Su búsqueda

This reprinted article originally appeared in Gifted Child Quarterly, 1982, Vol 26(1), 11-14. The following abstract of the original article appeared in (see record 1984-27279-001). Argues that there are certain unavoidable pitfalls in accepting the belief that giftedness can be defined by 3-5% of the normal curve. The 1st pitfall is the belief that giftedness and IQ are one and the same. A 2nd pitfall emanating from the 3-5% approach is that the gifted are likely to be viewed as a fixed population, one that always can be preselected for special services. This almost universal practice of preselection effectively closes the door to all other students and says, in effect, that no matter what kinds of outstanding abilities a nonselected individual shows, any special program assistance will be refused. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

This article describes a continuum of definitions of giftedness from conservative to liberal, and how these definitions relate to the development of the 3-ring conception of giftedness. In this definition, above-average ability, task commitment, and creativity are seen as 3 interactive clusters of traits that gifted students may exhibit or are capable of developing. The 3-ring conception of giftedness provides an operational definition that can be used by schools as the basis for identification that, in turn, leads to more targeted programming options for gifted students. Recent research related to the 3-ring conception focuses on the infinite number of interactions that contribute to giftedness including personality and environmental factors that have an impact on one's ability to engage in creative and productive endeavors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Why and how should a society devote special resources to the development of giftedness in young people for the twenty-first century? If we agree that the goals of gifted education and talent development are to maximize young people’s opportunities for self-fulfillment and increase society’s reservoir of creative problem solvers and producers of knowledge, then it would seem wise that programming and services enhance students’ capacity for creative productivity, not just content acquisition. This general theory for the development of human potential is discussed through an exploration of four research-based subtheories: the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness, the Enrichment Triad Model, Operation Houndstooth, and Executive Functions. In this article, a reexamination of current gifted and talented programming is intended to generate future research, extend dialogue among scholars, and inspire continued support for programming based on theory and related research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This reprinted article originally appeared in Gifted Child Quarterly, 1986, Vol 30(1), 20-23. The following abstract of the original article appeared in (see record 1987-12029-001). Examines 4 research designs of potential use in addressing the meaning of giftedness, including the traditional test-score-as-criterion design and 3 performance-based-research designs (academic mastery in a domain-specific area, creative productivity in domain-specific/interdisciplinary areas, and long-range creative productivity). It is suggested that the designs offer different conceptions of giftedness and imply different ways of providing educational services. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

"The gifted and talented constitute one single homogeneous group and giftedness is a way of being that stays in the person over time and experiences." We believe there is no more potentially dangerous and false myth than the one above. Let us, therefore, begin this response with the following resounding statement: There is no single homogeneous group of gifted children and adults, and giftedness is developmental, not fixed at birth. Our current federal definition suggests that gifted and talented students are indeed a diverse group of individuals, students with varying abilities and potentials in one or many domains. This widely accepted federal definition of giftedness (Ross, 1993) highlights students’ intellectual, creative, and/or artistic areas; unusual capacity for leadership; or excellence in specific academic fields. This definition discusses outstanding talents present in children and youth from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, in all areas of human endeavor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

The main argument of this article is that human living systems are open, dynamic, intentional systems and, therefore, are capable of building ever more complex behaviors through self-organization and self-direction. This principle underlying general human development is also applicable to the development of gifted and talented behaviors. These behaviors are dynamic because persons demonstrating such behaviors are forming dynamic, functional relations with a specific environment, with unique temporal trajectories capable of engendering emergent properties that feed into further development. This Contextual, Emergent, and Dynamic Model provides an alternative to traditional static, reductionistic, trait-based conceptions of giftedness. The article further elaborates on three dynamic facets of the making of gifted potential: selective affinity, maximal grip, and being at the edge of chaos. These facets allow for dealing with the genesis of talents, developing expertise over an extended period, and developing creative potential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

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)

This reprinted article originally appeared in Gifted Child Quarterly, 1982, Vol 26(2), 88-94. The following abstract of the original article appeared in (see record 1984-27624-001). Argues that intelligence seems to consist in large part of the ability to deal with nonentrenched tasks and concepts, but this ability seems only to be peripherally measured by current tests of intelligence. This view brings the concept of intelligence closer to that of creativity, as usually conceived, but still maintains the distinction between convergent and divergent thinking that has traditionally characterized the difference between what is measured in intelligence tests and what is measured in creativity tests. Examples of nonentrenchment in the assessment of intellectual giftedness are provided. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

This reprinted article originally appeared in Gifted Education Quarterly, 1984, Vol 28(4), 157-161. The following abstract of the original article appeared in (see record 1985-23827-001). Argues for the replacement of the current identification/placement paradigm, which is used to assess giftedness and talent in children, with one that focuses more on assessment and education. The separate identification step should be replaced by curriculum-imbedded and curriculum-determinitive processes. Suggestions for increasing the contributions of school psychologists in the assessment phase are outlined, along with the need to develop more individualized adaptive education programs for gifted students. Implications for school district policy are also noted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

The Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness focuses on creative/innovative productivity, which differs from schoolhouse or lesson-learning giftedness. Giftedness that leads to innovation emerges from the interaction and overlap of three clusters of traits--well above average ability in a particular domain, task commitment, and creativity--and occurs in certain individuals, at certain times, under certain conditions. A broader conception of giftedness will allow researchers, theorists, and educators to more fully address, answer, and respond to the most pressing questions about where innovation 'comes from'. Simultaneously, this model, when applied, will assist in the development of individuals most capable of engaging in innovation and improving the quality of life for society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The study of gifts and talents and how various innate abilities interact with one’s environment, personality, educational opportunities, family support, and life experiences has fascinated psychologists, educators, and parents for decades. Many are intrigued with the reasons 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 past few decades about the nature of talent development and intellectual giftedness? What general concepts are widely accepted about intellectual giftedness? How is it defined and how can it be developed? What combinations of genetic abilities and talents interact with one’s personality and environment to produce 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 reviewed in this chapter points out, core concepts about giftedness relate to the diversity of expression of gifts and talents, as there are no more varied groups of people than those labeled intellectually gifted. Those labeled gifted as children and/or adults are found in every ethnic and socioeconomic group and culture. They exhibit an unlimited range of personal and learning characteristics and differ in effort, temperament, educational and vocational attainment, productivity, creativity, risk taking, introversion, and extraversion. We begin our review of research related to intellectual giftedness with a discussion of these themes, summarizing highlights about research on intellectual giftedness in the United States, including some work that is considered seminal, and presenting an overview of what we believe to be some interesting and potentially important theories to date. We conclude the chapter with some interesting new research-based trends related to emerging ideas in defining and developing academic gifts and talents. It is important to understand, however, that scholars and researchers continue to debate definitions of giftedness, how intellectual giftedness develops, and the characteristics of diverse groups of high-potential youth that will help educators and psychologists to identify and nurture intellectual gifts and talents. To illustrate the challenges associated with both defining and identifying giftedness in students, four brief case studies are introduced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Thinking and writing about creativity immediately causes us to reflect upon our own experiences and wonder whether or not we think of ourselves as being creative people. This chapter describes an approach to developing creative activities and creativity in children, particularly, ways of influencing teacher behaviors to identify, promote, and develop creative teaching and the strategies for infusing creativity in educational experiences. The chapter provides a brief description on new directions in creativity program (NDC); the three-ring conception of giftedness; the schoolwide enrichment model; and the challenge of change in the real world of schools. The NDC includes five volumes: Mark A, Mark B, Mark I, Mark 2, and Mark 3. The NDC program is designed to help teachers develop the creative thinking abilities of primary and middle grade youngsters, and the premise of NDC is that almost all children have the potential to think creatively and that creative production can be improved by providing systematic learning experiences that foster the use of imagination. The general purpose of NDC can best be explained by contrasting the creative or divergent production abilities with the convergent production abilities emphasized in most elementary school classrooms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

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)

In the sections that follow, I summarize the two major theories underlying my work: the three-ring conception of giftedness and the enrichment triad model. Also interrelated with this phase is a subtheory that defines a procedure for regular curriculum modification called curriculum compacting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

In this chapter, the author provides a description of the major theoretical issues underlying various conceptions of giftedness, an overview of the three-ring conception of giftedness, some of the research that led to the initial development of the theory, and a brief description of research carried out in places that have used this model. Also included are a new dimension of the overall theory that deals with co-cognitive characteristics and a brief description of a plan for identifying students for special programs and services based on this conception of giftedness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)