Giftedness and Philosophy

Giftedness and Philosophy

Simon Kidd

Master of Teaching (Primary)

University of Western Australia

2010

Giftedness and Philosophy – Simon Kidd (2010)

Contents

Giftedness and Philosophy ................................................................................................ 1

1. Statement of Inquiry ................................................................................................... 1

2. Review of the Literature .............................................................................................. 1

Definitions, Identification and Provision ....................................................................... 1

Cultural and Gender Variation ..................................................................................... 8

Brain Science and 'Nature versus Nurture' ................................................................ 11

Multiple Intelligence and Levels of Giftedness .......................................................... 13

Synthesis .................................................................................................................. 17

3. Relating the Literature to the Statement of Inquiry .................................................... 17

4. Personal Response .................................................................................................. 41

References ...................................................................................................................... 44


1

Giftedness and Philosophy

1. Statement of Inquiry

The question addressed in this paper is whether the academic research on giftedness,

and the proliferating models of giftedness to which it gives rise, produce a philosophically

satisfactory account of giftedness. This area of inquiry has been chosen for several

reasons. First, the writer has a personal interest in the subject, having two very bright

children, one of whom was formally identified as gifted several years ago, and who is

currently in the West Australian state-school gifted program (PEAC). Second, he has a

professional interest as a preservice primary teacher anticipating being in charge of a

class of children of varying interests and aptitudes. Third, as a philosopher with a particular

interest in the philosophy of mind, he has a compelling inclination to understand the

expression of human mental potential, and its elucidation through education. He is also a

committee member of the WA Association for Philosophy in Schools (APIS), and has

taught philosophy in primary schools, including an elective during his first-year teaching

practicum. In addition, he completed a well-received assignment on the topic of giftedness

for a first-year unit on Dealing with Difference and Difficulty.

2. Review of the Literature

Definitions, Identification and Provision

In a meta-analysis of several dominant models of giftedness, Hewton (2008) claims that

there is a need in Australia for 'more critical appraisal of the different models and greater

willingness to embrace the diversity offered by those who have devoted their time, energy

and abilities to bring a rich variety of worthwhile models into being' (35). Hewton's

recognition of the multiplicity and diversity of models of giftedness signals a trend


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characteristic of scientific inquiry: a movement from a small number of simple models,

through increasingly fine-grained analysis, towards a greater number of complex models.

In this section I will touch on some of the reasons for this development in the context of

provision for the gifted in Australia, as well as some of its key stages.

There is no question that the issue of giftedness is a significant one for educators.

Taylor and Milton (2006) claim that gifted students have long been neglected in Australian

education. They report one of the findings of a 1988 Commonwealth select committee:

'Most pre-service teacher education courses in Australia offered, at most, a few lectures

on gifted education or an elective unit, often within the context of Special Education' (25).

A follow-up Senate Inquiry in 2001 found that there had been little progress in

provision for gifted children since 1988: the needs of many were still not being met, and

they were suffering 'underachievement, boredom, frustration and psychological distress as

a result'. The Inquiry found that many teachers 'feel a lack of expertise, lack of confidence

and lack of resources to meet the needs of gifted children'. It described a 'need for better

teacher training (both preservice and inservice) so that teachers are better able to identify

the gifted and make provision for their special needs. Better curriculum support is also

essential so that teachers can differentiate the curriculum for the gifted' (Commonwealth of

Australia, 2001: xi). One of its recommendations was that 'newly graduated teachers have

at least a semester unit on the special needs of gifted children in their degrees …

[including] training in identification of gifted children and the pedagogy of teaching them'

(96).

Taylor and Milton suggest that the simplest reason for the neglect is 'a pervasive

belief that gifted children will learn without special provision; that they will automatically

excel with the regular curriculum and instructional methods that work with most students'


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(26; see also Harris and Hemmings, 2008: 5). Also significant in this context is an

ambivalent attitude towards giftedness in the Australian community. Gross suggests that

this has deep roots in an anti-elitist outlook going back to the early settlers' penal-colony

circumstances. Interestingly, such an attitude does not extend to elitism in the physical

domain (especially sport), where prowess is regarded positively (Gross, 1999a: 91–4; see

also Commonwealth of Australia, 2001: xi).

Giftedness clearly presents us with a dual challenge: first, how to identify gifted

children; and second, having identified them, how to provide for their educational needs.

The second component is inseparable from the first, and depends on it in a very logical

sense: we can only provide for the gifted if we understand their nature. As Gross (1999a)

points out, the definition of giftedness adopted by a school or education system 'will

influence both the procedures used to identify highly able students and the curricular and

programmic responses developed to assist them' (96). Research relating to this topic,

therefore, tends to begin with definitions of giftedness (implicit or explicit), its

characteristics and, sometimes, misconceptions (or myths) about it, as well as community

attitudes towards it. Some of the research proceeds to make recommendations about

pedagogy, teacher training, resource allocation, etc.

Until the early 1980s, definitions of giftedness used in Australia were usually

performance based: students had to be visibly achieving before their high ability could be

acknowledged. Unfortunately, such definitions tended to 'ignore underachieving gifted

children who, through demotivation, the imposition of an inappropriate curriculum, or

economic disadvantage, might not have been able to translate their abilities into

achievement' (Gross, 1999a: 96).


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Gagné's differentiated model of giftedness and talent (DMGT) represents an

advance on the earlier, achievement-dependent ones. Significantly, Gagné defined

giftedness in terms of outstanding potential, rather than outstanding performance,

reserving the term 'talent' for the latter. He also recognised that children could be gifted in

any of a variety of domains of human achievement, and not merely intellectually. (Gagné,

1995)

Notwithstanding the refinement of definitions, giftedness continues to vex

educational scholars and practitioners. Taylor and Milton's paper typifies this

phenomenon. Having identified the 'significant characteristic of giftedness in educational

settings … as the ease and speed with which students are able to think and to learn new

concepts' (2006: 26), in the next paragraph they note that the gifted 'are not a

homogeneous group and have diverse cognitive, affective and social needs …

[necessitating] a range of educational provisions to suit particular children's needs

amongst the gifted population' (26). This consideration turns out to be 'one of the factors

that may make identification of the gifted difficult' (26).

Harris and Hemmings (2008) suggest that the 'wide range of definitions that exist

for giftedness and talent [appear] to be largely a result of the differing beliefs and

experiences of researchers' (5). They also point out that tests of general intellectual ability

are contentious (5–6) and, while tests of creativity offer an alternative, they are 'not

commonly used within Australia' (6). Teacher nomination is also unreliable, since teachers

tend to nominate conforming students (6; see Gross, 1999b).

When they turn their attention to how the needs of gifted students are met, Taylor

and Milton note that, historically, 'provision for exceptionally gifted learners has focused on

pull-out programs, special classes or special schools rather than provision within regular


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classes, creating the assumption that gifted courses need to be taught by specialist rather

than generalist teachers and that training in Gifted Education for all teachers was not

necessary' (27). (The introduction of the qualifying 'exceptionally' here is significant, and

we will return to it later, when we consider Ruf's (2009) notion of levels of giftedness.)

Since, however, 'most gifted primary students in Australia currently spend at least ninety

percent of their time in heterogeneously grouped classes … the regular class teacher's

role in implementing appropriate learning opportunities for gifted students is critical' (27).

Harris and Hemmings discuss a range of possibilities within regular classrooms,

including enrichment and extension, acceleration, and ability grouping. In each case,

however, there is research indicating that these strategies are not well implemented (6). Of

greater concern, perhaps, is Cooper's unpublished 1999 study that concluded that

'negative teacher attitudes towards gifted and talented students are rife ... such negative

attitudes exist because some teachers consider gifted and talented students to be a threat

... teachers may be resentful of gifted and talented students because of their diverse

needs, which may be seen as creating more work for teachers (cited in Harris and

Hemmings: 6).

Regarding preservice teacher training, Harris and Hemmings' research supports the

earlier conclusions of Taylor and Milton: 'there was an overwhelming consensus amongst

the preservice primary teachers interviewed that the training that they had received in

regards to gifted and talented education, during their four years at university, was

substandard' (14). One of the interviewees noted that 'students with other diverse abilities

[i.e. behavioural problems and learning difficulties] often seemed to take precedence over

gifted and talented students during her time at university' (15). Notwithstanding these


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criticisms, preservice teachers were pleased to have received some exposure to the

subject, in terms of raising awareness and dispelling misconceptions (14).

Lack of teacher training is one of the factors at play in how gifted children are

treated within the school system but, in a highly interesting 2005 article, Valpied studies

the often subtle and complex nature of the interactions between characteristics of gifted

children and the schools in which they are situated. She begins by reiterating the assertion

that the needs of gifted students are as different from the norm as are those of students

with intellectual disabilities, and the former consequently need a differentiated program in

like measure, indeed are entitled to it under Commonwealth recommendations. (Valpied,

2005: 12)

Drawing attention to the distinction between intellectual giftedness and giftedness in

other domains, and acknowledging that her paper deals with the former only, Valpied

points out that while there is a body of research indicating that the characteristics of

giftedness are often misinterpreted, there is little research that considers whether gifted

students are given inappropriate educational responses as a direct result of the very

characteristics associated with their giftedness. (12)

Valpied's study seems to uphold the findings of earlier researchers, and supports

the assertion by Gross (1999b) that teacher nomination, used alone, is 'probably the least

effective method of identifying gifted children in the early years of school, and the method

most prone to class and cultural bias'. Based on surveys, school reports, and interviews

with parents and students, Valpied's research appears to show that teachers sometimes

misinterpret characteristics of giftedness as their very opposite. Her conclusions can be

summarised as follows:


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Identification of participant children for gifted programming was largely initiated

by parents (15–16).

Schools were often reluctant to accept child participants' giftedness, due both to

scepticism concerning the assessment mechanism, and a perceived lack of

demonstrated ability in school work (16–17).

Even where differentiated programming was provided, it was seldom adequate.

There appeared to be both practical and philosophical reasons for this:

practically, differentiation was believed to increase workload for the teacher, and

at the same time raised the issue of running out of work to give gifted students;

philosophically, it was believed that differentiation would have an adverse effect

on the socialisation of the children, in spite of a significant body of research to

the contrary (17–20).

Throughout the study, it was 'the frame of reference through which the teacher

viewed characteristics of the children, rather than the expression of the

characteristics themselves, which determined whether these characteristics

were a source of celebration or concern for the teacher ... [which] is consistent

with Weber's (1999) suggestion that teachers develop mental models which they

project onto their students, and which affect the way in which they view

characteristics of gifted students' (21).

Child participants sometimes found themselves in no-win situations: where one

behaviour was regarded negatively by a teacher (e.g. 'slowness'), they would go

to the opposite extreme, and find that the new behaviour was also regarded

negatively (e.g. 'rushing'), sometimes even by the same teacher (22).


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Unsurprisingly, given the contrast between the learning preferences of the

children and the programming with which they were faced, 'a predominant

theme of child participant boredom in response to school was found'. In most

cases this resulted in an unwillingness to attend school, while other responses

included 'fidgeting, daydreaming, just doing the work, delaying work, doing a

different, self-initiated activity, and a sense of helplessness' (23).

Indeed, so strong were the statements of the child participants that Valpied wonders 'why

these children are attending school at all' (24). The fact that school attendance is

mandated by law only serves to underline the potential tragedy of wasted potential in the

case of gifted children. Valpied appropriately concludes with a quote from the

abovementioned Senate Inquiry: 'Above all, the duty to help all children reach their

potential is a moral imperative. We should not ask children to come to school to waste

their time' (Commonwealth of Australia, 2001: 35).

The significance of Valpied's research lies in the way it suggests a subtle interplay of

influences in the expression and reception of giftedness within the school context: 'child

characteristics related to giftedness, response of teachers and schools to the child and

response of the child to school influenced one another in a cyclic pattern of interactions,

marked by teacher misunderstandings of characteristics and needs related to giftedness'

(24).

Cultural and Gender Variation

In an overview of submissions, the 2001 Senate Inquiry noted that untrained teachers 'are

more likely to identify as gifted well behaved children of the dominant culture, and less

likely to notice giftedness among underachievers or minority groups' (Commonwealth of


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Australia, 2001: 4). This observation highlights another complexity in the identification of

giftedness, that of cultural variation.

According to Chaffey (2008), Indigenous education has historically been dominated

by 'deficit model' approaches that are diametrically opposed to the high-achievement

models of gifted education (38). This has contributed to the obscuring of giftedness among

Indigenous students. Compounding this are socio-emotional factors such as involuntary

minority status (a long-term subordinate position as a result of colonisation) and low

academic self-efficacy (Chaffey, 2009: 108–9).

Although gifted underachievement has to some extent been addressed since Gagné,

the most commonly used methods for identification of outstanding potential (standardised

tests and teacher nomination) are 'the very assessment forms where minority students

have been shown to under-perform' (Chaffey, 2009: 106). Chaffey uses the term 'invisible

underachiever' to refer to 'individuals who under-perform in the classroom and on

commonly used measures of aptitude or potential' (2009: 107).

By contrast with standardised testing, Chaffey promotes a version of the test–

intervention–retest format of dynamic testing, known as the Coolabah Dynamic

Assessment (CDA), which has proven efficacy in identifying outstanding potential (2009:

107). He enumerates the positive impact that suitable gifted education programs could

have on Indigenous education in general, including enhanced teacher and school

expectations, role modelling for peers/siblings, and community self-esteem (2008: 39).

Adding an international perspective to the literature, Chan (2009) shows how lay

conceptions of giftedness among the Chinese people can supplement those associated

with IQ and multiple intelligences imported from the West. Chinese folk stories and

Confucian philosophy both acknowledge the existence of a minority of individuals with high


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innate ability, but such ability is likely to be wasted if it is not developed through motivation,

perseverance and effort. 'Even more importantly, effortful learning does not have to end in

talented performance, but can be brought to a higher level of accomplishment through

self-cultivation that transforms and changes one's beliefs, attitudes and values to a deep

and ultimate concern for the well-being of others. The practice of ren [benevolence] with

enhanced socio-emotional competence is perhaps the new dimension that could be added

to traditional Western conceptions of giftedness' (121).

Gender differences are also evident among gifted children. A gifted girl who finds

lessons easy is more likely to find other ways of keeping occupied, including reading,

talking with friends, helping the teacher or taking on a leadership role. Teachers and

parents tend to find girls cooperative and good students. A gifted boy, on the other hand,

is more likely to become frustrated and act out if he is not being stimulated. His higher

energy level will make him restless, and may even lead to misdiagnosis of an attentional

disorder. (Ruf, 2009: 243–4)

Girls value peer acceptance highly, and are more likely to hide their giftedness in

order to fit in. Boys demonstrate defiant or oppositional behaviour, lose their motivation,

and underachieve:

In truth, many boys become more and more angry about all of the things that they are

expected to do in school – things that make no sense to them and seem like a waste

of time. No one validates their intuition – their accurate gut feelings – that the school

environment and curriculum are wrong for them, too confining, and not teaching them

anything new or useful. Instead, everyone bands together to force their compliance to


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this system. Hostility builds, as they correctly perceive that adults have the power to

force them to do assignments that don't teach them anything new. (Ruf, 2009: 245)

Brain Science and 'Nature versus Nurture'

Another fruitful area of research is that of cognitive science. According to Sousa (2009),

'evidence is accumulating that the brain has a much greater degree of specialization than

was previously thought. Even so ... the earlier idea that the brain is a set of modular units

carrying out specific tasks has yielded to a new model ... [in which] the boundaries

between the specific areas are fluid, not fixed' (25).

Another development has complemented earlier models of hemisphere

specialisation, with research indicating that the right hemisphere is more active in

situations involving novelty and challenge, and the left hemisphere taking over once

responses become routine. 'The amount of time and the number of situational exposures

needed to accomplish this right-to-left hemisphere transition vary widely from one person

to the next. But it may be that one component of giftedness is the ability of that person's

brain to make the transition in less time and with fewer exposures than average' (Sousa,

2009: 26).

The rear brain receives stimuli from the outside world, which is then integrated in the

middle brain, and interpreted in the front brain. The prefrontal cortex is the area at the front

where decisions are made. But decisions can be of two kinds: veridical, involving factual

information, where there is a simple right-or-wrong answer; and adaptive, involving

ambiguous information, where there are usually multiple, equally valid answers. Veridical

decisions are those we make on a day-to-day basis, while adaptive ones are those we

make about situations requiring complex interpretation, such as significant life events.


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Experience at making adaptive decisions should lead to greater efficiency of the neural

pathways responsible for these processes, a concept known as neural efficiency.

Research involving brain imaging does indicate that both high-IQ and creative individuals

are more neurally efficient across a range of problem-solving areas. It also indicated that

creative individuals showed more cooperation among brain areas than did gifted ones,

supporting the contention that creativity should be considered a separate measure of

giftedness. (Sousa, 2009: 27–30)

Sousa highlights two implications of this research for educators. He points out that

schools frequently favour veridical over adaptive decision making. Some students adjust to

this situation, excel at tests, and may even be considered gifted. Unfortunately, when

faced with adaptive decision making, the same students may vacillate and become

indecisive. Schools seldom offer students consistent opportunities to develop adaptive

decision-making skills. (30)

Another implication is that the bias towards veridical decision making disadvantages

those students who have a preference for adaptive decision making. Consequently they

may become bored, and act out or withdraw. Educators need to find areas of the

curriculum where adaptive decision-making skills can be employed and developed. (30)

Brain research leads to questions of genetics and 'nature versus nurture' in the

consideration of giftedness. As Sousa points out, 'the hunt for specific genes related to

intelligence has been disappointing' (9). Gene variations may play a minor role in

intelligence, and the prevailing theory is that 'there are many genes, each with a small

effect, that together produce the full range of variation in intelligence ... [moreover] their

effects can be moderated by the environment' (10).


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At this stage, conclusive statements about the relative contributions of genes and

environment are not possible, quite simply because it is difficult to separate the two

influences for research purposes. Without doubt, however, the two interact in reinforcing

ways. There is currently a great deal of interest in 'brain plasticity', the property of the brain

that allows it to adapt to new circumstances (see Doidge, 2008). For instance, Sousa

refers to evidence for greater neural plasticity in a group of subjects with superior IQ:

'Having a high degree of neural plasticity may enable individuals to adapt better to the

demands of their environment and may also be an indication of possessing a superior IQ'

(11).

The chicken-and-egg scenario implied by brain research only serves to underline the

importance of the right sort of environment for developing brains. Sousa makes the point

forcefully: 'If further research supports the theory that the environment is a principal factor

affecting early cortical development, then we need to re-examine closely what schools do

in the primary and intermediate grades. We must assess whether the learning environment

is truly challenging and creative for all students. Of course, this should be the goal of all

schools regardless, but the research implies that school experiences for this age group

may have a significant impact on an individual's eventual level of intelligence. That bears

repeating: What happens in classrooms may actually raise or lower a student's IQ –

maybe even the teacher's!' (12)

Multiple Intelligence and Levels of Giftedness

Some researchers attempt to address the complexity and diversity of intelligence in a

direct way, by basing their models on these very characteristics. A well known example is

the multiple-intelligence (MI) model of Gardner (2004a). Developing his theory in

opposition to the prevailing single-intelligence model, Gardner proposed seven


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intelligences in his original formulation (spatial, linguistic, logical-mathematical, kinesthetic,

musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal), later adding an eighth (naturalist). In his

Introduction to the twentieth-anniversary edition of Frames of Mind, he anticipates the

addition of other intelligences, referring specifically to emotional, spiritual, sexual, digital

and attentional intelligences (2004a: xix).

By Gardner's own admission, MI theory has a life of its own (he borrows Dawkin's

term, 'meme'). He is critical of some of the interpretations to which it has been subjected

(xvii–xviii), and in particular of simplistic applications in education: 'at any particular

moment, people differ for both genetic and experiential reasons in their respective profiles

of intellectual strengths and weaknesses. No intelligence is in and of itself artistic or non-

artistic; rather several intelligences can be put to aesthetic ends, if individuals so desire.

No direct educational implications follow from this psychological theory; but if people differ

in their intellectual profiles, it makes sense to take this variation into account in devising an

educational system.' (xv)

Although Sousa is critical of the 'fad-like' nature of some MI programs, he points out

that this model 'reminds teachers that students have different strengths and weaknesses,

different interests, and that they learn in different ways. By using Gardner's ideas, teachers

are likely to address the needs of a wider range of students, including the gifted ...

Classroom observations and studies have shown that more students are likely to be

motivated and succeed in classes where teachers use a variety of activities designed to

appeal to students whose strengths lie in one or more of the intelligences described by

Gardner' (2009: 16).

Gardner himself has said that educational goals 'need to reflect one's own values,

and these can never come simply or directly from a scientific theory' such as MI. The


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'putative existence' of our multiple intelligences may prove helpful once reflection on

educational values and statement of educational goals have taken place. ( xviii)

While Gardner's model attempts to do justice to the multiplicity of kinds of

intelligence, Ruf (2009) explores a multiplicity of levels within intelligence or, more

precisely, within the upper range of intelligence that is referred to as 'gifted'. The very idea

of giftedness is, of course, predicated on a range within intelligence, but there is also a

recognition that there is another range within giftedness itself. We may recall that Taylor

and Milton referred to 'exceptionally gifted' learners (2006: 27), and one comes across

terms such as 'profoundly gifted' in the literature. Ruf has attempted to chart this range,

and proposes five levels of giftedness.

While acknowledging that the identification of the gifted is 'fraught with disagreement

over criteria, terms, and definitions', Ruf holds that there is 'still sufficient agreement in

practice' to accept two principal methods of identification: parent and teacher

recommendation based on characteristics and behaviours, and IQ and achievement test

scores (30). It should be pointed out that Ruf uses 'gifted' and 'intellectually gifted'

interchangeably, and it is clear that her theory relates primarily to the latter.

Although Ruf uses IQ scores to distinguish the five levels of giftedness, she is quick

to point out that there is no 'magic line between gifted and not gifted' (xiv). Indeed, 'a gifted

cut-off score used by schools for program eligibility is confusing if it leads people to think

that a child is either gifted or not gifted. There is a continuum of intellectual giftedness, and

children at different points along that continuum differ considerably in their learning

abilities and their educational needs' (35). In keeping with this, Ruf refers to her levels as

'estimates'. The following table (from Ruf, 2009: 51) summarises her schema:


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Levels of Giftedness Approximate Score Range Descriptive Designation

Level One 120–129 Moderately gifted 120–124 / Gifted 125–129

Level Two 130–135 Highly Gifted

Level Three 136–140 Exceptionally Gifted

Level Four 141+ Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted

Level Five 141+ Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted

Levels Four and Five cannot be distinguished in terms of IQ scores, due to the limitations

of current tests, and they can be distinguished in terms of behaviour.

For Ruf, there are several implications of the levels of giftedness for schooling. First,

schools need to recognise the frequency of occurrence of very high levels of intelligence:

'Most people don't realize that there are far more potential geniuses – children who are

remarkably intellectually different from their same-age classmates – than the oft-repeated

"one in a thousand" or "one in a million" statistics would suggest' (xiv).

Second, giftedness is not merely a matter of intellectual ability, but rather denotes a

constellation of attributes: 'Intelligence is an intangible concept that defies being distilled

into a checklist of learning or thinking traits. Many behaviors besides intelligence are also

associated with giftedness, and the more gifted the child, the more clearly these behaviors

are present. The range of behaviors and traits varies enormously within the highly

intelligent population' (1).

Third, by the time they are aged 10 or 11, Level Five (or profoundly) gifted children

are beyond even the most advanced primary or middle school, and are ready for college-

level work. Although some parents send their children to college at this age, Ruf

recommends a combination of correspondence courses along with high school and

accelerated program attendance. (311)


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Synthesis

Rogers (2007) attempts to synthesise the research into provision for gifted children into a

set of five 'lessons'. These are phrased in terms sufficiently general to apply to any gifted

child, without implying that all gifted children are the same. Indeed, 'thinking of the gifted

learner as idiosyncratic, not necessarily one of the many classified as "the gifted," requires

a reconceptualization of how to appropriately and fully serve this unique learner' (382).

The five lessons are as follows:

Gifted and talented learners need daily challenge in their specific areas of talent.

Opportunities should be provided on a regular basis for gifted learners to be

unique and to work independently in their areas of passion and talent.

Provide various forms of subject-based and grade-based acceleration to gifted

learners as their educational needs require.

Provide opportunities for gifted learners to socialise and to learn with like-ability

peers.

For specific curriculum areas, instructional delivery must be differentiated in

pace, amount of review and practice, and organisation of content presentation.

It is up to each school to decide how best to implement these lessons, according to its own

philosophy, its staff, and the school community (382).

3. Relating the Literature to the Statement of Inquiry

The complexity and diversity of models of giftedness can appear bewildering, and one

might be tempted to throw up one's arms in resignation at the prospect of teaching a


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heterogeneous class of children. What is any teacher, let alone a recently qualified one, to

make of the plethora of definitions, characteristics, methods of assessment, and

pedagogical provisions relating to giftedness? Do they produce a philosophically

satisfactory account of giftedness?

As so often in philosophy, we begin by looking at the concept – in this case, the

concept of giftedness. This, after all, is the one thing that all researchers and writers

purport to study and describe. In order to arrive at a general concept of something, we

have to abstract from all of the particularities of its manifestation. Concepts isolate the

common characteristic or characteristics of things, and are often associated with

'definitions'. This works well enough for the objects of everyday experience: we have a

concept of chair, and define it as 'a raised surface for sitting on'. A chair without a back or

arm rests is known as a 'stool'. This process of abstraction leading to distinct concepts and

ever-more-refined definitions is known as 'analysis', and scientists legitimately use it all the

time.

Psychological science proceeds in this fashion, abstracting mental states such as

'happy' or 'sad' from the stream of consciousness. Having concepts of happiness and

sadness allows psychologists to talk about them in general terms, in isolation from any

particular individual's happiness or sadness. But we do not experience happiness or

sadness in general – we only experience our own particular happiness and sadness.

Furthermore, although psychology refers to these phenomena as 'states', implying static

realities, our experience of them is far from static. My intuitive sense of my own mental life

is one of flow, rather than a succession of states.

Notwithstanding the utility of analysis to science, French philosopher Henri Bergson

(1992) sees a danger in it:


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In so far as abstract ideas can render service to analysis, that is, to a scientific study

of the object in its relations with all others, to that very extent are they incapable of

replacing intuition, that is to say, the metaphysical investigation of the object in what

essentially belongs to it. On the one hand, indeed, these concepts placed end to end

will never give us anything more than an artificial recomposition of the object of which

they can symbolize only certain general and, as it were, impersonal aspects:

therefore it is vain to believe that through them one can grasp a reality when all they

present is its shadow. But on the other hand, alongside the illusion, there is also a

very grave danger. For the concept generalizes at the same time that it abstracts.

The concept can symbolize a particular property only by making it common to an

infinity of things. Therefore it always more or less distorts this property by the

extension it gives to it. (166–7)

By abstracting from all of the particularities of my own happiness and sadness, by seeing

them as general states rather than a flow, the concepts of happiness and sadness distort

the reality of my intuitive experience of happiness and sadness. After all, what

distinguishes my happiness and sadness from yours or anyone else's is the particular

colour that is imparted to them by my whole personality, including my memory. Here is

Bergson again:

It is undeniable that any psychological state, by the sole fact that it belongs to a

person, reflects the whole of a personality. There is no feeling, no matter how simple,

which does not virtually contain the past and present of the being which experiences


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it, which can be separated from it and constitute a "state," other than by an effort of

abstraction or analysis. But it is no less undeniable that without this effort of

abstraction or analysis there would be no possible development of psychological

science. Now, of what does the operation consist by which the psychologist detaches

a psychological state in order to set it up as a more or less independent entity? He

begins by disregarding the person's special coloration, which can be expressed in

common and known terms. He then strives to isolate, in the person thus already

simplified, this or that aspect which lends itself to an interesting study. (169–70)

To be gifted is not to experience a 'mood', like being happy or sad. The description of

someone as 'gifted' is an attempt to capture a constellation of traits under a single concept.

Like any concept, however, the concept of giftedness must abstract from the particularities

of individual cases. The same is true of any of the concepts associated with giftedness,

such as 'overexcitability' or 'sensitivity'. As such, all of these concepts distort the reality

that they attempt to describe. The sensitive person does not experience sensitivity as

such, but only his or her own sensitivity, which is a fluid experience coloured by the whole

personality, rather than a state. Similarly, no one is gifted in general – every single case is

going to be unique, and involve a different constellation of traits.

For practical purposes, of course, society groups people together into general

categories. Schools, as social institutions, also proceed in this manner. But the teacher of

a class of thirty individual children, grouped together by age, is charged with the education

of those children as individuals. Schools are mass institutions, but education is an

individual process. Each child is a constellation of aptitudes, competencies and

behaviours, and each of these traits is particular to that child.


21

The purposes of schooling don't necessarily align with those of education. As

Robinson (2009) reminds us, mass schooling is a recent phenomenon, originating in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and 'designed to meet the economic interests of those

times – times that were dominated by the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America.

Math, science, and language skills were essential for jobs in the industrial economies ...

The result is that school systems everywhere inculcate us with a very narrow view of

intelligence and capacity and overvalue particular sorts of talent and ability. In doing so,

they neglect others that are just as important, and they disregard the relationships

between them in sustaining the vitality of our lives and communities. This stratified, one-

size-fits-all approach to education marginalizes all of those who do not take naturally to

learning this way' (13–14).

Robinson relates the story of dancer and choreographer, Gillian Lynne, who was

taken to a psychologist at the age of eight (in the 1930s) because her constant fidgeting

and distractibility at school were disruptive to the entire class, and because her poor

school work lead to suspicions of a learning disorder. Fortunately for Gillian, the

psychologist seems to have had an enlightened outlook, and suggested to Gillian's mother

that she should go to a dance school. The change of environment made a world of

difference to Gillian. Now she was surrounded by children who, like her, had to move in

order to think. Gillian had found her 'element' and the outcome was a highly successful

career. As Robinson comments, she was lucky to have been taken to a psychologist

whose experience allowed him to 'read the signs' – someone else might have 'put her on

medication and told her to calm down' (4). This story is instructive, but one aspect of it is

particularly relevant to our topic. In conversation with Robinson, Gillian said that she 'did


22

better at all of her subjects once she discovered dance. She was one of those people who

had to "move to think"' (14).

Gillian could be described as intelligent in Gardner's sense of kinesthetic intelligence,

but even this would be an abstraction from the individual fluid reality of the person. By

discovering her element, Gillian's performance in all of her school subjects improved. But

who could have predicted that? Is there a model of giftedness that says that a fidgety,

distractible child should go to a dance school, thereby improving overall school

performance? Even models like Gardner's, helpful as they may be, are no substitute for

treating the individual as an individual. Even a fine-grained model (such as a street map) is

an abstraction from the particularity of reality. To extend the analogy, an accurate map is

useful if it helps us find our bearings, if it guides us to a destination, but looking at a map

should not be confused with making the journey. We like models, because reality is

messy, but to take the model for the reality is a mistake (a mis-take).

Another outspoken critic of mass schooling is John Taylor Gatto. As an award-

winning teacher of thirty-years experience, his views are not to be taken lightly. Like

Robinson, he refers to the origins of mass schooling in the exigencies of industrial

civilisation, and with similarly damaging effects on individuals:

The rhetoric of collectivization leads quickly to treating groups and sub-groups as

averages. This makes managerial labor much easier, but guarantees bad results no

matter how many resources are devoted to improving the lot of the group … The logic

of collectivization seeks to disconnect each child from his or her own unique

constellation, particular circumstances, traditions, aspirations, past experiences,

families, and to treat each as the representative of a type. (2010: 129)


23

For Gatto, 'gifted and talented' (or 'special needs' or any other categorisation used by

schools), is simply a way of grouping individuals for administrative convenience. Parents

see their children as individuals, while schools treat them as representative of types, and

teachers are caught midway between these tendencies. In his resignation speech, when

he was the New York State Teacher of the Year, Gatto made the following point:

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when

both are thirteen, you can't tell which one learned first – the five-year spread means

nothing at all. But in school, I label Rachel 'learning disabled' and slow David down a

bit, too. For a paycheck, I teach David to depend on me to tell him when to go and

stop. He won't outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise,

'special education' fodder. She'll be locked in her place forever.

In thirty years of teaching kids, rich and poor, I almost never met a learning-disabled

child; hardly ever met a gifted-and-talented one, either. Like all school categories,

these are sacred myths created by human imagination. They derive from

questionable values that we never examine because they preserve the temple of

schooling. (2010: 84–5)

Gatto gives many examples of people who have become highly successful with little or no

schooling, either because they lived in an era before mass schooling, or because they

dropped out. Indeed, schooling seemed to be inimical to these individuals. They learned

what they needed to know from life itself, from needing to solve real-life problems, making


24

mistakes, etc. (2010: Chapter 2). Robinson makes a similar point: 'Those students whose

minds work differently – and we're talking about many students here; perhaps even the

majority of them – can feel alienated from the whole culture of education. This is exactly

why some of the most successful people you'll ever meet didn't do well at school ' (2009:

16).

Gardner's work on multiple intelligences originated in psychology, but about ten years

after the publication of his iconic book he turned his attention to education research,

coming to some similar conclusions to Gatto and Robinson, although from a different

angle. Gardner was interested in the fact that students who had spent years learning

things from textbooks, and even scoring well in tests of such knowledge, would often make

rudimentary mistakes in questions about real-world applications of the same knowledge. It

was as if their preschool understanding had greater persistence than the facts they had

spent years acquiring at school. In other words, they were able to demonstrate knowledge

of the facts in the context of school assessment, but unable to transfer this knowledge to

the real world, as is necessary in the case of discipline mastery. Gardner concludes that

schools need to change radically, but there are powerful forces militating against such

change:

Beginning with those constraints that are likely to be encountered everywhere,

schools are institutions that place together individuals who have not known one

another, to work on tasks that appear more or less remote from the operation of the

remainder of the society. It is therefore necessary to set up procedures by which the

institution can run smoothly and to have rewards and punishments that are

appropriate to its purposes. It is hardly ideal to have to transmit knowledge in mass


25

form, with tens or scores of students in the same room, each with his own strengths

and weaknesses, approaches to learning, goals, and aspirations. Teachers must

also deal with non-cognitive problems that beset their students, problems that are

seemingly unrelated to the overt mission of schools yet that can cripple a class as

effectively as would a plague or a fire. (2004b: 138)

For Gardner, part of the solution is to have students working on real-world problems, and

for educators to teach for genuine understanding rather than entering into a bureaucratic

compromise, one in which the students are complicit. Since the world is changing rapidly,

schooling will have to adapt if it is to be relevant:

Just as the mind of the five-year-old endures in the school-age pupil, so too the values

and practices of the wider community do not disappear just because the student

happens to be sitting in class and listening to the teacher talk. Once the student

departs from class at the end of the day, or at the end of her school career, the

messages and practices featured on television, the objects prized by the consuming

society, the games played in arcades or on the floor of the stock exchange achieve

enormous salience. Just how to balance and integrate the mission of school with the

practices of the wider community is a problem that few educational institutions

have solved. (139)

Someone who successfully related his school work to the real world was Gatto, although

he did it in spite of the system rather than because of it. His bargain with the students (and

their parents) wasn't the bureaucratic one of settling for good test results, but one in which


26

the students could engage in real-world learning as long as they didn't tell the school

authorities! But more than that, Gatto realised that the only way he could genuinely

engage his students was to profile them thoroughly and to tailor their education to their

particular interests, aptitudes, and styles of learning. These profiles relied not on school

records but on data from 'parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, friends and enemies –

anyone who could provide intimate information to the emerging personal narrative' (2010:

101–2):

Once a profile was created, the second step was to add a personalized Wishes and

Weaknesses component. I asked each student to list three things each wanted to be

knowledgeable about by the end of the year – that was the wishes part – and three

weaknesses he or she wished to overcome, deficiencies which led to humiliation (I

get beat up all the time) or failures of opportunity (I want to do modeling work but only

the rich kids know how to present themselves to get that) – that was the weaknesses

part. I exercised virtually no censorship and whatever the individual kid's priorities

were became mine. I didn't consult with a single school administrator to put this

program in place, nor with any other teacher – only with parents from whom I

extracted promises of silence.

I know this sounds like a hideous amount of effort, and politically impossible in a large

urban school, but it was neither: it required only will, imagination, resourcefulness,

and a determination to scrap any rules which stood in the way … Acting in my favor

was the fact that with this new curriculum each kid was motivated, worked much

harder than I legally could have asked him or her to do, and recruited outside


27

assistance with resources no classroom teacher could match. And now for the first

time each had a personal reason to work hard, one that was self-grading. (2010: 102)

Gatto also tells us that only by motivating his students in this way could he hope to

compete with the television and computer entertainment that he believed were keeping his

students in a state of passive consumerism. Merely exhorting them to change would not

have worked:

Plunging kids into the nerve-wracking, but exhilarating waters of real life – sending

them on expeditions across the state, opening the court systems to their lawsuits,

and the economy to their businesses, filling public forums with their speeches and

political action – made them realize, without lectures, how much of their time was

customarily wasted sitting in the dark. And as that realization took hold, their

dependence on the electronic doll houses diminished. (2010: 93)

With regard to Gatto's radically individual approach to his students, it is pertinent to note

some observations from Gallagher's (2007) study of primary teachers:

By far the most common way for these teachers to differentiate instruction for their

gifted students was the use of individual contracts. In some cases, activities that were

instigated for the benefit of the gifted student were extended to the rest of the class,

with positive results. In the smaller schools where the teachers were operating in

multi-age classes, they had developed a more flexible approach, which allowed all

students to work at their own level. In these cases it may appear that little


28

modification had been made for the gifted student ... but it may be that these teachers

were trying to apply the principles of good gifted education to everyone in the class.

(23)

Several of the teachers reported that their experiences with their gifted student had

caused them to re-evaluate their general teaching practice resulting in positive

benefits to the rest of their class and future students. (26)

One begins to wonder what would happen if all school children were given the

opportunities and challenges that are normally reserved for those identified as gifted. Is it

true, as Gatto (2005) claims, that schools are 'dumbing us down'? Referring to figures

indicating a drop in American literacy rates since the introduction of compulsory schooling,

and other indications that home-schooled children are five-to-ten years ahead of their

formally educated peers in thinking abilities (2005: 22), Gatto suggests that schooling may

be producing the opposite of what it claims to achieve:

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This

is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in

schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the

institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and

do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. It rings

a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook

and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys

derive from a common ancestor. (2005: 21–2)


29

A corollary of what was said above about brain plasticity might be that if we challenge

students more, their brains might rise to the occasion. Perhaps those children who have

been formally identified as gifted are those whose brains have received, for one reason or

another, the right sort of stimulation from birth.

This is the challenging thesis suggested by Claxton and Meadows (2009). Reminding

us that 'brightness' or 'giftedness' are 'inferences and attributions, not statements of self-

evident fact', they set out to explore 'the behaviours and dispositions on which these

inferences and attributions are based and explore the ways in which they might have been

learned, and thus could be subject to further systematic modification' (3). They offer the

following list of behaviours and dispositions that are used by teachers to make the

attribution of 'bright' (3–4):

Physically alert and energetic

Strongly oriented to adults and alert to their presence

Facial expressions

Sensible responses for the classroom context

Ability to maintain focus

Articulateness

Quick on the uptake

Ability to sit still and listen to adults

Greater ease and fluency with peers

Ability to remember and make links to what has happened

Proactive and inquisitive


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Greater perceptiveness about sensory details and patterns

From this it is clear that 'bright' is a 'portmanteau word that contains a number of

ingredients … [and] being "bright" is not a single thing; it is woven together from a number

of separable developmental achievements, some social, some perceptual, some cognitive

and some linguistic' (4).

The writers then go on to suggest the sorts of environmental influences on young

children that could account for the observed behaviours and dispositions associated with

'brightness'. In the years between birth and school, children are immersed in surroundings

and relationships that will influence them in multifarious ways:

The habitual ways in which carers scaffold, guide, interpret, comment on and

evaluate children's activities set up corresponding habits and expectations in the

child, some of which may be education-positive and others not. (When you tell an

outrageously exaggerated story, do grown-ups regularly laugh and clap, or tell you off

for bragging or lying? How often do you have a story read to you and discussed with

you? Are you allowed to play with things around the house or are you continually told

'don't touch'?). Recurrent rituals sow and water the seeds of certain ways of thinking

and talking. Family mealtimes, for example, are an important arena in which habits of

debate and discussion are displayed, and a child's 'legitimate peripheral participation'

as fledgling debaters may be invited and shaped — or not (Pontecorvo and Sterponi

2002). All the time, adults model ways of solving problems such as trying to

remember where possessions have been left (Tharp and Gallimore 1988) or how to

understand other people's feelings (Meadows 2006). They are continually teaching


31

through their actions how to react when things go wrong, what to do with leisure time,

what is worthy of note and what things (that may be perfectly obvious and interesting

to the child) get regularly and strategically ignored (Billig 1999). (5)

Claxton and Meadows acknowledge that the research shows some inherited element in

brightness, but argue that its significance should not be overestimated by comparison with

environmental influences:

Most researchers (e.g. Resnick 1999) now believe that young minds are better

thought of as 'developing muscles' than 'fixed-capacity engines'. The mind is made

up of many interwoven strands which get stronger with exercise. Like musculature,

minds have a genetic element to them. Different people are born with different

physical 'potential', different ranges and aptitudes. But the training which these

muscles receive determines whether they get stronger, much more so than

differences in 'potential'. In practice the hypothetical 'ceilings' set by genetic

differences are so far away from where a child currently is that there is no excuse for

anyone to impute 'lack of innate ability' when a child finds something hard to master.

There is plenty of room for virtually everyone's physical fitness to improve, and

likewise there is plenty of room for everyone to get brighter, whatever portfolio of

capacities and dispositions their genes and their early years has provided them with.

Of course those early years have a big influence on the kind of learner you might

become. But a child's learning style and capacity is not fixed: far from it. We conclude

that it is strategically practical and morally preferable to focus our attention as


32

educators on how children's minds might be capable of development, rather than on

what is immutable. (5)

As Meadows puts it elsewhere (1993): 'The genes you inherit from your parents may

determine the potential you have for intelligence, but the environment in which you are

reared determines how nearly you reach that potential' (182).

Despite a broad consensus about the learnability of 'brightness', the idea that

intelligence exists in a fixed quantity persists, and it influences educational policy and

practice. Once attributions of 'bright' or 'dim' are made, expectations are created and

reinforced in children, parents, peers and teachers alike. Such expectations are not merely

damaging, they are simplistic, since they take into account neither variations over time nor

the fact that intelligence is highly individual and variable:

The fixed-pot view of ability is often associated with a restricted and rather academic

view of intelligence in general. Yet recent research tells us that intelligence is as

much about thinking slowly as it is about quick answering, and that true intelligence

should not be confused with verbal fluency or mere cleverness (Claxton 1997). Yet

there are still schools where 'slow' is used as a euphemism for stupid. Students with

more practical or creative forms of intelligence can, as Sternberg … puts it, be

'essentially "iced out" of the system, because at no point are they much allowed to let

their abilities shine through'.

Like adults, any group of children will vary widely on their current levels of

achievement and performance (CLAPs) on any kind of skills or subject matter. To


33

deny the fixed-pot theory of ability is not to deny these differences; it is merely to

deny a particularly common but pernicious way of talking about them, how they came

to be, and what can be done about them. (Claxton and Meadows, 2009: 6)

The authors point out that people with high CLAPs in any domain have got there through

long and persistent application: 'if you want to be outstanding, you need to invest around

10,000 hours of good practice ... The reason that virtuosi are so rare is because most of us

don't put in the hours. We lack the desire, the emotional support, the material resources,

and we have too many other interesting things to do' (6–7).

Resnick (1999) points out that while training in the cognitive skills associated with

intelligence has been shown to improve performance, once the training conditions are

removed the skills do not persist. Cognitive researchers have consequently shifted their

attention to 'educational strategies that immerse students in demanding, long-term

intellectual environments':

In experimental programs and in practical school reforms, we are seeing that

students who, over an extended period of time are treated as if they are intelligent,

actually become so. If they are taught demanding content, and are expected to

explain and find connections as well as memorize and repeat, they learn more and

learn more quickly. They think of themselves as learners. They are able to bounce

back in the face of short-term failures. (Resnick, 1999)

Gatto claims that modern society artificially extends childhood, pointing out that earlier

societies didn't recognise a distinct phase of life called 'adolescence' – around puberty


34

males and females left childhood behind and entered the adult world (2010: 39–40).

Claxton and Meadows refer to research on 'student voice' that appears to support a

psychological need for challenge as children turn into adults. The research indicates that

adolescents want schools to give them greater respect and responsibility:

Give them the opportunity, and many of them will find and engage with learning

challenges that are well beyond what the prescribed curriculum demands — just as

many of them are already doing on their bedroom computers in the evenings. They

say they like challenge. They like stretching their learning muscles, provided they see

demanding exercise as a way of getting stronger, not as exposing their 'weakness'.

And they know when things are getting too easy and it is time to make it more difficult

for themselves. (Claxton and Meadows, 2009: 8)

They conclude their paper with a suggestion that is congruent with Gatto's emphases:

In ten years' time, the antiquated and dysfunctional idea that 'giftedness' is an innate,

abiding and situation-independent quality of a fortunate minority of young people

must have been removed from the discourse of educational practice and policy. It

must instead be widely recognised that this idea exists primarily as a stress-reduction

device for teachers, one that comes with unacceptable side-effects for the majority of

young people – both those who are designated 'gifted' and those who are not. In its

place must come a more humble and pragmatic commitment to helping all

youngsters (a) stretch their mental capacities (whatever level those capacities may

currently be) i.e. become more 'gifted' and (b) discover the domains of human


35

achievement they would most like to become good at i.e. become more 'talented'. We

must accept that transitory levels of achievement in any sphere, including

sociolinguistic fluency, reflect composites of learned habits, and provide only poor

guides to future learning and performance. (9)

Another writer who points out the pernicious effects of the fixed-pot notion of intelligence is

Stanford Professor of Psychology, Carol Dweck (2006). Her research led her to conclude

that people tend towards one of two 'mindsets' (6–7). Those with the 'fixed mindset' think

of their ability in terms of a fixed amount, incapable of alteration – beyond a certain point,

they simply give up on challenges that are deemed too difficult. Those with the 'growth

mindset', on the other hand, regard challenges as opportunities to learn and grow (7–9).

We began this paper with a question. Do the academic research on giftedness, and the

proliferating models of giftedness to which it gives rise, produce a philosophically

satisfactory account of giftedness? This rather lengthy section has invoked ideas that go

beyond the research base in an attempt to answer the question, by situating the research

within a wider context. We have referred to these ideas as broadly philosophical.

The first thing these ideas help us to understand is that the concept of 'giftedness',

like all concepts, distorts the reality that it attempts to capture. Concepts allow us to

discuss things in general terms, but they can mislead us when we mistake the concept for

the living reality. The simplicity of concepts makes them very seductive – it is as if

language beguiles us into thinking we have control over reality just because we can

construct theories about it.


36

It may be that the simplicity and abstractness of the concept is ultimately what is

behind the tendency for models to proliferate and become more complex, as if we need to

elaborate and differentiate the concept to get it to fit the reality that we cannot escape. But

no model, no matter how sophisticated, can fit a reality that is fluid in nature.

The impulse to control our world through concepts has practical utility. In particular,

concepts of 'intelligence' and 'giftedness' lend themselves to the managerial side of the

mass social institutions that we call schools. Insofar as we can group people together

under broad categories, these institutions can persist, upheld as they are by the force of

law, by public funding, and by the social and economic imperatives for children to be cared

for while their parents work, and to demonstrate their competence to employers and

universities through standardised tests.

But, as many of the writers in this section point out, there is a contradiction at the

heart of schooling, and it stands out most clearly when one considers those who have the

greatest difficulty fitting into the schooling system, but it is true of all individuals

nonetheless. Public schooling groups children together, usually in large groups (twenty to

thirty), and primarily according to age (alternatives, such as Montessori, represent an

improvement, but at a financial cost). Education, on the other hand, is an individual matter.

The research on giftedness is useful to the degree that it establishes those who

demonstrate exceptional abilities as a group having special educational needs, and insofar

as it dispels misconceptions about this group. It can also expose the shortfall in the

provision of those needs, whether it be through inadequate preservice or in-service

teacher training, misplaced school priorities, negative teacher attitudes, or simply a lack of

will and imagination.


37

Models of giftedness have a role to play in the research. Over time, more fine-grained

and sophisticated models have replaced simpler and less adequate ones. Different models

have different strengths and weaknesses. Intellectual giftedness lends itself to

measurement through IQ testing, but it excludes other sorts of giftedness and also

depends on a fixed-pot idea of giftedness that is by no means well established. For

administrative and economic purposes, it also leads to the creation of arbitrary cut-off

marks, as in the case of WA's PEAC program, thereby excluding bright students who don't

quite make the grade. Ruf's notion of levels of giftedness represents a refinement, but

basically suffers from the same problems.

Multiple-intelligence models such as Gardner's allow for other sorts of giftedness, but

they are not so easily measured, and therefore may be neglected in a bureaucratic school

system that requires accountability. They also risk fragmenting endlessly into further and

further subdivisions, a tendency that can already been seen in Gardner's own comments

above. Why should there be only one kind of musical intelligence, for instance?

At root, all models are liable to be absorbed into the administrative system of

schooling, and there is a danger that teachers and schools will feel that they have done

their job if they can tick the boxes that say that such and such a model of giftedness has

been used and provision is being made for their gifted students. That may benefit to some

extent the students identified as gifted by that particular model, but will exclude others and

also separate such students from their supposedly non-gifted peers. As we have seen,

some of the research indicates that all of the students in a class can benefit from programs

designed for those who have been identified as gifted. This accords with common sense,

once fixed-pot theories of intelligence are dropped.


38

In spite of the benefits of research, and without wishing to undermine its role in the

academic system, the present writer finds greater insight and inspiration in the anecdotal

words of the thinkers presented in this section. Another exemplar is multi-award-winning

teacher Rafe Esquith (2007), whose book provides a wealth of information about engaging

students in real learning. Biography can be a powerful teacher, and is perhaps the next

best thing to apprenticing oneself to such a person.

Interestingly, a similar point is made by an academic writer in a book devoted to

gifted education. A consultant and trainer in gifted and talented education in the UK,

Hymer (2009) makes the following admission:

As a psychologist and educator trained within the standard social sciences tradition of

the neutral, disinterested outsider, I had been conditioned to believe that as a teacher

I could ensure 'successful learning' principally through focusing my energies on the

quality and rigour of my arguments and evidence-base (an empirical foundation), and

the technical 'efficiency' and persuasiveness of my presentations (the dark arts and

tools of sophistry). However, the evaluative feedback I have received in the course of

recent research ... has suggested, on the contrary, that beyond certain baseline

presentational skills ... only a relatively small part of the significant meanings (deep

learning) gained by participants can be attributable to the course content

('knowledge') and presentational technique. What has struck me over the course of

my research is how seldom people comment on being convinced, impressed, or

transformed by the 'research evidence' underpinning an approach – even though

'evidence-base' (and I mean by this empirical evidence from within the hypothetico-

deductive method) was, and to some extent remains, one of my most frequently


39

invoked claims to credibility and legitimacy. What they do (and frequently) comment

on is the personal knowledge, by which I include insights, principles, values, beliefs,

practices, etc. that they have constructed through dialogue with me and with others.

This is for me where learning becomes most real, meaningful, and 'inclusional' (299–

300).

Hymer's growing dissatisfaction with his 'adoption of a declarative, superficially

authoritative "expert-speak" delivery style at conferences, workshops and training days'

(299) is only one of three levels of dissatisfaction he experiences with his own practice, at

what he calls the level of process.

At the level of content, he expresses a similar dissatisfaction with 'a perceived

emphasis on traditional test-and-place mantras and an implied belief in the existence of

the "naturally gifted" student, in the face of overwhelming evidence of the fluidity of such

abstract and socially-constructed concepts as "intelligence" or "ability"' (299). At the level

of product, he is critical of 'an implied faith in the viability of transferred (i.e. efficiently

transmitted) "objective" knowledge, understandings and practices, despite a recognition of

the salience of contextual factors in knowledge-creation and a rejection of the "banking"

concept of education' (299).

In terms that could almost have come straight from Bergson, Hymer speaks of

'generative-transformational giftedness' as a model-that-is-not-a-model: 'I see it as

embodying not so much a reified "thing," as we have objectified "intelligence" or

"giftedness" in the twentieth century, but rather a limpid process-state, fluid and

changeable, and simultaneously both a value in and of itself, and a relational outcome.

What I describe as generative-transformational giftedness, and the conditions under which


40

I suggest it arises, is proposed as a theoretical scientific model – not a literal picture of

"reality" – but a personally meaningful, partial and provisional way of imagining the

unobservable' (301).

It is pertinent that Hymer finds inspiration in 'the dialogical methods' of Socrates,

Wittgenstein, Lipman (the founder of Philosophy for Children), and Vygotsky (300). He

also approvingly quotes Dewey – 'Everything we see in children is transitional, promises

and signs of the future ... not to be treated as achievements, cut off and fixed; they are

prophetic, signs of an accumulating power and interest' (301) – and detects in him an

anticipation of Dweck's incremental view of intelligence (301).

As we have seen, Hymer thinks of giftedness not as a fixed thing, but as a

disposition: 'a tendency to think with clarity, creativity, originality, and insight in a certain

way under certain conditions' (302). Within this broad tendency he suggests five 'emergent

criteria for gift-creation' (303): Generative-Transformational, Contradictory/Dialectical,

Relational, Activity-oriented and Temporal/Social. This is captured in the acronym G-T

CReATe. The following table summarises the differences between this conceptualisation

and the traditional one (306–7):

Domain Traditional Conceptualisation G-T CReATe Conceptualisation

Gift-identification? Yes; test & classify; the earlier the better

No; focus instead on gift-creation; happens at moments of coincidence between opportunity and need

Educators' emphasis 'objective' data from past performances

creating opportunities for present and future learning

G&T cohorts and labels?

Yes; distinct teaching and learning provision (often acceleration) on the grounds of ability and identification

No; inclusive initial provision, but extension opportunities on the grounds of interest and application

Nature or nurture? Emphasis on individual intelligence and the provenance of nature, genetics, background influences

Emphasis on the impact of social factors in learning, on motivation and distributed intelligence

Teacher's role? Teacher as neutral, impartial Teacher as involved co-participant in the


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arbiter, separate from and independent of individual students

construction of gifts and talents

Co-ordinator's role? Co-ordinator role: administrator of systems for identification, tracking and monitoring

Co-ordinator role: peer-coach and co-learner, alert to new learning and teaching methodologies for dissemination and championing

Expectations for performance over time?

Assumptions of linear progression in performance based on fixed ability

Assumptions of variable performance based on (e.g.) temporal-social, relational factors

Integration of affective factors?

Cognitive-emotional duality Cognitive-emotional dialectical unity

Self theory? (Dweck 1999)

Feeds fixed, entity-approach to intelligence and performance-led orientation

Feeds growth-focused, incremental-approach to intelligence and learning or mastery-led orientation

Evidence of accountability?

Accountability through evidence of student performances and tracking and monitoring systems

Accountability through evidence of student learning, including 'soft data' (e.g. commitment, interest)

In conclusion, the academic research on giftedness, and the proliferating models of

giftedness to which it gives rise, do not produce a philosophically satisfactory account of

giftedness. Models are limited and tend to obscure the reality of individual students. They

also lend themselves to a bureaucratic, box-ticking mentality.

4. Personal Response

Notwithstanding the negative answer to my opening question, reading for this paper has

been hugely informative and satisfying. Since the primary aim of the assignment is

educational, I feel it has truly fulfilled this purpose. The research leads me to conclude that

the only authentic way to teach is to treat each student as an individual, and to tailor their

education accordingly. The steps could be summarised as follows:

Profile students to determine strengths and weakness, aptitudes, interests, and

styles of learning.


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In cooperation with them, devise challenging real-world projects.

Allow them to work individually, in pairs and in groups, at different times and

according to varying criteria (preference, ability, learning style, subject matter,

etc.)

Organise incursions and excursions (e.g. use retirees, who have a wealth of

experience and more free time).

Organise, or allow students to organise, mentoring.

Involve parents thoroughly.

Employ technology optimally (see McVey, 2008), especially the Internet (blogs,

wikis, etc.) – this is another way to keep parents informed (e.g. class wiki).

Make philosophy a part of the whole process (e.g. Kohlberg's stages of moral

development, as used by Esquith, 2007, Chapter 2).

Through all of the above, make sure that the curriculum is covered.

Assessment should allow students to demonstrate their learning and

competence using their own preferred style, though reporting should comply

with the terminology of the curriculum.

This may sound idealistic, and I suppose that possession of idealism is one of the benefits

of being a preservice teacher. It remains to be seen how such a plan would work out in

practice. How will parents react? And the school principal? And, perhaps most

significantly, how will the children take it? By the time they reach the upper-primary, they

will have been 'conditioned' by several years of schooling. If they are a well-behaved class,

will they be thrown by an adjustment to the conventional teacher–student relationship? If


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they are unruly, will they attempt to take advantage of a looser social-constructivist

classroom.

It is my hope that a philosophical approach to education, where there is a good deal

of debate and negotiation of boundaries, and where everything must be justified by

reasons, will encourage mutual respect and maturity. The classroom is not a democracy,

but it could perhaps be democratic under the benign authority of the teacher as monarch!

Most of all, if the students are motivated to work by being engaged in challenging, real-

world projects that they have personally chosen, then perhaps many of the behavioural

problems associated with conventional schooling will simply evaporate. Finally, this

classroom will not distinguish between gifted and non-gifted, since each student will be

able to work optimally on projects of their own choosing.


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References

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Giftedness and Philosophy

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