Conference Program

Germany is a comparatively diverse post-migrant society, shaped by transcultural formations and growth, while simultaneously carrying historical and cultural continuities of atrocity and dehumanization. Yet its educational systems still rank among the most segregating in international comparison, systematically reproducing inequities along the lines of multiple interlocking dimensions of social inequalities. ­This tension is nowhere more visible than in the field of gifted education (Begabungsförderung), where structural barriers continue to obstruct the recognition and development of talent among marginalized children and youth.

A systematic review (Winter, 2026) confirms what practitioners have long sensed: intersectional perspectives are virtually absent from German gifted education research. Existing scholarship largely adopts monoaxial frameworks, addressing gender OR migration background OR socioeconomic status in isolation, or solely applies implicitly intersectional notions without explicitly naming them as such (Stamm, 2009). This conceptual gap is consequential: it renders invisible the compounded disadvantages experienced by children whose identities sit at the intersections of marginalized positions.

This contribution argues that gifted education research urgently requires what Boger (2019) terms an intersectional corrective lens – a reorientation that moves beyond additive thinking toward an understanding of how overlapping systems of oppression shape access to talent recognition and support. Drawing on Harris and Leonardo (2019) and Mayes, Goldsmith Jones and Hines (2018), we propose that intersectionality functions not merely as a descriptive tool but as a generative epistemological framework capable of exposing and challenging the structural mechanisms that produce glass ceilings in educational opportunity.

We situate this argument within the conceptual architecture of the Leistung macht Schule (LemaS) research initiative in Germany – a collaborative endeavor bringing together researchers, schools, and educational administrations - whose understanding of giftedness offers a productive point of departure. Aligned with Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, LemaS conceptualizes “gifts” as dynamic, fluid, and multidimensional and foregrounds potential-oriented, diversity-sensitive, and transformative approaches to learning (Gardner, 1999; Weigand, 2021). Crucially, it understands giftedness as a construct encompassing transformative knowledge and adaptive capacity for shaping a sustainable world in transition. This vision is inherently democratic in its aspirations: it demands inclusive learning environments in which all children’s potentials are recognized and reinventing school architecture in a literal and figurative way, particularly in post-migrant societies where structural barriers most acutely foreclose opportunity.

Methodologically, we draw on intersectional inquiry frameworks that foreground social complexity and resist reductive categorization. The contribution presents a qualitative research design following Winker and Degele’s (2010) intersectional multilevel framework that examines how intersecting categories – including race, class, gender, body and others – shape access to gifted education programs in Germany integrating the levels of identity, structure, and symbolic representation.

Finally, we explore structural pathways toward greater equity, engaging Stojanov’s (2011) concept of compensatory as a possible foundation for policy recommendations. We argue that realizing the democratic promise of gifted education in post-migrant Germany requires not only recognition of diverse potentials, but actively dismantling the structural conditions that render those potentials invisible.