Understanding Giftedness

A guide for parents and educators

Maria Assunta Zanetti, Gianluca Gualdi, Michael Cascianelli, Maria Assunta Zanetti, Gianluca Gualdi, Michael Cascianelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429840821
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

This concise, accessible guide explores the different models behind the concept of giftedness, examining the criteria for evaluating and identifying gifted children, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the lives of children and young people with high cognitive potential. It offers practical advice to parents and teachers, highlighting common queries and misconceptions and presenting evidence-based suggestions for management methods.

Key topics covered include the difference between being gifted and talented, how to identify a gifted child, neurological differences between gifted children and their peers, dealing with perfectionism, and the best ways to parent and teach a gifted child. Avoiding prescriptive rules, the authors emphasise the importance of knowing and understanding the individual child whilst utilising research around giftedness to promote the best possible outcomes. Illustrated with case studies of student and teacher perspectives, the book offers an inclusive perspective and practical strategies, whereby the development of individual potential is viewed not only as a way to promote the psychological well-being of the individual but also as an opportunity and benefit for society.

Understanding Giftedness is essential reading for parents and caregivers, as well as practitioners in clinical and educational psychology, counselling, mental health, nursing, child welfare, public healthcare and those in education who want to help young people develop their talents and achieve their full potential.

Part I

Understanding giftedness

Chapter 1

An in-depth look at giftedness

Maria Assunta Zanetti

Definition of giftedness and talent

Ask 100 people what is meant by giftedness and you will likely get 100 different definitions, even if some common elements emerge from most of the descriptions. These might include describing a person’s aptitude in a specific subject area or a talent in the visual or performing arts or in sports. Also mentioned might be creativity, inventiveness, or just plain “intelligent in everything”. That becomes a major problem when deciding who is gifted.

Most of the literature investigated refers to gifted learners as pupils who display higher abilities, more creativity, and more motivation to learn than other pupils in similar age groups. Giftedness is usually understood in relation to intelligence (see European Commission, 2006). However, giftedness is not an easy term to define and it also varies a great deal depending on the context in which it is being used. Drawing on George (1992 in White, Fletcher-Campbell, & Ridley, 2003), for example, there are over 200 definitions of “giftedness”.

The adopted term, by its origin, gives clues to understanding the concept of ability which puts great emphasis on genetic hereditability and therefore some characteristics defined as talent, i.e., “any capacity that enables an individual to display exceptionally high performance in a domain that requires special skills and training” (Simonton, 1999). Talent was the name given and whoever possessed talents was talented, suggesting something that can be acquired. Ability indicates “power to learn and act”; that is, to capture elements within the everyday living environment, and to abstract, organize, and incorporate this material into the internal perceptual field and to express it in proper ways of behaving.

Natural ability has its origins in genetic hereditability, which is configured by the combination of chromosomes in strings of genes, into a unique, individual, probably unrepeatable organization of its own. The old debate around “heredity versus environment” gives space to the authority of scientific knowledge (Plomin, 1998). The term “innate”, as well as the term “natural”, means “present at birth” without being necessarily hereditary. Strictly speaking, the term “innate” is a metaphorical reference, which means “being like this since birth” (Gagné & Guenther, 2010).

Another kind of ability influencing human life is acquired ability, reached through learned behavior (Angoff, 1988), which is developed by the influence of intentional environmental forces. The amount of possible acquired ability for any individual is conditioned by the level of natural ability predicted as potential in genetic hereditability.

In research literature and psychology textbooks there is a wide range of different terms used to describe young people displaying all forms of giftedness. These terms may cover very different concepts depending on their origin, their historical context, and what is meant by intelligence and denoted talent. Furthermore, the terminology adopted appears to be related to the educational policies developed for the benefit of these young people (Eurydice Report, 2006, p. 7).

This statement demonstrates the importance of defining what giftedness is in order to understand how different countries respond to such a phenomenon in terms of policy and practice. However, the definition of “gifted and talented” learners is most commonly used in conceptualizing the term “gifted”, which usually indicates pupils with high academic achievements and in conceptualizing the term “talented”, which instead refers to pupils with high performance in sports and arts (White, Fletcher-Campbell, & Ridley, 2003).

The question concerning the meaning of giftedness shows the importance of understanding giftedness as a fluid concept which should not only be considered in terms of “genetic or innate abilities”, but as a multi-faceted notion (Borland, 2005; Smith, 2006; Sternberg & Davidson, 2005). Giftedness manifests itself in different forms which require a variety of contexts and learning opportunities capable of grasping the totality of pupils’ abilities. So, for example, Sternberg and Davidson (2005) discuss the fact that giftedness is something created by society rather than something we discover, and therefore its conceptualization can change over time and place. For this reason, it is very important to understand how the notion of giftedness is conceptualized in different countries and how such a conceptualization may impact upon policies and practice.

The descriptions of giftedness furthermore vary from one culture to another. Gifted abilities are also more likely to emerge when the individual’s talents coincide with what is valued by the culture. Chess prodigies, for example, appear in cultures where such talent is valued and nurtured. Giftedness is what society perceives to be higher or lower on some culturally embedded scale.

Even researchers in gifted education have a difficult time agreeing on what giftedness means, but they agree on one thing: giftedness derives from a well above average level of intelligence in one or more observable behaviors. So, before we can understand what makes a person gifted, we have to take a closer look at what modern research has discovered about intelligence.

For many years in gifted education, the terms “gifted” and “talented” were often used interchangeably and attempts to differentiate them were only moderately successful. Indeed, some researchers saw no real difference between the two. In the 1980s, Gagné (1985) proposed a comprehensive model that made a distinction between the components of giftedness and the nature of talent.

Gagné (2003) differentiates between giftedness and talent, proposing that giftedness represents innate abilities in multiple domains, while talent is a skill in a single domain that has been systematically developed. The innate abilities fall into four aptitude domains: intellectual, creative, socioaffective, and sensorimotor. These aptitudes have a genetic basis and can be readily observed in the tasks that children perform in school. A Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) described the process of talent development as the transformation of above-average natural abilities, spontaneously possessed by an individual (called gift), into systematically developed expert performance. Such transformation is possible thanks to the operation of some catalysts connected to: interpersonal aspects (e.g., motivation, interests, habits), environmental variables (e.g., socio-demographic factors or the influence of parents, teachers, or peers), specific structures and programs of talent development, or genetic predisposition (Gagné, 1985).

Gagné described the model in its original version of 1985, but it has been updated several times (Gagné, 2004, 2009) until its last version in 2013. In 2009, Gagné also updated his definition of the talent development process to:

the systematic pursuit by talentees, over a significant and continuous period of time, of a structured program of activities leading to a specific excellence goal [where talentee indicates] anyone participating in a systematic talent development program, whatever the field.

(Gagné, 2009)

Talents in this model emerge from a developmental process that transforms aptitudes into the skills that are characteristic of a particular field of human activity or performance. The model indicates that abilities and aptitudes are the raw constituents of talent.

In other words, talent implies the presence of well above-average natural abilities. One cannot be talented without having gifts. However, according to Gagné (2003), the opposite is also true. Some students with well above-average natural abilities do not translate these gifts into talents, as evidenced by academic underachievement in intellectually gifted students.

In summary, the terms “giftedness” and “talent” are identified as:

Giftedness indicates a “competence which is distinctly above average in one or more domains of ability” (Gagné, 1985), a definition that was recently updated to: “the possession and use of untrained and spontaneously expressed outstanding natural abilities or aptitudes (called gifts), in at least one ability domain, to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers” (Gagné, 2013).

Talent, on the other hand, defines a “performance which is distinctly above average in one or more fields of human performance” (Gagné, 1985), a definition recently updated to: “the outstanding mastery of systematically developed competencies (knowledge and skills) in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of ‘learning peers’” (Gagné, 2013).

In the 2013 updated version of DMGT Gagné added two important changes (Gagné, 2013):

The first concerned the biological underpinnings of DMGT, or the genotypic foundations of gifts, which influence both the physiological endo-phenotype – a set of non-externally visible but measurable physical characteristics, like aerobic capacity – and the anatomical exo-phenotype – the external and visible set of characteristics which influence abilities and behaviors (e.g., resistance or agility). Gagné underlined that there is no direct connection between the biological underpinnings of giftedness and the expression of giftedness itself, but rather it is mediated by the action of catalysts. Introducing the biological underpinnings of giftedness, Gagné described the Developmental Model of Natural Abilities (known as DMNA), which explains how giftedness results from the process of transformation of biological underpinnings. Subsequently Gagné introduced the Expanded Model of Talent Development – EMTD, which integrates the DMGT with DMNA, to obtain a complex model of talent development. It begins with the emergence of giftedness from its biological underpinnings and finishes with the expression and development of a specific talent, through the action of a set of catalysts. DMNA and DMGT are not clearly divided and do not occur in the same way for everybody because a lot depends on the action of catalysts and the specific area of talent (e.g., time of maturation in sport can be very different than in science, literature, or medicine). Thus, Gagné concludes that:

Talent development results from a complex series of interactions between the four groups of causal components; it becomes a choreography unique to each individual.

(Gagné, 2013)

Therefore, it is wrong and misleading to consider the concepts of giftedness and talent as synonyms. They must be clearly differentiated between gifts (natural abilities) and talents (systematically developed from gifts).

These definitions allow us to conceive talent development as the progressive transformation of outstanding natural abilities (gifts) into outstanding knowledge and skills (talents) in a specific occupational field. Outstanding natural abilities (gifts) from one or more domains may be viewed as raw materials in the talent development process. The talent development process can be supported or hindered by intrapersonal and/or environmental catalysts. These are factors, in addition to cognitive and intellectual ability, that help us better understand and even predict the unfolding and development of talent at the highest levels of expertise and even eminence.

It is important then to not only recognize the presence of high ability or talent but also to observe its development.

The existence of talent is, in itself, something of a mystery: originated in the intimacy of the genes’ combination happening a few hours after the conception of a new being, a talent lies there as a seed that needs appropriate conditions to develop and grow. At that stage it would be generically called a “gift”, a “natural ability”, or an “innate predisposition”. Later on, when it is confirmed in the environment, with an acknowledged high-level behavior, we essentially recognize it as “acquired”, or absorbed from the surrounding environment.

Ability and talent exist and this is an undisputed fact. They should not be thought of as a personal trait, or a block of features, but as a natural phenomenon captured in different dimensions and manifestations, by a wide diversity of expressions. Talent as such is found in all social groups, all races and people, in all geographies and throughout all history. A considerable body of research aligns studies indicating a strong association between human ability and genetic configuration, reaching as high as 70%, without considering the set of elements, influences, and active environmental interaction networks acting in different life stages.

Giftedness manifests itself as a cluster of traits, not as a typical pattern of behavior and development. High-ability young children vary in the range of talents they exhibit and in their emotional, socia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the editors
• Preface
• PART I: Understanding giftedness
• PART II: Supporting gifted students in school
• Index