Educating the Gifted Children in the 21st Century in East Asia: Implications for Canadian Education and Policy Learning Opportunities

Special policies regarding education for gifted children is a relatively new phenomena, certain countries have established it as formal part of education policy, some are on the way to recognition that these policies are needed, some still have a debate whether to introduce it. The countries of East Asia, who already have such policies and gained beneficial results from these policies, can be seen as sources of knowledge and expertise, but it is not easy to ‘borrow’ policies from one country and launch them in other countries. (Ibata-Arens, 2012) Therefore, the problem here could be described as opportunities and difficulties in ‘policy learning” and how can countries learn from one another, particularly, if they have different social cultures/norms. In our case: can a country like Canada - and its provinces, like Quebec or Alberta learn from the experience of East Asian countries like Hong Kong and South Korea? It is not clear, in which circumstances such learning could happen