23 - 24 MAY 2025

Dr Michelle Ronksley-Pavia

Generative Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Pedagogical Approaches for Gifted Learners

Bio – Dr Michelle Ronksley-Pavia is a pioneering researcher in gifted education. Her work is transforming understanding of gifted education and twice-exceptionality and creating innovative pathways for supporting diverse gifted learners. As Senior Lecturer in Special Education and Inclusive Education, and Program Director for the Graduate Certificate in Special Education, Griffith University, she has established herself as an internationally recognised expert on disability, giftedness, and the intersection of these domains—twice-/multi-exceptionality.

Dr Ronksley-Pavia’s research centres the voices of gifted children and twice-/multiexceptional children, addressing critical gaps in understanding their lived experiences. Her pioneering work on prevalence estimates of twice-exceptionality provides essential data previously unavailable to policymakers and educators. Her research on identification methods has challenged inappropriate practices, with her critique of Australia’s NAPLAN as the sole approach for identifying giftedness being viewed over 8,400 times and ranking in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.

As a field leader, Dr Ronksley-Pavia has secured prestigious national and international grants, including the Esther Katz Rosen Fund Grant from the American Psychological Foundation—becoming the first Australian researcher ever to receive this honour. Her innovative work exploring generative AI (GenAI) applications in gifted education demonstrates her forward-thinking approach to talent development. Additionally, her Queensland Department of Education Horizon Grant is building teacher capacity to leverage GenAI for neurodiverse students. Dr Ronksley-Pavia’s service to gifted education is exemplary. As an elected Australian Delegate to the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC), she actively contributes to Council initiatives, including serving on the Teacher Education Committee that developed the WCGTC Global Principles for Professional Learning in Gifted Education. She has also established the annual Griffith University Gifted Education Symposium, bringing together international experts, practitioners, and parents/caregivers.

Her international leadership is evidenced by speaker invitations, authorship requests, media consultancy invitations, membership of the Academic Committee for the WCGTC 2025 World Conference, editorial board membership for the Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity, and Australian Correspondent for the European Council for High Ability (ECHA). She was recently honoured as “a prominent, pioneering scholar” through an invited interview in the field-leading journal Roeper Review (2024).

Room: P1

Sue Stevens

Parenting your child through the school years

Synopsis: School is not a perfect fit for any one child. Your child’s school experience maybe fraught with frustration, reluctance to attend or to cooperate in a class that doesn’t bring them any joy. So what are parents to do in the here and now? It may be better to work toward a mutual understanding of what would be deemed “success” for your particular child. Rather than fighting the system, informed parents may be able to negotiate the school program, and make it fit for their children.This involves a rethinking of what it means to “achieve” at school and to align the success criteria so that real progress can be made more easily. Strategies to negotiate with schools coupled with useful activities and hints for children, resources and examples of success will be shared so that parents will be empowered to take their place a first educators of their children without the need for WWIII with their child’s school.

This presentation relies not just on theory but also Sue’s personal experience. Making school fit her children’s learning needs was a difficult task and ultimately involved acceleration and searching out enrichment programs that were on offer. Thankfully, all three children and both parents survived the school years and the children are now pursuing their dreams.

Bio: Sue is a mathematics and science teacher of long standing. She is the mother of three gifted children and has a masters’ degree in gifted education, both factors informing her continual promotion of appropriate accommodations for gifted children in schools through the work of QAGTC.

Sue is a passionate provider of teacher professional development workshops and seminars and co-writer of the Strategies and Indicators document for the implementation of gifted education in state schools and an equivalent document for Brisbane Catholic Education. She also wrote the gifted supplement modules for ACARA and Australian Science Teachers’ Association online curriculum support. She is an enthusiastic creator and deliverer of STEM programs for gifted students from prep to Year 9 and a judge of the annual Science Teachers’ Association Queensland (STAQ) Science competition. Sue is presently directing her attention to the identification and support of potentially overlooked disenfranchised, yet gifted students.

Room: P2

Anna Fowler

Identifying twice-exceptional students in the early years of schooling: A case study

Synopsis: Twice-exceptional learners are often difficult to identify. With a co-occurrence of high potential and disability(ies), these students require specific supports to address their unique and diverse needs. Without accurate identification, twice-exceptional students may not receive appropriate educational programming and provisions, further exacerbating educational difficulties where students remain unable to reach their potential. Findings from this exploratory case study into current early learning identification practices used in one state school in Queensland, will be presented. Data were gathered through document reviews and a two-stage interview design with a single participant, with research focussed on practices taking place in the early years of schooling, Prep and Year 1, to determine their suitability for identifying both exceptions (giftedness and disabilities) for these students. Key findings revealed a local policy initiative to identify gifted learners, a comprehensive assessment approach, a collaborative decision-making approach, and the key roles of the principal and gifted and talented coordinator in driving local practice. Discussion will take place around these findings, along with recommendations for policy and practice, as well as suggestions for further research.

Bio: Anna Fowler has over 20 years experience in Education, including Primary teaching, pre-service teacher education at the University level, tutoring and research. She completed a Masters of Education and Professional Studies Research in 2024, focused on Twice-exceptional identification, and has since gone on to undertake a PhD at Griffith University where she seeks to explore sense of belonging experiences for twice-exceptional learners across schooling years. Anna recently started teaching for Griffith University, after many years of working online for the University of New England, Armidale. Her particular area of passion for twice-exceptional learners combines her personal, teaching and researcher perspectives and experiences.

Room: P3

Barbara Mossman

Lighting the Gifted Fire in the Classroom

Synopsis: To maximise individual self-realisation and national potential, we clearly need to engage gifted students in Australian schools. To do so, educators need to adopt a multi-pronged approach to catering to our most able. Not only do staff need education about the needs of gifted students and ways to cater to them in the classroom, but targeted opportunities need to be introduced that appeal to such students’ need for challenge, ideally beyond extension or acceleration options. Understanding the complex socio-emotional profiles of many gifted students and the breadth of their gifts is key to building a program that unleashes potential and creates a culture of excitement. Recognising this, Cannon Hill Anglican College has embraced a broad definition of giftedness via a range of unique, “home-grown” elective subjects that cater to student passions. These electives include Changing Tomorrow, a collaborative problem-solving elective, and The Project, where students undertake ambitious passion projects, resulting in extraordinary achievements in areas ranging from marine biology research to designing functioning AI to writing fantasy novellas. In addition, students are involved in a school-wide, soft-skills development program that invites them to reflect, not only on their thinking skills, but also on their personalities, communication and collaboration skills.

Bio: With a reputation as an innovative, soft skills-focused educator of gifted young people who has fostered an aspirational student culture in her school, Barbara Mossman is passionate about the need to challenge students by catering to a broad range of giftedness through both curricular and extra-curricular opportunities. Most notably, in her role as Head of Gifted and Enterprise Education at Cannon Hill Anglican College she has designed innovative electives that facilitate ambitious passion projects and a successful whole-school 21st century skills development program. Barbara has extensive educational leadership experience in leading Queensland schools and a background in the communications industry.

Room: P1

Janelle Wills

You Can’t Make Me! Self-Determination Theory and Student Motivation.

Synopsis: We can’t make students be motivated but we can create an environment where students can motivate themselves. Self-determination theory (SDT) is a widely used framework for understanding human motivation and well-being. According to SDT, people have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competency and relatedness. Autonomy refers to the sense of volition and choice in one’s actions, competency refers to the sense of mastery and effectiveness in one’s skills, and relatedness refers to the sense of connection and belonging with others. When these needs are satisfied, people experience more intrinsic motivation, engagement, learning and achievement. When these needs are hindered, people experience more extrinsic motivation, anxiety, boredom and dropout.
This workshop will introduce the main concepts and principles of SDT and how they apply to our students. It will also provide practical strategies for educators to enhance the autonomy, competency and relatedness of their students in the classroom and beyond. The workshop will cover topics such as:
• How to create a supportive and autonomy-respecting learning environment
• How to use feedback in a way that promotes competency and intrinsic motivation
• How to foster positive relationships and a sense of community among students and teachers

Bio: Dr. Janelle Wills, a seasoned educator with over three decades of experience in teaching and leadership, has been instrumental in driving positive change in Australian education at a school and sector level.

With a PhD that delved into self-efficacy and twice exceptional students, Dr. Wills has significantly contributed to various realms of education, including special education, gifted education, assessment, and feedback. Her research has shaped and enriched these areas, shedding light on effective teaching practices and strategies.

Room: P2

Carol Barnes

Gifted Learners with Disability (GLD) vs. the latest shiny ideologies

Synopsis: Not all intellectually gifted children achieve high grades in a straightforward manner. Some are continually struggling with an unidentified co-occurring disability which may negatively affect their learning, their academic success and their general wellbeing. These children are ‘gifted learners with disability’ (‘GLD’). In this context, ‘disability’ is defined widely (as in Australian disability discrimination legislation) rather than encompassing only those few disabilities which some education departments have selectively tweezered out for additional funding. Some GLD advocates in Australia are increasingly concerned to see educators gradually and capriciously moving towards a differentiation or UDL position espoused by some overseas academics – the promotion of a narrower, ‘strength-based’ approach for GLD, at the expense of remedial intervention designed to address (if possible) the concomitant disability. Similarly, the trend to begin referring to GLD students by euphemisms such as ‘twice-exceptional’ or ‘neurodivergent’ in Australia is harming these students when it comes to applying for disability adjustments for classroom activities and for exams. And the enigmatic ideology of full inclusion, with all its strict rules and requirements, may result in GLD having neither their giftedness nor their disability needs met at school. What would it be safer for educators to do instead?

Bio: Carol Barnes is an honorary Visiting Fellow (gifted education) at GERRIC within the Education School at the University of NSW. She is national coordinator for GLD Australia, an online learning community focussing on intellectually gifted learners with disability (GLD). She currently consults to government on 12 GLD-related projects, inquiries and reviews. A resident of Queensland, Carol is currently undertaking a Bond University PhD in Law on disability adjustments for GLD children. Carol was the only Australian named on the 2020 Bridges 2e Center’s list of ‘movers and shakers’ in the GLD field.

Room: P3

Gail Young

Celebrate Engage: How Gifted students seek out priority question techniques

Synopsis:  Young Gifted learners are curious thinkers who like to inquire about their own learning . These students need to generate their own thinking about their learning.  The asking of questions by students can be just as important as a teacher asking questions. It is important to create a culture of thinking in positive classroom environment where the teacher steps back and encourages students to take the lead with their own learning. The key idea is to get students thinking for themselves unfettered by worries about whether the teacher likes or dislikes their questions.

In this interactive workshop participants will learn about the shift in teaching when students formulate their own questions. The importance of establishing this powerful tool will allow our young  gifted learners to be self directed learners as they emerge on their own demonstrating their gifts and talents.

Bio: Gail is an experienced early years professional teacher who has completed her Masters degree in Gifted and Talented Education. Gail advocates for connecting with gifted learners by providing a platform in classroom practice whereby gifted students build their question formulation skills. Gail has recently completed a course at Havard University on the Question Formulation Technique. Gail Is a member of state management team at QAGTC Inc and has presented at World, International , National, Asia -Pacific and QAGTC state conferences.

Room: P3

Susan Stevens

Critical and Creative Thinkers: Gifted 101

Room: P1

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