Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Serving the Gifted book... Thoughts?

Saw this on the SENG newsletter recently, and looked at some excerpts from the book (in other words, I'm reacting without reading the whole book, which admittedly can be dangerous).

http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/the-emotional-cost-of-prevailing-myths-about-the-gifted?utm_source=Jan%2FFeb+2014+SENGvine&utm_campaign=Jan-Feb-2014-Sengvine&utm_medium=email

I am not sure if this link will work. The summary seems to suggest that gifted isn't necessarily something inherent, but rather, something that develops over time. This seems to put us right back at the achievement = gifted, non-achiever = not gifted after all myth. Curious as to whether anyone has read this book or heard the author speak, and if so, your thoughts?

Updating your link into a clickable one for you.

I had the same misgivings about this one, ConnectingDots. In fact, when I saw the book, I thought, "Oh, look - here's a new book on giftedness. Maybe I should get it for DD's school." Then I read the excerpt, and I decided not to. Probably not what they were going for!

I don't share your misgivings - indeed the tendency I perceive here to see giftedness as an innate, unchangeable attribute is something that bothers me. Moving towards identifying children who right now need something different from what's on offer - whether or not they did last year or will next year - and emphasising that everyone can improve their capabilities with hard work and appropriate challenge and support, seems very positive to me. Sure, I'd expect there to be a large overlap between children who need more one year and those who need it the next, but the black and white "is s/he gifted?" thinking we often see here and elsewhere does noone any favours, IMHO.

hm.


Well, I think he's wrong to call giftedness a mere construct (er-- or "cognitive ability/potential" anyway-- "gifted" clearly IS a construct, but what is MEANT by it isn't).

He's taking a growth mindset (good and correct) starting point and adding in touches of plasticity (also fine) and the notion that any particular evaluation of IQ is merely a snapshot anyway...

and getting "gifted doesn't mean anything anyway because we can ALL be gifted!!" That's where I think he's going wrong with this. It's not that I disagree that the boundary between gifted and bright needs to be fuzzier and softer-- that, I agree with. It's not that I think that IQ is the be-all, end-all of ability and dictates performance, because I don't think that either...

but I do think that this is RIPE for abuse by administrators/teachers who want to say that a child who is DYS level at 6yo "doesn't need anything special" if underperforming at 8yo.


Who's to say that differences in individual IQ "snapshots" don't reflect testing artifacts, anyway?

Clearly the author has confused the words "achievement" and "giftedness." With some judicious editing, he can make sense:


Much better.

I think this is well put, ColinsMum. An emphasis on closing the gap between services offered and services needed is really what's on the table, not a label. Frankly, maintaining focus on services rendered and required would be beneficial for meeting the educational needs of all students, not just gifted ones. I wish that our educators and policymakers could be so lucid as to see needs (and required actions!) existing on a continuum, not just on a truncated distribution.

conflating giftedness with accomplishment/achievement?

yes, I agree with Dude.

I think that Dude nailed this too.

Anything which is correlated to IQ, certainly including academic achievement, provides some information about IQ. So if someone is doing better/worse in school than his score on an IQ test predicts, you should revise your estimate of his IQ up/down, although I can't say by how much.

Here is a thought experiment. For a group of students, you have IQ scores from the Stanford-Binet (SB) and WISC, taken at the end of 8th grade, in addition to middle school (grades 6-8) grade point average. I bet that linear prediction of WISC IQ from SB IQ and GPA would have positive coefficients on both variables.

In a magical world in which every child gets equal and adequate:

- sleep
- exercise
- healthy food
- parental support (in all domains)
- social interaction
- individual instruction
- environmental stimulation
- play
- etc.

Then yes, your hypothesis would be correct... any variation in school performance would require a revisiting of their IQ. Except there are biological influences to consider, so the kids would also have to be clones.

Here in the real world, however, we often have to look at other factors, because life is complicated.