Abstract

Chilean gifted education is relatively a new area of academic interest. Nevertheless, its history started in 1964, with the Chilean Institute for Gifted Children. Its founder, Professor Mario Gambra, was the representative of Latin America at the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children’s assembly of delegates in 1979, and one of the Chilean delegate assembly in 1982. In one of the newsletters of the World Council, Henry Collins, the president of the Executive Committee, acknowledged Gambra’s initiatives. Additionally, his work was promoted in other Spanish speaking countries. However, in Chile, this Institute was highly criticised because of its lack of recognition by the Ministry of Education as well as its questionable idea basis. The recent and best-known history formally begins when in 2001 the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile developed a program for gifted and talented students called PENTA UC. This extracurricular enrichment program fosters the capabilities of talented Chilean students from grade 6-12. These students have special classes every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and continue with their mainstream classes during the rest of the week. This program has also a special feature called PENTA UC Escolar, an extracurricular intra-school enrichment program, which implements an identification system of gifted students and teacher development within the school. Since the introduction of PENTA UC, this model has been shared with other Universities in Chile, and with the University of Panama, using the same format described above. The seven programs are located in different areas of the country, and different universities are in charge of them. Considering the previous information, this presentation aims to summarise the known and less-known history of gifted education in Chile, to provide critical lenses to discuss its future. This discussion is critical to develop guidelines for new policies, provisions, professional development and research in the field.