Identification of Giftedness

The lack of a unified definition of giftedness leads researchers to use very different operationalizations when selecting a sample of gifted individuals for use in research.  We found 74 empirical articles from 21 journals that differentiated between gifted and nongifted students which were analyzed to determine the most common methods of identifying individuals in research.  Results of the analysis show a lack of consensus as to what qualifies a person to be defined as gifted for the purposes of research.  This lack of consensus leads to lower generalizability of research about giftedness and to an inability for researchers in the field to compare results of studies.  An agreed-upon unified definition of giftedness for the purposes of research will lead to a more homogeneous group of participants, which in turn would lead to multiple benefits, including higher external validity in research designs.

The author interviewed Dr. Carolyn Callahan, an eminent scholar in gifted education. The interview focused on Dr. Callahan's work on implementing gifted program in rural areas, and illustrated her suggestions for teachers, researchers, and parents on how to advocate for gifted students.

This study aims to investigate how effective are differentiation and enrichment of an instructional design in revealing and improving creative thinking skills of gifted and talented learners. Pre-test and post-test experiment-control group quasi-experimental design was used in this study. The subjects of the study consisted of 72 students aged 10 to 11 years, who were identified as gifted and talented and who are currently attending the same Science and Arts Center (SAC) in the province of Istanbul. When the findings were interpreted, it is possible to conclude that the instructional design that was differentiated and enriched by means of the Kolb's learning styles the Bloom's taxonomy had positive effects on revealing and improving creative thinking skills of gifted and talented learners. Based on the findings obtained within this study, we could recommend that teachers, who would like to support and develop their students' creative thinking skills, should first start with identifying the potentials, interests and learning styles of their students; then provide them with a learning environment where the students can demonstrate their creativity, defend their ideas freely, and produce unique solutions to the problems that they face; and finally employ the approaches, methods, or techniques that improve creative thinking and whose effectiveness is scientifically proven in the literature.

The current study explored the influence of birth order and family size on academic achievement, divergent thinking (DT), and problem finding (PF) with a sample of 156 gifted male and female Arab students (M= 12.21 years, SD= 1.75). Regarding academic achievement, it was found that first-borns possessed higher grade point averages (GPAs) than did other-born children. Family size was also related to academic achievement-participants from smaller-sized families had significantly higher GPAs compared with gifted students from middle-and large-sized families. As for the influence of birth order and family size on both DT and PF, a multivariate analysis of variance showed significant differences for birth order and the interaction between birth order and family size in the originality dimension of PF. Non-significant differences were found concerning family size. The follow-up analyses of variance showed that later-born gifted students scored higher than first-, second-, third-, and fourth-born children in PF originality. Later-born gifted students who scored higher on originality were from smaller families. No significant influences for birth order and family size were found concerning fluency for both DT and PF as well as DT originality. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

[Punitive] perspectives on artistic education and aesthetic knowing in classrooms void of creative expression. And how to get it back.
(A critique and response to the question:
What impact would art education have on creative cognition in both students’ ability to problem solve and on teachers’ ability to teach with passion as co-learners?)

Academic achievement of learners is an important indicator of the academic success in school. However, some high-ability learners who show great academic potential fail to perform at a level commensurate with their previously displayed abilities. Meanwhile, it has been largely discovered that these discrepancies resulted from some affective and psychological factors. Depression and Stress are linked to lower academic performance. It is proposed that academic performance is reduced in young people with high levels of stress or depression as a function of increased test-specific worry that impinges on working memory central executive processes. Thus, this study investigated depression and stress as determinants of academic underachievement of high-ability learners in selected secondary schools in Oyo State, Nigeria.

The Social Cognitive Model of Achievement, Beck’s Cognitive Theory of Depression and Cognitive Activation Theory of stress provided the framework while the descriptive survey research design was adopted. Simple random sampling technique was used to select five secondary schools in Ibadan to cover for the research scope in Oyo State. However, purposive sampling was adopted to select 94 high-ability learners from SS1 and SS2 classes in the selected secondary schools in Ibadan, Oyo State. To screen for their eligibility as high-ability learners, students’ academic records were obtained from their class teachers in the various schools used in this study and those whose scores are above 70 on the scale of 100 in the key subjects like English and Mathematics were selected; about 8-10 students were selected from each class in the schools. 

The respondents’ age was dominated by the age bracket of 13-16 which represents 84% of the total number of the respondents. Out of the 94 respondents, 55 were females (58.5%) while 39 were males representing 41.5%. likewise, those from the SS2 class were 55 (58.4%) while SS1 were 39 (41.5%). The study found out that depression (r=0.150) and stress (r=0.025) had negative contribution to academic achievement of high-ability learners. It was revealed that a unit increase in depression and stress will cause a decline in academic performance of high-ability learners- academic underachievement by 0.148. The findings from this study also revealed that gender has a significant influence on the effect of depression and stress among high-ability learners’ academic underachievement, even though gender in this study is a moderator variable. This was predominant in the Beck’s depression scale which showed that female high-ability learners are more prone to having mild mood disturbance, moderate depression, and borderline clinical depression than their male counterparts.   
Depression and stress determined academic underachievement among high-ability learners in Oyo State. Therefore, it is recommended that Educators, Counselors, Psychologists, Parents, Researchers and Policy Makers should develop strategies to reduce psychological problems like depression and stress among students and organize intervention programs to enhance high-ability learners’ psychological well-being which helps to increase their academic performance.
Keywords: depression, stress, academic achievement, underachievement, high-ability learners.
Word count: 464

Early intervention is essential in the development of intellectual, emotional, social, oral, and spiritual development of gifted and talented children (Bloom, 1985). In order to provide these children with beneficent early intervention so as to help these children realize their potential, it is critical that their giftedness and talents be identified as early as possible. Such an early identification is a pivotal issue amongst other pertinent issues in educating the gifted and talented. Early and timely intervention is likely to offer young gifted children more opportunities towards fulfilling their perceived potential. This paper begins by reflecting on the current literature pertinent to identification of gifted and talented children. The paper continues by examining and comparing two most used means for assessing and identifying gifted children, screening procedures and nominations. Students’ general abilities tests and academic and non-academic performances are discussed in the screening section, whilst teacher, parent, peer and self nominations are addressed in the nomination section. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications of employing various tools appropriately for identifying gifted and talented children at an early age in Hong Kong.

This study aimed at developing a scale of behavioral characteristics of kindergarten-gifted children to be used in nominating children for gifted programs in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this goal, a blueprint of the scale was developed based
on pertinent literature of the behavioral characteristics of gifted children. The blueprint of the scale was submitted to a jury of specialists in the field of gifted education to decide on its appropriateness and applicability in the Saudi context. Then, the scale was applied by 50 kindergarten female teachers who have
evaluated 539 male and female kindergarten children in the neighborhoods of Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Provenance in Saudi Arabia. Reliability of the scale was calculated using the split-half (.83) and Cronbach's α (.84). A factor analysis yielded five dimensions of behavioral characteristics including: motivation and the desire to learn, language characteristics, learning characteristics, personality characteristics, and logical/math thinking characteristics. Results indicated that there were differences between males and
females in the dimensions of motivation and language characteristics favoring
females, and in the dimension of the logical/mathematical thinking favoring males.
There also were differences between three stages of age for the advantage of the
older ages. In addition, there were significant differences between gifted and nongifted
children in all dimensions. Generally, results of the study indicated that the
scale is valid for use in identifying Saudi's kindergarten-gifted children.

This paper addresses the issue of identification of gifted and talented children, discusses the two commonly used procedures for identification, namely, screening and nomination, and illustrates the author’s personal experiences regarding identification issues in China and Hong Kong.

This paper presented a significant problem in the field of research on the gifted and talented. Traditional methods for the identification of gifted individuals, including intelligence and achievement measures do not always correctly identify every gifted individual.  Identification could be made more accurate with the addition of other identification areas. One often overlooked area for identification is personality measures.  Literature of the field was reviewed to clarify the identification problem. The two research questions examined were:
1. Are there relationships between scores on the Sensory Profile and traditional measures of giftedness?
2. Are there relationships between scores on the OEQII and the Sensory Profile?
Four hypotheses were proposed:
      Hypothesis 1:  Scores on the Sensory Profile will correlate with intelligence
        scores and achievement.
      Hypothesis 2:  Scores on the Sensory Profile will correlate with scores on the
        Overexcitability Questionnaire II.
      Hypothesis 3:  A model consisting of four latent variables (Overexcitability
        Questionnaire II, Sensory Profile, intelligence test scores, achievement scores)
        defined by the scores on their related tests will demonstrate good fit with
        empirically collected data.
      Hypothesis 4:  There will be strong metric invariance between the gifted and non-
        gifted groups on the proposed model.

    Methods for exploring the hypotheses were discussed. Confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group analyses were performed. Discussion of the hypotheses, the limitations of the study, and of future directions for research was conducted.
    All four hypotheses were supported, although some hypotheses were supported more strongly than others. Scores on the Sensory Profile were weakly correlated with intelligence and achievement scores. Scores on the Sensory Profile were moderately correlated with scores on the Overexcitability Questionnaire II. A model consisting of four latent variables (Overexcitability Questionnaire II, Sensory Profile, intelligence test scores, achievement scores) defined by the scores on their related tests demonstrated adequate fit with empirically collected data. There was strict metric invariance between the gifted and non-gifted groups on the proposed model.
    Evidence supporting both convergent and divergent validity between the four latent factors was found as a result of the analyses. Further research should be done to examine the validity of the Sensory Profile for use in identifying gifted individuals.

The Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT) is said to be a culturally neutral measure of ability that assesses both majority and minority students equally. Although research has examined the effects of ethnicity and gender on NNAT performance, little published research has examined the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and NNAT performance. Correlations and multiple regression were used to examine the relationships between ethnicity, SES, and NNAT performance in a large kindergarten sample.  The results suggest a significant relationship between ethnicity, SES, and NNAT performance.  Even after adjusting for ethnic differences, children from low-SES families were half as likely as other children to be identified.

This paper is a mixed-methods exploration of the levels of stereotypic views about gifted individuals held by current and future educators.  Because educators are often asked to provide recommendations for participation in gifted programs, it is important to determine if those recommendations are based, in part, on stereotypic thinking.  Stereotypic views held by educators could bias the selection of participants for gifted programs, preventing students from receiving appropriate gifted educational services. Participants were volunteer undergraduate and graduate education majors.  Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were conducted to determine both the levels of stereotypic thinking within each group, as well as differences in levels of stereotypic thinking between groups.  Results suggest both pre-service and in-service teachers hold stereotypical thoughts about the gifted in multiple areas.

Le haut potentiel est une spécificité méconnue du grand public et dont l’école et l’industrie suisses ne font pas assez cas. Cette absence de prise en compte active et constructive a des coûts humains, médicaux et économiques énormes, et a des répercussions sur la société dans son ensemble: non seulement elle empêche la réalisation du potentiel et le bien-être de tout un pan de la société, mais elle prive également l’ensemble de la communauté de forces vives. Ce volume propose des solutions simples, efficaces, et peu coûteuses pour y remédier.

One of the underutilized tools in gifted identification is personality-based measures.  A multiple confirmatory factor analysis was utilized to examine the relationships between traditional identification methods and personality-based measures.  The pattern of correlations indicated this model could be measuring two constructs, one related to traditional intelligence-related aspects of giftedness and the other related to personality-related aspects. Multiple discriminant analyses were then conducted to determine if the identification method would discriminate between gifted and non-gifted adults.  Traditional identification methods and the OEQII were able to discriminate between gifted and non-gifted but the Sensory Profile was not.

There is no “recommended” age for identification for giftedness. Furthermore, in many cases giftedness identification is unnecessary, and might even be harmful. For example: when a child is identified as gifted and as a result either the parent or the child thinks that he or she is “better than everybody else”; when the child’s parents expect special treatment from teachers, family members, even the child’s peers; when there are no ways to enrich or accelerate the child, and the feeling of “being gifted” but not facing any challenges, intellectual, artistic, or creative causes the child to be frustrated, angry, or nervous – the “gifted label” might do more harm than good. In many other cases giftedness identification is recommended. For example: when in order to be accepted to a program which might ease the child’s life because it is suitable, interesting, challenging, or requiring hard work, which the child is not expected to do anywhere else. Under such circumstances the child should take the “giftedness test” a short time before the deadline for registration in order to ensure there is still vacancy when accepted. Sometimes the probability of acceptance is maximized; for example: sometimes at age 6 a child will be more willing to take the giftedness examination” with a minimal level of anxiety or fear than an older child who is already more aware of the importance of such an identification process and is more influenced by parental expectations.

The question: "how to educate teachers in order to help them be more understanding, more suitable, and more motivated when teaching gifted students" has been widely discussed. The question whether it is possible at all certainly needs more research. However, we shall hereby suggest some "signs", hints, or even explicit utterances that might help teachers to notice students who need extra-supervision, enrichment activities or an accelerated track. These sayings, or doings, are usually either ignored by teachers or quite often wrongly interpreted. Had teachers known how to "read" these signs it would have helped them to know if a certain student needs extra-challenging, different, higher-level school curriculum, more creative homework or self-learning assignments.
1. Being bored: looking bored or complaining about being bored
2. Finishing all tasks before everybody else
3. Correcting the teacher or/and other students/"Takes over" class conversation
4. Not doing homework, not preparing for exams but getting high grades;
5. Behaving highly emotional.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using a program in improving teachers' skills in identifying gifted preschoolers. A total of 30 teachers (15 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group) participated in the program. A cognitive competency scale was constructed and used for pre-and post-measurements. The results showed that several competencies are low .These competencies include knowledge of early talent indicators during the first 3years of child, knowledge of the cognitive, creative, and social characteristics of gifted kindergarteners, ability to determine the criteria diagnosis in identifying gifted kindergarteners, and the ability to use IQ and creative tests in identifying gifted kindergarteners, depend on results of the degree of competences, the program give information to raising competences teacher in identifying gifted preschool, Results show that the program is effective by using the means and ANCOVA results.

This chapter summarizing the situation of teaching mathematics to the gifted elementary-and high school student in Israel. It surveys the various frames of learning: formal learning in the regular and in the gifted class, and the learning of math in the enrichment programs for the gifted-both in the Hebrew an in the Arab sectors. The second part of this chapter summarizes all the existing non-formal programs-acceleration as well as enrichment-for the mathematically gifted child and adolescent. It includes descriptions of these programs, their target audience, the subject learnt in them and the level of studying, the prerequisites-if any, and the contribution to the students in terms of contents as well as certificates or diplomas. The third part of the chapter deals with the contradiction between the well-developed are of learning high level mathematics for gifted students on one side and the comparatively low achievements of Israeli best students in the International examinations-TIMSS and PISA-on the other.

The book DYNAMIC ON-LINE ASSESSMENT OF GIFTED CHILDREN offers educators, counselors and parents of 3-16-year old gifted, talented, curious, and creative children and youths a new, original tool of assessing their interests and abilities. As this book has been published during the second wave of the covid19 pandemic, it concentrates on ways of assessment that can all function on-line as well. All offered activities have been tried both before “corona-time” started, when on-line therapy, let alone – on-line giftedness identification, was not practiced for children. The case studies presented in the book have all been written since March 2019, proved effective, enriching the knowledge of the counselor. They were also described as “easy”, “nice”, pleasant” and “interesting” by the children involved, and thus are recommended as unlike formal identification they put no pressure either on the child or on her or his parents.
The first assessed child described is a 3-year old girl, who was identified as highly gifted in mathematics. The “game” played was “the geometrical shapes game”, during which she was asked “what do you want me [the counselor] to paint?” and then: “what color do you want me to use?” During the “game” the child showed a wide knowledge in both 2- and 3-dimentional shapes, she always insisted on using the exact mathematical terms, and each time she approved on the result she was very happy.
The next “games” descried were all word games. In “The associations game” the counselor writes a word and the child adds another one without thinking, and this goes on alternately for as long as the counselor decides, depending on the child’s age, her or his attention span, level of hunger or thirst, etc. This “game” is suitable toddlers, kindergartners and first grader. The “ugly words game” is suitable especially for children with emotional and social problems. “Writing a story” is most suitable for kindergartners; it does not only reveal many important characteristics of the child but also enables them to express themselves freely, knowing that the story is imaginary. “Writing a story together” is the last suggestion for on-line assessment through a word game.

The short answer to the question of whether we should continue to use the term "giftedness" is, in my opinion, "yes." The following are some of the main educational, psychological, social, political, and practical reasons for this firm opinion.
The main reasons for continuing the use of the term "gifted are: There is no need to "fix" what is not broken; "Gifted" is well understood non-offensive term; The gifted label helps the double-exceptional and the disadvantaged; "Giftedness" or its translation is successfully used in many language-families; Changing a term is often perceived as a substitute to a needed substantial change; Are there any advantages of replacing "gifted/ness"? Are we ready for the perception changes resulting of the "gifted" term? There is no proof of potential harm at the school level and peer relations. This article offers new directions aiming to increase equity in gifted education without replacing the term "gifted/ness".

pandemic. In an empirical study, we focus on female top performing students in STEM and the humanities. Of particular interest was whether the measures associated with the pandemic constitute a risk-factor for a re-traditionalization of gender roles. Before lectures or courses began, students at a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. We investigated four research questions: 1) Are women underrepresented in our sample among the top performers in STEM and the humanities? Are there gender differences among top performers with regard to (2) digital readiness, (3) socio-emotional and (4) learning related variables? The sample of the study consisted of 2,849 higher education STEM and humanities students. The study took place as an online survey. In the week before the start of the official lecture period, all students enrolled at the university were invited to take part via an e-mail correspondence from the Vice President of Education (survey access link). Participation in the survey took place via the Questback platform and was activated for 10 days. The cutoff point for the ability level was set at the 95th percentile of previous university achievements. To test Q1, we performed a hierarchical loglinear analysis with posthoc Chi² tests. In research questions Q2-Q4 two-way ANOVAs were used to test the effects of gender and subject. Results indicate equal shares of female and male students among the top performers, with women overrepresented in the humanities and men overrepresented in STEM relative to their proportion of the student population. The analysis of socio-emotional and learning-related factors showed risk factors for high performing female students such as lower self-efficacy, but no major emotional vulnerability. Overall, the data suggest that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, female top performers had still been able to compensate for the risk factors.

Le haut potentiel est une spécificité méconnue du grand public et dont l’école et l’industrie suisses ne font pas assez cas. Cette absence de prise en compte active et constructive a des coûts humains, médicaux et économiques énormes, et a des répercussions sur la société dans son ensemble: non seulement elle empêche la réalisation du potentiel et le bien-être de tout un pan de la société, mais elle prive également l’ensemble de la communauté de forces vives. Ce numéro propose des solutions simples, efficaces, et peu coûteuses pour y remédier.

Table des matières:

– Claude-Emmanuelle Centlivres Challet : Introduction: pourquoi faut-il agir ? 43


– Olivier Revol, Roberta Poulin:  Les enfants à Haut Potentiel Intellectuel , 51

- Monique de Kermadec:  Le surdoué a-t-il tout pour lui? 59


– Claudia Jankech: Quel écueils sur la route des enfants et des adolescents à haut potentiel intellectuel, 65

-  Fabienne Giuliani, Béatrice Couchepin Marchetti: Haut potentiel intellectuel et syndrome d’Asperger: vers une meilleure connaissance et reconnaissance, 81


– Hanna David: Diagnostic et enseignement des enfants HP: l’exemple d’Israël, 91

- Hanna David: «Haut potentiel», «douance», ou «précocité»: «juste» une question linguistique? 103


– Mark Dettinger: Ökonomische und soziale Konsequenzen von Hochbegabung, 113

Students' mental strength in higher education plays a very important role in academic success, especially for gifted student. Many findings indicated that there were a few academically gifted students without troubles. This research was conducted to produce a counseling service strategy by combining religious aspects with aspects that are always used in human daily life in displaying certain behaviors. The strategy developed by author was applied to 23 the final year gifted students whom had non-technical problems related to student motivation and emotions. Treatment was done to help strengthen the mental of gifted students in achieving academic success in the form of completing studies in a timely manner. Student's mental strength was observed from several indicators which were part of the content of the strategy developed. The development of mental strength of students after being given treatment was reviewed using the results of the questionnaire interpretation that had been filled by students, which were then analyzed qualitatively. The results showed that religious counseling services with strategies developed could help gifted students to have aspects of behavior that were very important to themselves, so that there were no obstacles that arise in themselves to achieve academic success through the completion of timely studies with satisfactory results.