Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology
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- Gifted Education Programs and Procedures
- Identification 496 Gifted Education and the Law 499 Instructional Issues 499
- Conceptions of Giftedness The IQ Tradition
- Emphasis on Performance in Defining Giftedness
- Gifted Education Programs and Procedures 489
- Multiple Intelligence Perspective on Talent and Giftedness
- The Role of Training in Defining Talent and Giftedness
- Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, Giftedness, and Talent
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486 Learning Disabilities Strang, J. D., & Rourke, B. P. (1985a). Adaptive behavior of chil- dren who exhibit specific arithmetic disabilities and associated neuropsychological abilities and deficits. In B. P. Rourke (Ed.), Neuropsychology of learning disabilities: Essentials of subtype analysis (pp. 302–328). New York: Guilford Press. Strang, J. D., & Rourke, B. P. (1985b). Arithmetic disability subtypes: The neuropsychological significance of specific arith- metical impairment in childhood. In B. R. Rourke (Ed.), Neu- ropsychology of learning disabilities: Essentials of subtype analysis (pp. 167–183). New York: Guilford Press. Surber, J. M. (1985). Best practices in a problem-solving approach to psychological report writing. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best Practices in School Psychology. Washington, DC: National Association of School Psychologists. Swanson, H. L. (1988a). Memory subtypes in learning disabled readers. Learning Disability Quarterly, 11, 342–357. Swanson, H. L. (1988b). Toward a metatheory of learning disabili- ties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21, 196–209. Swanson, H. L. (1989). Phonological processes and other routes. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 493–496. Sweeney, J. E., & Rourke, B. P. (1978). Neuropsychological signif- icance of phonetically accurate and phonetically inaccurate spelling errors in younger and older retarded spellers. Brain and Language, 6(2), 212–225. Tal, N. F., & Siegel, L. S. (1996). Pseudoword reading errors of poor, dyslexic and normally achieving readers on multisyllable pseudowords. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17, 215–232. Taylor, H. G., Satz, P., & Friel, J. (1979). Developmental dyslexia in relation to other childhood reading disorders: Significance and clinical utility. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 84–101. Telzrow, C. F., Century, E., Whitaker, B., Redmond, C., & Zimmerman, B. (1983). The Boder test: Neuropsychological and demographic features of dyslexic subtypes. Psychology in the Schools, 20, 427– 432. Toth, G., & Siegel, L. S. (1994). A critical evaluation of the IQ- achievement discrepancy based definition of dyslexia. In K. P. van den Bos, L. S. Siegel, D. J. Bakker, & D. L. Share (Eds.), Current directions in dyslexia research (pp. 45–70). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Tunmer, W. (1989). Mental test differences as Matthew effects in lit- eracy: The rich get richer and to poor get poorer. New Zealand Sociology, 4, 64–84. Vail, P. (1990). Gifts, talents, and the dyslexias: Wellsprings, spring- boards and finding Foley’s rocks. Annals of Dyslexia, 40, 3–17. Valtin, R. (1978–1979). Dyslexia: Deficit in reading or deficit in research? Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 201–221. Van den Bos, K. P. (1984). Letter processing in dyslexic subgroups. Annals of Dyslexia, 34, 193. van der Wissel, A., & Zegers, F. E. (1985). Reading retardation revisited. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3, 3–9. Vellutino, F. R. (1977). Alternative conceptualizations of dyslexia: Evidence in support of a verbal-deficit hypothesis. Harvard
Vellutino, F. R. (1978). Toward an understanding of dyslexia: Psy- chological factors in specific reading disability. In A. L. Benton & D. Pearl (Eds.), Dyslexia: An appraisal of current knowledge (pp. 61–112). New York: Oxford University Press. Vellutino, F. R. (1979). Dyslexia: Theory and research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vellutino, F. R., & Scanlon, D. M. (1996). Experimental evidence for the effects of instructional bias on word identification. Ex-
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CHAPTER 19 Gifted Education Programs and Procedures PAULA OLSZEWSKI-KUBILIUS 487 GIFTED EDUCATION PROGRAMS AND PROCEDURES 487
THE EDUCATION OF GIFTED CHILDREN 496
REFERENCES 508
In this chapter I review research related to the practices within the field of gifted education. Talent-giftedness is a phenomenon that greatly interests our society. However, edu- cators have a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward gifted- ness and gifted children. There is no agreed-upon definition of giftedness to guide practice and programs as there is with other special categories of children and no federal mandate to serve gifted children. As a result, the kinds of services avail- able to gifted children in schools vary widely. I try to capture that variability and the issues that frame practice and theory within this emerging field of psychology and education. Conceptions of Giftedness The IQ Tradition The field of gifted education has been dominated throughout its history by a conception of intellectual giftedness that em- phasized individual differences in IQ. In practice, IQ is still widely used as a measure to identify giftedness in school children (Cox, Daniel, & Boston, 1985) and the research on giftedness is overwhelmingly done on groups defined as gifted on the basis of IQ scores (Tannenbaum, 1983). The emphasis on IQ resulted largely from the work of Louis Terman. In 1921 Terman initiated a study of 1,500 chil- dren with IQ scores above 140 on the Stanford-Binet test. He and his colleagues studied these individuals longitudinally and prospectively resulting in numerous publications about the Termites (Cox, 1926; Terman, 1925; Terman & Oden, 1947; Terman & Oden, 1957). The Termites were found to be well-adjusted, high-achieving adults. Few of them, however, attained eminence in their fields. Terman believed that giftedness involved quantitative but not qualitative differences in intellectual ability; gifted chil- dren are able to learn more quickly and solve problems more readily than are children with lower IQ scores, but their think- ing and the organization of their intellectual abilities are not qualitatively different from those of other children. Terman also assumed that intelligence was a unitary construct, that it was constant and stable at least through the school years, and that heredity dominated over environment in influencing it. These beliefs and others of Terman regarding IQ have since been challenged and disputed, including the indispensability of IQ for adult success (Tannenbaum, 1983). In response to the notion that intelligence is an indivisible, unitary construct, several researchers subsequently proposed multifactor theories of intelligence. Thurstone (Tannenbaum, 1983) proposed a list of seven primary abilities—verbal meaning, number ability, memory, spatial relations, percep- tual speed, and reasoning abilities. Guilford produced the structure of the intellect model with 150 separate factors ob- tainable through the combinations of four different kinds of contents (e.g., figural), six different kinds of products (e.g., transformations), and five different kinds of operations (e.g., evaluation). In contrast to the IQ tradition, these multi- factor theories have had very little influence on the practice of identifying or serving gifted children in schools although they have been used as identification rubrics in some research studies.
The last 15 years have brought a flurry of theories regarding intellectual giftedness. Only a very few of these 488 Gifted Education Programs and Procedures new conceptions have yielded changes in school practices, however.
Tannenbaum (1990, 1983) proposes a psychosocial concep- tion of giftedness. According to Tannenbaum, “. . . whereas the psyche determines the existence of high potential, society de- cides on the direction toward its fulfillment by rewarding some kinds of achievement while ignoring or even discour- aging others” (1990, p. 21). Tannenbaum proposes four dif- ferent categories of talents. Scarcity talents are those of which society is always in need and that are in short supply, such as the talents of a Jonas Salk or a Martin Luther King Jr. Surplus talents elevate and bring society to new heights, are not essential for life, and include individuals who make great contributions to art, literature, music, and philosophy. Individuals with surplus talents “are treated as ‘divine luxu- ries’ capable of beautifying the world without guaranteeing its continued existence” (Tannenbaum, 1990, p. 24). Quota talents are those that require a high level of skill to produce goods and services needed by society, such as the talents needed to become physicians, lawyers, and engi- neers. These individuals typically do not provide creative breakthroughs, and society only needs a certain amount of them. Schools are most responsive to society’s need for cer- tain quota talents (e.g., current need for computer program- mers and software engineers). The last category is anomalous talents; this category in- cludes specific, isolated, or idiosyncratic abilities such as speed-reading or great feats of memory. These talents provide amusement for others and may serve some practical purpose, but are examples of high-level or prodigious performance and are typically not recognized by society for excellence. Tannenbaum (1990) is concerned with how ability in childhood is translated into adult achievement: Keeping in mind that developed talent exists only in adults, a proposed definition of giftedness in children is that it denotes their potential for becoming critically acclaimed performers or exemplary producers of ideas in spheres of activity that enhance the moral, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, or aesthetic life of humanity (p. 33). Tannenbaum (1983, 1990) proposes five factors that link childhood potential to adult productivity—general intelli- gence such as high IQ or g, specific abilities, nonintellective factors such as personality and motivation, environmental factors such as support from the home, opportunities within the community or society’s valuing of the talent area, and chance. The major contribution of Tannenbaum’s theory is its emphasis on cultural context in defining talent. Emphasis on Performance in Defining Giftedness Renzulli (1990; see also Renzulli & Reis, 1986) proposes a model of giftedness that de-emphasizes the role of ability— particularly general ability as measured by IQ—and instead stresses achievement. Renzulli prefers to speak of gifted be- haviors and gifted performances rather than gifted individu- als. Renzulli believes that typically used IQ cutoff scores for the categorization of giftedness are somewhat arbitrary and too exclusive. Many more individuals who have lower IQs but who do have certain personality characteristics such as task commitment and high levels of motivation can produce gifted levels of performance in a particular domain. Renzulli rejects the notion of schoolhouse or lesson- learning giftedness, the type most easily assessed by IQ and other cognitive tests, and instead focuses on creative produc- tive giftedness—or giftedness recognized by the develop- ment of new products and new knowledge. According to Renzulli, the truly gifted are those who create knowledge, art, or music—not those who are able to consume it rapidly or at a very high level. Educational programs for children should concentrate on developing the characteristics and skills needed for adult creative productivity. School gifted pro- grams should aim to produce the next generation of leaders, musicians, artists, and so on. Renzulli emphasizes the role of nonintellective factors in achievement, such as task commitment and creativity, along with above-average but not superior general or specific abil- ity. Task persistence includes perseverance, self-confidence, the ability to identify significant problems, and high stan- dards for one’s work. Creativity includes openness to experi- ence, curiosity, and sensitivity to detail. For Renzulli, “. . . giftedness is a condition that can be developed in some peo- ple if an appropriate interaction takes place between a person, his or her environment, and a particular field of human en- deavor” (Renzulli, 1990, p. 60). The interaction of the three components previously described leads to creative produc- tive giftedness. Renzulli very deliberately tries to show how his theory can be employed in schools. He and his colleagues have developed materials for both identification and curriculum to be used by educators who work with children. Specifically, Renzulli proposes an identification protocol that involves selecting students performing at the 80th or 85th percentile and giving them different kinds of enrichment opportu- nities. Students revolve into higher level, more complex activities that include independent research projects, and their placement is based on successful performance at lower levels. Renzulli’s model is frequently adopted by schools in the United States. Its appeal is twofold: It casts a wide net, so to
Gifted Education Programs and Procedures 489 speak, by including students with achievement levels that are lower than what is typical for gifted programs, and it comes with a ready-to-use set of curriculum and other materials. Multiple Intelligence Perspective on Talent and Giftedness Gardner (1983) postulates the existence of eight relatively autonomous human intellectual competencies or intelligences. These are linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal (knowledge of others) and intrapersonal (knowledge of self), and naturalistic (scientific knowledge). Each intelligence has distinct manifestations— such as poetry and writing for linguistic intelligence; dance for bodily and kinesthetic intelligence; and chess, painting, and sculpting for spatial intelligence. At the most fundamental level, each has a biological basis and a brain-based, neural sub- strate. Each intelligence has a unique computational capacity or information-processing device upon which more complex manifestations are based and built. Gardner’s criteria (1983) for the existence of a separate in- telligence include the following: (a) that it can be found in relative isolation in special populations such as in individuals with brain damage or so-called idiot savants; (b) that it exists at very high levels in some individuals such as prodigies and is manifested in their performances of various tasks; (c) that it has an identifiable core operation or set of operations such as a sensitivity to pitch for musical intelligence; (d) that there is a distinct development history of the intelligence “ranging from universal beginnings through which every novice passes, to exceedingly high levels and/or special forms of training” (Gardner, 1983, p. 64) with a definable set of end state performances; (e) that it has an evolutionary history; (f) that there is support from experimental psychological tests for the intelligence; (g) that there is susceptibility of the in- telligence to encoding as a symbol system; and (h) that there is support from psychometric studies for its existence (e.g. high correlations between measures of the same intelligence and low correlations between measures of different types of intelligence). Gardner (1983) proposes that the types of intelligence are “‘natural kinds’ of building blocks out of which produc- tive lines of thought and action are built” (p. 279). They can be combined to yield a variety of abilities, processes, and products. Normal human interaction typically requires that various types of intelligence work together in complex and seamless ways to accomplish human activities. Many schools make reference to multiple types of intelligence within their mission statements. Multiple intelli- gences (MI) theory is increasingly being used as the basis of gifted programs, affecting identification systems as well as programs (see Fasko, 2001). Gardner suggests that one can speak about the particular intelligences that are used in spe- cific educational encounters. Additionally, one can character- ize the material or content to be learned as falling within the domain of a particular intelligence: “. . . Our various intellec- tual competencies can serve as both means and as message, as form and as content” (Gardner, 1983, p. 334). The impli- cations of Gardner’s theory for identification of talents has been explored in several projects including the Key School in Indianapolis (in which MI theory is also being used by teach- ers as a basis for designing curricula and instructional activi- ties) and Project Spectrum, which is directed by David Feldman of Tufts University (see Garner & Hatch, 1989). In research on Project Spectrum, Gardner found evidence that children who were assessed for the various intelligences in an intelligence-fair manner (e.g., using modes of assessment that respect the ways of thinking in the various intelligences, such as putting together household objects to assess spatial intelligence) exhibited profiles of relative strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, there was some evidence that more children were identified as talented in some domain than when more traditional measures were used. Although it is limited, this research supports Gardner’s contention about the separateness of the various intelligences. Gardner also asserts that a lengthy time period is required before the raw computational devices of an intelligence de- velop into expression in a mature, cultural mode. Part of that long time period is the natural process of development of the intelligence within an individual—a process of going through domain-specific developmental milestones. Another part is the less natural process of acquiring information that is delib- erately transmitted via school or other agents such as parents or other adults. This latter part, which may be thought of as tal- ent development, does not occur within a vacuum. Factors such as motivation, an affective state conducive to learning, and a supportive cultural context are also important—even necessary. Although Gardner does not deal with these factors in depth, he recognizes their contribution to the development of high levels of performance within each of the domains of the intelligences.
Gagne (1993, 1995, 1998, 1999) proposes a theory of gifted- ness and talent that has as its base the roles of training or learning. For Gagne, giftedness refers to exceptional “natural abilities which appear more or less spontaneously during the early years of children’s development and give rise to signif- icant individual differences without any clear evidence of any
490 Gifted Education Programs and Procedures systematic learning, training, or practice” (1995, p. 105). There are four domains of natural abilities: intellectual abili- ties, physical abilities (which includes sensory and motor abilities), creativity, and socioaffective abilities (which in- cludes leadership). A fifth possible domain of natural ability is the personal abilities, which include the ability to delay gratification, to focus one’s attention on the task at hand, to perceive one’s needs, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum from natural abilities are talents, which are “systematically developed abilities which define the characteristic performance of an individual in a field of human activity: these are the abilities shown by com- petent pianists, teachers, carpenters, swimmers, journalists, pilots, and so forth” (1995, p. 105). Gagne notes that whereas “natural abilities are defined in reference to characteristics of the person (intelligence, creativ- ity, sociability, motoricity), systematically developed abilities or skills are labeled according to the field of human activities that governs the set of appropriate skills to master” (1995, p. 106). Also, natural abilities provide the component opera- tions that are used to acquire the skills and knowledge associ- ated with expertise in a particular domain or field. Thus, natural abilities are the building blocks or constituent elements of systematically acquired abilities. According to Gagne, the growth of aptitudes or talents occurs through four developmental processes: maturation, daily use in problem-solving situations, informal training and practice, and formal training and practice. Gagne (1993) stresses that the relationship between aptitudes and talents is co-univocal, which means that one aptitude can be involved in the development of many different talents, and any talent can use abilities from more than one aptitude domain as its constituents. For Gagne, gifted individuals are those who possess a nat- ural ability in at least one of the four ability domains to a de- gree that places them in the top 10% of their age group. Similarly, talented individuals are those who possess levels of systematically developed abilities and skills that place them in the top 10% of individuals within the same field of endeavor. Gagne (1998) also advocates differentiation within this top 10% of individuals into categories (mild, moderate, high, exceptional, extreme) that are increasingly selective and consist of the top 10% of the previous category. According to Gagne’s theory, one can be gifted and not talented; however, one cannot be talented and not be gifted. A child could be intellectually gifted by virtue of high IQ or test scores but may not be academically talented if he or she does not display exceptional performance—via grades or awards—in an academic area. Giftedness is childhood promise, whereas talent is adult fulfillment of promise. The process of talent development is then the systematic training and education sought by the gifted individual to develop talent to a high degree. Gagne (1993, 1995) proposes the existence of catalysts that are both positive and negative influences that affect the devel- opment of childhood giftedness into adult talent. Intrapersonal catalysts include motivation, temperament, and personality dimensions of the individual such as adaptability, attitudes, competitiveness, independence, and self-esteem. Environ- mental catalysts include surroundings (home, school, com- munity), persons (parents, teachers, mentors), undertakings (activities, courses, special programs), and events (significant encounters, awards, accidents such as the loss of a parent). For Gagne, catalysts, personality dimensions, or other nonintel- lective factors are not essential elements or components of a talent but are contributors to the results of the talented performance. Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, Giftedness, and Talent Sternberg (1986) proposes a general theory of intelligence that consists of three subtheories. The componential subthe-
individual—the “mental mechanisms that lead to more or less intelligent behavior” (p. 223). These mechanisms enable individuals to learn how to do things, plan what to do, and carry out their plans. The experiential subtheory deals with the role of experience in intelligent behavior. It specifies those points in an individual’s continuum of experience at which a task or situation is novel and therefore requires intel- ligent behavior and those points at which the individual has so much experience that response to a particular task or situ- ation is mostly automatic. The third subtheory, the contextual
external environment. It specifies three classes of acts— environmental adaption, selection, and shaping that consti- tute intelligent behavior in different contexts. According to Sternberg, the componential subtheory ad- dresses the question of how behaviors are “intelligent in any given setting” (p. 223). The experiential subtheory addresses the question of “when behaviors are intelligent for a given individual” (p. 224). The contextual subtheory addresses the questions of “what behaviors are intelligent for whom and where these behaviors are intelligent” (p. 224). Therefore, ac- cording to Sternberg, the componential subtheory is univer- sal, and the mental mechanisms specified are used by all individuals—some better than others. The experiential sub- theory is relativistic and the types of situations and activities that are novel or very familiar varies for each individual; however, it is universal that every person has a range of
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