Gifted Education Point-Line-Surface: a Learning Community for Sharing Resources for the Gifted and Talented Students

Overview

Gifted education (GE), in Hong Kong’s inclusive education system, relies heavily on schools to provide support in regular classroom (Tier 1) and school-based pull-out programmes (Tier 2) although external programmes has been offered by the HKAGE, EDB and other agencies as Tier 3 support. In this heterogenous GE development in the education system, some individual schools provide excellent services for the gifted while some are still at an emerging stage. The systematic in-service GE teacher training provided by Education University of Hong Kong in collaboration with Radboud University, the Netherlands, drew a group of frontline teachers from about 30 schools together in 2021-2023. Their design and implementation of school-based gifted programmes, as part of the course’s assignments, were shared as peer learning. It paved the way to the establishment of Hong Kong Professional Association for the Gifted and Talented (HKPAGT) in January 2025 with the support of various universities and government agencies. This learning community, consisting of passionate principals, teachers, educational psychologists and social workers, aims to exchange insights and experience, and more importantly to share GE resources and programmes in a sustainable model of development in which teachers’ collective efficacy is enhanced.