The State of Knowledge in Rural Gifted Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

To outline the current state of empirical knowledge in rural gifted education, a systematic review of the international empirical literature was conducted with peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2000 to 2020. Six inclusion/exclusion criteria guided the searches that were undertaken of the ERIC and PsycINFO databases, six peer-reviewed journals in gifted education, and three peer-reviewed journals in rural education, along with the reference lists of the journal articles identified from the database and journal searches. The 103 journal articles that were eventually identified as meeting search criteria were thereafter analyzed to document key details, including the countries/regions of origin, publication outlets, authorship, approaches to data collection and analyses, and the major findings. A discussion of the key issues and trends in the identified studies, along with areas for focus in future investigations, concludes the review.