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7th Bildungskongress in Muenster

together with the annual LemaS – Conference

22.-25. September 2021

Identifying Potential – Developing Talents – 

Sustainable Education

CONFERENCE THEME:

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 
• 21^st 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?  

Submission deadline: 17 January, 2021.

A detailed call with more information on the submission procedure can be found here: https://icbfkongress.de/images/Call_for_Papers_en.pdf Contact: icbfkongress@uni-muenster.de

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 15^th 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 15^th September 2020. By October 31^st 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 30^th. 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