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This article presents a new, systems theory of creative giftedness. The system has three major parts: the person, the ecological context in which the person operates, and the creative contributions that the person makes. Creative giftedness thus is seen as an interaction between the person, the ecological context, and the tasks that the individual undertakes within that context. Suggestions are given as to how to develop creative giftedness within this theoretical approach.

In this article, I discuss two kinds of giftedness, transactional and transformational. Transformational giftedness is giftedness that is transformative. Transformationally gifted individuals seek positively to change the world at some level—in their own way, to make the world a better place. Transactional giftedness is giftedness that is based on exchange. It is tit-for-tat in nature. The individual is identified as gifted and then expects and is expected to do something in return. That something, for children, is typically high-level performance in academic coursework. Society also may expect that the individual later in life will continue to show high educational achievement. The two kinds of giftedness are not inborn. Rather, they are shaped through life in school and in the home interacting with the personal attitudes toward life of the gifted individual. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The focus of the field of giftedness is on the wrong thing. Instead of focusing on identifying who is gifted, the field should identify how people will deploy their gifts and educate students to deploy their gifts in ways that will make the world a better place. In this article, I present at least a partial taxonomy of how gifts can be deployed and discuss how the taxonomy can be used to shift the emphasis in the field. In particular, I discuss nine types of giftedness: Type 1—unidentified; Type 2—inert (largely undeployed) giftedness; Type 3—fully transactional giftedness (where one gives something back in return for getting something); Type 4—self-transformational giftedness (where one transforms oneself but not others); Type 5—other-transformational giftedness (where one transforms others but not oneself); Type 6—full transformational giftedness (where one transforms both oneself and others); Type 7—self-destructive giftedness (where one’s gifts are deployed self-destructively); Type 8—other-destructive giftedness (where one’s gifts are deployed toward destroying others); and Type 9—full pseudo-transformational giftedness (where one’s gifts are destructive of oneself and others). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Two implicit metaphors can be seen as having dominated the study of the gifted—the savings bank and the investment bank. In the savings-bank metaphor, people have differential levels of IQ or general intelligence, which is viewed as determining whether they are gifted. Their cognitive ability is their metaphorical “money in the bank.” In the investment-bank metaphor, people are seen as having differential investments in varied kinds of abilities and talents. Their pattern of abilities is their metaphorical portfolio of investments. A better implicit metaphor might be the foundation, however, whose effectiveness is judged by the worthiness of the transformational causes to which it contributes and the effectiveness of the use of the foundation’s assets toward these causes. A person is gifted by virtue not merely of the assets they have but of how they transformationally deploy those assets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article reviews the implications of many of the major schools in the history of psychology for understanding giftedness and its inner workings: operationist, psychometric, psychoanalytic, associationist, behaviorist, Gestalt, cognitive, humanistic/positive psychology, functionalist/pragmatic/constructivist, cultural, and biological. Each paradigm has elucidated different aspects of human nature and functioning, and each has somewhat different implications for how we can understand giftedness. No one paradigm can provide complete understanding of giftedness. Rather, the paradigms should be viewed as different windows toward understanding giftedness, all of which together tell us much more than any individual one. It is regrettable that so many theorists and practitioners have locked themselves into an operationist paradigm, which simply accepts current measurement operations as sufficient for identifying and developing giftedness. The operationist paradigm is wholly insufficient to meet the challenges of the world of the 21st century. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The late Marcia Gentry sought equity in the identification and instruction of the gifted. This was a noble and proper goal: Inequity has been a problem in the field of giftedness since the very beginning. A related challenge that feeds into the inequity problem is that educators often look for the wrong thing. What matters is not merely how gifted a person is, or how many gifts they possess, but rather what they do with those gifts. Many of the problems in today’s world derive from people who are gifted and then use their gifts for selfish and even narcissistic ends. A model is needed that takes into account one’s deployment of gifts, not just one’s possession of them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The field of giftedness—including educators, theorists, and researchers--needs to show more cognizance of a phenomenon that is rearing its ugly head in more and more visible ways, namely, dark giftedness. Dark giftedness is giftedness used for bad and even toxic ends. Being gifted provides little, if any protection against the dark deployment of the abilities, talents, and skills that lead one to be viewed as gifted. The field of giftedness needs to take responsibility for identifying dark giftedness and mitigating its effects, to the extent possible. It needs also to teach gifted young people to use their gifts for positive rather than negative ends. The field of giftedness cannot assume that this will happen automatically, or that by ignoring the world-pervasive problem of dark giftedness, the problem will somehow not, nevertheless, be part of its responsibility to understand and assuage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article discusses a problem in the field of giftedness—the meaning and deployment of giftedness in authoritarian systems, or in declining, failing, or pseudo-democracies. This problem exists for much of the world’s population yet seems to be relatively little discussed. The article opens with a consideration of what the problem is. It then discusses how widespread it is—it applies to most of the world’s population. Indeed, much of what is discussed in teaching of the gifted, with regard to both content and pedagogy, truly can be applied fully only to those who live in relatively free countries, as wide-ranging creative and critical thinking may be suppressed in nondemocratic societies. The article then discusses the roles individuals can play in declining or non-free societies, and the defense mechanisms they use to justify certain roles. The article further discusses ways of teaching in various societies, and the risks these ways of teaching pose. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The kind of transactional, or tit-for-tat giftedness that so many programs identify and develop will not help to create a better world. Yet, if anyone is in a position to create a better world, it is our gifted young people. In this article, roles are presented that can be used to create change in the world. Some of these roles, when applied toward good causes, can be positive—advocate, activist, and champion. Others tend to be negative—fool, fanatic, and spoiler. We should teach in a way that encourages gifted students to become champions of positive causes—to take leadership roles in effecting positive change. This article discusses how those in the gifted field might think about this task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Giftedness is typically thought of as an individual characteristic. But the development and labeling of an individual as “gifted” is always a collective process and takes place embedded within local, sociocultural, and temporal contexts. The view of giftedness as individual is deceptive and results in faulty practice, such as the bestowal of huge advantages in development and labeling upon children whose parents have more substantial financial and other resources. This article applies a pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness to the analysis of individual, collective, and contextual factors in development and labeling and concludes that giftedness should never be viewed merely as an individual characteristic. Doing so not only distorts reality but creates procedures that tend to pass identification and development of “giftedness” inequitably through successive generations of families by virtue of the families’ resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Courage may be the most important gift of all. It is not something we are born with. It is not something that, for the most part, we learn in school. Rather, it is a choice that anyone can make—if they are willing to pay the price. This article discusses the gift of courage. It discusses what courage is, why it is important, and why it crucially needs to be incorporated into contemporary discourse about giftedness. It is courage, perhaps more than any other form of giftedness, that will determine what this world becomes—or does not become. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Gifted children are an extremely precious resource. But what does it mean to be gifted? Ellen Winner has devoted much of her career to addressing this question. In this essay, I argue that our society misdefines giftedness, placing undue emphasis on analytical skills. Moreover, the problem is getting worse. Amplifying factors in society are narrowing rather than broadening our definition of giftedness. I discuss what is happening, why, and what we can do about it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article introduces the construct of personal talent curation. Personal talent curation is one’s assessment of one’s talents—of one’s strengths and weaknesses—but also the building of an adaptive match in life between those talents and both one’s career pursuits and one’s personal lifestyle. Sometimes, this match means pursuing a lifelong passion, but other times, it means giving up that passion or transforming it into a passion that works in the broader context of the life one seeks for oneself. For example, one may be an exceptionally talented musician, scientist, or artist, but the concomitants of a life building relentlessly on those talents—competition, professional jealousy, and continual critiques—just do not fit the kind of life one wishes to lead. In such cases, it may turn out that what in a profession or in society is viewed as a “failure” or a “derailment” may represent a personal adaptive success. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Comments on an article by Scott J. Peters (see record 2022-20183-002). Peters has made excellent suggestions for how to increase diversity and equitable representation in identification of gifted children. His approach, however, is based on current models of what constitutes “giftedness.” This approach is incomplete and, taken on its own, perhaps suboptimal. I would suggest a complementary approach. We need to start taking seriously the need to identify and nurture the fully transformationally gifted. Nurturing them means presenting gifted children not just with academic problems that have little relevance to the life problems they will need to solve later, but also presenting them with problems that are ecologically valid, such as problems of how to deal with the challenges the world is facing today. It’s nice to excel transactionally; it’s better to excel by making a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world—to make the world a better place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The late James Flynn, to whom this Special Issue is dedicated, suggested that what will matter most to the future of the world is not levels of intelligence but rather how intelligence is deployed. In this article, I argue that we can distinguish between transactional and transformational deployments of intelligence. Loosely following Flynn, I suggest that we need to pay much more attention to the latter rather than the former. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

In this chapter, I present a theory of giftedness that emphasizes that giftedness should be defined not just in terms of general-intellectual skills, as it has been in the past, but in terms of adaptive-intellectual skills—a person’s ability to make a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. People who are adaptively intelligent not only are “smart” in a traditional sense, but they also have the skills to become active engaged citizens and ethical leaders. I discuss the theory, the research, and the implications of the work for gifted identification and instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

This chapter reviews the previous chapters in the book and identifies points of agreement and disagreement among authors. The greatest point of agreement is that those wishing to identify and develop giftedness in young people need to go beyond IQ in their conception of what it means to be gifted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: book)

The essays in this special issue of Gifted Education International focus on issues in the terminology of the gifted field, especially the terms “gifted” and “giftedness” themselves. We summarize the contributors' arguments and propose ten common themes that emerge from the essays: 1. Be clear about what terms actually mean. 2. Promote giftedness as being about maximizing opportunity, not elitism. 3. Achieve equity so that all have equal opportunities. 4. If you identify individuals as “gifted,” use multiple and diverse measures. 5. Move beyond IQ and other narrow constructs. 6. Giftedness is dynamic, not just a permanent state. Who is gifted and how they are gifted can change over time and sociocultural and other contexts. 7. Motivation to achieve and to make a difference is more important than static abilities. 8. What matters is what you achieve, not just what you could achieve. 9. Focus on achieving a collective or common good. 10. Focus on instruction to help maximize on potential, not on identification. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Gifts can be individually, dyadically, or collectively chosen and oriented. Society, in its identification of the gifted, has chosen to focus on individual and sometimes dyadic goods. This practice represents a culture of individualism, but it has become solipsistic. We argue that identification instead should focus on those most likely to help to achieve a collective common good—who will bestow on others, gifts that are broadly beneficial especially to those most in need of help. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)