Creative giftedness gained a foothold in American K-12 schools with the inception of the Marland report. To understand the growth and direction of creative giftedness over a 50-year timeframe from an international basis, we selected 16 academic journals in the field of gifted education from the United States, Europe, Türkiye, Korea, and Oceania and conducted keyword search strings for creative and Marland. Our retrospective study found precursors on creative giftedness rooted in early psychological research (1900–1950); a transitional conceptualization through a global awakening from Guilford’s presidential speech (1950–2000); and new world interconnectedness with a democratization of creativity that contemplates cyber-creativity (2000–2025). Content analysis of 2,564 keyword article titles showed eight main topics, and we analyzed the distribution of work on these themes, over the three time periods. Trends are observed in terms of journal topics and trends over time across the set of journals.
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