Our History
Since 1991 the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has established a strong academic focus on teaching and research in gifted education, and this has been linked to the development and expansion of a range of programs for gifted children, courses for their parents, counselling services for gifted students and their parents, conferences, seminars and workshops for teachers with an interest in gifted education, and the development of a range of teaching resources.
Formally opened on Friday 19th September 1997 by His Excellency the Honourable Gordon Samuels, AC, former Governor of New South Wales, the University of New South Wales established the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre, to provide an establishment for excellence in research, teaching and services for gifted education. The foundation of GERRIC was not only an acknowledgement by UNSW of its leadership role in this field of education, but a milestone in the history of gifted education in Australia being the first centre of research in gifted education in the Southern Hemisphere.
In the 13 years since, the initiatives taken by GERRIC have had a remarkable influence on the education of gifted and talented students throughout Australia, not just in high-impact research and program outcomes, but also in filling vital national specialist and training needs. GERRIC post graduate coursework and research graduates and former staff are highly regarded locally and internationally, have assumed key roles in the gifted education field as University academics, school leaders, education consultants, educators, counsellors and psychologists, policy makers, curriculum consultants and designers, and presenters and co-ordinators of gifted and talented programs.
Since its formal opening, more than 80 teachers have completed postgraduate degrees specialising in gifted education, and close to 2,000 teachers from every Australian state and territory, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vanuatu have successfully completed the UNSW Certificate of Gifted Education program. Through the international visiting lecturer component of the program GERRIC has annually brought four leading scholars in the gifted education field to share their cutting edge knowledge and expertise with Australian teachers and collaborate on research and policy input. At the same time more than 600 onsite school inservices by GERRIC presenters and educational consultants have been conducted across Australia, and more than 23,000 children from around Australia have attended GERRIC’s short courses and residential programs for gifted students.
GERRIC has been recognised in the region as the preeminent Centre in the field, has attracted numerous Asia Pacific government and scholarly visitors, and has successfully delivered offshore and onshore Certificate of Gifted Education programs on behalf of the Ministry of Education Singapore and the Ministry Of Education, Science and Technology, Republic of Korea.
In 2003-2004 GERRIC won an Australian Commonwealth Government contract to develop a professional development package for teachers, which the then Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) sent into every Australia school in book or CD-Rom format. In 2005 GERRIC won a second DEST contract to design and deliver 50 workshops for parents of gifted and talented children in regional and remote areas of Australia
In 2008, the then Minister of Education, the Honourable Julie Bishop, visited GERRIC's winter holiday Gifted Student Programs, and took the opportunity to congratulate GERRIC on the successful delivery of these important nationwide programs.
As well as its collaborative work in the Government education sector at both the State and Federal level, GERRIC has also formed significant partnerships with schools in the independent and Catholic education systems.
Throughout its history, GERRIC has initiated and delivered innovative new programs and services for gifted and talented students, their parents and their teachers and schools. For example, in the mid-1990s GERRIC pioneered the provision of intellectual assessment testing for gifted children - a service not then widely available to parents and children. Since that time, we are delighted to report, a number of independent psychologists have provided such a service. In the use of objective assessment, as in so many other ways, GERRIC initiatives have changed the Australian educational landscape.
In 2009 GERRIC initiated a hybrid online/face to face mode of its successful Certificate of Gifted Education, which 200 teachers across all Australian states and territories have completed since its inception. In the same year, GERRIC’s revitalized and relaunched its successful parent seminars taking these seminars interstate for the first time (Queensland and Victoria in 2009 and 2010 with a further program in 2011 planned for South Australia. These interstate weekend courses have been welcomed by parent organisations indeed by schools which have publicised the courses to parents of their gifted and talented students.
This year, in response to strong demand by its users, GERRIC introduced a brand new program PEAK! Peak is a one day course on developing facilitative study skills. It is designed and led by long-term GERRIC associate Michele Juratowitch, Director of Clearing Skies in Brisbane. Running a workshop on study skills for gifted students gave rise to expressions of surprise from teachers who questioned whether such a course was necessary. Parents of gifted students had no such qualms. Some gifted students have found little need, in their early school career, to study, and they may not have developed the skills of planning and self-organisation which their classmates have had to learn much earlier. Peak! gives them these skills.
In 2010 GERRIC strengthened its partnership with the School of Education and was co-located with the School in the newly refurbished Goodsell Building.
In acknowledgement of her many years of exemplary service to gifted students and gifted education, Professor Miraca Gross, Director of GERRIC was recognised in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours List with Membership in the Older of Australia. In the same year the Mensa International Education and Research Foundation honoured Miraca with its most prestigious Award for Lifetime Achievement, This honour has never before been awarded outside North America.
Uniting and underpinning GERRIC’s diverse programs of teacher education, student enrichment and research has been a philosophy of service to gifted education and teacher training that recognises that development of high academic abilities in our intellectually gifted students should, and must, go hand in hand with the recognition of, and response to, these children’s social and emotional needs. These include the need to be identified, and served, through appropriate, research supported, strategies for finding and fostering their talents.
