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Conceptions of giftedness that focus on domain-specific considerations hold the most promise for promoting talent development in individuals at all stages of development because of the capacity to make appropriate correspondences between aptitudes and interventions, between predispositions and interests, and between the life of the mind and creating a life in the real world. Although general intelligence thresholds matter in real-world and school-based problem-solving situations, the level of g necessary to function at very high levels in specific domains remains debatable (Tannenbaum, 1996) and may depend greatly on a particular discipline or field (Jensen, 1998). This chapter explores the theories and applications of domain-specific giftedness as they have been articulated to date and analyzes how they differ from other conceptions of giftedness. The chapter concludes with applications of a domain-specific conception of giftedness to practice in the areas of identification, curriculum and instruction, and assessment in school and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

This chapter looks at a psychometric approach to the definition of academic giftedness. A historical overview of the scientific study of giftedness is given, and assessment of ability and achievement in terms of readiness is discussed. The author also explains the predictive usefulness of psychometric information, and why a psychometric definition of giftedness can be imperfect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

The WICS model is a possible common basis for identifying gifted individuals (Sternberg, 2003c). WICS is an acronym standing for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, Synthesized. According to this model, wisdom, intelligence, and creativity are sine qua nons for the gifted leaders of the future. Without a synthesis of these three attributes, someone can be a decent contributor to society, and perhaps even a good one, but never a great one. In the remainder of this chapter, each of these attributes is discussed, although for didactic purposes, they are not discussed in the order in which they are stated in the acronym. The discussion starts with intelligence, which is a basis for creativity and wisdom and so should be discussed first. Then, creativity is discussed, which is essential in wisdom, as well. Finally, wisdom is discussed, which builds on but goes beyond intelligence and creativity. Then, methods are described for measuring the attributes. Finally, some general conclusions are drawn. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

This chapter outlines a view of creativity that pinpoints a mechanism that underlies all creative work, including that of children and adults, and that allows objective study and assessment. It is grounded in existing theories of lifespan development, and it translates easily to practice. Examples of such practices are discussed throughout this chapter. This chapter also compares this theory of creative giftedness with other existing theories. We will see that there are both points of agreement and points of disagreement. First, the mechanism underlying original and creative activity is described. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

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)

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)

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)

Giftedness, talent, expertise, and creative achievement are inextricably linked concepts. As we seek to understand the development of abilities in youth and the rise to high-level achievement in adulthood, these concepts may guide our efforts to nurture and establish conditions for their full fruition. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to examine the basic nature of giftedness, talent, expertise, and creative achievement and their interrelationships as they affect and guide the education of gifted and talented youth and to delineate guidelines for the development of high-level and creative achievement in adulthood. What genetic potentials and facilitative conditions combine and interact to produce expertise and/or high-level creative achievement? From exhaustive study of the lives of creative achievers, Gardner (1993) and Simonton (1997) offer some insights based on in-depth analysis of the lives of high-level, creative achievers. At first one is struck by the diversity among very high achievers: staid Albert Einstein, flamboyant Picasso, isolated Georgia O'Keefe, scholarly Darwin, and adventurous Ernest Hemingway! Are there common characteristics that might account for their genius or serve as predictors of creative achievement? Or are they too unique as examples of high-level achievement? Insights derived from research on the lives of great achievers are examined later in this chapter. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

In this chapter, the authors focus on making giftedness productive. Though fundamentally psychological and educational, their approach is derivative of the "new economics" that broadly applies well-established economic principles to explain human behavior outside its traditional monetary purview, including learning, human and social capital, marriage, divorce, crime, addictions, suicide, and other phenomena (Becker, 1976). This economic approach employs only a few central ideas to parsimoniously explain and predict a wide variety of human behavior. The chapter looks at conceptions, and psychological explanations of productive giftedness. Toward that end, this chapter explains the findings of our research program and sets forth what makes for exceptional performance in school and in nonacademic pursuits. It summarizes our studies of the childhood traits and environments of eminent men of Western history and of 20th-century American women, as well as the family and school environments of 20th-century gifted adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

At the outset of the chapter, it is pointed out that the concepts of gifts and talents have their origins in mythology, theology, and metaphysics. The main reason for their adoption into science was the compulsion to find explanatory concepts for the phenomenon that some persons attain a level of efficiency in a specific domain that normally cannot be achieved, even with extreme learning efforts and the best of support. To explain this phenomenon, the Actiotope Model of Giftedness places the focus on the actions of an individual and their evolution. The development of excellence is understood as an adaptation of a dynamic system, which intensifies in complexity through interactions with the objective structure of a domain, whereby with increasing excellence, the individual will also increasingly effect changes in the objective structure of the domain itself. This chapter also considers the coadaptation and coevolution of the components of the Actiotope, such as the action repertoire and its determinants, goals, subjective action space, and environment, as well as the interaction of these components within a network. Gifts and talents, which are traditionally understood as attributes of an individual, therefore, have several mothers and fathers. It is now time to recognize them by their true names. It is also time to give their talented children the chance to attain excellence by providing them with an individually tailored promotion of their entire Actiotope. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

In this chapter, advanced development and giftedness within the context of the school are discussed. The authors contention is that advanced development is the fundamental concept for understanding giftedness, and they attempt to explain our position by offering a definition, describing the roots of the definition--explaining the changes in our thinking--that have led to a deeper understanding of giftedness and schooling, and proposing a modified definition. The authors also discuss some implications of the ideas they have proposed. (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)

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)

Too often, regular classroom teachers are unaware of the existence of a unique population: children who are gifted and have a learning disability. Giftedness can be defined as potential or demonstrated ability to achieve excellence in any area of human endeavor (Whitmore, 1981). A learning disability is generally defined as a severe discrepancy of at least one standard deviation between full-scale intelligence and performance in one or more areas. Thus, the "twice-exceptional" gifted/LD student fits both definitions due to high potential or ability concurrent with the experience of learning problems. While gifted/LD students have characteristics of both gifted and learning-disabled students, they also have their own unique characteristics. Therefore, they must be treated as a separate population. Although the research has acknowledged this population (Whitmore, 1981) and developed procedures for identification (Barton & Starnes, 1988), this information has not been transported into many classrooms. Children who are both gifted and learning disabled are often overlooked and underserved. The majority of school districts have no procedures in place for meeting the education needs of this group; but, at the same time, they have indicated an interest in improving in this area (Boodoo, Bradley, Frontera, Pitts & Wright, 1987). The key to meeting the educational needs of the gifted/LD population is thorough dissemination of information and strategies to regular classroom teachers through the use of staff development provided by the gifted coordinator. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Schools face difficult decisions about the appropriate placement of students in mathematics classes. Although one of the educational goals for the United States was to be "first in the world in mathematics and science achievement by the year 2000", the evidence from a variety of sources demonstrates that this goal has not been realized. Neither the practice of tracking nor that of heterogeneously grouping mathematics students has led to quantifiably higher standardized testing outcomes over the last decade. This chapter examines differentiating mathematics for gifted students in heterogeneously grouped mathematics classrooms. In particular, it poses and answers the question, "What is a teacher to do?" (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Asperger's Syndrome (AS) is a pervasive developmental disorder on the autism spectrum characterized by social deficits, relatively normal language and cognitive development, and the presence of idiosyncratic interests. Repetitive speech or actions and pedantic speech, often concerning the person's intense interests in a restricted subject matter, and clumsiness may co-occur (Klin, Volkmar, & Sparrow, 2000; Myles & Simpson, 1998). AS may occur in gifted individuals. This chapter examines the characteristics of gifted children with Asperger's Syndrome and appropriate strategies for serving them. The two conditions tend to mask one another, making identification of either more difficult, particularly because most professionals are trained in either giftedness or autism spectrum disorders, but rarely in both. In this chapter, I will review the history of Asperger's Syndrome, describe the characteristics of people with AS and discuss their identification, and then describe some common characteristics and suggested educational modifications recommended for members of this subgroup. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

As late as the 1990s, the term "gifted learning disabled" was a relatively new idea in special education (Fall & Nolan, 1993). Consequently, gifted students with learning disabilities have presented a challenge to both regular and special-education teachers because many educators are unaware that such a population exists. If educators are to meet the special needs of these students, we must be able to identify them and provide appropriate intervention. Silverman (1989) pointed out that the coincidence of dual exceptionalities occurs more frequently than we realize. One problem is the assumption that gifted students demonstrate overall high achievement levels. This is based to a great extent on the early longitudinal studies of giftedness initiated by Lewis Terman at Standford University. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily true. For example, Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 3 years old, and he was never a good student in school. He had problems with spelling and writing well into adulthood, although he had exceptional abilities in nonverbal areas (Fox, Brody, & Tobin, 1983) Identified gifted students who have unidentified learning disabilities may exhibit a discrepancy between their perceived potential and actual performance. These students are often told that they are not trying hard enough or that they are lazy (Williams, 1988). Others use their unidentified giftedness to compensate for their learning disabilities and succeed in functioning at or slightly below grade level (Baum, 1989; Landrum, 1989; Silverman, 1989; Suter & Wolf, 1987; Well, 1987), obscuring both their giftedness and their learning disabilities. In this case, gifted students with learning disabilities are left out of the identification process because teachers do not recognize the need to have them screened for either exceptionality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The era of No Child Left Behind legislation is an excellent time to examine the field of gifted education. Bines (1991) lamented that, after more that 70 years of research, there is not even consensus on an operational definition of giftedness or the most reliable method for identifying gifted students. Evidence does support the following statement: There are some youngsters who are born with the capability to learn faster than others those ideas or concepts that societies value in children and in adults (Baldwin, 1994). According to Dalzell (1998), giftedness may be defined simply as intellectual precocity. Incumbent upon educators remains the challenge to resolve these lingering obstacles in order to best serve the students who are identified as gifted and therefore entitled to gifted education services. Topics discussed in this chapter include the nature of giftedness, the evolution of giftedness in the U.S., identifying giftedness, and designing classrooms for exceptional students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: create)

Nine-year-old Stephen reads orchestral scores as he hums the music aloud in perfect tune. Reading musical scores is one of Stephens favorite activities, vying only with reading college-level computer programming manuals. At an age when most children are concentrating on fourth-grade arithmetic, Stephen has already earned a prize in music theory that is coveted by adults (Winner, 1998). Brian was prescribed Ritalin when he was young to assist in controlling his hyperactive behavior. He also received resource room support in grades 3 and 4. Currently, his sixth-grade teacher reports that distractibility and basic reading skills still pose problems for him, yet his WISC-R scores include a Verbal IQ of 118 and a Performance of 128 (Crawford & Snart, 1994). Brad does not have the motor control to paint, draw, or do geometric constructions, yet he did well in both art and geometry. He cannot speak, yet he attained As in both speech and French (Willard-Holt, 1998). Question: Which of these children are girted? Answer: All of them. These children are examples of individuals who are asynchronous or uneven in some aspect of their development. They defy the notion of what Winner (1998) termed "global giftedness," a phrase that denotes ability or talent in all academic areas. In today's educational system, the myth of global giftedness is quite prevalent. While some students are talented in all academic areas, many more are not. Unevenness tends to be the rule rather than the exception. Thus, many children, due to a deficit in some aspect of development, are excluded from gifted programming--something many of them desperately need. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

It is easy to assume that gifted students will be successful at school, because--by definition--they learn and understand things more quickly and more easily than their age-mates do. But, school accomplishment is no guarantee; motivation plays a critical role in success. Because motivation is so complex, there are various routes to enhance or stifle it, and teachers, parents, and peers travel many of those routes. In this chapter we focus on understanding gifted students' motivation, and address what others can do to promote these students' adaptive motivation, with an emphasis on the middle- and high-school grades. We take the approach that gifted adolescents are characterized by high ability in one or more areas of human endeavor, but vary dramatically in their motivational profiles, showing patterns of motivation that range from optimal to maladaptive. This perspective allows us to consider underachieving gifted students who exhibit maladaptive motivational patterns. It is also consistent with dynamic and incremental approaches to viewing giftedness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)