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In the discourse on the intellectual styles of exceptional learners, three specific issues readily present themselves. The first issue is the diversity of exceptional learners. By exceptional learners, one refers to a heterogeneous group of learners that includes, among others, learners with dyslexia, learners with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learners with autism spectrum disorder, and highly able or gifted learners. The question is whether there are distinct intellectual styles or profiles of styles for distinct groups of exceptional learners. The second issue has to do with the connection between abilities and styles. Perhaps what set exceptional learners apart from normal nonexceptional learners are their profiles of marked strengths and weaknesses, which are likely to correspond to their areas of giftedness and deficits. It is likely that there is a possibly stronger ability-style connection among exceptional learners, given that exceptionality is often defined in terms of abilities (talents) or disabilities (deficits). The question is whether or not exceptional learners are predisposed to prefer specific intellectual styles in line with their abilities and disabilities. The third issue is the role of intellectual styles in the teaching and learning of exceptional learners. Given the possibly stronger ability-style connection, the question is whether or not instruction matching intellectual styles of exceptional learners should assume greater importance in the effective teaching and learning of these more able and more vulnerable learners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

In this chapter, the authors focus on extreme giftedness--individuals whose potential and/or achievement are several standard deviations above the norm. The authors focus their attention on children because they are interested in early signs of giftedness and in how such atypical children are best identified, assessed, and educated. Gifted children stand out in four striking ways. They are precocious in their domain of ability; they are passionate about and have a rage to master that domain; they think, learn, and solve problems in ways that are qualitatively different from typical children; and they are aware of being different from others. Those four ways are discussed, along with a number of ways to identify and evaluate giftedness, and educating extremely gifted students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

In this chapter, the authors have presented here a model of giftedness by referring to the specific domain of music. The model defines giftedness as a transitional process in which different characteristics contribute to the transformation of abilities into competencies and expertise and, in exceptional cases, into scholarly productivity or artistry. This transformation is made possible through the interaction of innate abilities and context, as specified at each stage. The authors have also outlined how they believe education can best facilitate the passage from abilities to competencies to expertise and scholarly productivity or artistry. They offer this model, based on research in the domain of music in the United States, as a useful framework for understanding, comparing, and nurturing talent development in other domains and other countries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

Since 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its satellite Sputnik, until the dissociation of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian tradition of educating gifted children had been world-renowned. However, with a restructuring of society's major domains of functioning in the early 1990's, the Soviet system of complete federal support for gifted education all but disappeared. In this chapter, the authors argue that the system, despite the challenges of the 1990's, has survived its toughest times. The authors illustrate that, by capitalizing both on past and current theories of giftedness and cognitive development, the field of gifted studies in Russia continues to develop and that it is in the process of re-creating itself in the changed social and cultural context of Russia. This chapter attempts to address questions of identifying, educating, and caring for gifted children by capitalizing on Russian psychological science and its past and present accomplishments in the field of gifted and talented research. First, based on works of multiple Russian psychologists, a systemic multidimensional model of giftedness is introduced. The model integrates extant Russian psychological research, extends available conceptualizations, and suggests directions for future research. Next, we describe current practices for the identification and education of the gifted and talented in Russia. Finally, the chapter introduces suggestions for best practices for assessment of achievement in gifted individuals and projections for future research in the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

To understand giftedness, and particularly intellectual giftedness, one must understand intelligence. But what is intelligence? In 1921, when the editors of the Journal of Educational Psychology asked 14 famous psychologists that question, the responses varied, but generally embraced two themes. First, intelligence involves the capacity to learn from experience. Second, it involves the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment. Sixty-five years later, 24 cognitive psychologists with expertise in intelligence research were asked the same question (Sternberg & Detterman, 1986). They, too, underscored the importance of learning from experience and adapting to the environment. They also broadened the definition to emphasize the importance of metacognition—people’s understanding and control of their own thinking processes. Contemporary experts also more heavily emphasized the role of culture. They pointed out that what is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered less intelligent in another culture (Ang, Van Dyne, & Tan, 2011). To summarize, intelligence is the capacity to learn from experience, using metacognitive processes to enhance learning, and the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment; it may require different adaptations within different social and cultural contexts (Niu & Brass, 2011; Saklofske, van de Vijver, Oakland, Mpofu, & Suzuki, 2015; Sternberg, 2004). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word intelligence entered our language in about the 12th century. Today, we can look up intelligence in numerous dictionaries, but most of us still have our own implicit ideas about what it means to be smart. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 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)

Israel is a small country in which the academic and creative abilities of people are considered a major natural resource (Milgram, 2000). The identification and education of gifted and talented children and adolescents have been the focus of considerable interest in Israel for many years. The rationale underlying this interest is that a small country, bereft of natural resources, must place high priority on its human resources, that is, on the abilities and talents of its people. This chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, we present a summary of research in Israel on topics of creativity. In the second section, we present a theoretical model of the structure of giftedness and creativity (Milgram, 1989, 1991) that has generated the bulk of theory-driven empirical research on creativity in Israel. In the third section we report on international research on learning style and creativity that included Israel, and in the fourth section we discuss new directions in research on creativity in Israel. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The conception of giftedness proposed is one based on student learning and performance needs, hence the label child-responsive model. The model accepts, while adapting, some basic premises of two existing paradigms of giftedness that have competed for attention in the schools. It is predicated on the belief that the school environment should recognize the behaviors and characteristics of the exceptional learner from these two realms and respond to the concomitant learner needs in each group by creating learning environments that will maximize the opportunities for exceptional learners to extend their achieved and potential expertise in areas of high performance. Within this model, there are two clusters of gifted students. The two clusters of gifted students are designated the academic activists and the problem-solving innovators. The two paths that gifted students may follow in this model are the academic-accelerative path and the creative-productive path. Each path is of equal importance and deserves equal attention in the planning for addressing the needs of gifted students in our schools. Within this model, the authors attend specifically to the groups of students within each of those categories who can be reasonably served by the current school structure. In this chapter, the authors discuss the the two clusters of gifted students, and two paths that gifted students may follow in this model in great detail. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) was established at Johns Hopkins University in 1971 by Professor Julian Stanley to help youths who reason extremely well mathematically find the educational resources they need to achieve their full potential. After administering above-grade-level tests to identify students with advanced mathematical reasoning abilities, SMPY provided counseling and created programs to meet their academic needs. Eventually, university-based talent centers were established around the country to continue the practices SMPY pioneered. Because SMPY's methods for developing talent evolved over time in a very pragmatic way, that is, in response to the needs of individual students, the psychological and conceptual bases for this approach have not been especially emphasized in the literature. The first book-length report of SMPY's initial work was titled Mathematical Talent: Discovery, Description, and Development (Stanley et al., 1974). The three "D" words indicate the steps utilized by SMPY to find and serve talented youths. As a way to emphasize these steps, as well as the mathematical reasoning ability that the early talent searches involved, the book's title and this model of talent development was sometimes abbreviated to MT:D³. Later, a fourth D was added in acknowledgment of an increasingly important dimension: Dissemination of its principles, practices, and procedures. In this chapter, the conceptual and operational components of this model are summarized. It is meant to help youths who reason extremely well mathematically and/or verbally develop their talents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

In this chapter, the authors briefly review several conceptualizations of giftedness; review the scope of the underrepresentation and overprediction phenomenon for gifted students of color; elaborate on some of the causes of this national crisis; provide evidence of how the Meyerhoff Scholars Program (MSP) nurtures the academic excellence of gifted and talented students of color; discuss the theoretical constructs from the social sciences that they believe inform practices having to do with academic attitudinal and behavioral changes; and conclude with a discussion of those aspects of the program that can be transferred in efforts to reduce the overprediction phenomenon and increase the persistence and academic excellence of gifted and talented students of color. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

At a recent conference, a clinical psychologist who works with gifted students engaged the first author in an exciting and challenging conversation. As the authors discussed specific research and case studies involving gifted children, they realized that we were talking almost exclusively about the importance of context in defining and addressing giftedness. During the rest of the conference, they noticed the role of context in talent development in every session we attended. On the first author's return home, one question kept leaping into his mind: If the need to consider context comes up in most research sessions and so many practical applications, why don't we spend more time exploring its role in theories of giftedness? In this chapter, the authors explore the role of context in some classic and contemporary theories and models of giftedness, propose an alternative view, and explore the practical implications of that perspective. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

The recent popularity of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory corresponds with current efforts to move away from the use of standardized measures of achievement and ability to more authentic assessment techniques, including portfolio and performance-based assessment. Gardner and his colleagues have strongly encouraged the application of MI theory to performance-based assessment. This study investigates the reliability and validity of a battery of instruments based on MI theory, including teacher checklists and performance-based assessment activities. The purpose in developing the instruments was the identification of talent in culturally diverse and/or low income kindergarten and first grade students. Results suggest acceptable evidence of reliability but raise questions about the validity of the assessments. This study has implications for both future research efforts and the application of MI-based, performance measures to the assessment and identification of talent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The authors review 8 different cognitive conceptions of expertise: (a) general process (speed and accuracy in executing applicable cognitive processes in a given task); (b) quantity of knowledge (extensive stored knowledge about task or field); (c) organization of knowledge (attention to the deep structures of problems); (d) automaticity (mental efficiency in information processing); (e) analytical ability (making inferences beyond given information); (f) creative ability (application of insight to novel problems); (g) practical ability (application of tacit knowledge or "savvy"); and (h) labeling (getting oneself "recognized"). The authors conclude that no single conception captures the essence of expertise: All are necessary. The authors then propose a ninth, synthetic view, in which expertise (and giftedness) become a prototype against which a person is compared and recognized as gifted, depending on the degree to which she or he resembles the expert prototype. What is exciting about this proposal is that it requires use of a clear, independent criterion in identifying individuals as gifted. In a time of "talent development" and a move toward eliminating the use of the term gifted, the authors' conceptualization allows us to maintain a manageable field of study that is based on current theories of cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: introduction)

This reprinted article originally appeared in Parenting for High Potential, June 1997. The article provides an alternative to the over-reliance upon traditional intelligence testing or using only an IQ score as the primary indicator of giftedness. Rather, the author offers his theory of successful intelligence, whereby individuals identify and cultivate their strengths and figure out ways to compensate or correct for their relative weaknesses. The author punctuates the explanation of his theory with a call to action for parents and teachers; research findings suggest that students who are offered instruction in ways that allow them to play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses outperform those who were not offered such flexibility. In short, not scoring high on a traditional intelligence test can be overcome by considering strengths more broadly and playing to those strengths. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

Due in large part to technological advances, society has changed in unprecedented ways and at a breakneck pace. Yet conceptions of giftedness and models for gifted education have not kept pace with these changes. One conceptual change widely applied to other fields is the use of sociocultural theories, which are rarely applied to the study of and education for giftedness and talent development. Such perspectives emphasize the interrelated nature of the individual and their social and cultural contexts. A sociocultural approach to giftedness focuses less on the individual student and more on the ways in which that student is supported by and interacts with their immediate social context. The emphasis in a sociocultural approach to talent development is primarily on the need to provide enriched contexts for students as they interact with each other and cultural tools, resulting in the emergence of talent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

In comparison to most research approaches and theoretical traditions in other fields of psychology, educational-psychological approaches to these concepts have been related more closely to practice in a wide variety of educational settings in and out of schools. For example, topics of research in the areas of motivation and cognition have been concerned with learning and achievement, and the language used has tended to be familiar to educators and teachers. Educational psychologists integrated new concepts and methods from other fields of psychology into their research as a way to more fully address issues of practice. Thus, when psychometric approaches relying on quantitative measures became dominant in the area of intelligence research, many investigators in the field of educational psychology began to conceptualize and measure variables using psychometric approaches. Statistical tools were adopted to measure talent (giftedness), as well as cognitive factors based on traditional intelligence tests. As a consequence, research efforts focused on interindividual differences. This line of research however, did not address intraindividual development, nor information about the relations between the variables under consideration (Krapp, 1999; Medved, Midi, & Ainley, 2002; Murphy & Alexander, 2000). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

This article discusses kinds of transformational giftedness, or giftedness that makes a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference to the world. We extend previous work by suggesting that there are two kinds of transformation that matter: self-transformation and other transformation. Combining these two kinds of transformation yields a 2 × 2 grid of four kinds of giftedness: non-transformational giftedness (no transformation), transformational giftedness (self and other-transformation combined), self-realized giftedness (whereby one transforms oneself but not others), and other-realized giftedness (whereby one transforms others but not oneself). We open with a discussion of some of the history of conceptions of giftedness. Then we discuss transformational giftedness as it has been defined in the recent past. We then introduce our concepts of self- and other-transformation. We also describe two other kinds of giftedness—inert giftedness, which is giftedness in personal attributes that has not been realized in interactions with others and the world; and transactional giftedness, which is a give-and-take form of giftedness whereby one meets certain societal expectations in exchange for being identified as gifted. We finally conclude that the gifted movement needs to focus much more on developing transformational giftedness, or at least the potential for it, in our young people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

In this chapter, the authors present a comprehensive conception of talent development that draws from research in the psychological sciences and is applicable across diverse domains, from academics and athletics to the visual and performing arts. The model is distinguished by the following components: (a) recognizing the varied beginnings of domain trajectories from the earliest manifestations of talent to expertise and beyond; (b) promoting the role of opportunities not only inside, but outside, and beyond school; and (c) the increasing importance of malleable social and mental skills as well as insider knowledge as individuals progress to higher stages of performance and creative productivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

This chapter examines the evolution of the concept of talents and gifts in Russia and its current “incarnation” in federal and regional versions. This discussion will cover a range of definitions and a range of programs that have been put into practice, but never formally evaluated, throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Special attention will be given to the description and evaluation of the two currently dominant federal year-around residency programs for gifted and talented children, Artek and Sirius. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

This chapter develops the perspective of giftedness in France implemented at the National Center for Assistance to children and adolescents with High Potential (CNAHP). First, we present the debate about the terminology used to describe gifted children in France which varies according to the underlying theoretical conceptions and representations (e.g., gift, precocity, talent, or potential). The term high potential has been preferentially chosen given that it reflects both the cognitive capacities of children and adolescents (high intellectual and/or creative potential), and the fact that this potential can be expressed or inhibited by their difficulties (emotional, behavioral, and/or school problems).Then, the multidimensional and integrative approach to identify high intellectual and/or creative potential at the CNAHP is examined. We propose a model that highlights the central role of the environment in the development of intellectual/creative potential in children, notably their family, school, and societal environment. Four main environmental factors contribute to the development and expression of children’s high potential: fostering and sustaining motivation, providing opportunities of enrichment, valuing effort, and offering support for the child. After identification of the child’s profile (based on cognitive, conative, and psycho-affective assessments) in order to understand better the child’s needs and possible difficulties, the objective of the CNAHP, presented in the last part, is to provide appropriate care, enhance children’s well-being, and enable them to express and develop their potential. Simultaneous interventions are conducted in the family, school, and societal environments in collaboration with parents, teachers, and caregivers, taking into account the motivation, enrichment, effort, and support factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)