Introduction to terminological controversies in gifted education

The authors’ charge

To explore terminology surrounding the concept of giftedness, we created a special symposium for Gifted Education International to consider terminology in the field of giftedness. You are now reading the introductory essay for this symposium. In particular, we asked experts in the field of giftedness:

1. “Should we even continue to use the term “giftedness”?

What did we find?

Common themes

We found ten themes that permeated the essays. Not every essay had every theme, but these themes were common across essays:

1. Be clear about what terms actually mean. Often, in the field of giftedness, terms are just “thrown around,” starting with the term “giftedness,” much as the term “democracy” has been thrown around. Part of the problem in the field is that terms are used in ways that are unshared, so that they mean different things to different people.

What were the main ideas in the essays?

Main ideas

The main ideas in the essays converged around the notion that traditional notions of giftedness have, in many respects, outlived their usefulness.

Robert J. Sternberg, in his essay, “Identification for Utilization, Not Merely Possession, of Gifts: What Matters Is Not Gifts but rather Deployment of Gifts,” argues that educators pay far too much attention to individuals’ levels of static abilities rather than to how individuals deploy their abilities. Having a sky-high IQ matters little if the individual has no desire to use it for some societally constructive purpose. Society does not need more people whose IQs are used primarily for admission to high-IQ societies, for societally-harmful purposes like producing ever higher levels of pollution, or who do nothing at all with their abilities. Rather, Sternberg suggests, we need people who are transformationally gifted who use their abilities and talents to make a positive, meaningful, and enduring difference to the world—who try to make the world a better place.

Dean Keith Simonton, in his essay, “Giftedness from the Perspective of Research on Genius: Some Precautionary Implications,” agrees with Sternberg that high IQ is not enough. Simonton quotes Terman (1940), who suggested: ““beyond a certain high level of intellectual ability success is largely determined by non-intellectual factors and that the number of persons who are endowed with abilities equal to great achievement is immensely greater than the number who will attain eminence” (p. 301). Simonton also cites Cox (1926), who found that the highest levels of intelligence are less helpful to eminence in science than are high levels of intelligence combined with the highest degree of persistence. He further observes that even the Guinness Book of World Records has dropped highest IQ from its more than 40,000 categories of unusual achievement.

So, Simonton and Sternberg appear to agree that just looking at ability measures is a sad commentary on the entrenchment of some who work in the field. We believe they are stuck, in their thinking, in the early 20th century. If professionals in other fields, like medicine, were stuck in the early 20th century, one can imagine what would happen when people need medical treatments and found their physicians prescribing patent medicines, including but not limited to snake oil.

In their essay, “What’s in a Name? Rethinking “Gifted” to Promote Equity and Excellence,” Melanie S. Meyer and Jonathan A. Plucker suggest that fixed notions of abilities, like IQ measurement itself as a sole basis for identification of the gifted, are outdated. Educators need to formulate identification measures with the goal of equity in mind—so that all have an equal chance to be identified. Intelligence is dynamic, it is contextual, and its nature and levels are not fixed. We need to provide opportunities for the development and display of excellence, not just test scores that fix someone into a category.

Marcia Gentry, in her essay, “Excellence, Equity, and Talent Development: Time to Retire the G-Word,” suggests that no matter what practices we follow, the time has come to retire what she refers to as the “g-word.” She is not referring to general intelligence, however, but rather to “giftedness.” Gentry suggests a number of reasons for why the term needs to be retired—the racist history associated with the word; the association of the word with underrepresentation and hence lack of equity; the declining support in the U.S. and elsewhere for special programming for gifted students; seemingly endless debate that goes nowhere over the use of terms such as “giftedness”; the narrow historical definition of “giftedness” and its association with IQ; and the need for language to evolve over time, including the words we use to characterize those with the potential to excel in various ways. Thus, Gentry’s argument combines the theoretical, the historical, and the pragmatic, in its assertion that the term “giftedness” has outlived its usefulness.

Don Ambrose, in his essay, “The blunting of Occam’s Razor: Omnicompetent reductionism distorting conceptions of giftedness,” picks up on themes made by Meyer and Plucker and by Gentry that the history of the field of giftedness has led us to a nonoptimal place. In particular, Ambrose suggests that the abilities measured by conventional ability tests are like the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We see only a wee bit of it but act as though the visible spectrum we see is all there is. We believe that our reductionism and often trivial measurements provide far more than they are capable of providing. If we look at high achievers, we see that there is a whole vast range of skills that we are failing to measure but that matter for the highest levels of achievement—visual-metaphorical insight, aesthetic appreciation, critical thinking, and the altruism that can enable us to go beyond seeing only our own needs.

In their essay, “Building Off Creativity to Move from Gifted to Gifting,” Vlad Glaveanu and James C. Kaufman point out that in its common use, “giftedness” is essentialist—one has the essence of giftedness or one does not. There are winners and losers. If one is a loser, there is no sense trying to be a winner. Instead, giftedness should be viewed in a more dynamic way so that individuals can become “gifted.” Moreover, giftedness should be viewed in a more sociocultural way, where gifts reside not merely in an individual, but in the ways in which people interact with each other in sociocultural settings. Giftedness occurs in interaction, not just in isolation.

In a way that is related to the arguments of Glaveanu and Kaufman, Robert J. Sternberg and Sareh Karami argue, in their essay “Gifted for Whom? Individualism, Dyadism, and Collectivism in the Definition of Giftedness,” that giftedness can be viewed individualistically, dyadically, or collectively. Giftedness is often mistakenly conceived of as an individual characteristic—as something that resides somehow in the individual. A not much better way of viewing giftedness is dyadically—not necessarily in terms of two people, but in terms of the individual’s relationship to performance on some task or well-defined set of tasks, such as performance in school (the dyad is the individual and performance at the school) or at work (the dyad is the individual and performance in the workplace). Rather, educators should focus on educating gifted children to be the ones who have the most to contribute to the common good—because that is the gift that is truly important to society, not the gift of the narcissistic and individualistic culture that emphasizes each individual maximizing on gains in their own life, often at others’ expense. Why would society want to subsidize education to maximize individual rather than collective benefit?

In their essay, “How to Save the World: Replacing ‘Giftedness’ with ‘Giftingness’ Based on Individual Strengths and Interests,” Judith Glück and Kornelia Tischler follow up on Sternberg and Karami’s essay by emphasizing that giftedness should emphasize promotion of a greater good—“gifting” — not just an individual good that serves as a resume-builder. As pointed out by Gentry and others, the current systems largely favors students who are already favored, socioeconomically or otherwise. Rather, the educational system should favor all students, helping them to develop their gifts to the greatest extent possible.

A related construct arises out of the essay of Aakash Chowkase, “Three C’s Conception of Giftedness: A Call for Paradigm Shift.” Chowkase picks up and greatly expands on a model originally proposed by Bapat (2017), according to which giftedness arises from competence in one’s action, commitment to task, and concern for others. The first two components are similar to those in Renzulli’s (1978) model but the third represents a perspective that is related to the common-good orientation of Sternberg, Karami, Glück, and Tischler, among others. Chowkase goes quite a bit beyond past work in proposing varied profiles of giftedness, which arise from different combinations of the three components in the 3C model. For example, one individual might be solely competent, another solely committed, another both committed and showing concern, and so on. The advantage of this profile analysis is that it points out that gifted individuals are not uniformly high in components of the model, but rather show different profiles that enable them to contribute different strengths to society.

Although many of the contributors to this symposium believe that the term “giftedness” has had its run, not all do. R. Richard Olenchak, in his essay, “Pondering the Term ‘Gifted’ through a Romeo and Juliet Lens,” argues that the widespread usage of the terms “gifted” and “giftedness” suggests that the terms must have utility. Otherwise, would they have survived as long as they have, especially in view of the reservations many people have about use of the terms? Olenchak suggests that the optimal solution to current terminology problems is not to drop the terms but rather to clarify them. He suggests that the U.S. Government or private foundations might fund a panel of experts to figure out the best use of the terms. How could they be used in a way that reflects current realities and needs? In this way, the terms would be retained but would be used in ways that reflect the needs of the 21st rather than the early 20th century.

Denise de Souza Fleith, Nielsen Pereira, and Eunice Maria Lima Soriano de Alencar, in their essay “Giftedness in Brazil: To What Extent Does Terminology Really Matter?,” further remind us, as Olenchak pointed out, that if we use terms such as “gifted” or “giftedness,” we need to be very clear in what we mean, and that we need to avoid getting stuck in outdated uses of the terms. Indeed, terms related to “giftedness” do not even exist in some languages—a reminder of linguistic relativity. We see what our language lets us, and sometimes makes us, see. Giftedness is dynamic rather than static, and there are multiple profiles of giftedness. We should not get stuck in looking at giftedness in just one way.

Dante Dixson, in contrast, in his essay, “Moving beyond the Gifted Label in Gifted Education: An Equity Perspective,” suggests that the time has come to put the term “giftedness” into the past. Like Gentry, Dixson believes the term is too associated with socioeconomic class structure and even eugenics. However well-meaning users of the term might be, they cannot remove the taint associated with the label. High achievers are high achievers in a domain, not in general; and they are individuals who bring diverse abilities and talents, often not measured by conventional tests, to the table. The current tests and the current labeling mechanism results in underserved students continuing to be underserved. So, we should replace the gifted label with—nothing. Instead, we should focus on doing our best to help each student develop their abilities and talents. And we should look for the hidden talents that the current educational system often does not highlight.

Similarly to Dixson, C. Owen Lo, Rachel C. Lin-Yang, and Megan Chrostowski, in their essay, “Giftedness as a Framework of Inclusive Education,” suggest that our focus on gifted learners is the wrong focus. We as educators instead should focus on serving advanced learning needs. Thus, the focus is not on the person, but on the learning needs of those who need more than the ordinary curriculum typically provides.

Chingchih Kuo, in her essay, “Expanding the Conception of Giftedness to Talent Development,” further reminds us, as have Dixson and Fleith, Pereira, and Soriano de Alencar, that we must be sensitive to the needs of children from diverse backgrounds. We also must be on the lookout for twice and multi-exceptional learners, who may be missed by traditional identification procedures. As others have pointed out, we need to identify for multiple, wide-ranging talents, not for single, narrow ones.

Where Fleith and colleagues focus on Brazil, Kirsi Tirri focuses on Finland in her essay, “Giftedness in the Finnish Educational Culture.” As a reminder of how diverse cultures can be, the idea of “giftedness” is largely taboo in Finnish culture. So Fleith and colleagues remind us that the word for giftedness does not exist in some languages, and Tirri reminds us that even where the word exists, the concept it signifies may be unwelcome. She reminds us that giftedness should help to achieve a common good—as discussed by Sternberg and Glück and Tischler. In the end, giftedness should be about making the world a better place in an ethical way—the theme that pervades the entire issue.

Conclusion

To conclude, the authors in this special issue all seem to believe, along with Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956), that language affects the way we think about things. Terms like “gifted” and “giftedness” carry with them connotations that sometimes lead the field to remain stuck in early 20th century thinking (e.g., of Terman, 1916, 1925). Even today, much of the research on giftedness ends up being high-IQ people, again and again, studying and showing their appreciation for people like themselves (Sternberg, in press), without serious questioning of the assumptions underlying the research. If there is a fundamental principle of interpersonal attraction, it is that we are attracted to, and appreciate more, people who are like ourselves (Sternberg, 1998). We may thereby inadvertently fail to appreciate the gifts of people unlike ourselves.

The essays in this section point out ways in which the field could advance further into the 21st century, keeping the best of the old but also recognizing that concerns for equity, fairness, inclusion, and a much broader approach to identifying gifts need to be part of any new conception. More studies showing again and again that there are significant correlations between IQ and this or that criterion are not going to advance our thinking. Rather, those studies will emphasize that the field is stuck in neutral. Indeed, if we give the high-IQ people advantages that we do not provide those with lower IQs, our findings will represent, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy (Sternberg, in press) whereby society helps to creates the correlations it attributes to some “natural” process. Hopefully, gifted identification and programming of the future will move beyond the too often narrow and elitist focus of the past.

Supplemental Material