Nurturing for talent development and impactful research

Professor Rena Subotnik was invited as the NIE Higher Degrees Distinguished Speaker from 10 to 12 January 2018. Professor Subotnik is with the Education Directorate, and is Director, Center for Psychology in the Schools and Education at the American Psychological Association. Her research expertise is in creativity, innovation and talent development. At the Distinguished Lecture entitled, “Talent development toward creative eminence in the 21st century”, Professor Subotnik highlighted that the challenges posed by problems in the new century require a rethinking of the elements associated with the development of talent and creative productivity. She underscored that talent preparation is developmental in nature and teachable with guidance and practice. Professor Subotnik encouraged professors and education leaders to incorporate skills in mentoring their students, help students develop collaborative skills and resilience, and acquire insider knowledge of a domain. In the seminar with NIE academic faculty and graduate students entitled, “Talent development for STEAM: Applications from the psychology of high performance to academic domains”, Professor Subotnik presented interesting research on multiyear students studying science and classical music that highlighted the differences between audition selection versus science testing, explicit versus no explicit psychosocial skills teaching, and other important applications from the psychology of high performance to academic domains. In the seminar, “Nurturing young talents”, Professor Subotnik provided new insights for identifying talent in the domain areas, and spoke about the variation involved in particular domains as to when abilities can be identified and nurtured, particularly in young children. The seminar with NIE’s doctoral students entitled, “Doing meaningful and impactful research”, focused on valuable ideas for beginning educational researchers. She shared how randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can be designed and implemented with qualitative methods to analyse policy and research implications and get the most “bang” for all the hard work that goes into developing a RCT.