Differentiation: Modification of a gifted student’s curriculum to accommodate their specific needs. This may include changing the content or ability level of the material.

Affective Curriculum: A curriculum that is designed to teach gifted student’s about emotions, self-esteem, and social skills.

Heterogeneous Grouping: A strategy that enables the grouping of students of all ability levels to learn in the same classroom environment.

Homogenous Grouping: A strategy that enables the grouping of students by specific ability, interest, or subject area.

Individualized Education Plan (IEP): A written document that addresses the gifted student’s needs. It may include specific accommodations, materials or classroom instruction. IEP’s are generally used with Learning Disabled (LD) students. Many states are not required to have IEP’s for gifted students.

Over excitability has been a popular theme in many gifted circles over the past twenty years. Over excitability is a component of developmental potential, a part of Dabrowski's theory of Positive Disintegration, a theory of personality development. The application of TPD to gifted education is one of several (other applications include psychotherapy, personality theory, philosophy of Man, etc.).

This is the most hotly debated aspect of gifted education. Some people believe that gifted education resources lack availability and flexibility. They feel that in the alternate methods of gifted education, the gifted students "miss out" on having a "normal" childhood and educational experience. Others believe that gifted education allows gifted students to interact with peers that are on their level, be adequately challenged, and leaves them better equipped to take on the challenges of life.

Mara Sapon-Shevin has argued that gifted programs result in educational triage, with the gifted program taking a disproportionate amount of school resources, leaving other pupils with much reduced resources.

Her critics have countered that her research was into a school that was untypical of gifted education programs in general.

Gifted programs also often have problems with the singling out of the gifted students by regular students. Gifted programs that are in the same school but under a separate program can cause a problem with bullying, as a specific set of targets, already singled out for a reason that might fuel a bully's insecurity (above-average performance intellectually), are objects of abuse. Such a program can result in gifted students being discriminated against by other students. This obviously has negative effects on the students as well, perhaps not just limited to a dim view of 'normal' students.

While giftedness is seen as an academic advantage, psychologically, it can pose social challenges for the gifted individual. Especially in regard to children, social pressures cause cause children to want to "play down" their intelligence and blend in with other students. This is a behavior that is obviously discouraged by educators as they attempt to teach children to not only challenge themselves, but also embrace their gifts and talents. Children can flee or fight. "Playing down" is a strategy often used by girls, boys tend to attract attention and to disrupt the normal order of the class by giving the correct answers all the time, working ahead, asking for new things, etc. Usually mistaken for ADHD.

Some authors question the existence of "the g factor" and thus hold that the result of an IQ test is meaningless, thus rendering the notion of giftedness meaningless. The most famous example is The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. In her book, Identifying Gifted Children: A Practical Guide, Susan K. Johnsen (2004) argues that schools should use a variety of measures of students capability and potential when identifying gifted children. These measures may include portfolios of student work, classroom observations, achievement measures, and intelligence scores. Most educational professionals accept that no single measure can be used in isolation to accurately identify a gifted child.

Even if the notion of IQ is a good one, the question of the cutoff point for giftedness is still important. As noted above, different authorities often define giftedness differently.

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