diversified approaches, and requiring permanent international consultations. Permanent consultations not only between organisations, but also persons. Many do not, or do not want to affiliate to organisations, and that is fine. Talent support is a personal thing, and it has developed its niche in science cultivated by persons, not organisations. ECHA has a very long future ahead, as indicated by the fact that it has stood the test of time for more than three decades.
How different have you become over the past 8 years, how much has the post of ECHA President changed you?
I have become a completely different person over these 8 years. I could perhaps say I am the same person, but my dominant characteristics are different now. Interestingly, when I read into my writings from 10-12 years ago, I find that I would now describe many things the same way, but they have a completely different meaning for me.
My view of the world has deepened in recent years; I feel I have gained something of a “new understanding”. This new understanding essentially means a much more direct relationship with Totality, where by Totality I mean God, I mean Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but here, in this context, I would like to highlight the meaning of Totality. I have gained a more ordinary and live understanding of the un-understandable, of what Totality, of which we realise various small slices in our own lives, is in the world.
Talent support, too, falls into place when you are ready to come across someone quite different from you and in many respects much more valuable than you any time. Why? Because that other person reflects another slice of Totality or reflects the same slice to a different degree. Consequently, we mutually disclose some part of Totality, different for each individual. In this sense, the nature of Totality is endless. Each of us, born to this Earth, gets a slice of it. Consequently, we can experience constant amazement in the world; see how beautiful it is; how much it gives us; and with what humility we should relate to everything/everyone we meet. Well, this humility had not been present in me to such extent eight years ago. As I get older and more and more experienced, not in the last about Totality, this humility is developing in me. I consider this a crucial change in myself
How did ECHA change me in the past 8 years? It gave me humility. Because an international, European, arena — if you do not conceive of it as a battlefield, as many do, but a stage for cooperation — helps you learn humility, recognise the assets that different people, habits, traditions, solutions etc. from different countries can give you. I saw this at some depth during my work at ECHA.
Would today’s Péter Csermely have accepted the post of President of ECHA?
Put this way, this is a rather “unhistorical” question: it cannot be answered, because today’s Péter Csermely is past an eight-year presidency. I have always felt people get used up in a specific position over the years, that it, it is imperative that someone else take over the tasks and give an organisation a new approach. How many years — that is a good question. Nowadays, I realise that in some positions, e.g. that of a pastor or priest in a congregation, you must be able to coexist with a community in the long term, accompany them through ups and downs; suffer and rejoice with them. These situations are not development projects that can be handed over once you had reached your goal, whatever it was.
I could not give ECHA much more. Also, in the meantime, I have moved to a brand new career: I am a university student in theology, preparing to be a Lutheran pastor. This excludes filling such an important post also in terms of time. I am very grateful to Lianne Hoogeveen for accepting the post of president of ECHA from 10 September this year.
What do you consider the biggest achievement of the past 8 years within ECHA?
I consider the establishment of ETSN and its becoming independent the most important achievement. But, in addition, I consider the launch of thematic conferences very important, as it had become clear over the years that many wanted to organise ECHA conferences, but we had to reject many offers. The aim was to have smaller and more specific thematic conferences. Of course, the coronavirus situation makes us re-evaluate many things; we will have to invent creative arrangements also for our conferences.
Another major achievement is that the ECHA education programme has received a transparent framework; for twenty years, there have been excellent programmes all over the world, but they have been far from uniform and lacked monitoring, and this has led to intensifying uncertainty. A legitimate need arose to clarify what was common in these educational programmes. I am most grateful to the Educational Committee led by Professor Christian Fischer for drafting the relevant standards and having them adopted through years of work and international consultations.
I consider it important that transparency has become typical of the work of ECHA also in many other respects: a great part of previously ad hoc decision-making has sound theoretical bases now. I would not say the process is completed, but we are on track.
I was very glad we could adequately celebrate the 25th and 30th anniversaries of the organisation, and we have also collected 25 years of history and the history of the conferences. So the history of ECHA will not be lost without a trace: it has been documented. Let’s not forget that ECHA was born a short time before the systems changes, in 1987, and one of its goals was to reconcile the two halves of Europe, that is, it has been shaped by very special times in Europe.
The above achievements, however, are dwarfed by the fact that I could take Franz Mönks to the London flat of Joan Freeman, and Joan received him there. We arrived with a large bouquet, and Joan received us with lots of photos. During a very nice conversation lasting several hours the founding president and the three-times president of ECHA made up in my presence (after almost twenty years). This was followed by Dublin, where Franz asked Joan to dance at the gala dinner. And Joan said yes. That dance – that was my most important achievement in eight years.
What do you consider the most important achievement of the past eight years in your own life?
My deepened spirituality; my more intensive relationship with Totality that fills me with infinite joy. I can live a much “rounder” life than a few years ago. And this gives me an incredibly amount of purity, humility and poverty (in a broad sense, all of them). The things really worth living for have crystallised in my life. I experienced impoverishment in the good sense, when the superfluous things are omitted from one’s life and only the ones that are really crucial remain. It is clear to me now that the crucial things all relate to Totality.
Totality is a beautiful standard; it has light and it has love. Using these qualities as a compass, one’s life starts to get settled, and after a while it turns into beautiful poverty. Of course, this settling process of my life is still in progress; I am glad I can take steps along this path with the power of grace.
What professional topics occupy you most nowadays?
I have started to realise what is truly important also in my profession. There are very few such things, 2-3 maybe, and it is not certain that you will be the one who detects even one of them, but you will be happy anyway for being involved. There are many traps and temptations also in network research: one could get stuck with certain components or consider whatever he is occupied with an enormous thing. Understanding, intuition of what is really important in a field of science requires lots of time, at least ten years, and also sufficient humility for this to happen. We do not see what is truly important in a field by ourselves, but if we are open, we’ll receive the grace for it. What I am most occupied with in network research currently is how networks change and develop; what activates their development and what makes a single cell learn and how.
Big questions of the world …
Yes, but smaller ones are not worth tackling. In some sense you need to get poor also in this context, and to start to look at life from the perspective of the universe. Then you realise that 90 percent of what you had done before was valueless, and you also realise that you’d better discard it all, no reason to carry it with you. When you omit the unimportant things, you will be much happier and lighter. Maybe sometimes not in this world…
This is concurrent with getting closer and closer to Totality in your life. This proximity, of course, does not exclude everyday activities. To the contrary! Now, for example, we are having a conversation here because of the interview, but I do not only converse with a friend, but also with Totality. It is possible to experience quality time also this way, with one more person: Totality, in other words Jesus Christ, is also sitting at the table with us, but we do not always notice Him. Whereas we should realise that it is only the presence of Jesus Christ that makes the table a table.
Was it difficult to keep ECHA, a very diverse community where theory meets practice, together?
It was difficult. Yes: science and practice meet in this community, but different European practices, different generations and disciplines also meet there, and neither are easily “kept together”.
The core mission of ECHA is to link theory and practice, to bridge the gap between the two. ECHA is excellent in this bridging role. Why is it excellent? Because in this community, scientists do not look down on those active in practice, but learn from them. Take for example Joan Freeman[4], who has been listening to the most practical reports with infinite humility to this day, because she can always find something of interest in each that may even be worth considering scientifically later. But Albert Ziegler[5] is also such a leader, and I could list many others. One could say that all the decisive personalities in ECHA have been like that, including Professor Mönks, of course. This has actually marked ECHA to a large extent: you cannot conceive of this organisation any more without including attentive listening among its essential properties. This is a very nice thing in this organisation.
Do you have a talent concept?
No, I think talent as a notion is very close to Totality; it is close to a complex concept that cannot be reached by reason, only by intuition. It is a beautiful moment when, during a conversation, you realise that the person you are conversing with is highly talented, and you become certain of it. However, it is far from certain that you could also put into words why you think so. I found it beautiful that, as it turned out in conversations with the best talent supporters of the word, this was our common experience.
It is important to define, measure, develop etc. such a colourful thing as talent in diverse ways also scientifically. The essence of science, in my opinion, is that it always gives you something new, just like understanding Totality. It opens up new dimensions, and repeatedly surprises you by its depths. When you feel you are comfortably moving about in a dimension you have become familiar with, suddenly a new depth is revealed, and this process is as endless as Totality itself …
What in your opinion are the most serious challenges in talent support in Europe today?
Let me start out from the virus emergency. This is not an instantaneous condition in the life of humanity. I am convinced we got it to redirect humanity onto a new course. The previous course is unsustainable. Unsustainable in the sense that it is destroying the Earth, and also in that humanity is destroying itself, because it raises the number of the poor to an astonishing extent and gives insatiable unhappiness to the bulk of the rich. The virus warns us that with humility, purity and poverty, in the broad sense, we must restrain ourselves. We cannot continue to devour things as we have done for decades. During our astonishing enrichment in the objective sense, we failed to notice that what we accumulated was garbage, not essential things. If we return to the same way of life, humanity would be destroyed. As ecosystem, the Earth also feels that this course is unsustainable and starts to do something to counter it. It feeds back, what we experience as retaliation. Whereas this is a teaching and a message.
Crises becoming permanent is quite a new situation. Without underestimating the common sense of the average, people with high creativity can help a lot, in an outstanding way. But we have not prepared them adequately to really help find answers. Self-critically, I must admit that I have not done that myself either — talent support has not really faced this problem yet; we must start to prepare the youth much more thoroughly to provide help. As pastor student, I deeply experience the importance and incredibly rich opportunities of this.
In the past years, the number of persons who joined the ECHA Facebook group rose to six thousand. There are five hundred ECHA members… It is interesting to see that the majority of members lives in extremely poor countries without any talent support traditions, outside Europe. This alerts us to the fact that these destitute people consider talent support an outlet for being party to Europe, to talent, to European talent. We, on the other hand, must be able to give them these outlets. This is not altruism pure and simple: it is also in our own interest. I do not mean brain-drain here: we have a single Earth and we would all perish with it if we did not put its omnipresent talents in a position where they can (and want to) ease the worries of the common home. The works of field-workers, such as the head of Narayan Desai Talent Centre, India, who can offer escape routes through talent support for those who have no other perspectives is extremely important. We must try to bring part of the ever poorer population of the Earth within the scope of talent management and support.
May the Almighty grant us strength, wisdom, foresight and mercy for this effort in the highly varied terrain where the paths of our lives lead us!
Csilla Fuszek
[1] ECHA = European Council for High Ability; NGO registered in The Netherlands, founded in 1987
[2] Franz Mönks (1932 – 2020), former president of ECHA
The Editor-in-Chief of High Ability Studies (HAS), Albert Ziegler has completed his second term leading ECHA’s scientific journal. The General Committee formed a search committee to find Albert’s successor and after a careful selection process Alejandro Veas from the University of Alicante (Spain) was elected by the General Committee as the new Editor-in-Chief of HAS. We would like to thank Albert Ziegler for his great leadership of the Journal leading to a wider circulation, higher impact and — last but not least — many key papers of gifted education! Please find the bio of the new Editor-in-Chief enclosed. We wish Alejandro Veas a great continuation of the long traditions of the Journal! Alejandro Veas is a Doctor with an International Mention and Extraordinary Award from the University of Alicante (Spain), a Bachelor of Psychology with a Master in Teacher Training from the University of Murcia (Spain). He has worked as an Educational Counselor in various Primary and Secondary Education centers, and has been hired Predoctoral in the area of Developmental Psychology and Didactics at the University of Alicante, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in public call. He currently works as a Teaching Assisstant Professor in the same department. His research was carried out among others at the University of Bristol, England (2015) and the University of Nuremberg, Germany (2016). Likewise, he has collaborated in varioius research project, most of then financed by Ministries and Departments of Education. As a result of the work carried out, communications have been published at international congresses, and several articles in international journals indexed in JCR, such as the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, and Frontiers in Psychology, among others. His lines of work encompass academic performance, psychometrics and experimental designs applied to education, and giftedness. Currently, he is leading an innovative research project in Spain about applied psychometrics in educational assessment and students’ competences.
International ECHA Conferences have been the biannual summits of European talent support in the last three decades. The 2016 General Assembly of ECHA modified the Standing Orders of ECHA allowing the organization, of a (much) smaller, thematically well-focused, research oriented ECHA Thematic Conference in between the two biannual International ECHA Conferences. The 1st Thematic ECHA Conference was organized in Dubrovnik (Croatia), between 16-18 October 2019 on Creativity Research & Innovation in Gifted Education: Social, Individual and Educational Perspective. The 2nd Thematic ECHA Conference will be in Budapest (Hungary) between 25-27 March 2021 on Closing the achievement gaps in gifted education. The General Committee of ECHA invites organizations involved in gifted education or help of highly able young people in Europe to submit their application to organize the 3rd Thematic ECHA Conference in 2023.The Guidelines for a Thematic ECHA Conference can be downloaded from HERE. You should submit your application using the Application Form downloadable from HERE before 15th of September 2020. Please send the proposal by e-mail to the vice-president of ECHA, Prof. Albert Ziegler to: albert.ziegler@fau.de before 15th September 2020. By October 31st the ECHA General Committee will discuss the proposal, inform applicants about each others proposal, and the opinion of the General Committee about the proposals. Applicants will be able to withdraw or modify their application until November 30th. The General Committee will announce the organizer, time and venue of the 2nd Thematic ECHA Conference by 20th of December 2020 at the ECHA web-site. We look forward to receiving your proposal!
Dear ECHA Community, Dear Friends! It is my sad duty to inform you that the Honorary President of ECHA, Franz Mönks has passed away on March 10th at 4.10 am in peace. He had suffered from a severe gland inflammation which has led to a serious condition in the last few months. He passed his 87th birthday in April 2019. He obtained his PhD in Bonn in 1966 about the future vision of adolescents. From 1967 to 1988 he was professor of developmental psychology at Radboud University in Nijmegen. Since 1988 he has held the first chair in Psychology and Pedagogy of the Gifted Child in Europe. From 1973 to 1978, he was also professor of developmental psychology at the University of Leuven (Belgium). He was visiting professor in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Lima, Bandung, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Lexington (Kentucky), Debrecen (Hungary), Hefei and Shanghai (China). In 1997 he retired as an emeritus professor of Radboud University (Nijmegen, The Netherlands). He became the Honorary Professor and Doctor of many universities. In 1989 he became vice president of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC). In that position, he organized the ninth World Congress on giftedness in The Hague in 1991. In 1992, he resigned from that position to become President of the European Council for High Ability (ECHA). He was re-elected altogether three times for a four-year period. In this position he founded a globally recognized training in 1992: Specialist in Gifted Education. In 1994, the first five diplomas were awarded during the ECHA Congress in Nijmegen. There are now several thousand teachers who have successfully completed this training. Most of them in Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, but also in Sweden, Chile and Peru. He was the recipient of the Kelemen László Award of the Hungarian Association of Psychology (2000); as well as the Lifetime Achievement Awards of the Hungarian Talent Support Organization (2012) and MENSA International (2012). One of the last public occasions he participated was the 1st Thematic Conference of ECHA in Dubrovnik in 2019, Croatia where he became the Honorary President of ECHA and received its Certificate. That was a moment of well-deserved honour for Franz’s many-decade long service for ECHA. I am truly glad that the ECHA community was able to give this to Him. We will miss Franz. He contributed a lot to our community and had personal friendship with many-many members in ECHA. Please keep Franz in your best memory, and think about those who were close to Him sharing their loss, pain and suffer. Peter Csermely, president of ECHA
