Developing Talent Across the Lifespan

Peter Heymans, Cornelis F.M. Van Leishout, PETER HEYMANS, CORNELIS F M VAN LIESHOUT

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134838530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This volume presents fascinating new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the life-span development of talent. It shows how talents are the result of the acquisition of a sequence of skills and how the acquisition of these skills is facilitated by changes in the individual's environment. It explores to what degree the development of high intelligence or achievement is similar to the development of specific domains such as personality, morality, painting, musical performance, or professional skills. It questions whether the development of talent observed for specific groups is similar to individual cases and how the different numbers of highly talented women and men in several domains are to be explained.

Part One
Conceptual Perspectives on the Development of Talent

Chapter One

Developmental Theory and the Expression of Gifts and Talents

David Henry Feldman

Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University, USA

To his ‘dying day’ … Terman believed that every individual has a genetically determined intelligence which is stable over time. However, by the time he was 77, the empirical data of his genetic studies convinced him that many of his 1500 subjects had never made use of their superior ability.

—(Mönks, 1992, p. 193)

Introduction

The field that focuses on exceptional abilities and their development has undergone significant changes during the past decade, especially changes in the basic assumptions about what its purposes should be and how to best pursue those purposes during the decades to come. At issue is nothing less than the identity, the heart, and the soul of a field that now has almost a century of history behind it (Mönks, 1992; Mönks & Mason, 1993).

As Morelock (1996) has recently discussed, there are at least two competing perspectives that seem to have reached something of an impasse: one of these points of view has been part of the field from the beginning: the other, although it came a bit later, has taken an increasing share of the spotlight over time. It now threatens to reduce the other perspective to insignificance unless an appropriate balance between them is restored.

The first perspective, which Morelock calls the “gifted child” point of view, is concerned with the special qualities of children whose extremely rapid development (especially in the linguistic area) outpaces other areas. Typically, children who score very high on IQ tests such as the Stanford-Binet (140 IQ, at least) are identified as presenting the qualities of the “gifted child”.

The second stream of activity in the field has been more concerned with achievement and the attainment of more advanced levels of mastery within various fields than with IQ. Morelock refers to this line of work in two ways: as “talent development” and as “gifted achievement”. The two terms are intended to capture the emphasis on the accomplishments in real-world domains that children achieve. Morelock’s fear is that the “gifted child” who has traditionally been the primary concern within the field may lose its special place.

Morelock (1996) tries to “put the gifted child back together again” by showing that the focus on internal experience of one group of scholars and educators, as well as the externally oriented achievement orientation of the other group, are both important to the field as it begins its second century. There is value to both perspectives and they should be integrated into a more complete and comprehensive framework rather than seen as competing theories of giftedness or competing world views.

Yet there is a sense in which the preoccupations and concerns of those who wish to preserve the place of the extremely high-IQ, verbally precocious child at the centre of the field have taken their case too far. Even within the traditional field of gifted education, it is not the extreme case that has defined the field in recent years (cf. Feldman, 1979, 1991): it is rather the child who scores two or three deviations above the mean in IQ who has been focus of the field’s research and practice. One could argue that it was the moderately gifted child who drove the more extreme cases of verbal precocity from centre stage as much as the more recent interest in diversity and domain-specific gifts and talents. Giftedness became “democratised” (if that meaning is possible), such that a more modest degree of precocity became the basis on which the field moved into the mainstream of educational practice (Morelock, 1996).

And so it might be said that in the battle between the “gifted child movement” and the “talent development” movement, both groups were really on the same side. The real enemy of both groups was the field itself and its watering down of the meaning of giftedness that had taken place during the last 50 years. Recent activity has aimed at “shifting paradigms” away from such an emphasis (Feldman, 1991; Morelock, 1996, Treffinger, 1991), but not necessarily back to the rarified levels of IQ of Hollingworth’s era.

Both groups wanted to bring back to the centre of attention in the gifted education children who have been neglected by the field. Perhaps they would both have also wished to exclude the more modestly academically talented children who now hold the official title, perhaps not. But it is clear that a more inclusive field would require that different definitions of giftedness and different criteria for what is called giftedness would be necessary for the field to do its work. That means a major shift of some kind, if not quite the “paradigm shift” imagined in the early 1990s by some in the field (Feldman, 1992; Frasier & Passow, 1994; Treffinger, 1991).

At the very minimum, it would be necessary for the field to accept a more differentiated set of definitions of what giftedness is. Similarly, those who want to see the range and variety of gifts and talents expanded to include a much more diverse set of possibilities fear that, unless a new conception of giftedness is embraced, the field will continue to give little more than lip service to serving anyone other than a child with a moderately high IQ (see Ross, 1993).

Also of great importance is the issue of the term “giftedness” itself. In a sense, whichever group captures this term captures the field. If extreme verbal ability or some other variation of IQ is called giftedness, then other possible uses of the term are curtailed. If general academic talent of the IQ sort continues to hold the field’s allegiance for what it means by giftedness, then this constrains other possible meanings of the term. Thus a great deal is at stake when a decision is made about how to use the term “gifted” (Gagné, 1993).

We should not gloss over the fact that the stakes are very high for the field, nor should we fail to recognise that each group’s claim has legitimacy. To place the label “gifted” on children with certain defining qualities means to single out such children for special attention and/or treatment and to exclude others, for better and sometimes for worse.

No mere semantic preference, the definition of the term “gifted” is perhaps the most important theoretical task faced by the field as it enters the next century (Mönks & Mason, 1993). As a member of the group that drafted the national report in the US for the Javits Program (Ross, 1993), I know how difficult, divisive, and contentious an issue it can be to try to define or redefine giftedness. That group, which included some of the field’s most prominent scholars and leaders (e.g. Mary Frasier, Jim Gallagher, Joe Renzulli, Stuart Tonemeh), argued long and hard to reach consensus on its definition. Here is what the Javits group came up with (Ross, 1993, p.3):

Children and youth with outstanding talent perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. These children and youth exhibit high performance capability in intellectual, creative, and/or artistic areas, possess an unusual leadership capacity, or excel in specific academic fields. They require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the schools. Outstanding talents are present in children from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor.

This definition tries to be inclusive and diverse to such a degree that its focus is lost. Yet it reflects the tensions and shifts that have been occurring in the field. After the clean precision of IQ, and even after the 1972 expanded version usually called the “Marland” definition (after the head of the US Office of Education), the 1993 definition must have struck the field as difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to implement in practice.

The Need for a Framework to Guide Research and Practice

Clearly there are good reasons to argue for one or another definition of giftedness. Each definition tends to bring certain children to the centre of the field, while tending to move others out towards the periphery. For most of its history, the field of gifted education has been linked with the measurement of intelligence as IQ, and giftedness has been assumed to be measured through intelligence tests (Mönks & Mason, 1993; Morelock, 1996). This has meant that the only real question to be answered was how high a test score is high enough to be considered gifted?

The “talent development” tradition can also be divided into the more moderate versus the more extreme talent focus. Beginning with the aforementioned Marland Report (1978) in the US, talents beyond the academic, such as artistic and leadership abilities, were included in the official definition of gifted/talented students in the US. But as with IQ, the focus was on high but not extreme capabilities.

It was only in the late 1970s that a US Social Science Research Council Committee on Giftedness and Creativity pushed for studies of extreme creativity, giftedness, and talent (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Feldman, 1982; Feldman, Csikszentmihalvi, & Gardner, 1994; Gardner, 1993, 1995, 1997; Morelock, 1996). Although the motivation behind the Committee’s recommendation was primarily to rejuvenate the research field, implications for policy and practice were soon to follow, as for example in the US definition quoted earlier (Ross, 1993).

Therefore, at the very least, the field has to find ways to incorporate four different categories of giftedness and talent. These may be summarised as in Table 1.1. All four of these forms of exceptional capability have legitimacy and have reason to be included in the field of gifted and talented education. However, ideological, practical, and theoretical commitments of one sort or another prevent the several kinds of giftedness/talent from being integrated into a common endeavour (although see Feldhusen, 1995; Morelock, 1996, for suggestions about how to do this). There is no coherent framework within which to organise and pursue the several distinct but presumably related areas of endeavour presented in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1
Four Categories of Giftedness/Talent

	Gifts	Talents
Moderate	Moderate gifts	Moderate talents*
Extreme	Extreme gifts*	Extreme talents

* Contrasted in Morelock, 1996.

Towards a Framework for the Study of Giftedness and Talent

Is it necessary for the field to be guided by theory? One might argue that the study of giftedness, creativity, talent and the like has proceeded for the better part of a century without being greatly concerned about theory. Why is it necessary now? Or is it?

The position taken here is that it is important for the field to be guided by a theory (or theories) if it is to fulfil its promise (Cohen, 1988). It may have been acceptable for the field to have been atheoretical during its first century, but it has become too large, diverse, and complex to continue to bumble along without a star to follow. In this respect Morelock (1996) and LeoNora Cohen before her (Cohen, 1988; Cohen & Ambrose, 1993) should be praised for their foresight, as should other leaders in the field who have tried to provide integrative frameworks along the way (cf. Gagné, 1993; Mönks, 1992; Renzulli, 1992; Tannenbaum, 1983), as well as to build organisational structures and opportunities for theory to have a continuing role.

All of these efforts (and of course many others) have had value and have made important contributions to the field. Each perspective has something important to offer by way of clarifying issues and framing the discussion. Yet it can be fairly said that none of them is sufficiently comprehensive, powerful, heuristically rich, or integrative to serve as a lodestone towards which our collective efforts can be attracted or a Rosetta stone to which they can be compared in orderly fashion.

The theory that I am proposing to guide and help direct the field is called Non-universal Theory (Feldman, 1980, 1986, 1994, 1995). Non-universal theory is broader and more inclusive than the study of giftedness (however defined); it is a theory of development that was designed to complement existing theories (e.g. Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner) by extending the boundaries of developmental theory beyond the universal changes that have been the focus of developmental psychology; thus, non-universal. Non-universal theory is therefore more than a theory of giftedness or talent; it is a general theory of development that integrates individual variation and normative patterns of development by focusing on domains of knowledge and experience and the qualities and conditions necessary for mastering them.

Non-universal theory proposes that there are many domains of development beyond the universais of traditional developmental psychology. It also proposes that individuals vary in their natural proclivities for these diverse domains. The theory organises its many developmental domains into developmental “regions” that vary in a number of ways, ranging from the traditional universais of developmental psychology to domains that are unique extensions or transformations of existing domains (Feldman, 1994). The regions of the “universal to unique” continuum of non-universal theory are presented in Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1 Kinds of developmental change. (Based on the Universal to Unique Continuum from Feldman, 1994.)

The Universal to Unique Continuum

The central image of the theory is of a continuum of domains ranging from universal to unique (see Fig. 1.1). For example at the universal end of the continuum are found only domains that are achieved by all people in all cultures over all periods of human history. They also require that all individuals (other than those with significant physical impairments or who are subjected to extreme abuse) achieve full mastery of the knowledge of the domain in question (Feldman, 1994). For such universal domains, variations in natural proclivities for achieving mastery are mostly irrelevant, except for profound deficits that interfere with the natural developmental trajectory.

Other regions of the continuum are specified in other ways; for example, in terms of larger or smaller numbers of people who master them; or the extent to which they require formal or informal instruction; or the range of variation in proclivity for achievement. Once an analysis of a domain has been done, it can be provisionally placed within a region. As more data are gathered about the domain, or as the domain evolves, it may he moved from region to region of the universal to unique continuum. Only a small number of non-universal developmental domains have been analysed to date, but the techniques for doing so are fairly well developed and available to other researchers (Feldman, 1994).

Another feature of the universal to unique continuum is that it permits description of domains in terms that lend themselves to systematic comparison. Patterns of similarities and differences may be identified, and prerequisite capabilities for mastery within and across domains can be explored. The taxonomic effort to analyse and then classify the most important domains (judged by explicit criteria) will be a considerable one, but when it is completed it will provide something akin to the periodic table in chemistry, a classification system that will facilitate understanding, analysis, and comparison among the domains that have been constructed, preserved, valued, and transformed in human cultures by human beings (Feldman, 1994; Gardner, 1997). But in contrast with the periodic table, developmental domains continue to evolve over time as they are extended, reorganised, and transformed by those who master them.

The domains of the universal to unique continuum are all assumed to be developmental, and this term has special meaning within the theory. Consistent with many traditional developmental theories, developmental domains are assumed to have a sequence or sequences of stages or stagelike levels as part of their core structure. Identifying such a sequence or sequences is one of the first steps to analysing or mapping a domain. Many domains can be thought of as being composed of levels of expertise ranging from a beginning or novice level to higher levels such as master.

What makes most of the domains in the continuum non-universal is the fact that they are not mastered by all indi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• Part One: Conceptual perspectives on the development of talent
• Part Two: Intellectual giftedness
• Part Three: Specific talents: Personality, morality, emotionality, academic achievement, and art
• Part Four: Supporting the development of talent
• Author Index
• Subject Index