The End of Giftedness?

The book referenced below -- "The Genius in all of Us" by David Shenk is right up there with "The Talent Code" and should be in every serious coaches library as a resource. Both are very thought provoking.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/07/the-end-of-giftedness/21410/

In recent years a truckload of science has emerged with some surprising insights which, taken together, completely overturn our longstanding view of giftedness and innate talent. The findings, in a nutshell:

i) Genes don't issue fixed instructions for development; rather, they interact with our surroundings so that we can adapt to them.

ii) Intelligence is not innate; it is a collection of skills that one acquires.

iii) Talent is not a thing; it's a process.

Putting this all together, one ends up with a whole new view of talent. We are not a world cruelly divided between the innately-gifted and the destined-to-be-mediocre. Rather, every human being is a reservoir of talent waiting to be successfully tapped."

David Shenk is a writer on genetics, talent and intelligence. He is the author of Data Smog, The Forgetting, and most recently, "The Genius In All of Us".

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Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness

Joseph S. Renzulli, Ed.D.
Director
The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut



http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/semart13.html

Summary: What Makes Giftedness?

In recent years we have seen a resurgence of interest in all aspects of the study of giftedness and related efforts to provide special educational services for this often neglected segment of our school population. A healthy aspect of this renewed interest has been the emergence of new and innovative theories to explain the concept and a greater variety of research studies that show promise of giving us better insights and more defensible approaches to both identification and programming. Conflicting theoretical explanations abound and various interpretations of research findings add an element of excitement and challenge that can only result in greater understanding of the concept in the years ahead. So long as the concept itself is viewed from the vantage points of different subcultures within the general population and differing societal values, we can be assured that there will always be a wholesome variety of answers to the age-old question: What makes giftedness? These differences in interpretation are indeed a salient and positive characteristic of any field that attempts to further our understanding of the human condition.

In this chapter, I have attempted to provide a framework that draws upon the best available research about gifted and talented individuals. I have also reviewed research offered in support of the validity of the three-ring conception of giftedness. The conception and definition presented in this chapter have been developed from a decidedly educational perspective because I believe that efforts to define this concept must be relevant to the persons who will be most influenced by this type of work. I also believe that conceptual explanations and definitions must point the way toward practices that are economical, realistic, and defensible in terms of an organized body of underlying research and follow-up validation studies. These kinds of information can be brought forward to decision makers who raise questions about why particular identification and programming models are being suggested by persons who are interested in serving gifted youth.

The task of providing better services to our most promising young people can't wait until theorists and researchers produce an unassailable ultimate truth, because such truths probably do not exist. But the needs and opportunities to improve educational services for these young people exist in countless classrooms every day of the week. The best conclusions I can reach at the present time are presented above, although I also believe that we must continue the search for greater understanding of this concept which is so crucial to the further advancement of civilization. Perhaps the following quotation by Arnold Gesell best summarizes the state of the art: "Our present day knowledge of the child's mind is comparable to a fifteenth century map of the world#&151;a mixture of truth and error. Vast areas remain to be explored. There are scattered islands of solid dependable facts, uncoordinated with unknown continents."