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In an applied field such as education we have always maintained that a theory doesn't have much value (beyond generating research proposals) unless it can ultimately guide practice, and hopefully policy. We also maintain that there is no such thing as a "perfect" identification system and any system is always a series of compromises that must take into account state rules and regulations, political realities (e.g., parent pressures, under representation of low-income and minority groups), practical issues (e.g., time and costs of testing), and of course the conception(s) of giftedness and the programming models) that guide the services for which students are being identified. In this chapter, we first discuss a number of considerations that must be taken into account when designing an identification system for a school, district, or even a state. The step-by-step system that is described here is an attempt to address as many of these considerations as possible, but we must also state up front that the system presented in this chapter is based on the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness. Further, it is designed for programs that focus mainly on creative productive giftedness as delineated in the Enrichment Triad Model. The system does, of course, provide a major pathway for the highest achieving students but it also "opens the door" for participation by students who show potential for high performance through one or more nontest criteria that may not be adequately assessed by cognitive ability or achievement tests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

This qualitative study was conducted to investigate the social and cultural characteristics of gifted and talented students and their perceptions of the educational factors that have contributed to the development of their gifts and talents. Twelve Puerto Rican English Language Learner (PR-ELL) students who are identified as gifted and attend a full-time academy for gifted and talented students were selected for the study. Both ethnography and comparative case methodology were used as the participants completed a questionnaire with 67 questions and then were interviewed and observed in their school. Students' cumulative records were also reviewed and analyzed. Interesting findings emerged in the study as participants identified the following characteristics that would identify them as gifted and talented: high potential, motivation, commitment, perseverance, self-confidence, maturity, and hard work. The participants believe that they work harder, expend more effort in their academic studies, take school more seriously, and have more enthusiasm for learning than students from other cultures who are identified as gifted and talented. They also reported that their parents encouraged their children to work hard and do well in school. All students agreed that the Gifted & Talented Academy they attended and their teachers provide them with a rigorous, enriched curriculum. The participants also indicated that they loved being challenged and encouraged by their parents and teachers to work hard and excel. They enjoy being exposed to new curriculum and learning new content, as opposed to the lack of challenge they experienced in their previous schools. This research contributes to new understandings regarding the characteristics of PR-ELL gifted students, family characteristics and educational factors that support and sustain high academic achievement; however, additional research is needed relative to the identification and characteristics of gifted ELL students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

The original article on The Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness appeared in a 1978 edition of the Kappan. Although it was originally rejected by the journals in gifted education, it has now become the most widely cited article in the field. Over the years, I have updated the article three times to include new research and changes in identification and programming that have taken place in the field over the years. The original article and subsequent follow-ups have been cited approximately 3,000 times in national and international journals. The most important point in the chapter is that our field needs to make differentiated provisions for both high-achieving students and what I have described in this chapter as creative productive giftedness. These two types of giftedness are not mutually exclusive, but it is important to recognize that creative and productive people represent the kind of giftedness found in people who have changed the world in both large and small ways. The chapter presented here is the most recent update. I am proud of the influence all of the Three-Ring articles have had because they show that a field can change its mind regarding long held beliefs about the nature of giftedness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The Enrichment Triad Model was developed in conjunction with the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness discussed in Chapter 3 of this book. This model, which is essentially a learning theory, is primarily designed to serve as a practical guide for promoting what I referred to in Chapter 3 as creative productive giftedness. It was originally published as articles in a two-part series and subsequently a short book. Both of these models were greeted with a fair amount of skepticism in the gifted education community because they disagreed with prevailing trends about the conception of giftedness, a focus on advanced lesson-learning approaches to developing giftedness, and the belief that higher level thinking skills were the exclusive province of gifted students only. The Three-Ring and Triad models, however, "got legs," and as they grew in popularity over the years, I gained new insights about issues related to practical strategies for implementing the three types of enrichment around which the Triad Model is organized. This chapter is an updated version of the original work on Triad and a compilation of the original theory plus various conceptual and practical additions that have been added over the years. The chapter serves as an overview rather than as a practical guide for implementation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

This recently written chapter is designed to set the stage for a better understanding of the chapters that follow in this section of the book. As will be pointed out, epistemology, the study of knowledge creation and use, was a topic examined by ancient philosophers and is reflected in modern educational templates for learning such as Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. I was surprised that no articles in the gifted literature had addressed this topic. It wasn't until recent years that I realized different types of knowledge are the "grist for the mill of mind." Understanding different levels of knowledge helped me to better recognize the argument made in the following chapter about the importance of focusing special programs on creative and productive giftedness. This work also reflects my growing fascination with the importance that technology is now playing for learners of all ages and the easy accessibility to the wide world of knowledge that young people now have through the Internet. An examination of the three levels of knowledge discussed in this chapter and the importance of blending them together will strike some readers as "common sense," and this is exactly what I intended. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

In the early 1970s when I began work on the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness, I embedded the rings in a houndstooth background that represented the interaction between personality and environment. In recent years, further research and theory development coupled with a growing concern in the field related to social and emotional development has led to a new dimension of my work on characteristics that calls attention to a series of six co-cognitive factors that are discussed in this chapter. A comprehensive review of the literature and a series of Delphi technique studies led to the development of an organizational plan for studying these six components and 13 subcomponents. Factor analysis identified these clusters of discrete but interrelated traits. I refer to these as co-cognitive factors because they interact with and enhance the cognitive traits that we ordinarily associate with the development of both high achievement and creative productive manifestations of giftedness. This new initiative was prompted by a longstanding concern about the role that gifted education should play in preparing persons with high potential for ethical and responsible leadership in all walks of life. Investments in this type of social capital benefit society as a whole because they help to create the values, norms, networks, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation geared toward the greater public good. Striking evidence indicates a marked decline in American social capital over the latter half of the century just ending. National surveys show declines over the last few decades in voter turnout and political participation, membership in service clubs, church-related groups, parent teacher associations, unions, and fraternal groups. These declines in civic and social participation have been paralleled by an increasing tendency for young people to focus on materialism, self-intelligence, narrow professional success, and individual economic gain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

This chapter provides a summation of four subtheories developed over approximately five decades. Although my early work on Subtheory I (the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness) and Subtheory II (the Enrichment Triad Model) gained more attention than I ever expected, I began to feel that there were still characteristics and programming opportunities that needed to be added to the overall search for factors that contribute to total talent development. This concern, coupled with my own belief that programs for our most able young people should: (1) promote a sense of social justice and the use of one's gifts to make positive contributions to society, and (2) provide experiences in the development of strategies for acquiring self-regulation skills, using time and resources wisely, taking action, and managing change. And, of course, I wanted to come up with ideas that interacted with rather than replaced Three-Ring and Triad. The result was several years of research and development that led to Subtheories III and IV that are discussed in this chapter. I refer to the traits discussed in Subtheories III and IV as co-cognitive factors because they interact with and enhance the cognitive traits that are ordinarily associated with the development of human abilities. A number of researchers have suggested that constructs of this type, including social, emotional, and interpersonal intelligence, are related to each other and are at least partially independent from traditional academic measures of human abilities. I invite readers to draw their own conclusions about whether or not these four interactive subtheories promote what I describe as a fully functioning self-actualized individual. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Interest in gifted women has continued in the three decades since Carolyn Callahan published one of the first articles about this topic in the context of gifted education in 1979. Indeed, during the last three decades, books and multiple articles have been published about gifted girls and women by Karnes, Kerr, Rimm, Reis, and others. This chapter probes the reflections of gifted women in the field of gifted education in an effort to identify their perceptions of their contributions, challenges, and beliefs about giftedness and talents in girls and women. Reis (1998) defined talent development in women as occurring when women with high intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership ability or potential achieve at in an area of choice and make what they define as personally meaningful contributions to society. Reis identified several factors that contribute to this conception of giftedness and talent in women including: abilities (intelligence and special talents), personality traits, environmental factors, and personal perceptions, such as the social importance of the use of one's talents to make a positive difference in the world. Each of these factors contributes to what Gruber called "self-mobilization", characterized in some talented women by the development of belief in self, a desire to develop one's talents, and a sense of destiny enabling one to make conscious decisions to develop talents, often with little support and against many obstacles. Each of the women profiled in this chapter displayed these characteristics, working many hours over years of sheer effort as they successfully used their talents to make a difference in this field. This chapter highlights both their stories and their personal reflections on their journeys. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The study of gifts and talents and how innate abilities interact with one's environment, personality, educational opportunities, family support, and life experiences has fascinated psychologists, educators, and parents for decades. Why is it that one child with remarkably high potential born into a particular family in a particular environment grows up to become a neurosurgeon while a child of similar intellectual potential who lives in the same community and attends the same schools, decides to drop out of high school? What have researchers and scholars learned in the last few decades about the nature of talent development and intellectual giftedness? In this chapter, these questions, none of which can be answered simply, are discussed and current research about intellectual giftedness is summarized. As the research points out, one of the core concepts that has emerged about intellectual giftedness in the last few decades relates to its diversity, for there is no more varied group of people than those labeled intellectually gifted. Despite this broad diversity, however, several common themes about intellectual giftedness and the conditions for its development exist. We begin our review of the research related to intellectual giftedness with a discussion of these themes, summarizing highlights about research on intellectual giftedness in the United States, including the seminal work of Lewis Terman, and presenting an overview of what we believe to be some interesting and potentially important American theories to date. We conclude the chapter with some interesting research-based trends related to new ideas in defining and developing academic gifts and talents. It is important to understand, however, that there is no agreed-upon consensus about who is gifted and no final answers about our evolving understandings of how intellectual giftedness develops and the characteristics that help us to identify and nurture intellectual gifts and talents. To introduce the challenge associated with both defining and identifying giftedness in students, four brief case studies are introduced in the first section of the chapter. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

An overview of definitions of giftedness, special populations of gifted and talented children, methods of identification, and a continuum of services are summarized in this chapter. These services include organizational strategies (such as instructional grouping options), instructional strategies (such as acceleration and enrichment options), and a variety of talent development opportunities that should be included in a continuum of services that will engage and challenge all gifted and talented students. Also included in this chapter are some social and emotional challenges that may affect gifted and high potential children, such as the potential underachievement of children who do not encounter sufficient challenge in school. The chapter ends with a summary of research about the effectiveness of grouping, instructional, and talent development strategies, as well as recommendations for the creation of a continuum of services in each school district that will challenge and engage all students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The term gifted means that an individual is exceptional at something and we prefer to use the term as an adjective (e.g., he or she is a gifted pianist, etc.) rather than as a noun (e.g., the gifted). We also talk about gifted behaviors rather than use giftedness to represent a state of being. The study of gifts and talents and the ways in which individuals’ abilities interact with and are affected by environment, personality, educational opportunities, family support, and life experiences have fascinated researchers for several decades. As we consider our scholarly and school-based experiences in developing programs and identification systems for high potential students, as well as our knowledge base about how giftedness can be developed in children and adolescents, several common themes emerge about talent development and giftedness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Both qualitative and quantitative longitudinal studies of school-wide enrichment model (SEM) gifted programs demonstrate positive outcomes in cognitive, affective, and social development of participating students. The participants increased their college and work aspirations, and maintained interests and creative productive work that begin in gifted programs after they finished college and graduate school. It is our hope that more schools and districts will continue to implement talent development programs based on the SEM in the years to come, whether as part of gifted or enrichment programs, magnet or theme schools, or as a part of a general education program. During the last decade, several Renzulli Academies, schools based on the SEM using the SEM-based strategies and methods described in this chapter, have been developed, focusing on the pedagogy described in this chapter for high-potential students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

This chapter is based on a research project that produced some "hard data" to support the assertion made earlier stating that the field has changed its mind about the conception of giftedness and the types of information that should be used in the identification process. Strong agreement was found among classroom teachers, gifted education teachers, administrators, and consultants (experts in the field and state directors) from urban, suburban, and rural districts. Overall, respondents disagreed with a totally test-score approach and supported approaches that used individual expression, ongoing assessment, and context-bound identification procedures. Furthermore, they strongly agreed with the importance of using multiple criteria for the identification of gifted and talented children. This study has important implications about the need for change in both policy and identification practice and its most valuable use to the field is that it should be brought to the attention of policy makers responsible for developing state and district guidelines. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)