ZDM Mathematics Education
DOI 10.1007/s11858-016-0814-8
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Dangerous myths about “gifted” mathematics students
Linda Jensen Sheffield1 
Accepted: 3 September 2016
© FIZ Karlsruhe 2016
Abstract  A number of myths about mathematically gifted
students, mathematics itself, and programs designed to
serve these students tend to inhibit educators, parents and
students themselves from developing students’ mathemati-
cal creativity, expertise and enjoyment. This paper dis-
cusses some of the myths that can discourage students’
mathematical development, restrict their understanding of
mathematics, and/or are well-intentioned solutions with
unintended consequences and includes research results
from a few mathematics programs and other studies
designed to counteract these myths and maximize students’
mathematical achievement, engagement and innovation.
Keywords  Mathematically gifted · Promising · Talented ·
Mathematical expertise · Mathematical creativity
Abbreviations
AP Advanced placement
CCSS-M Common core state standards in mathematics
CERI Centre for Educational Research and
Innovation
ESSA Every Student Succeeds Act
HS High school
MAA Mathematical Association of America
Some of this material was originally presented at and included
in the Proceedings of the Ninth International Mathematical
Creativity and Giftedness conference in Sinaia, Romania in June
2015.
* Linda Jensen Sheffield
sheffield@nku.edu
http://www.lindajsheffield.com
1
Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY 41099,
USA
NAEP National Assessment of Educational Progress
NAGC National Association for Gifted Children
NCLB No Child Left Behind
NCSM National Council of Supervisors of
Mathematics
NCTM National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
NSB National Science Board
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
PISA Programme for International Student
Assessment
STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics
TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Sci-
ence Study
US United States
1 Introduction
In the United States, the National Science Board report,
Preparing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators noted,
“The long-term prosperity of our Nation will increasingly
rely on talented and motivated individuals who will com-
prise the vanguard of scientific and technological innova-
tion; and every student in America deserves the opportu-
nity to achieve his or her full potential” (NSB, 2010, p. v).
This is not just an issue for the United States, but for our
world as a whole. The need for scientific and technologi-
cal innovation to combat international issues such as cli-
mate change, shortages of food and clean water, and ter-
rorism demand that all students, regardless of gender, race,
religion, socio-economic status or nationality develop their
mathematical gifts and talents to the maximum. Unfor-
tunately, there are a number of reasons that this has not
13

happened. Many of these may be related to commonly
believed myths that prevent students from developing their
mathematical expertise and passion to the fullest.
This paper investigates a few of these myths. The first
two of the myths, that mathematics ability is genetically
determined and that mathematically gifted students are
White or Asian males, are especially dangerous because
they greatly limit the numbers of students who could
achieve at the highest levels. The third myth, that math-
ematics is not creative, narrows students’ understand-
ing of mathematics to a rotely-learned series of facts and
algorithms, and denies them the opportunity to become
engaged in the beauty and challenges of true mathematics.
The final two myths, that gifted mathematics students can
develop on their own or that acceleration is the solution to
developing the highest levels of mathematics performance,
are classroom strategies that may have been implemented
with good intentions, but often have disastrous unintended
consequences. For each of these myths, recommendations
are given based on research and results from practices that
have shown some success with our most outstanding math-
ematics students. Much more research is needed to further
this quest to increase the numbers, levels, and passions of
our most promising mathematics students.
2 General background
To understand current myths about mathematically gifted
students, it is helpful to take a brief look at the meaning and
process of mathematics as well as definitions of giftedness
and how these come together to understand mathematical
giftedness.
2.1 School mathematics
When elementary students are asked for a definition of
mathematics, responses often include the naming of opera-
tions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and divi-
sion, generally with whole numbers and fractions, and per-
haps including some ideas of geometry and measurement.
Secondary students may expand on these ideas to include
operations with variables, but most K-12 students do not
go beyond a rule-driven, operation-focused idea of what it
means to do mathematics.
W. W. Sawyer (1955), a mathematician and mathemat-
ics educator who often worked with gifted students, defined
mathematics in a manner that is commonly heard today
that mathematics is the classification and study of all pos-
sible patterns. More recently, Keith Devlin (1997) reflects
the attitude of many modern mathematicians also defin-
ing mathematics as the study of patterns. Polya (1945), in
the definitive How to Solve It, emphasized the process of
13
L. J. Sheffield
inventing mathematics when he noted, “Yes, mathematics
has two faces; it is the rigorous science of Euclid but it is
also something else. Mathematics presented in the Euclid-
ean way appears as a systematic, deductive science; but
mathematics in the making appears as an experimental,
inductive science.” (1945, p. 7) These definitions reflect the
much broader view of mathematics as an evolving, innova-
tive science of patterns, relations, and logical reasoning and
not just a set of rules for the manipulation of numbers and
symbols to be memorized. This paper uses this dynamic
concept of what mathematics is and what it means to do
mathematics. This has significant implications for defining
and planning K-12 mathematics experiences for all stu-
dents, but especially for those students who will become
the future mathematicians, STEM professionals, and lead-
ers of tomorrow.
2.2 General giftedness
It is also important to look at what is meant by being
gifted. Books such as The Genius in All of Us: Why Eve-
rything You’ve Been Told about Genetics, Talent and IQ is
Wrong (Shenk, 2010) and research on a “growth mindset”
(for example, Dweck, 2006a; Boaler, 2016) emphasize the
importance of understanding that intelligence is not fixed,
but is dynamic, diffuse and ongoing. This is supported by
several neuroscience researchers who are beginning to
make inroads in opening new pathways to improve edu-
cational research, policies and practices. Understanding
the Brain: the Birth of a Learning Science, a report on two
decades of research from the Organisation for Economic
Co-operations and Development (OECD) and the Cen-
tre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) also
stresses the plasticity of the brain and the importance of
the environment. At the same time, neuroscience research
has found numerous indications of differences in the brain
between novices and experts. Research into these differ-
ences is “opening up understanding of “causation” and
not just “correlation”; and moving important questions
from the realm of the intuitive or ideological into that of
evidence” (OECD/CERI, 2007, p. 7). For example, in a
study of 294,000 people, Benjamin, Cesearini, and Koe-
llinger have identified variants in 74 genes that are asso-
ciated with educational attainment. They note, however,
that these genes are not deterministic but that the environ-
ment sets the stage upon which genes act out their roles.
Collectively, they found that the variants in the 74 genes
explained a total of 3 % of the differences in educational
levels. They also found that the variants had a much
stronger effect on Swedes born in the 1930s than those
born in the 1950s after education reforms were imple-
mented that improved access to schools and universities
(Yong, 2016).
Dangerous myths about “gifted” mathematics students
This discussion of giftedness, including gender, racial,
socio-economic and other differences, is not new, and often
includes reliance on a test of intelligence. Over 100 years
ago, Alfred Binet (1909), who is often acknowledged as
the inventor of the modern intelligence (IQ) test, protested
against what he termed the brutal pessimism of philoso-
phers who asserted that an individual’s intelligence is a
fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. Binet
felt with practice and training that we become more intel-
ligent that we were before. He claimed that it is not always
the people who start out the smartest who end up the
smartest.
Even though research has repeatedly shown that a score
on a single IQ test is not a reliable indicator of future stu-
dent performance, it continues to be used to place students
in gifted programs in many schools in the United States.
For example, when my son, Dan, was in second grade,
he took an IQ test to get into the gifted program in third
grade and missed the cut-off score. I asked for him to be
retested in the fall before the program began, and that sum-
mer we spent a few hours studying for the IQ test. In the
fall when he was retested, he passed with flying colors and
was subsequently part of an excellent gifted and talented
program from grade 3 through grade 12. He skipped ninth
grade, was high school valedictorian, received a bachelor’s
degree, a master’s degree and a Ph. D. from Harvard, and is
currently a professor at Princeton University. This reliance
on a single test score paid off for him when he was iden-
tified and included in this special programming, but over-
looks untold numbers of students who “miss the cut-off”.
2.3 Mathematical giftedness
Just as conceptions of mathematics and giftedness have
been studied and evolved for years, so have conceptions of
what it means to be mathematically gifted. Several terms
have been used to describe the phenomena, including math-
ematically gifted and talented, (highly) able, (intellectu-
ally) precocious, bright, expert, mathematically advanced,
and many others, but none of these has a single, agreed
upon definition. Perhaps the most widely cited is Krutet-
skii where “mathematical giftedness” is the name given to
a unique aggregate of mathematical abilities that opens up
the possibility of successful performance in mathematical
activity (Krutetskii, 1976, p. 77). Others focus on perfor-
mance rather than inherent qualities in the individual and
refer to the development of mathematical talent rather than
a mathematically gifted student.
The term ‘mathematically promising’ was introduced by
the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
in the mid-1990s as a function of maximizing variables
such as abilities, motivation, beliefs, and experiences or
opportunities. NCTM suggested using the term promising
rather than gifted, purposely broadening the definition to
include a much greater range of students and to open the
possibility of developing outstanding mathematical abili-
ties in students and not simply identifying students with
pre-existing mathematical expertise and passion (Shef-
field et al, 1999). It is within this broader context of what
it means not only to be mathematically gifted but also
to become mathematically gifted that these myths are
discussed.
3 Myth #1: mathematics ability is genetically
determined
3.1 The myth and its dangers
The widespread belief in the United States that mathemati-
cal geniuses are born that way and that others are born
unable to do mathematics at higher levels is perhaps the
most dangerous of all these myths. We seem to understand
that the Williams sisters, starting when they were 4 years
old, had to spend thousands of hours practicing to become
tennis stars and that Tiger Woods was practicing his golf
swing before the age of two, but we continue to believe that
giftedness is a mystical power that people are born with
and don’t have to work at, and that this is especially true
in the field of mathematics. This belief is dangerous not
only for those students who believe that they do not have
a mathematical mind and therefore give up on learning
mathematics almost before they even know the true mean-
ing of mathematics, but also for those students who are the
most proficient at school mathematics. Many students who
breeze through early mathematical topics in school may
give up the first time they struggle with a new idea, believ-
ing as soon as they struggle that they actually do not have
a mathematical mind. Therefore, they don’t go on to study
real mathematics and never experience the joy that accom-
panies new hard-won discoveries.
Just as Binet asserted over 100 years ago, research by
Carol Dweck (2006a) and others has shown that students
who believe in a “fixed” mindset, that is a belief that you
are born with certain “fixed” abilities, do more poorly
learning mathematics than those who believe in a “growth”
mindset, understanding that your brain changes and grows
the more it is challenged to learn. This is true for our best
mathematics students as well as for those who perform
poorly. Jo Boaler (2016) makes a powerful case for the
harm caused by this idea of genetic determinism and teach-
ing mathematics as a “performance” subject that is used to
separate children into those who have the math gene and
those who don’t. Instead, she calls for teaching mathemat-
ics as an incredible lens to view the world that is available
to all students through study and hard work.
13

The work of Dweck, Boaler and others builds on
advances in neuroscience research at the end of the twen-
tieth century that demonstrated that the human brain is
designed with a fundamental number sense that is even
more inherent than language. That research prompted a
number of books including The Number Sense: How the
Mind Creates Mathematics (Dehaene, 1997), What Counts:
How Every Brain Is Hardwired for Math (Butterworth,
1999), and The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking
Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip (Devlin, 2000).
Each of these books includes a chapter on the brains of
those who are especially good at mathematics. In answer-
ing the question posed in the chapter, Do Mathematicians
Have Different Brains?, Devlin (2000) argues that the con-
centration and abstraction required to understand math-
ematics at the highest level requires considerable determi-
nation and effort and that most people are not incapable of
this, they simply either choose not to or they don’t believe
that they are capable of it. In discussing the fact that Ein-
stein’s brain had cells in the left parietal lobe more densely
packed that normal, Butterworth (1999) reminds us that a
correlation between parietal neurons and numerical ability
is quite different than proving causation. In fact, it could
be that numerical ability causes the increase in neurons
because that part of the brain is constantly exercised. In
the chapter on Geniuses and Prodigies, Dehaene concludes
“genius emerges from an improbable confluence of multi-
ple factors—genetic, hormonal, familial and educational.
Biology and environment are intertwined in an unbreak-
able chain of causes and effects, annihilating all hopes of
predicting talent through biology or of giving birth to a
baby Einstein by crossbreeding two Nobel Prize winners”
(Dehaene, 1997, p. 162).
More recently, in 2016, Dehaene and his co-author
Amalric found through the use of functional magnetic reso-
nance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 15 professional
mathematicians and 15 nonmathematicians of the same
academic standing that in the mathematicians only, listen-
ing to complex math-related statements activated a net-
work of regions in the brain associated with evolutionarily
ancient knowledge of number and space. This was the same
area that Dehaene and others had found to be active when
performing simple arithmetic calculations or simply seeing
numbers on a page. Even though there are differences in
the brains of expert mathematicians compared to non-math-
ematicians, they note that the differences do not indicate
the causes. (Cepelewicz 2016).
3.2 Recommendations
Educators obviously cannot change the students’ inherited
mathematical genes. For them, the question is whether they
can increase the mathematical abilities and passions of our
13
L. J. Sheffield
highest performing students as well as raise others to those
levels.
Several years ago, I met ‘Rose’ whose teacher had told
her mother that Rose was mentally retarded because, at age
nine, Rose was unable to add or subtract two-digit numbers.
The teacher believed that Rose would never be able to do
real math. Rose, however, said she would rather be in the
mathematics class with the gifted students instead of in the
special education class where the teacher assumed she was
incapable of learning. Later when Rose’s mother took her to
a local university to have a psychologist test her, she was told
that Rose had “school-induced retardation”, likely due to the
fact that her teacher had taught mathematics as rotely putting
dots on numerals and believing that her students were too
retarded to learn conceptually. Unlike countless others in that
teacher’s classes and classes of other similar teachers at all
levels, there is a happy ending for Rose, who is a competitive
swimmer and was more than willing to work learning the
true meaning of mathematics just as she worked to become a
better swimmer. We spent a few hours that summer and peri-
odically over the next several years exploring mathematical
concepts and interesting problems as Rose constantly asked
questions and worked to understand everything she could
about any topic her teachers introduced. Subsequently, Rose
has gone on to learning and enjoying math at a high level. As
a sophomore in an elite high school, Rose took pre-calculus,
got 102 % on the final exam, had “RoseLovesMath” for her
email address, and recently received early acceptance into a
top-tier university engineering program.
I mention this anecdote because work with Rose and
scores of other students and teachers with whom I have
worked over the years, has caused me to ponder whether
we might move from “school-induced retardation” to
“school-induced giftedness”. It is easy to understand that
poor teaching can create students who perform poorly and
have low self-esteem. It is not at all obvious whether good
teaching can produce the opposite.
When I was co-principal investigator on a US Depart-
ment of Education Javits grant for Gifted and Talented Stu-
dents, Project M3: Mentoring Mathematical Minds (http://
www.projectm3.org), directed by Dr. M. Katherine Gavin at
the University of Connecticut, a low-performing Kentucky
school was one of the pilot schools in the research study.
To begin the program, we selected 20 “gifted” mathemat-
ics students in each of 10 pilot schools in Kentucky and
Connecticut using a variety of measures. In this Kentucky
school, our class of twenty selected “gifted” students’ aver-
age test scores were at the 22nd percentile in mathematical
concepts, the 24th percentile in mathematical problem solv-
ing and the 23rd percentile overall in math on the Iowa Test
of Basic Skills, indicating over 75 % of students nationwide
who had taken the test had a better performance. After only
one year in the program with a heavy emphasis on creative
Dangerous myths about “gifted” mathematics students
problem solving through reasoning, sense-making, and what
we now see as the Common Core State Standards in Math-
ematics (CCSS-M, 2010) Standards for Practice, including
oral and written communication, the class average went to
the 75th percentile in concepts, the 76th percentile in prob-
lem solving and the 71st percentile in overall mathematics.
Overall, posttest scores did not match those of wealthier,
high-performing districts in the study, but they certainly
were the highest “value-added” scores of any group (Gavin
et al, 2009). Treating these students in the same way as stu-
dents in other districts who had been selected for the pro-
gram based on more traditional indicators of giftedness such
as IQ scores above 130 or 135 and/or mathematics achieve-
ment test scores above the 95th percentile, resulted in sig-
nificant progress, although not in the typical “gifted” range.
We later followed the Project M3 program with the
NSF-funded Project M2: Mentoring Young Mathematicians
(http://www.projectm2.org), which was designed for and
implemented with heterogeneous classes of kindergarten
through second grade students. Even though these classes,
each starting with a wide range of student performance on
mathematics tasks, were randomly assigned to either Pro-
ject M2 or a comparison group, at the end of a year in the
program, more than twice as many students in the Project
M2 classes scored above the mean on an open response
posttest as students in the comparison classes, and as many
as 7 % of the students in the Project M2 classes scored two
standard deviations above the mean as compared with only
0.5 % of the students in the comparison classes (Sheffield
et al, 2012; Gavin et al, 2013a, b).
These results support increasing amounts of evidence
from brain research as well as national and international
research in teaching and learning mathematics that a wide
range of students can learn to perform at far higher levels
of mathematics than has previously been thought possible.
Teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders need to
understand that they can control much of their own ability
to perform at high levels mathematically. We may not know
how much genes influence our mathematics abilities, but
we do know that belief that one is capable of learning com-
plex mathematics, opportunities and the desire to engage
in challenging problem solving and problem posing, hard
work, and perseverance can increase the abilities of even
the best mathematics students.
4 Myth #2: gifted mathematics students are Asian
or White males
4.1 The myth and its dangers
This myth, as with many others, has its basis in a number
of facts. The gender gap on average mathematics scores for
students in the United States is generally small to non-exist-
ent, but the gender gap on math tests among high-achieving
students is consistently much larger (Ellison and Swanson,
2010). From 1972 through 2015, the average scores on the
math section of the SAT, a commonly used college entrance
exam in the United States, has shown approximately a
30-point difference in favor of males that has not narrowed
in spite of girls increasingly taking higher-level mathemat-
ics courses. Girls now outnumber boys in the top 10 % of
US high school graduating classes and in advanced AP or
honors mathematics and science classes. In spite of this, at
the high end of performance (a score of 700–800) on the
2015 SAT math test, boys outnumbered girls by a ratio of
1.62 to 1. This gender difference exists across all ethnicity
groups taking the SAT, but the average SAT math scores
show a far greater difference based on ethnicity than that
based on gender. For example, the average 2015 SAT Math
score was 611 for Asian males and 585 for Asian females
while the overall average scores were 527 for males and
496 for females. The average score of female Asian Ameri-
can students is higher than the average score of males in
every other ethnicity group and the average score of black
males is lower than the average score of females in every
other ethnicity group (Perry, 2015).
For students receiving scores at the 99th percentile on
the American Mathematics Competition (AMC), Ellison
and Swanson (2010) found the gap is even greater where
the male–female ratio exceeds 10 to 1. However, power-
house non-magnet, non-charter public schools produce
top-performing mathematics students on the AMC at a rate
ten times the national average, even among schools that are
demographically similar. “Whereas boys come from a vari-
ety of backgrounds, the top-scoring girls are almost exclu-
sively drawn from a remarkably small set of super-elite
schools: as many girls come from the 20 schools that gener-
ally do best on these contests as from all other high schools
in the United States combined. This suggests that almost all
American girls with extreme mathematical ability are not
developing their mathematical talents to the degree neces-
sary to reach the extreme top percentiles of these contests”
(Ellison and Swanson, 2010, p. 110).
One test that is showing more positive results for girls
is the recently implemented Technology and Engineering
Literacy (TEL) assessment that is part of the eighth grade
National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United
States. First given in 2014, this showed females with a
slight advantage overall (151–149) with 3 % of both males
and females scoring at the most advanced levels. Ethic
differences were greater (160 to 128—comparing White
and Black students) with socio-economic differences also
showing significant gaps (135–163 for students qualifying
for free and reduced lunches compared to those who did
not) (NAEP 2014).
13

On an international level, the OECD report, The ABC
of Gender Equality in Education states that girls in top-
performing countries perform on par with their male
classmates in mathematics and attain higher scores than
all boys in most other countries. “These results strongly
suggest that gender gaps in school performance are not
determined by innate differences in ability. A concerted
effort by parents, teachers, policy makers and opinion
leaders is needed if both boys and girls are to be able to
realize their full potential and contribute to the economic
growth and well-being of their societies” (OECD, 2015,
p. 15).
Differences in scores based on ethnicity also exist, but
after studying “negro children of superior intelligence”,
Jenkins (1936, p. 190) noted that, “The data presented here
concerning Negro children of superior intelligence add
weight to the already abundant evidence that intelligence
and educability are matters of individual differences rather
than of racial differences”. Eighty years later the myth
persists that individuals of one racial group or one sex are
smarter than others in spite of the “abundant evidence” to
the contrary that existed in the 1930s and has grown signifi-
cantly since then.
In spite of the evidence that girls and students of
color are quite capable of performing at high levels
mathematically, we do not see them entering STEM
fields in numbers consistent with their success in school
mathematics. In the United States, in 2013, 73 % of
math doctorates were male and 94 % were white or
Asian. The proportion of women pursuing mathemat-
ics Ph.D.s between 2004 and 2013 actually fell, from
34 % of the students to 27 % (Velez et al, 2013). The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment (OECD) notes that this is not just a problem in
the United States. Citing the importance of every coun-
try developing the potential of all their students for
today’s global economy, their study, The ABC of Gen-
der Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confi-
dence, determined that when given equal opportunities,
girls and boys have equal chances of achieving at the
highest levels. “Meanwhile, in higher education and
beyond, young women are under-represented in the
fields of mathematics, physical science and computing.
In 2012, only 14 % of young women who entered uni-
versity for the first time chose science-related fields of
study, including engineering, manufacturing and con-
struction. By contrast, 39 % of young men who entered
university that year chose to pursue one of those fields
of study” (OECD, 2015, p. 13). They found that even
high-achieving girls had less self-confidence and more
math anxiety than boys, and less than 5 % of girls in the
OECD countries even contemplated pursuing a career in
engineering or computing.
13
L. J. Sheffield
4.2 Recommendations
Ongoing differences favoring White and Asian American
males in the US at the highest levels of math performance
are proving difficult to change. The larger numbers of girls
in the highest-level mathematics classes is not closing the
gap at needed levels. Perhaps one reason is related to the
finding by Dweck (2006b) that when researchers gave chal-
lenging work to fifth grade students that girls had more
difficulty when they scored highly on IQ tests, whereas
for boys the opposite was true. Similarly, Boaler (1997)
reported that high-achieving girls who are placed in top
track classes frequently suffer from the idea that they are
smart and need to maintain the image of smartness, leading
to a fear of challenge and inability to cope with failure.
Through the ages, individuals from all ethnic groups,
including women, have performed at the highest levels
mathematically, but the numbers are not enough for the
needs of our technological future. As noted in the recom-
mendations for the first myth, there are programs showing
some success in increasing the mathematical talents and
abilities of girls, students of color, and students from the
lowest socio-economic levels and these should continue to
be studied. In addition, we need to continue to explore the
unique needs and abilities of males and females from all
ethnic and socio-economic groups. One factor to explore is
the following myth, that mathematics is a dead, rote subject
and not of interest to large numbers of students.
5 Myth #3: mathematics is not creative
5.1 The myth and its dangers
Throughout the ages, mathematicians have known that
mathematics is a creative subject but students often do not
see it that way. As Boaler stated, “When we look at mathe-
matics in the world and the mathematics used by mathema-
ticians, we see a creative, visual, connected, and living sub-
ject. Yet school students often see mathematics as a dead
subject—hundreds of methods and procedures to memorize
that they will never use, hundreds of answers to questions
that they have never asked” (Boaler, 2016, p. 31).
In 1908 Henri Poincare gave a presentation to the French
Psychological Society entitled ‘Mathematical Creation’
that inspired Jacques Hadamard to begin his own investiga-
tion into this area that resulted in a series of lectures and
his seminal work on four stages of mathematical inven-
tion—initiation, incubation, illumination and verification
(Hadamard, 1954). In spite of this, school mathematics in
the United States all too often continues to be taught as a
rule-driven, algorithmic subject. As noted by Mann (2006),
“Teaching mathematics without providing for creativity
Dangerous myths about “gifted” mathematics students
denies all students, especially gifted and talented students,
the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of mathematics,
and fails to provide the gifted student an opportunity to
develop his or her talents” (p. 236).
Milgram and Hong (2009) claim that one of the major
reasons for talent loss in the field of mathematics is this
lack of recognition that creative thinking is important to
talent development. They note that schools often iden-
tify giftedness in children using a traditional test of gen-
eral intelligence whereas talent in adults is recognized by
the products they create. Narrow conceptions of gifted and
talented mathematics students that do not acknowledge the
importance of creativity not only limit the number of stu-
dents identified, but also limits the efforts to develop their
talents.
5.2 Recommendations
Students need to realize that mathematics is a creative,
ever-growing subject, and they should not be afraid to slow
down, dig deeply, ask questions, make mistakes, and take
risks with unusual strategies and solutions. In following up
on the work of Hadamard, Liljedahl (2009) emailed 150
prominent mathematicians, asking them questions from
Hadamard’s initial survey relating to the phenomenon of
mathematical discovery. Recurring themes in response to
this survey have several implications for mathematics stu-
dents including the importance of persistence, making and
building on failures and wrong ideas, deriving mathematics
for oneself and questioning and re-creating the work of oth-
ers, and paying attention to insights that come during the
suspension of conscious thought.
It is important that our best students be challenged and
encouraged to struggle with difficult problems, using a
variety of strategies and solutions. Teachers are often afraid
that if they let students make errors when solving math-
ematics problems that students will remember incorrect
answers, and therefore teachers expect students to memo-
rize and utilize only methods and algorithms taught by the
teacher. Research shows that the opposite is true, however.
Students who are allowed to make mistakes and “construct
viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others” as
recommended in the third CCSS Standard for Mathemati-
cal Practice have greater enjoyment and a much deeper and
long-lasting understanding of mathematical concepts as
well as a willingness to attack difficult problems in unique
and creative ways and persevere in their solutions.
Unfortunately, creativity is not mentioned in the Com-
mon Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS-M) even
though it is needed. In the joint publication, Using the
Common Core State Standards for Mathematics with Gifted
and Advanced Learners, from the National Association for
Gifted Children (NAGC), the National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics (NCTM), and the National Council of
Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM), we suggested that
the CCSS-M add a ninth Standard for Mathematical Prac-
tice: “Solve problems in novel ways and pose new mathe-
matical questions of interest to investigate. The character-
istics of the new proposed standard would be that students
are encouraged and supported in taking risks, embracing
challenge, solving problems in a variety of ways, pos-ing
new mathematical questions of interest to investigate, and
being passionate about mathematical investigations” (John-
sen and Sheffield, 2012, p. 16).
6 Myth #4: gifted mathematics students develop
on their own
6.1 The myth and its dangers
In the middle of World War II, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt asked the head of the US Office of Research and
Development, Vannevar Bush, if there could be a program
to discover and develop scientific talent in American youth
to ensure the future of scientific research. Bush (1945)
responded, “The responsibility for the creation of new
scientific knowledge rests on that small body of men and
women who understand the fundamental laws of nature and
are skilled in the techniques of scientific research. While
there will always be the rare individual who will rise to the
top without benefit of formal education and training, he
is the exception and even he might make a more notable
contribution if he had the benefit of the best education we
have to offer” (p. 23). Twenty-five years later, the National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics stated, “The student
most neglected, in terms of realizing full potential, is the
gifted student of mathematics. Outstanding mathemati-
cal ability is a precious societal resource, sorely needed
to maintain leadership in a technological world” (NCTM
1980, p. 18). The need for the best education that we have
to offer to develop the most talented mathematics stu-
dents possible remains as critical today as it was 17 years
ago. The world is far more technological than it was more
than 35 years ago when the NCTM noted that our most
neglected, and sorely needed, students are the most gifted.
This includes those students who are already performing at
the highest levels as well as those who have the potential to
do so.
In 2010, when the National Science Board published
Preparing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators they
asserted that, “Currently, far too many of America’s best
and brightest young men and women go unrecognized and
underdeveloped, and, thus, fail to reach their full potential.
This represents a loss for both the individual and society”
(NSB (2010), p. 1) This was echoed by Finn and Wright in
13

Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Edu-
cating High-Ability Students after visiting eleven countries
in 2012 and 2013 in an attempt to analyze US support for
gifted students compared to other countries with high-
performing students. They found that lack of support for
gifted students in the US is especially damaging to poor
and minority high-achieving students who often do not have
access to challenging public schools or elite private schools
and who seldom reach the Advanced level of the NAEP
mathematics assessment or attend the most challenging col-
leges. They note that while 9 % of American 15-year-olds
reach the top two levels of the PISA mathematics assess-
ment, 31 % of Korean students and 16 % of Canadians do
so. Even worse, only 1 % of US students with poorly edu-
cated parents reach those levels versus 5 % in Australia, 6 %
in Germany and 7 % in Japan (Finn and Wright, 2015).
Clearly our best mathematics students have not devel-
oped on their own to the levels that are needed to become
the future leaders and innovators who are most likely to
develop miraculous cures, solve the world’s problems such
as global warming, lack of clean water, renewable energy
and terrorism, and improve the lives of people around the
world. The recent US education policy of “No Child Left
Behind” (NCLB) has been laudable in its support for stu-
dents who are performing poorly, but much more needs
to be done for students at the top. The Every Student Suc-
ceeds Act (ESSA), which replaced NCLB in December
2015, asks states to track the progress of all gifted students
and for the first time allows schools to use federal dollars
to experiment with ways to screen for low-income, high-
ability students beginning in the early years and to train
teachers to provide for them. It is up to the states to take up
this challenge.
6.2 Recommendations
In addition to implementing the recommendations from the
ESSA, several other things might be done to identify, sup-
port, and develop mathematical expertise. The report, Pre-
paring the Next Generation of STEM Innovators, has three
main recommendations that apply to our most promising
mathematics students. These are:
1. Provide opportunities for excellence. This includes
providing support and a national database for both cur-
ricular and extracurricular opportunities for students,
including merit-based scholarships, and additional
training for teachers as well as building partnerships
with colleges, museums, industry, research labs, and
schools at all levels.
2. Cast a wide net. Noting the need for all types of tal-
ents in all demographics of students, recommendations
include using appropriate and multiple talent assess-
13
L. J. Sheffield
ments including quantitative/mathematical, verbal and
spatial and increasing training for education profes-
sionals at all levels, including early childhood educa-
tors and pediatricians.
3. Foster a supportive ecosystem that nurtures and cel-
ebrates excellence and innovative thinking. This
includes working to transform negative stereotypes of
gifted students and creating positive school environ-
ments that expect and appreciate academic excellence
and creativity and celebrate achievements and suc-
cesses (NSB 2010).
There are a number of ways to provide opportunities
for excellence that have been shown to have some success
increasing the numbers and levels of promising mathemat-
ics students. As noted earlier, well-trained teachers and cur-
ricular programs that focus on mathematical creativity, oral
and written discourse, and challenging problem solving
and problem posing such as Project M2: Mentoring Young
Mathematicians and Project M3: Mentoring Mathematical
Minds can start our youngest students on the path to math-
ematical excellence.
Outside of class, math clubs, math circles, competitions,
mentorships and other challenging activities have involved
students in developing their talents in engaging ways. Tyre
(2016) notes that the number of American teens who excel
at advanced math has surged, including winning the Inter-
national Math Olympiad in 2015 after finishing second or
third in the five previous years. Of course, only a relatively
few students can be on the Olympiad team, but college
professors are beginning to notice dramatic changes in top
math students and they attribute much, if not most of this,
to extracurricular activities. In addition to selective math
camps that have operated for decades such as the Ross
Mathematics Program at Ohio State, dozens of other math
enrichment camps have popped up and are open to students
who are enthusiastic about math but are not necessarily
prodigies. Numbers of students enrolled in math circles,
math clubs, and math competitions from the elementary
level through high school are also growing at a rapid pace.
Math chat rooms, online programs and websites such as
the Art of Problem Solving, Brilliant.org, and Math Pickle
also draw thousands of passionate students. Tyre (2016)
notes that all of the outside-of-school programs have key
elements in common, including the emphasis on think-
ing conceptually with open-ended, multifaceted situations
to predict, explore and explain the world with a dearth of
rote learning, memorization, and emphasis on speed. Stu-
dents learn math facts and formulas as a by-product, not the
goal. Unfortunately, many of these programs cost too much
money or are otherwise not available to students whose
families don’t have the money or the knowledge to access
them. More needs to be done to expand the programs to
Dangerous myths about “gifted” mathematics students
make them available and attractive to much larger numbers
of students, including infusing their techniques and chal-
lenges into K-12 public schools.
7 Myth #5: gifted students should accelerate their
mathematics classes as much as possible
7.1 The myth and its dangers
One possible solution to increasing the numbers and lev-
els of top mathematics students that is widely used in the
United States, but that is not proving successful, is the
acceleration of mathematics classes. This often takes the
form of tracking at the secondary level, to allow some stu-
dents to move rapidly into more advanced classes. Tracking
involves an attempt to place students into more homogene-
ous classes to allow teachers to focus their instruction on
students a narrower range of expertise. Research results
vary. For example, Collins and Gan (2013) found tracking
beneficial to low- and high-performing students in Dal-
las, Texas, and Loveless (2009) found that detracking car-
ried risks for high-achieving students in Massachusetts.
On the other hand, Boaler (2016) asserts, “we know that
students who are advanced in math from an early age are
more likely to drop math when they get the opportunity
and achieve at lower levels” (p. 99). One common theme
is that simply going faster with a cohort of students with
similar skills without changing the content of the course is
not effective for our top students. Picciotto (2016) decries
what he terms “hyper-acceleration”, students taking high
school mathematics classes in middle school 2 or more
years before they are typically taught, noting that this fre-
quently results in gaps because of missed topics from mid-
dle school mathematics, and a shallow, poorly understood,
easily forgotten series of mathematics topics that empha-
sized memorization, speed and regurgitation.
The number of students taking high school mathemat-
ics classes in middle school has exploded since 1990. At
that time, only 16 % of US students took algebra in eighth
grade. By 2013, more eighth graders were taking Algebra
I than any other math class. Minnesota established a new
high school graduation requirement that, beginning with
the class of 2015, all students must complete an Algebra
I credit by the end of eighth grade, and California’s school
accountability formula strongly encouraged algebra in
eighth grade for nearly all students. However, studies of the
California policy found that while more students enrolled
in eighth grade algebra there were also more failures, and a
Duke study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina,
move to expand algebra into eighth grade resulted in lower
scores on Algebra I tests and lower pass rates in Geome-
try and Algebra II in subsequent years. Research by Tom
Loveless (2013) of the Brookings Institution found in states
where the numbers of students in advanced middle school
mathematics courses such as Algebra I increased, the gains
on NAEP scores in algebra decreased. In January 2013,
members of the California State Board of Education voted
unanimously to remove Algebra I standards from eighth
grade and instead to follow the recommendations of the
CCSS-M with a more gradual approach to algebra mastery
and a deeper, more rigorous understanding of prerequisite
concepts such as proportional reasoning and understanding
of rational number operations.
Numbers of students taking calculus in high school have
grown even faster than students taking high school math in
middle school. Over the past quarter century, 2- and 4-year
college enrollment in first semester calculus has remained
constant while high school enrollment in calculus has
grown tenfold. We have passed the crossover point where
each year more students study first semester calculus in US
high schools than in all 2- and 4-year colleges and universi-
ties in the United States. In theory, this should be an engine
for directing more students toward careers in science, engi-
neering, and mathematics. In fact, it is having the opposite
effect. “Too many students are moving too fast through
preliminary courses so that they can get calculus onto their
high school transcripts. The result is that even if they are
able to pass high school calculus, they have established an
inadequate foundation on which to build the mathematical
knowledge required for a STEM career. Nothing demon-
strates this more eloquently than the fact that from the high
school class of 1992, one-third of those who took calculus
in high school then enrolled in pre-calculus when they got
to college, and from the high school class of 2004, one in
six of those who passed calculus in high school then took
remedial mathematics in college” (Bressoud et al, 2012, p.
2). Some students simply stop taking mathematics classes
because they never enjoyed their accelerated classes, and
they have met all the math requirements for high school
(HS) graduation before the senior year of HS or they use
advanced placement (AP) calculus scores to meet all the
requirements to graduate from college without ever taking
a college mathematics course. “What the members of the
mathematical community—especially those in the Math-
ematical Association of America (MAA) and the National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)—have
known for a long time is that the pump that is pushing more
students into more advanced mathematics ever earlier is not
just ineffective: It is counter-productive” (Bressoud et al,
2012, p. 2).
7.2 Recommendations
This is not to say that K-12 students should not have access
to the highest-level mathematics classes possible. It simply
13

means that faster is not always better. There are certainly
benefits to not waiting until high school to experience alge-
braic reasoning and a strong calculus course in high school
may set students on the path to success in college and their
chosen careers. Accelerating math classes for more than
1 year, however, has not been shown to be beneficial for the
majority of top students. As noted in the previous section,
mathematics experiences that emphasize multi-faceted,
complex problem solving are much more effective than
simply going faster through classes that are based on mem-
orized rules and algorithms.
8 Conclusion
Students will not all start at the same point, proceed at the
same pace, dig into concepts with the same levels of under-
standing or enjoyment, or decide to enter STEM careers,
but far greater numbers of students can achieve and relish
mathematics at far higher levels. We need to ensure that
all our students, including those already performing at the
highest levels, are engaged and challenged to make con-
tinual progress. Developing their passion and perseverance
when learning mathematics is just as critical as the ensur-
ing that they have the necessary foundation in all strands of
mathematics.
In summary, to support and develop these promising
young mathematicians, we should counteract these five
myths with these successful practices:
1. To dispel the myth that mathematics ability is geneti-
cally determined, students need to know that their
brains will grow if they struggle and persevere in learn-
ing new information, focusing on depth, complex-
ity, oral and written justification and invention. Math-
ematics is the perfect area to do this, appreciating and
enjoying the beauty of the subject along with preparing
for engaging careers and life in general. Note that just
working harder or longer is not enough to raise students
to the highest levels, and not all students given the same
experiences will rise to the same levels of achievement.
Proper experiences where students are given the oppor-
tunity and techniques to solve and pose complex prob-
lems, making connections, working with peers using
verbal and written communication, recognizing and
correcting errors, and persevering in the face of diffi-
culties are all critical to student success. Students who
already are performing at peak levels need these experi-
ences to make continual progress, and students who are
not yet performing at high levels need these experiences
to perform and enjoy working at higher levels.
2. To counteract the myth that only males, especially
wealthy White and Asian American males, can become
13
L. J. Sheffield
gifted mathematics students, we must increase the pool
of mathematically promising students, especially those
from underrepresented groups such as girls, students of
color, and those who live in poverty through research
and positive portrayals in schools and in the media
and the creation and development of their mathemati-
cal promise with a diverse and engaging opportunities.
Teachers, parents, and the students themselves must all
have confidence in their abilities and value and cele-
brate their successes.
3. To offset the myth that mathematics is not creative,
educators and students should heed the recommenda-
tions in the joint NAGC, NCTM, NCSM publication
on the CCSS-M and gifted and advanced students that
a ninth Standard for Mathematical Practice be added
that students “solve problems in novel ways and pose
new mathematical questions of interest to investi-
gate”.
4. To overcome the myth that gifted mathematics stu-
dents can develop on their own, we need to increase the
research and dissemination of information and replica-
tion of successful projects. Research has found that we
can develop students’ mathematical passion and exper-
tise by offering a variety of engaging and challeng-
ing K-12 curricular and extracurricular opportunities.
This includes extracurricular programs for recreational
mathematics, such as math circles, clubs and competi-
tions, as well as curriculum and teaching strategies that
support the establishment of mathematical creativity,
expertise and engagement such as Project M2: Mentor-
ing Young Mathematicians and Project M3: Mentoring
Mathematical Minds.
5. To surmount the difficulties of an over-reliance on
speeding through mathematics programs, educators
need to use appropriate pacing, that sometimes allows
students to slow down, struggle, and make mistakes
as they investigate intriguing mathematical topics in
depth and that does not require students to repeatedly
practice low-level skills that they have previously mas-
tered.
It is hoped that this paper might trigger a further discus-
sion of these and other myths and the dangers that they pre-
sent along with research, practices and recommendations
to increase the numbers and levels of our most mathemati-
cally proficient and passionate students.
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