The Lived Experience of Expertise

Fire, Fairs, and Dragonflies: The Writings of Gifted Children and Age-Bound Expertise - Everyday Welfare in Modern British History Experience, Expertise and Activism - NCBI Bookshelf An official website of the United States government Here's how you know The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site. The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. Log in Show account info Close Account Logged in as: username Dashboard Publications Account settings Log out Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation Bookshelf Search database Books All Databases Assembly Biocollections BioProject BioSample Books ClinVar Conserved Domains dbVar Gene Genome GEO DataSets GEO Profiles GTR Identical Protein Groups MedGen MeSH NLM Catalog Nucleotide OMIM PMC Protein Protein Clusters Protein Family Models PubChem BioAssay PubChem Compound PubChem Substance PubMed SNP SRA Structure Taxonomy ToolKit ToolKitAll ToolKitBookgh Search term Search Browse Titles Advanced Help Disclaimer NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Beaumont C, Colpus E, Davidson R, editors. Everyday Welfare in Modern British History Experience, Expertise and Activism. Cham (CH): Palgrave Macmillan; 2025 Dec 19. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-64987-5_7 Everyday Welfare in Modern British History Experience, Expertise and Activism. Show details Beaumont C, Colpus E, Davidson R, editors. Cham (CH): Palgrave Macmillan ; 2025 Dec 19. Contents Search term < Prev Next > Fire, Fairs, and Dragonflies: The Writings of Gifted Children and Age-Bound Expertise Jennifer Crane . Author Information and Affiliations Authors Jennifer Crane 1 . Affiliations 1 School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Email: [email protected] Corresponding author. Published online: December 18, 2024. This chapter uses children’s writings to argue that age must be considered as a hugely limiting modifier of experiential expertise; of how it was lived and felt, and how it could be used. Despite substantive policy and media interest in gifted children in the mid-to-late twentieth century, gifted children’s testimonies were typically published only when conforming to specific visions of the appropriate precocious child. Nonetheless, the chapter also argues, gifted young people did exert expertise within voluntary spaces that were meaningful to them. Many young people enjoyed participating in these spaces, despite their limited influence. Others used these spaces to experiment with lively written critique of adult authority. Linking to this collection’s central framing, then, this chapter shows that young people labelled “gifted” were able to “fare well” within a broader “state of welfare”, even if their specific needs were not always catered for in the institutions of the “welfare state”. Yet the chapter shows, also, that the holding of experiential expertise did not guarantee that children could “fare well”; many found this expertise a burden, rejected it, or sought to offer themselves “self-care” while negotiating their distinct new identity as “gifted”. Keywords: Children, Giftedness, Age, Magazines, Precocious Introduction Explorers Unlimited was a newsletter delivered by the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) to the primarily middle-class children identified by keen families as gifted. 1 Children used this newsletter to write to others, sharing poems, stories, and opinions. In the March 1981 edition, a seven-year-old girl published a poem discussing the many joys of a Christmas fair—delicious toffee apples, her favourites, and “all the little treats”. 2 Yet, the girl wrote, her joy at the fair was restricted by parental control. The girl had to ask her mother if she could even have this apple; she needed social permission and money. Ultimately, when the girl was told she had had enough fun for the day, she had to leave. To this, she merely responded, “Oh”. This chapter uses children’s writings to argue that age must be considered as a hugely limiting modifier of experiential expertise; of how it was lived and felt, and how it could be used. Despite substantive policy and media interest in gifted children in the mid-to-late twentieth century, gifted children’s testimonies were typically published only when conforming to specific visions of the appropriate precocious child, whose critique was made humorous or “cute”. Nonetheless, the chapter also argues, gifted young people did exert expertise within voluntary spaces that were meaningful to them, such as in newsletters of the National Association. Many young people enjoyed participating in these spaces, despite their limited influence. 3 Others used these spaces to experiment with lively written critique of adult authority, and this was meaningful in their peer communities and to adult readers. Linking to this collection’s central framing, then, this chapter shows that young people labelled gifted were able to “fare well” within a broader “state of welfare”, even if their specific needs were not always catered for in the institutions of the Welfare State. 4 Yet the chapter shows, also, that the holding of experiential expertise did not guarantee that children could “fare well”; many found this expertise a burden, rejected it, or sought to offer themselves self-care while negotiating their distinct new identity as gifted. Children’s writings are central to this argument. The chapter relies on both the known, famed Opie collection (observations and writings by children aged 8–14 about play, collected between 1950–1980s) and on the uncatalogued archives of the NAGC, as above, which were accessed following speculative contact with a successor organisation. 5 Looking from the perspective of those who held expertise, and using child-produced sources, are relatively unusual approaches in studies of expertise, which often privilege the policy workings of expertise, its impact, and its public ramifications. 6 The use of children’s writings in the history of childhood likewise faces regular critique, whether for apparently lacking sources, or for studying a group described as without political influence. 7 This chapter uses a broad analytical framework of agency to demonstrate that the young were an organised constituency, who engaged in activism. 8 Traces of children’s written and spoken word—their voices—are available for us to analyse, with awareness that such sources are “always produced in relationships, and they are always performative, always mediated”. 9 This chapter contends, indeed, that ignoring children and youth is an active decision. By not seeking out the traces which children have left, via partnership work or archiving, we reinscribe the very hierarchies of age which we must critically analyse to fully understand expertise. This chapter first briefly maps out the emerging power of giftedness in mid-to-late twentieth century Britain. The second section of this chapter asks : what was the lived experience of expertise? It demonstrates that children labelled as gifted felt a distinct sense of identity; these children felt like experts, though many also grappled with a linked sense of responsibility and felt unease about this. Third, the chapter asks, to what extent was expertise born from experience? The chapter emphasises that the expertise of the gifted young was never uncontestable. 10 It had been bestowed by adult authority and was frequently dismissed due to prevailing cultural ideals of childlikeness. Age was a significant modifier of expertise, even, as in this chapter, for children who were typically privileged by being middle-class and who had supportive, engaged families. 11 Age shaped hierarchies between children and adults and within childrens’ peer groups. The concept of experiential expertise is therefore a useful and provocative one, but one which we must continue to explore closely, particularly from the perspective of those who were said to hold it. What Was Giftedness? While there had then long been scientific, medical, and social interest in ideas of precocious youth, interest in children labelled gifted—and indeed in their ability to become experts—accelerated markedly in the mid-to-late twentieth century in Britain. 12 Testing was embedded in the post-war British welfare state within the 11+ examination, which determined young people’s entry to different types of secondary school. 13 Yet the 1944 Education Act was framed, by the Conservative and Labour politicians alike, around providing for “all children”, rather than specifically for the gifted. 14 Grammar schools—for children of the highest academic ability—went on to educate between 24.6% and 37.8% of the secondary school-aged population between the late 1940s and start of the 1960s. 15 With relatively large factions attending, one criticism of these schools—from teachers in local press and in the Houses of Parliament—became that they were not sufficiently catering for the very highest levels of gifted children: the 0.1–2% of young people with the most remarkable intellectual capacities. 16 Slowly, and mostly at a local level, educational experiments began to provide for these “hyper-gifted” young people from the 1960s. 17 Bringing the issue further to national attention in this decade, in 1966 a former journalist and psychiatric social worker, Margaret Branch, founded the National Association. A later Guardian profile claimed that Branch’s interest sprung from her clinical work, where, in 1952, she had met “a disturbed and epileptic boy with an IQ of 150” who had “put her on the track of the lonely ones who are so much more gifted than their contemporaries, their parents, or their teachers”. 18 The National Association would flourish in subsequent years. It had 4,863 members by 1981, as well as 277 associated schools and other institutions such as Child Guidance Clinics. 19 Its membership was primarily middle-class, though it made efforts to work closely with, and recruit families in, inner city areas. 20 One key focus of the National Association was providing counselling for parents, and extra provision in school holidays and at weekends for the gifted young, enabling them to meet one another and engage in activities beyond schools’ curricula. 21 In the organisation’s most active years, the 1970s and 1980s, conservative press and politicians also began to fixate on gifted children, and to emphasise their key role in constructing national futures, notably reversing the perceived issues of permissiveness, egalitarianism, feminism, and national and economic decline. Throughout the 1970s, right-wing tabloid press emphasised that gifted children were critical for forging “our future”. 22 Gifted children were presented by the Daily Mail as the “most important asset that Britain possesses”, and “our greatest hidden asset”. 23 While these ideas were framed in terms of distinct narratives about British declinism, transnational voluntary groups also sought to identify and mobilise gifted children from the 1970s and 1980s. 24 The World Council for Gifted Children was founded in 1975 in London, and the European Council for High Ability was founded in 1988, with leadership from British psychologist Joan Freeman. These groups aimed to identify and use gifted children to promote “East–West cooperation” across Europe and to develop more broadly “a better world and our common future”. Gifted children, in the accounts of these organisations, could promote international development goals, prevent future World Wars, and spread ideals of liberal democracy across Eastern Europe and ‘the world’. 25 By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the emergent discipline of educational sociology began to offer significant critique of giftedness, particularly from America. Researchers demonstrated that IQ tests and teacher recommendations did not adequately identify children who were poor, female, from a minoritised culture, minoritised ethnic, or spoke English as a second language. Testing was not always applied properly and existing tests had been designed to cater best for white, middle-class boys. Psychologists disagreed on whether to abandon, or merely reshape, intelligence testing as a result. 26 Interest in the 0.1–2% of children who performed best on IQ testing began to fade from this point. Yet, the idea that an elite faction of British youth may assist with national futures did not disappear entirely in British policy or culture; testament to the flexibility of these constructions. Notably, versions of these ideas were brought into national policy for the first time, in broad form, by Tony Blair’s New Labour governments (1997–2007). 27 The government’s white paper Excellence in Schools (1997) called for the creation of “an atmosphere in which to excel is not only acceptable but desirable”, and stated that every school and local education authority must “plan how it will help gifted children”. 28 More children than ever were expected to be identified under this programme. The Excellence in Cities report (1999) stated that “local authorities must identify 5–10% of children as academically gifted or talented in art or sports, and also that 25% of schools should become ‘specialist schools’”. 29 Government select committees, meanwhile, heard evidence that even as high a proportion as 30–40% of children may in fact have significant “gifts”. 30 While more and more children were being identified, and the term gifted was positioned within a social mobility agenda, older ideas of the national and global roles of the gifted remained. New Labour’s National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, for example, was established in 2002 as a summer school for high-performing young people, and contained such ideas of these youth as future leaders. 31 Ideas about the gifted child were significant from the 1950s until the 2000s in Britain. These ideas were flexible, but in general associated with visions of future leadership, and often—at least until New Labour efforts—looked to identify a hyper-minority of the young population. Rhetoric from policy, press, and voluntary sector looked to position the gifted young as saviours of Britain’s economy, protectors of its morality, and key international ambassadors. This raises the questions: how did it feel to have lived experience of being gifted, and were the gifted young—who were apparently so powerful—given realistic mechanisms through which to use their apparent expertise to exert change? The Lived Experience of Expertise Children’s own poetry, games, and letters provide revealing traces of how they lived with the label of gifted as it expanded through the mid-to-late twentieth century. This section examines such materials from two sources. First, the highly celebrated Opie Archives, which contain a “pioneering”, “ground-breaking”, and “magnificent” “wealth” of material collected by Iona and Peter Opie between 1950 and the 1980s, including their own observations and writings by young children about play. 32 Second, the uncatalogued archives of the NAGC. These have been kept, in disordered form, in boxes by a successor organisation, and include newsletters produced for child-members in the 1970s and 1980s. These newsletters varied significantly: some were A5, some A4 size; some for children who had attended summer clubs, some for postal subscribers; some bright yellow, some white; some demarcated as for members aged 5–12, 12–17, or thereabouts. Newsletters were published every few months, and filled with children’s poetry, letters, drawings, and contributions. The children’s games documented by the Opies were at times “not intended for adult ears”, yet also shaped by dialogue with adults from families, schools, communities, and culture. 33 The National Association materials, meanwhile, were constructed with the adult-editor of these magazines, and in imagined dialogue with involved adult and child-readers. These sources then reveal how young people looked to construct relationships with others, how they felt about their lives, and how they looked to navigate identities in relation to their own social worlds; relationships of framing and representation have been further explored by Colpus and Millard in this collection. 34 In keeping with the approach of this collection, these texts are read with “empathic inference”, as conceptualised by Mona Gleason, looking to “imagine and to interpret historical events and sources from the point of view of young people”. 35 While this process is imperfect, comparing the Opie and National Association materials suggests that many children were aware of, and interested in, negotiating ideas of intelligence through peer culture and play in the mid-to-late twentieth centuries in Britain. Children who had been labelled as gifted, however, also felt that this label gave them not only a new type of expertise, but also, entwined, a new social identity and new responsibilities. These could be empowering and exciting, or daunting, sparking challenging new expectations from peers, adult cultures, and children themselves. 36 Poetry written by children—whether labelled or not labelled as gifted—shared a common sense of darkness, satire, and resentment. Poetry from the National Association children, for example, discussed the destructive power of fire, the slyness of spiders in killing flies, and the dangerous beauty of the dragonfly. 37 A poem written by a ten-year-old, published in a March 1981 edition of Explorers Unlimited , was written from the perspective of a fox, lamenting: “Oh I wish I was away far from this horrible place”. 38 Another poem, entitled, “Hungry”, and collectively written by three thirteen-year-olds, spoke to potential vengeance wreaked by animals: discussing how “poor old Clive”, presumably a human adult, was subsequently eaten by a piranha while out fishing. 39 Poetry from the Opie collection offered similarly dark perspectives and visions. One poem from 1952, written by a girl attending a non-selective school in the West Midlands, wrote of a pair of dogs, happily swimming along a river when, suddenly, “One seized the other dog and ate up all his liver”—the animals were not domestic “friends” but rather violent and unpredictable. 40 Other examples, also from the 1950s, come from boys attending Sale County Grammar School, who were thus identified as highly intellectually able, though before rhetoric about giftedness expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. One poem, from these boys, suggested that those hunting out in the woods, looking for birds and game, “no [sic] nothing about my aim”: closing by darkly threatening “Protect all life/And all Game”. 41 Common to these poems were ideas of powerlessness, expressed through empathy with caged animals, or envy of the destructive power of fire or wild dogs, which potentially signalled a desire for an anarchistic approach to existing hierarchies. Children, whether those attending selective or non-selective schools, or those labelled as gifted by voluntary groups, schools, or not, were all interested in using their leisure time—and their opportunities to share their thoughts with adults—to construct what Marina Warner described in 2001 as a “playground tone, irreverent, daring, laced in equal parts with blitheness, morbidity, and callousness”. 42 Again, looking across these sources and samples, we find that children also all shared an interest in thinking about their own intelligence, and in contrasting it to those of their peers. Poetry from a northern grammar school reflected explicitly on the social capital of attending such a school—writing that it was one “for a swot”, not for “a careless lot”, and warning others not to enter unless “daring”. 43 Other poems from this school reflected on the power of books (“a friend/For those in need”, “for most”); and the role of talent in society (which made a boy “gallant”, but also potentially liable to “ravings”). 44 Students at a non-selective school in Kirkcaldy, Fife, likewise, were interested in reflecting on intelligence; for example responding to a question about the definition of “sap” by stating that this denoted “a stupid person, a mug, High School Mug”; someone “soft and not quite all there”, “a fool or a cissy”, “a trifle soft in the head”, and “someone soft in the head”. 45 Further pieces from the Opie collection suggest that such perceived connections—between intelligence and social worth—shaped playground behaviours. An eleven-year-old girl, writing from a non-selective school in the West Midlands, discussed childhood games with friends where one team labelled themselves, “Reds Reds clever heads”. 46 Another eleven-year-old girl reporting from this same school discussed a playground game in which you invited a partner to pull your finger, while holding out a thumb. If they pulled that thumb, you would say, “Your [sic] not very clever that was my thumb”. 47 Other children from these schools and beyond described the phrase “big head”, for a “show off”. 48 Children hoped to prove themselves more intelligent than their peers, and expressed and tested notions of intelligence through daily play, with irreverent tones. Children in selective and non-selective schools alike were interested in categorising and considering intelligence. Yet the writings from children explicitly labelled as gifted in the 1970s and 1980s, amidst more frenetic interest in this term, and through participation in the National Association, gave distinctive responses. The application of the label gifted gave these children a distinct and formal sense of their own expertise and authority; an expertise which shaped their experiences and often bestowed them with a new sense of responsibility. One example of this comes from a thirteen-year-old child’s testimony published in 1979 by the National Association, captured at one of their Saturday clubs for gifted children in London. 49 Opening his reflections, the child reflected that he “contemplate[d] my own existence knowing that my potential may or may not be great”, with “a mind, and this I feel I can offer to the world”. 50 The boy described that until the age of three, he was “told” that he was “a very demanding, almost violent child”. 51 He found school “very uninteresting” and struggled to mix with his peers. When a psychologist tested his IQ “and explained to me that I was ‘gifted’”, his life had changed. 52 Notably, he joined the National Association and, when able to meet with other gifted children, felt he could “socialise more freely”, developing interests in computers, photography, and philosophy, to “be proud of”. 53 Overall, the child stated that when he died he must hope “that my journey has not been in vain and that I have played my part in the world around me”. 54 Being labelled as gifted, working within the National Association, and then speaking for one of their publications, had all left this boy grappling with a new and distinct sense of responsibility—one which seems specific to the 1970s and 1980s, and to the writings of those mobilised in voluntary groups for gifted children. These themes of identity and responsibility were echoed across writings by members of the National Association. Other children likewise stated that they felt connected to other geniuses in the past, for example, Isaac Newton. 55 Others, still, felt empowered or perhaps compelled to comment on global affairs in Association publications, most commonly on nuclear deterrence and the Cold War. 56 There are three key, and more broadly applicable, points to note about the distinct forms of experiential expertise, held in this moment by these child-members of the National Association. First, we can ask whether this expertise was best defined as experiential, professional, structural or by some other category. The children’s expertise was critically drawn from their knowledge, yet it was also as likely bestowed by, or recognised after contact with, clinical professionals, parents, or voluntary organisers. This experiential expertise was dependent on interaction with adults, as much as with peer groups of other experiential child-experts. Do we ever then have an unadulterated form of experiential expertise, or is such expertise always entwined with, bestowed and modified by, or even dependent on, professional forms of knowledge? A second point of reflection is that gifted children, also, in this moment often found their expertise a lived burden, as much as an empowering tool for change. The holding of experiential expertise was not always desired, and by no means guaranteed that recipients would “fare well”. This became particularly visible in the National Association’s Explorers Bulletin newsletter of Summer 1979, as a group of “ninth and tenth graders” in a “Mentally Gifted Programme” in Alhambra, California, wrote a composite letter to address British children, entitled “What’s it like then?” 57 For these children, having passed “a silly test of describing pictures”, they now encountered new burdens and expectations—they were “expected to always be straight A or on top”. 58 Rather than being defined as holding experiential expertise, these children argued together, adults should instead, “recognize my wishes and help me”, and “[u]nderstand me a little more”. 59 These ideas of resisting the status of experiential expert, or of looking to negotiate it with self-care were reiterated in poetry published by the National Association that discussed childhood bullying. This raises the question, is the delegation of experiential expertise always sought out, and wanted; do we tend to assume it is powerful and positive? Despite the resistance that many children felt to the label gifted, a third key reflection is that, in their daily lives, many children did feel that their experiential expertise should override established hierarchies of age and gender. This is clear in many writings by children and parents of the National Association. The May 1977 newsletter, for instance, provided a report about a summer course run in South Wales, by a parent member, for over forty children aged between six and ten. 60 This report suggested that the children had internalised the idea of giftedness as an identity which entitled them to special treatment and, importantly, to the experiences of intellectual and physical victory. Reflecting, the parent organising the course argued that these children, “had not played with other Explorers before”, and thus “were not used to competition. They were used to winning”. 61 Consequently, the author reported, one “sturdy nine-year-old took it very hard that he could be beaten at target shooting by a weedy seven-year-old”; and other sessions were “a real struggle for a ten-year-old, used to the masculine environment of preparatory school where he shone at everything, to accept that a mere girl was better at making a camp fire that he was”. 62 These writings are by an adult, and may reflect an adult-reading of children’s interactions. Nonetheless, the reflections suggest that giftedness may have reshaped deeply held identities, and they also raise the question, how did identity of experiential expert reshape expectations of established social hierarchies? Overall, analysing the testimonies of children who had, and who had not, been explicitly labelled as gifted, from schools or voluntary groups, and in different periods in the history of this term, revealed many parallels. Children across these samples, and across schools with different policies of selectivity, were interested in exploring relative intelligence through peer culture. Nonetheless, the children who had been labelled as gifted by the National Association and their families also developed distinct forms of understanding and identity. This section therefore highlights the significance of looking closely at what the experience in experiential expertise was, how it was understood by those who held it—if at all—and how it reflected, as well as critiqued, existing systems of power. The Expertise of Experience The gifted young did not have the same capacity to use their expertise as adult experts. Despite their relatively privileged position (given the typical demographic of National Association membership, and press and policy interest), gifted young people were rarely given the capacity to enact meaningful change. Indeed, critique of the gifted young meant they were typically taken as “cute” and absorbed, by press in particular, within cultural tropes around precocity. Despite this, while at times taken as entertainment, gifted young people did use the spaces available to them in the “state of welfare”—such as voluntary newsletters—to experiment with their expertise in ways that were meaningful to them. Gifted young people had influence, because of their distinct experiences, in “the world of the neighbourhood” and “acquaintance networks”. 63 Gifted children rarely exerted expertise in the same ways as many other voluntary actors encountered in this book—for example by speaking to Parliament or press, or writing policy reports. At times, the gifted young were brought in to policy and media, but typically only briefly. 64 New Labour’s National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth gave young members brief visits to government organisations, working on short courses and making presentations. Yet members wrote in subsequent newsletters that this interaction had primarily functioned to change their view of politicians, rather than to harness their expertise, stating for example that, “I thought politicians were really evil, but they listened to our ideas and it was great to see where everything happens”. 65 Demonstrative of how unusual this was, and self-performance as disruptive thinkers, young attendees also expressed shock that they were able to enter these spaces, writing that, for example, “I can’t believe they let us in!”. 66 The gifted young did not necessarily become expert, or influential in exerting change, in spaces of policy and media. Indeed, newspaper and television coverage was typically most interested in presenting the criticism of the gifted young as entertainment, as if to prove their fun, precocious wisdom, and to show their unique, disruptive, senses of self. To offer an extreme and unusual example: Doron Blake was a famous gifted child in America, famed because he had been conceived in the early 1980s, at a sperm bank explicitly intended to distribute the sperm of Nobel Prize winners across the nation. 240 children were born from this bank, and press coverage throughout his early life discussed Blake in line with established tropes about gifted children: emphasising in particular his fascination with computers and interest in building complex toys. 67 From his 18th birthday, in 2001, Blake began to use media interest to critique the term gifted. He stated that his IQ did not make him “good” or happy—it provided no guarantee that he would “fare well”. 68 Blake’s criticism was made into entertainment, as newspapers in America and Britain were able to absorb it within a fascinating narrative journey from “perfect baby” to adult critic of “the new master breed”. 69 While the Blake example is unusual, it exemplifies the ways in which the critique of young people labelled gifted—whether made in press or in small-scale voluntary spaces—was often not only dismissed, but actively incorporated into a vision of a gifted disruptive self, used to confirm stereotypes around the gifted child. This was also a feature in repeated newspaper accounts in the 1990s, asking “What becomes of child prodigies?” 70 At the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, likewise, critiques made by the gifted young—for example about whether the pursuit of career “success” at present made for a “wasteful life”—were again fitted within glossy published newsletters, disseminated to supporters, which simply amplified the idea that these young people had particularly challenging minds, ripe for exploration. 71 Even within the spaces constructed by voluntary organisations, which sought to bring gifted children together, the ability of these children to exert change was highly limited—particularly by awareness of their age. In leisure camps organised by the National Association, for example, leaders providing accounts of these courses emphasised that they had to maintain discipline during physical activities, “for safety’s sake”. They also described how the childlikeness of participants remained clear in their emotional and physical expressions: children were sometimes “in tears” during final farewells, or experiencing homesickness. 72 Children in newsletters were directly told that, while they may enjoy science experiments, they should also “ask your parents” for key components, such as surgical spirits, “as chemists won’t sell alcohol to children”, and that they should not engage without adult supervision. 73 While restricted in their power, it is also the case that the gifted young did find ways to use their expertise to exert influence, in ways that were meaningful to them. On this, a first reflection is that, if we are to recognise the lived complexities of young people’s agency, we must take seriously the possibility that many young people enjoyed participating within these spaces. On this account, perhaps young people did not have significant critique of these spaces, despite their limitations, and that this is why critical writings about such spaces are not visible. This point is framed by the analytical works of Susan A. Miller and Tatek Abebe. 74 While adult-generated sources, contemporary surveys (conducted by the National Association and by academic auditors of the National Academy) found high levels of youth satisfaction with various giftedness programmes. Such surveys concluded that the young saw these as spaces to meet other friendly young people, and to pursue interesting hobbies beyond school. 75 A second reflection is that we can draw meaning from the limited—but present—ways in which gifted children did use the spaces available to them for critique. Notably, young people used voluntary newsletters to challenge ideas of giftedness, value, and hierarchy. Such newsletters had a relatively small audience, yet their pages reflected significant efforts from involved young people, who thought about their letters, wrote them, found stamps and stationary, and posted them. Such newsletters were likely meaningful in the lives of the young, who saw their words published, perhaps for the first time. A particular theme, from young people’s writings in these newsletters, was criticising the lack of power assigned to the young—as visible in the poem this chapter opened with. Frustration at a sense of restriction, due to parental control, emerged likewise in another poem in the same newsletter about experiences of London Underground travel. While the author reported that such travel made her feel “engulfed” by “[f]ear”, with the train’s “continuous humming” insisting that “yourrr neverrr goinggg toooo gettt outtt of herrre aliveee”, the child knew that she could not escape underground travel. Echoing the sense of resignation and foreclosure, that this chapter’s first testimony opened with, the Underground poem likewise ended on the reflection that, “there’s always a next time” on the train. 76 The experiential expertise of gifted children did not then entitle them to unlimited authority, by any means—children were restricted by adult agendas and structural power. Nonetheless, children could use the voluntary areas available to them to challenge their lack of power. They could express their discontent, and share their disappointment or frustration with one another, in text. Conclusion What then are we to conclude about the lived experiences of being a gifted child in the mid-to-late twentieth century in Britain? What can we conclude about the level of expertise which these young people were able to exert? First, it is worth reflecting on the ways in which the gifted young people in this chapter were distinct experts to those across this collection. Unusually in this book, gifted young people were highly disempowered experts—they were rarely able to control letters to newspapers, or to speak at public events or directly lobby politicians, for example. When press interviewed gifted young people, they were more likely represented as entertainment or human-interest stories; they were intelligent—despite their age! Age, then, critically moderated both how the gifted young saw their own expertise, and also their ability to reshape society. Despite the fact that the gifted young were relatively disempowered by age, many still felt like experts, and they felt like they held experiential expertise. The writing of National Association children shows that gifted children felt special. Often, those labelled gifted felt a huge sense of responsibility—and some relished this, seeking to advise national governments or challenge social norms, while others rejected it. Gifted children were unusual experiential experts, also, because they did not always believe that claiming experiential expertise could enable them to “fare well”, or to lobby for productive change for their peers. The range of ways in which the gifted child responded to their social authority—whether by embracing it to critique adult-structures, rejecting it, or reshaping it—all represented the exercise of agency. 77 Overall, we must look to the testimonies of experiential experts themselves, if we are to understand this category fully. We must also consider case studies from children in our analysis of experiential expertise; age critically moderated how adults responded to children’s expertise, and how these children understood one another. Analysing the lives and experiences of the young remains surprisingly contentious in modern British scholarship, as discussed recently by Colin Heywood and, from a critical perspective, by Sarah Maza. 78 For Heywood, this may reflect a lack of historical sources, and also the fact that children are not “an organized political constituency”. 79 This chapter demonstrates that, with inference, imagination, and collaboration, sources are available to understand young people’s lives. Further, this chapter shows the young were an organised constituency—they simply mobilised in spaces less familiar to adults, such as through voluntary groups and in school playgrounds. If we wish to analyse historical power dynamics, rather than to reinscribe them, we must take young people seriously, and find and analyse their testimonies. Select Bibliography Abebe, Tatek. 2019. Reconceptualising Children’s Agency as Continuum and Interdependence. Social Sciences 8 (3): 1–16. [ CrossRef ] Crane, Jennifer. 2022. Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism in 1970s and 1980s Britain. The Historical Journal , 65 (5): 1418–1441. [ PMC free article : PMC7617401 ] [ PubMed : 39991077 ] Gleason, Mona. 2016. Avoiding the agency trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education. History of Education 45 (4): 446–459. [ CrossRef ] Maza, Sarah. 2020. The Kids Aren’t All Right: Historians and the Problem of Childhood. The American Historical Review 125 (4): 1261–1285. [ CrossRef ] Miller, Susan A. 2016. Assent as Agency in the early years of the Children of the American Revolution. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9 (1): 48–65. [ CrossRef ] Opie, Iona, and Opie Peter, eds. 2001. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren . New York: New York Review of Books. Pooley, Sian, and Jonathan Taylor, eds. 2021. Children’s Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain . London: University of London Press. Shuttleworth, Sally. 2010. The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900 . Oxford: Oxford University Press. [ CrossRef ] Thomas, Lynn M. 2016. Historicising Agency. Gender & History 28 (2): 324–339. [ CrossRef ] Footnotes 1 On the demographics of this organisation, see, Crane, Jennifer. 2022. Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism in 1970s and 1980s Britain. The Historical Journal , 65 (5): 1418–1441. 2 National Association for Gifted Children archives, Bletchley (hereafter NAGC). 1981. The Christmas Fair. Explorers Unlimited , March 22 . 3 Miller, Susan A. 2016. Assent as Agency in the early years of the Children of the American Revolution. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, 1: 48–65. 4 See detailed discussion of Robert Pinker in the Introduction to this collection. 5 The Opie Archive is available from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and also much is digitised here and available under CC BY-NC 4.0 license: https://www ​.opiearchive.org/ (last accessed 01 July 2024). Descriptions of this work are available in: Bateman Amanda and W. Butler, Carly. 2014. The Lore and Law of the Playground. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 125; Factor, June. 2014. Colleagues in the Antipodes: conversations with Iona and Peter Opie. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 224; Giddings, Sean. 2014. What is the State of Play? International Journal of Play 3, 3: 195; Finnegan, Ruth. 2014. Child Play Is Serious: Children’s Games, Verbal Art and Survival in Africa. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 293. 6 Stehr, Nico and Grundmann, Reiner. 2011. Experts: The Knowledge and Power of Experts . Milton Keynes: Routledge; Turner, Stephen P. 2013. The Politics of Expertise . Milton Keynes: Routledge; Hilton, Matthew, McKay, James, Crowson, Nicholas, and Mouhot, Jean-Francois. 2013. The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain . Oxford: Oxford University Press. 7 Heywood, Colin. 2020. On the Margins or in the Mainstream? The History of Childhood in France, Nottingham French Studies 59, 2: 135; Maza, Sarah. 2020. The Kids Aren’t All Right: Historians and the Problem of Childhood. The American Historical Review . 125, 4: 1261–1285, and the responses to Maza’s article. 8 Gleason, Mona. 2016. Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education. History of Education 45, 4: 446–459; Thomas, Lynn M. 2016. Historicising Agency. Gender & History 28, 2: 324–339; Miller, Susan A. 2016. Assent as Agency in the early years of the Children of the American Revolution. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, 1: 48–65; Abebe, Tatek. 2019. Reconceptualising Children’s Agency as Continuum and Interdependence. Social Sciences 8, 3: 1–16. 9 Kristine Alexander, Stephanie Olsen, and Karen Vallgårda, “Voices and Sources: Lessons from the History of Childhood”, Digital Handbook of the History of Experience, September 2023, https://sites ​.tuni.fi ​/hexhandbook/methodology ​/voices-and-sources-lessons-from-the-history-of-childhood/ . Accessed 1 March 2024. 10 Scott, Joan. 1991. The Evidence of Experience. Critical Inquiry, 14: 778. 11 See Crane, ‘Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism’. 12 Shuttleworth, Sally. 2010. The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900 . Oxford: Oxford University Press; Sutherland, Gillian. 1984. Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education, 1880–1940 . Oxford: Clarendon Press. 13 On the 11+  and 1944 Education Act: Mandler, Peter. 2020. The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War . Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chap. 3. On grammar schools, see: ‘Briefing paper: grammar schools’, Secondary Education and Social Change Project (SESC) , January 2018, https://sesc ​.hist.cam ​.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads ​/2018/01/Briefing-paper-Grammar-Schools.pdf . Accessed 13 September 2021, 1; Harris, Richard, and Rose, Samuel. 2013. Who Benefits from Grammar Schools? A Case Study of Buckinghamshire, England. Oxford Review of Education 39: 151–171; Brine, Jacky. 2006. Tales of the 50-Somethings: Selective Schooling, Gender and Social Class. Gender and Education, 18: 431–446; Reay, Diane. 2006. The Zombie Stalking English Schools: Social Class and Educational Inequality, British Journal of Educational Studies, 54: 288–307. 14 Butler, R.A, Education Bill, House of Commons, 19 January 1944, vol. 396, col. 232; John Parker, Education Bill, House of Commons, 19 January 1944, vol. 396, col. 233. For debates on which party—or civil servants—were most influential in introducing this Act, see: Kopsch, Hartmut. 1970. The Approach of the Conservative Party to Social Policy during World War Two. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of London, 385–386, as cited in Simon, Brian. 1986. The 1944 Education Act: A Conservative measure? History of Education 15 1: 31; Jeffreys, Kevin. 1984. R. A. Butler, the Board of Education, and the 1944 Education Act. History 69, 227: 415–431; Wallace, R. G. 1981. The Aims and Authorship of the 1944 Education Act. History of Education 4: 283–290. An influential account about the effect of wartime on post-war social policy is in: Titmuss, Richard. 1950. Problems of Social Policy . London: HMSO. 15 Statistics are taken from: ‘Briefing paper: Grammar Schools’, SESC , January 2018 https://sesc ​.hist.cam ​.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads ​/2018/01/Briefing-paper-Grammar-Schools.pdf . Accessed 13 September 2021, 1. This figure was to continue to fall, sharply to 9.8 in 1975, down to 5.2% by 2015, due to the comprehensivation process, see on this: Mandler, The Crisis of the Meritocracy , Chaps. 4 and 5; ‘Briefing paper: Comprehensives’, SESC , October 2017 https://sesc ​.hist.cam ​.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads ​/2018/02/Briefing-paper-Comprehensives.pdf . Accessed 13 September 2021, 3. 16 See for example: Anon. 1950. School Entrance. The Manchester Guardian, June 7, 6; Anon. 1965. Education changes must “aid gifted”. Birmingham Daily Post , April 8, 7. 17 Anon. 1965. Public Notices. Reading Evening Post , September 28, 9. See also: Tisdall, Laura. 2017. A progressive education? How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth-Century English and Welsh schools. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Bridges, S. A, ed. 1969. Gifted Children and the Brentwood Experiment. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd; Bodleian Library (Bod), Gibson, Joy, and Chennells, Prue, eds. 1976. Gifted Children: Looking to their Future . Essex: The Anchor Press, 73–87. 18 Stott, Mary. 1967. In April, The Guardian , April 6, 6. 19 NAGC, Annual Report 1981, 7. 20 Survey of membership demographics: Mason, Patricia and Essen, Juliet. 1987. The Social, Educational, and Emotional Needs of Gifted Children . London: Ciceley Northcote Trust, 6; NAGC, Newsletter, Undated but inner material says 1984; Recipe for Success: Merseyside & Wirral, 11; NAGC. 1979. Looking to their Future , March, Gifted Children and Inner City Areas, 1. See on this: Crane, Jennifer. 2023. Britain and Europe’s Gifted Children in the Quests for Democracy, Welfare and Productivity, 1970–1990, Contemporary European History , 32 (2): 235–253; Crane, ‘Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism’. 21 Crane, ‘Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism’. 22 Smith, Ian. 1978. Treated Like a Freak for Being Clever. Daily Mail , November 28, 6–7. 23 Barritt, K. D. and Price, E. 1979. Come on, Britain, Use Your brains. Daily Mail , April 20, 36; Southworth, June. 1979. Everything We All Need to Know About Gifted Children, Daily Mail , August 18, 6–7; Smith, Treated Like a Freak for Being Clever, 6–7. 24 Edgerton, David. 2018. The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History. London: Allen Lane. 25 See forthcoming monograph, Crane, Jennifer. Forthcoming 2025. “Gifted Children” in Britain and the World: Equality and Elitism since 1945. Oxford : Oxford University Press, Chap. 6. 26 For example: Richert, E. Susanne. 1985. Identification of Gifted Children in the United States: The Need for Pluralistic Assessment. Roeper Review 8, 2: 68–72; Richert, E. Susanne. 1987. Rampant Problems and Promising Practices in the Identification of Disadvantaged Gifted Students. Gifted Child Quarterly 31, 4: 149–154; Ford, Donna Y. 1998. The Underrepresentation of Minority Students in Gifted Education: Problems and Promises in Recruitment and Retention. The Journal of Special Education 32, 1: 4–14; Harris, J. John, and Ford, Donna Y. 1999. Hope Deferred Again: Minority Students Underrepresented in Gifted Programs. Education and Urban Society 31, 2: 225–237. 27 See Excellence in schools , July 1997, Cm 3681; Brady, Margaret. 2015. An Exploration of the Impact of Gifted and Talented Policies on Inner City Schools in England: A Case Study. Unpublished PhD thesis, Brunel University, 69–70. 28 Excellence in schools , July 1997, Cm 3681. See also: Levitas, Ruth. 2005. The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour Basingstoke: Palgrave. 29 Brady, Gifted and Talented Policies on Inner City Schools, 69–70. 30 Education and Employment Committee, Highly Able Children, 1998–1999, Volume 1: Report and Proceedings of the Committee: xix, 15–22. 31 See for example: Modern Records Centre (MRC), UWA/PUB/DEP/29/5, Aspire (magazine) for gifted and talented youth, 2002–2007, Summer Edition 3––July 2003. Students letters and comments, 10. Crane, “Gifted Children” in Britain and the World, Chap 5. 32 Bateman Amanda and W. Butler, Carly. 2014. The Lore and Law of the Playground. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 125; Factor, June. 2014. Colleagues in the Antipodes: conversations with Iona and Peter Opie. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 224; Giddings, Sean. 2014. What is the state of play? International Journal of Play 3, 3: 195; Finnegan, Ruth. 2014. Child play is serious: children’s games, verbal art and survival in Africa. International Journal of Play 3, 3: 293. 33 Warner, Marina. 2001. Introductory. In The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren , eds. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, 1. New York: New York Review of Books. 34 See chapters ‘ Claiming and Curating Experiential Expertise at the Children’s Telephone Helpline, ChildLine UK, 1986–2006 ’ and ‘ Justifying Experience, Changing Expertise: From Protest to Authenticity in Anglophone “Mad Voices” in the Mid-Twentieth Century ’ in this collection. 35 Gleason, Avoiding the agency trap, 452. 36 Ibid. 446–459. 37 NAGC. 1981. The Fox. Explorers Unlimited , March, 23; NAGC. 1981. Catch a Bat. Explorers Unlimited, March, 24; NAGC. 1981. The Spider. Explorers Unlimited , March 1981, 24; NAGC. 1981. The Tube Train. Explorers Unlimited , March, 23. 38 NAGC, The Fox, 23. 39 NAGC. 1980. Hungry. Bulletin , November, 11. 40 Opie Archive, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, (hereafter Opie), OP/A/1/9/8/40/2, MS. Opie 9 fol. 495r, Acocks Green Junior Mixed School, Birmingham, Warwickshire, 1952–1953. 41 Opie, OP/A/1/1/3/13/6, MS. Opie 1 fol. 112r, Sale County Grammar School for Boys, Sale, Cheshire, England. 42 Warner, Introductory, ix. 43 Opie, OP/A/1/1/3/13/11, MS. Opie 1 fol. 112v, Sale County Grammar School for Boys, Sale, Cheshire, England. 44 Opie, OP/A/1/1/3/13/11, MS. Opie 1 fol. 112v, Sale County Grammar School for Boys, Sale, Cheshire, England. 45 See for example: Opie, OP/A/1/3/8/32/1, OP/A/1/3/8/34/1, OP/A/1/3/8/31/1, MS. Opie 3 fol. 381r, Kirkcaldy High School, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, c. 1952. 46 Opie, OP/A/1/9/8/44/5, MS. Opie 9 fol. 499r, Acocks Green Junior Mixed School, Birmingham, Warwickshire, 1952–1953. 47 [Opie, OP/A/1/9/8/44/5, MS. Opie 9 fol. 499r, Acocks Green Junior Mixed School, Birmingham, Warwickshire, 1952–1953. 48 Ibid., Warwickshire, 1952–3. Idea of ‘Big head’ also visible in Opie, OP/A/9/6/51/5, MS. Opie 9 fol. 344v, Ipswich, Suffolk, England. 49 Bod, Per 264,505 e. 4, NAGC. 1979. Saturday Club. Journal of the Gifted Child, Autumn, 50–51. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 NAGC. 1981. Limericks. Explorers Unlimited . March, 13. 56 NAGC. 1980. Community Spirit? Looking to Their Future , November, 29; NAGC. 1982. Political Forum. Dialogue , Easter, 9. 57 NAGC. 1979. What’s it like then? Explorers Unlimited, Summer, 1. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Looking to their Future: The News Letter of the NAGC . 1977, Country Holidays for Young Explorers, May, 5. This is further discussed in Crane, ‘Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism’. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Gleadle, Kathryn. 2009. Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender and Political Culture in Britain, 1815–1867 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 17; Hendrick, Harry. 2008. The Child as a Social Actor in Historical Sources: Problems of Identification and Interpretation. In Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices , eds. Pia Christensen and Allison James, 46. London: Routledge. 64 See for example: British Film Institute, Horizon , 1969; Anon. 1966. New Body Aims To Get Help For The Gifted Child. The Times , June 18, 10. 65 MRC, UWA/PUB/DEP/29/5, Aspire (magazine) for gifted and talented youth, 2002–2007, July 2007, Goal Programme scores again!, 3. 66 Ibid. 3. 67 Lowry, Katharine. 1987. The Designer Babies Are Growing Up: At Home With the First Children of the ‘Genius’ Sperm Bank. Los Angeles Times , November 1; Walmsley, Ann. 1985. The “genius” babies. Macleans , September 2. 68 BBC Science and Nature . 2019. The Genius Sperm Bank http://www ​.bbc.co.uk ​/sn/tvradio/programmes ​/horizon/broadband ​/tx/spermbank/doron/index_textonly.shtml Accessed 5 August 2019. 69 Anon. 1983. Is this little boy a perfect baby? Daily Mirror , August 17, 8–9; Kingstone, Heidi. 1986. Superbabe... or just another little boy? Daily Mail , September 18; Chalmers, Sarah. 2001. The New Master Breed? Daily Mail , February 10. 70 Southworth, June. 1995. What becomes of child prodigies? Daily Mail , December 2, 3; Clark, Susan. 1992. How Gifted Children Can Wither Under the Hot-House Pressures. Sunday Telegraph , July 19; Wavell, Stuart. 1995. Prodigies: A Suitable Case for Treatment. Sunday Times , May 21. 71 MRC, UWA/PUB/DEP/29/5, Aspire (magazine) for gifted and talented youth, 2002–2007, April 2003, Give a Child a Life, 11. 72 Looking to their Future: The News Letter of the National Association for Gifted Children . 1977. The Week at Ardtrostan, November, 13. 73 NAGC. 1981. Young Scientists. Explorers Unlimited , March, 37. 74 Miller, Susan A. 2016. Assent as Agency in the early years of the Children of the American Revolution. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, 1: 48–65; Abebe, Tatek. 2019. Reconceptualising Children’s Agency as Continuum and Interdependence. Social Sciences 8, 3: 1–16. 75 See for example: MRC, UWA/PUB/DEP/29/6. Evaluation of the Summer School, 2004. 76 NAGC. The Tube Train, 23. 77 Gleason, Mona. 2016. Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education. History of Education 45, 4: 446–459; Thomas, Lynn M. 2016. Historicising Agency. Gender & History 28, 2: 324–339; Miller, Susan A. 2016. Assent as Agency in the early years of the Children of the American Revolution. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, 1: 48–65; Abebe, Tatek. 2019. Reconceptualising Children’s Agency as Continuum and Interdependence. Social Sciences 8, 3: 1–16. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. My research here was funded by a Wellcome Research Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number: 212449/Z/18/Z]. Potential Plus UK made the rich uncatalogued archives of the National Association for Gifted Children available to me for research, thank you. Final thank you to the Ludwig Fund, New College, Oxford, for paying for research assistance from Dr Jono Taylor, which enabled fantastic discussions and Jono’s expertise about the local newspaper analysis on these issues. Copyright 2025, The Author(s) Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. Monographs, or book chapters, which are outputs of Wellcome Trust funding have been made freely available as part of the Wellcome Trust's open access policy Bookshelf ID: NBK612250 PMID: 40043162 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-64987-5_7 Contents < Prev Next > Share Views PubReader Print View Cite this Page Crane J. Fire, Fairs, and Dragonflies: The Writings of Gifted Children and Age-Bound Expertise. 2024 Dec 18. In: Beaumont C, Colpus E, Davidson R, editors. Everyday Welfare in Modern British History Experience, Expertise and Activism. Cham (CH): Palgrave Macmillan; 2025 Dec 19. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-64987-5_7 PDF version of this page (301K) In this Page Introduction What Was Giftedness? The Lived Experience of Expertise The Expertise of Experience Conclusion Select Bibliography Other titles in this collection Wellcome Trust–Funded Monographs and Book Chapters Related information PMC PubMed Central citations PubMed Links to PubMed Similar articles in PubMed Adapting Safety Plans for Autistic Adults with Involvement from the Autism Community. [Autism Adulthood. 2025] Adapting Safety Plans for Autistic Adults with Involvement from the Autism Community. Goodwin J, Gordon I, O'Keeffe S, Carling S, Berresford A, Bhattarai N, Heslop P, Nielsen E, O'Connor RC, Ogundimu E, et al. Autism Adulthood. 2025 Jun; 7(3):293-302. Epub 2025 May 28. Sexual Harassment and Prevention Training. [StatPearls. 2026] Sexual Harassment and Prevention Training. Cedeno R, Bohlen J. StatPearls. 2026 Jan Survivor, family and professional experiences of psychosocial interventions for sexual abuse and violence: a qualitative evidence synthesis. [Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2022] Survivor, family and professional experiences of psychosocial interventions for sexual abuse and violence: a qualitative evidence synthesis. Brown SJ, Carter GJ, Halliwell G, Brown K, Caswell R, Howarth E, Feder G, O'Doherty L. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2022 Oct 4; 10(10):CD013648. Epub 2022 Oct 4. "Just Ask What Support We Need": Autistic Adults' Feedback on Social Skills Training. [Autism Adulthood. 2025] "Just Ask What Support We Need": Autistic Adults' Feedback on Social Skills Training. Hull L, Rane S, Lee SH, Sedgewick F. Autism Adulthood. 2025 Jun; 7(3):283-292. Epub 2025 May 28. How lived experiences of illness trajectories, burdens of treatment, and social inequalities shape service user and caregiver participation in health and social care: a theory-informed qualitative evidence synthesis. [Health Soc Care Deliv Res. 2025] How lived experiences of illness trajectories, burdens of treatment, and social inequalities shape service user and caregiver participation in health and social care: a theory-informed qualitative evidence synthesis. May CR, Gravenhorst KC, Hillis A, Arber M, Chew-Graham CA, Gallacher KI, Mair FS, Nolte E, Richardson A. Health Soc Care Deliv Res. 2025 Jun; 13(24):1-120. See reviews... See all... Recent Activity Clear Turn Off Turn On Fire, Fairs, and Dragonflies: The Writings of Gifted Children and Age-Bound Expe... Fire, Fairs, and Dragonflies: The Writings of Gifted Children and Age-Bound Expertise - Everyday Welfare in Modern British History Experience, Expertise and Activism Your browsing activity is empty. Activity recording is turned off. Turn recording back on See more... Follow NCBI Twitter Facebook LinkedIn GitHub NCBI Insights Blog Connect with NLM Twitter Facebook Youtube National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894 Web Policies FOIA HHS Vulnerability Disclosure Help Accessibility Careers NLM NIH HHS USA.gov