UAE’s New Online Mentoring Program Offers a Blueprint for Global Gifted Education
Elhoweris, H., Mohamed, A., Garces-Bacsal, R. M., & Opoku, M. (2026). Online mentoring and creative problem solving for academically talented high-school students. Education Sciences, 16(8), 1153. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16071153
Introduction
As the UAE pushes to build a STEAM-ready workforce, its Ministry of Education and partner organizations have poured resources into identifying and nurturing gifted students — nearly 9,000 were evaluated through the national Talent Identification Program in 2025 alone. Elhoweris and colleagues (2026) argue that traditional gifted education, built around acceleration and in-person enrichment, hasn’t kept pace with what technology now makes possible: connecting talented students with mentors anywhere in the world. They also trace how the definition of “giftedness” has shifted from pure IQ testing toward multidimensional models incorporating creativity, motivation, and context (Renzulli, 2001; Sternberg, 2000), which is part of why enrichment and mentorship have gained ground over acceleration alone. Their paper describes a UAE University online mentoring program built around the Real Engagement in Active Problem Solving (REAPS) model, which blends inquiry-based learning, real-world problem-solving, and multi-perspective thinking to build creative problem-solving skills in gifted teenagers.
Methods
The program recruited academically talented students aged 14–16 from 36 Abu Dhabi schools, nominated by teachers based on achievement, interest, and motivation. It unfolded in three phases modeled on Renzulli’s Schoolwide Enrichment Model: an initial four-week interest-exploration phase (96 students, split into STEM, research, and arts/literature clusters); a REAPS-based master class (29 students) in which teams role-played stakeholder perspectives — bully, victim, bystander — to research bullying, then tackled a real plastic-recycling problem with actual UAE environmental agencies; and a final independent project phase, where 9 student proposals were submitted and 3 selected for two to three months of mentor-guided work. Evaluation relied on teacher and student reflections and program observations rather than a validated measurement instrument.
Results
Teachers reported that the master class visibly encouraged students to use critical and creative thinking, particularly when weighing multiple possible solutions to the bullying and recycling problems from different stakeholder perspectives while working within SMART-goal constraints (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound). Students, per their own reflections, generally described the master class content as challenging and interesting, said it improved practical life skills, and reported motivation to perform better academically. All participating students in this phase said they enjoyed the collaborative aspect of working through the problems together. Attrition between phases was notable as the number of participants dropped from 96 to 29 participants, attributed to exam schedules and Ramadan.
Discussion
The authors frame online delivery as the program’s main advantage: it let students train directly with U.S.-based REAPS experts without travel, offered scheduling flexibility, and supported inclusion regardless of a student’s gender, socioeconomic background, or location within the emirate. At the same time, the authors are candid that this same flexibility ran into real scheduling friction: the time difference between the UAE and the U.S., school exam periods, and Ramadan all complicated the master class schedule. They suggest future iterations might shift enrichment programming to weekends, after school hours, or summer break to avoid these collisions.
Implications for Mentoring Programs
Structured stakeholder role-play—assigning participants to argue from an unfamiliar perspective before tackling a shared real-world problem—is a,transferable technique for building perspective-taking, specific enough that other programs could adopt it directly rather than treating “creative thinking” as an abstract goal. Additionally, the sharp participation drop across phases is worth taking seriously: even motivated, teacher-nominated students lost steam over months, suggesting programs betting on long-duration mentorship should plan explicitly for attrition and account for exam and cultural/religious calendars rather than treating dropoff as incidental.
Read the full article here
