Prof. Dr. A.J.M. Lianne Hoogeveen

The importance of professional development in gifted education and mental health care has been reviewed and discussed extensively (see Jen & Hoogeveen, 2021). However, there are still many teachers and counsellors who work with gifted people, but lack systematic training. The requirements for teaching gifted students vary across states in the U.S and Australia, and although most European countries claim to do ‘something’ for their gifted students), their educational beliefs and systems vary, and training is scarce.
To address the need for training, focused on giftedness, the European Council for High Ability (ECHA), one of the most important professional communities in the field of gifted education since 1992, has formulated criteria for trainings focused on gifted education and mental healthcare, and qualifies trainings that meet those requirements (ECHA, n.d.). In 2020, more than 1700 graduates obtained an ECHA advanced diploma (Mathijssen, et al., 2020).
The aim of the so called ECHA training is to help educational and psychological professionals to enlarge knowledge in the area of recognizing and supporting gifted children and adolescents. The content of the training joins the disciplines psychology, pedagogy, and educational science (See more in European Council for High Ability, 2018).
In this presentation, the themes that will be discussed are:
– What knowledge do teachers and psychologists need to support people with high abilities?
– What personal characteristics do teachers and psychologists need to support people with high abilities?
– How can we empower teachers and psychologists to adequately support people with high abilities?
– What did ECHA Practitioners and Specialist learn, how did they grow, how do they apply what they learned?
References
European Council for High Ability (2018). Professional training programmes in gifted education. Retrieved from https://www.echa.info/images/documents/echa_training/ECHA-Training.pdf.
Jen, E., & Hoogeveen, L. (2022). Design an international blended professional development model for gifted education: An evaluation study. Evaluation and Program Planning, 91, 102034.

Prof. Dr. Lianne Hoogeveen is Programme Director of the Radboud International Training of High Ability (RITHA), qualified by the European Council for High Ability (ECHA). She coordinates the master specialization ‘Gifted Education’ at Radboud University. As a mental health psychologist, she attends people with high abilities at CBO Talent Development in Nijmegen. As part of the Behavioral Science Institute (BSI) of the Radboud University, Lianne Hoogeveen is involved in research on giftedness and education, cooperating with Dutch and international colleagues. She is a guest teacher in several European and non-European universities. She is the President of the European Council for High Ability (ECHA).