The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education 3030916170, 9783030916176

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The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education Edited by  Robert J Sternberg · Don Ambrose Sareh Karami

The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education

Robert J Sternberg  •  Don Ambrose Sareh Karami Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education

Editors Robert J Sternberg Department of Psychology College of Human Ecology Cornell University Ithaca, NY, USA

Don Ambrose Department of Graduate Education Rider University Lawrenceville, NJ, USA

Sareh Karami Department of Counseling Educational Psychology and Foundations Mississippi State University Starkville, MS, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-91617-6    ISBN 978-3-030-91618-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: rdonar / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Many countries, including but not limited to the United States, have a variety of forms of special education. Often, however, this special education strongly emphasizes seriously under-performing students rather than ones who greatly exceed expectations—that is, students who are gifted. Why? Students who under-perform are at risk not only for being unfulfilled educationally, but also for becoming a serious drain on societal resources, in terms of potentially needing financial or other help to succeed in or even adapt to a hyper-competitive world that does not always have a lot of room for those who have not received the education they need to succeed in that world. Gifted children, in contrast, often are viewed already as profiting from the educational system and needing, if anything, fewer rather than more resources. Almost certainly, a better way of viewing gifted students would be to view them as crucial to the betterment of their nation and the world. Gifted students could be transformational, but are they? Sternberg (2020a, 2020b) has suggested that a problem with much of gifted education in the United States is that it is viewed as largely transactional: The educational establishment invests in the education of gifted children, and in return, the children perform at high levels on traditional measures of academic success. They do well on statewide or nationwide standardized tests, they earn high grades in school, and perhaps they even attend prestigious universities from which they receive prestigious degrees. But whether they use their education to benefit anyone beyond themselves is not part of the bargain. Sternberg (2020a, 2020b) has argued that gifted education should not be focusing on developing transactionally gifted children who view themselves as giving something and then, in return, getting something (high grades, good v

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test scores, good university admissions, financial aid for school, etc.) that will benefit them but perhaps no one else. Instead, perhaps gifted education should focus on developing transformationally gifted children who view their giftedness as a means to help society attain a common good—that is, they use their gifts to make a positive, meaningful, and enduring difference to the world (Sternberg, 2017). School officials might be more willing to invest in gifted education if they felt more assurance that the financial and other resources they invest would improve society rather than merely stuff personal bank accounts. The goal of this book is to present diverse conceptions of what identification and instruction of the gifted would look like if the focus of gifted education were primarily transformational rather than transactional. What if gifted education did not focus so much on acceleration vs. enrichment, or pull-out versus in-class integration, but rather on how to be gifted in giving back—in using one’s gifts to create a better world? Education is often lacking at presenting to children the kinds of problems that the world needs to confront in the future. Instead of focusing on the kinds of problems students will confront when they go out into the world, it focuses on problems whose characteristics largely are limited to the context of schooling. This book focuses on what education would look like if it prepared gifted students to transform the world—to make it a better place for all, not just for those who receive extra resources from schools in return for being labeled as “gifted.” The focus is thus on giftedness as applied to solving the numerous and often severe problems the world faces, at many levels. Transformationally gifted people seek to make the world a better and more just place. They try to make a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring contribution to changing things in the world that are not working. They may do this in a smaller context, such as a local one, or in a larger context, such as a global one. But they do not view “giftedness” merely as a transaction whereby, in exchange for being labeled as “gifted,” they accrue benefits to themselves, such as a more prestigious education, more income, or residence in a more exclusive community. The primary intended audiences for the book are scholars and educators of the gifted, as well as policymakers concerned with the gifted, as they are the ones who potentially could change the way in which gifted education is done. However, we believe the transformational model potentially could be applied to all students, so that we would hope that the book also would have readers among scholars, educators, and policymakers in all realms of education. We believe that a further audience for the book will be students of gifted

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education and parents who have an interest in gifted education, even though they have not been trained in it. Readers will find in this book essays by a diverse collection of scholars and educators. Although the foci of the individual chapters were up to individual authors, authors in general were asked to address the following questions: • What, if anything, has been lacking in gifted education with respect to preparing gifted students for an uncertain, challenging, and in some respects, potentially grim future? • What could be done differently in order better to prepare and educate students for the future they actually face, as opposed to the future that might have been imagined when gifted education was initiated early in the twentieth century? • How might identification of gifted students be changed so as to place more emphasis on identifying students who have the potential positively to transform society rather than merely to complete a transaction whereby they do well in school in exchange for being given additional resources? • What kinds of things could educators of the gifted do in educating students and talking to policy-makers to persuade them to invest more heavily in gifted education? Ithaca, NY, USA Lawrenceville, NJ, USA  Starkville, MS, USA 

Robert J Sternberg Don Ambrose Sareh Karami

References Sternberg, R. J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39(3), 139–152. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/kSvRMFf9R8tAJPDRfXrJ/full Sternberg, R. J. (2020a). Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. OlszewskiKubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 203–234). Prufrock Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266

Contents

1 Discovering and Dismantling Enormous Barriers Hindering the Transition from Transactional to Transformational Giftedness  1 Don Ambrose 2 The Beautiful Risk of Moving Toward Pedagogies of the Possible 23 Ronald A. Beghetto and Vlad P. Glăveanu 3 Respecting the Invisible: Transactional and Transformational Approaches to Giftedness 43 Dowon Choi and James C. Kaufman 4 From I to We: The Three C’s Conception of Gifted Education 61 Aakash A. Chowkase and Sujala Watve 5 A Catalyst for Change: Improving the World Through Talent Development 87 Jennifer Riedl Cross and Tracy L. Cross 6 Ten Changes That Will Render Gifted Education Transformational107 David Yun Dai

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7 Promoting Transformational Giftedness Through Service Learning131 Ophélie Allyssa Desmet 8 Fairminded Critical Thinking and Depth of Knowledge as Essential to Gifted Education Programs That Advance the Common Good143 Linda Elder 9 Be Prepared for the Complexities of the Twenty-First Century!171 Joachim Funke 10 Addressing Access, Equity, and Missingness to Transform Gifted Education181 Marcia Gentry 11 Through the Dąbrowski Lens: Wisdom, Transformational Giftedness, and the Personality Ideal201 Amanda J. Harper 12 Evidence of Transformational Giftedness in the Profoundly Gifted When We Use the “Integral Practice the Gifted™” Model225 P. Susan Jackson 13 Starting Over: An Iranian Conception of Giftedness and How It Can Transform Societies and the World251 Sareh Karami and Mehdi Ghahremani 14 Transformational Education as a Work in Process: Insights from Transformationally Gifted Adults267 Lori Lutz 15 The Rainbow Revolution: Empowering Gifted LGBTQ+ Learners for Transformative Action287 Andres Parra-Martinez and Alena R. Treat

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16 Transformational Giftedness: Using SEM Pedagogy to Create Future Leaders and Change Agents Dedicated to Service, Social Responsibility, and Using Their Talents to Improve the Planet313 Sally M. Reis and Joseph S. Renzulli 17 Equity, Social Justice and Transformational Giftedness: A Gifted Academy in a Vulnerable Community335 Renu Singh and Bharath Sriraman 18 Transformational Giftedness: Who’s Got It and Who Does Not355 Robert J Sternberg 19 Channeling Gifted Abilities into Transformative Creative Productivity373 Rena F. Subotnik , Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, and Frank C. Worrell 20 Educating Ethical Minds in Gifted Education387 Kirsi Tirri 21 Redefining Human Talents: Gifted Education in the Age of Smart Machines403 Yong Zhao, James Basham, and Jason Travers 22 In Conclusion: Where We Currently Stand in the March Toward Transformational Giftedness427 Don Ambrose, Robert J Sternberg, and Sareh Karami Index443

Notes on Contributors

Don Ambrose, PhD  is professor of graduate education at Rider University and editor of the Roeper Review. He leads numerous interdisciplinary scholarly projects involving eminent researchers studying creative intelligence. He serves on the editorial boards for numerous, major journals and for several book series. Don has won international, national, regional, and institutional awards including the NAGC distinguished scholar award. He has done invited keynote presentations throughout the world. James Basham, PhD  is a Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas. He is also the Senior Director for Learning & Innovation at CAST, a research and development non-profit and founders of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. Dr. Basham is also one of the cofounders of the UDL Implementation and Research Network (UDLIRN). His research is focused on the implementation of UDL, STEM education, learner-centered design, innovation, and technology in human learning. He is a principal investigator on various projects, including the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning (CIDDL). Ronald A. Beghetto is an internationally recognized expert on creative thought and action in educational settings. He holds the Pinnacle West Presidential Chair and serves as a Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Dr. Beghetto is the Editor for the Journal of Creative Behavior, Editor for Review of Research in Education, Series Editor for Creative Theory and Action in Education (SpringernBooks), and has served as a creativity advisor for LEGO Foundation and the Cartoon Network. He is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the xiii

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Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (Div. 10, APA), and the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI). Dowon Choi  is a Combined Counseling and School Psychology doctoral candidate and fellow at Florida State University. She has authored numerous academic publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and a conference paper in the fields of creativity, gifted education, and school psychology. Dowon is also engaged in international media; these have included giving a TEDxUConn talk, interviewing giftedness experts on YouTube, being featured on podcasts/magazines for Koreans living in Vietnam, and writing blogs for an APA division and Korean Ministry of Education website. Aakash A. Chowkase is a doctoral candidate in Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies at Purdue University. His research interests are talent development; social, emotional, and motivational development; and equity in gifted education. His dissertation focuses on the development of a concern for others in adolescents with high intellectual abilities. He is a former K-12 educator and former assistant professor at Jnana Prabodhini’s Institute of Psychology, India. He is the co-founder of the Jnana Prabodhini Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit working for education, women leadership, and rural development. Tracy L. Cross, PhD  is the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education and the executive director of the Center for Gifted Education and the Institute for Research on the Suicide of Gifted Students at William & Mary. He is the past editor of numerous journals, including Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, and Journal for the Education of the Gifted. He has been president of the National Association for Gifted Children and The Association for the Gifted. Dr. Cross has received many awards for his research and service in the field of gifted education, including the 2020 Palmarium Award. Jennifer Riedl Cross, PhD  is the Director of Research at the William & Mary Center for Gifted Education. Dr. Cross holds a doctorate in educational psychology with a specialty in cognitive and social processes. She is the co-­ editor, with Tracy L. Cross, of the Handbook for Counselors Serving Students with Gifts and Talents, now in its second edition, and co-author of the second edition of Suicide among Gifted Children and Adolescents. Her research in the field emphasizes social and psychological aspects of gifted education, from

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individual coping with the stigma of giftedness to the mental health of highability students. David Yun Dai, PhD is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Methodology at University at Albany, State University of New York, and a Guest Professor at East China Normal University. Dr. Dai has published 11 authored and edited books, and over 100 journal articles and book chapters in general psychology, educational psychology, and gifted and talented education. Dr. Dai was the recipient of the the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2017 conferred by the National Association for Gifted Children in the United States. Dr. Dai’s current research interests include talent development and creativity. Ophélie Allyssa Desmet  is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology and Program Coordinator for the Center for Gifted Studies at Valdosta State University. Dr. Desmet earned her Doctorate in Educational Psychology with a focus on Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies from Purdue University. Her research investigates social, emotional, and motivational aspects of talent development. In particular, her work focuses on understanding the complex phenomenon of underachievement among underrepresented students (e.g., culturally and linguistically diverse students, twice or multi-exceptional students, and economically disadvantaged students) and establishing successful interventions to prevent and resolve underachievement. Linda Elder  is an educational psychologist and international authority on critical thinking who has taught both psychology and critical thinking at the college level. She has been president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and the executive director of the Center for Critical Thinking for more than 25 years. She has a special interest in the relation of thought and emotion, as well as the cognitive and affective. She has developed an original theory of the stages of critical thinking development. Elder has coauthored four books on critical thinking, as well as all 23 titles found in the Thinker’s Guide Library. Joachim Funke  is Professor of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology at the University of Heidelberg and has been a retired professor with a reduced teaching load since April 2019. He is an expert in complex problem solving and has been involved in his active career since 1998 as a member of various expert groups on problem solving in OECD studies (primarily PISA). From 2010 to 2014, he chaired the PISA International Expert Group on Problem Solving. From 2010 to 2019 he was speaker of the Academic Senate of his university.

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Notes on Contributors

Marcia Gentry  directs the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute at Purdue University where she enjoys working with doctoral students and engaging in research and gifted education professional development. In 2021 she graduated her 25th doctoral advisee. She remains active in the field through service to NAGC and AERA and by writing, reviewing, and presenting research aimed to improve education for children, youth, and teachers. She focuses on underserved populations and creating an equitable, socially just field. Mehdi Ghahremani  is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Foundations, Mississippi State University; where he teaches several courses and study human development to promote understanding of differences of people and analyzing effective and productive modes of thinking such as critical thinking, design thinking, and wisdom. He received his PhD in Educational Studies, with a focus on Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies from Purdue University. He is a mixed-method researcher certified in quantitative and qualitative inquiry. His research interests center around creative thinking and team creativity; STEM education and STEM-talent development, psychology of design thinking, and wisdom and wise reasoning. Vlad P. Glăveanu  is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology and Counselling at Webster University Geneva, founder and director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation, and Associate Professor II at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen. He published widely on topics related to creativity, culture, imagination, wonder, collaboration, and human possibility. Amanda J. Harper, PhD  has taught in schools, worked in regional gifted education, and coordinated Enterprise Learning across Tasmania, before moving into academia. Amanda coordinates the Bachelor of Philosophy, a companion degree for gifted students at the University of Tasmania, and has taught Gifted Education at the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia. Her PhD examined the place of gifted education pedagogy in undergraduate healthcare, focusing on the development of empathy and Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. She was honoured to receive the biannual Australian John Geake Outstanding Thesis Award for 2018. P. Susan Jackson  is the Founder of the “Daimon Institute for the Highly Gifted” in Surrey, BC, Canada. This international institute offers service to the exceptionally and profoundly gifted, supporting their learning needs and overall development. Her “Integral Practice for the Gifted™” model addresses

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multiple aspects of human functioning—cognitive, emotional, spiritual, physical, and talent-based dimensions—and explains how advanced cognition influences these elements, the Self, and the expression of talent. She presents Keynotes and Symposia worldwide in her role as a distinguished expert on the profoundly gifted. She has published in numerous Gifted Education journals and books. In 2021 she received SENG’s “Mental Health Practitioner of the Year” award. Sareh Karami is an assistant professor of Educational Psychology at Mississippi State University. Karami earned her doctorate in Educational Studies from Purdue University. Sareh received her bachelor’s and first master’s in clinical psychology from the University of Tehran. She served as the head of the research and extracurricular programs department in the Iranian gifted school for more than 10 years. Sareh left her job to do more graduate work in education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She received her second master’s in education from UBC. She has developed two theories of wisdom; the Iranian Hierarchical wisdom model based on an Iranian literary canon and Polyhedron Wisdom Model based on Western literature. Sareh has published several articles on wisdom, creativity, and intelligence. She has received several awards in recognition of the quality of her work, including the John Feldhusen Fellowship of Purdue University, the Carolyn Callahan NAGC Doctoral Student Award, and two NAGC Doctoral Student Gala Award. James C. Kaufman  is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author/editor of more than 50 books, including Creativity 101 and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. He has also written more than 350 papers, which include theoretical contributions such as the Four-C Model of Creativity (with Ronald Beghetto). Kaufman is a past president of APA’s Division 10 and has won Mensa’s research award, the Torrance Award from NAGC, and APA’s Berlyne, Arnheim, and Farnsworth awards. Lori Lutz  graduated from The Roeper School in 1975. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Northeastern University in Boston. Lori served on The Roeper School Board of Trustees from 1995 to 2008, the last 3 years as Chair. As Associate Director of The Roeper Institute, an organization that advocates for the ethical development of giftedness, Lori created and was project director for “A Matter of Equity”, an initiative designed to nurture the development of low-income and culturally diverse high-potential Detroit children through a public-private partnership with Detroit Public Schools Community District.

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Paula Olszewski-Kubilius is the director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy. Over the past 38 years, she has created programs for diverse groups of gifted learners and written extensively about talent development. She has served as the editor of Gifted Child Quarterly, co-editor of the Journal of Secondary Gifted Education and on the editorial boards of Gifted and Talented International, Roeper Review, and Gifted Child Today. She is Past- President of the National Association for Gifted Children and the Illinois Association for Gifted Children and received the NAGC Distinguished Scholar Award in 2009. She serves as a trustee of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. Andres Parra-Martinez  is a doctoral candidate in Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies at Purdue University. Andres received his bachelor’s degree with honors in English Philology from the National University of Colombia. At Purdue, he served as dorm life coordinator of the GERI Summer Residential Camp for gifted children between 2016 and 2019. He serves as chair-elect of the GLBTQ network at the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). Andres advocates for the inclusion of gifted LGBTQ+ and gender-­ diverse youth. His research interests are the social-emotional and identity development in teachers of gifted children, wisdom, and educational policy. Sally M. Reis  holds the Letitia Neag Chair in Educational Psychology in the Renzulli Center, as well as a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Neag School of Education and the former Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Connecticut. She has authored and co-authored over 280 articles, books, book chapters, monographs and technical reports, and worked in a research team that has generated over 60 million dollars in grants in the last 15 years. Her research interests are related to special populations of gifted and talented students, including students with learning disabilities, gifted women, and diverse groups of talented students. Joseph S. Renzulli is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he also served as the former Director of the Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development. His research has focused on the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people and on organizational models and curricular strategies for differentiated learning environments that contribute to total school improvement. A focus of his work has been on applying the pedagogy of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students.

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Renu Singh  is the program director of the Gifted & Talented Academy at Maryvale High School. She has shown continued commitment to enhance student success and transformation through education. Her teaching journey started in India after she completed the Masters in Organic Chemistry. In the year 2000, she came to the United States with her family to complete another Masters in Secondary Science Education. She then began teaching at the Phoenix Union High School District in 2001. Since then she has worked in four different schools and taught twelve different subjects. After completing the doctoral program in education at Arizona State University in 2014, she got a rare opportunity to lead the Gifted and Talented Academy at Maryvale High School. Dr. Singh’s expertise lies in instruction, curriculum, innovative program development, and human learning in conjunction with social-­ emotional wellbeing. She has also published papers based on her research work in chemistry and education fields. Bharath Sriraman is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Montana-Missoula, known internationally for his research in the interdisciplinary aspects of mathematics with the arts and sciences; cognition; creativity; history and philosophy of mathematics; and mathematics education. To date Professor Sriraman has published 300+ journal articles, book chapters, proceedings papers, and reference work entries in his areas of interest, which include 31 edited books. In 2016, he was named the University of Montana Distinguished Scholar. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Mathematics Enthusiast, an independent, peer-reviewed open access international journal now in its 18th year of existence. He is the Co-founder/ Co-Series editor of Advances in Mathematics Education and Creativity Theory and Action in Education which are both with Springer. Professor Sriraman has held more than 30 visiting professorships at institutions in Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, Canada, South Africa, Colombia and Argentina, which include two U.S. Fulbright awards. The Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences has been his most ambitious editorial project to date. He is presently curating and editing The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, another Springer Major Reference Works project. In his spare time he is an amateur arborist. Robert J Sternberg  is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His BA is from Yale, his PhD from Stanford, and he holds 13 honorary doctorates. He is a past-recipient of the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology, the Cattell and James Awards of the Association for Psychological Science, and

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the E. Paul Torrance Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Gifted Children. He has been cited roughly 210,000 times with a Google h index of 221. He is a member of the US National Academy of Education. Rena F. Subotnik, PhD  is Director of the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education at the American Psychological Association. The Center promotes high quality application of psychology to programs and policies for schools and education. One of the Center’s missions is to generate public awareness, advocacy, clinical applications, and cutting-edge research ideas that enhance the achievement and performance of children and adolescents with gifts and talents in all domains. She has been supported in this work by the National Science Foundation, the American Psychological Foundation, the Association for Psychological Science, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Kirsi Tirri  is a full Professor of Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, and a visiting Professor at St. John’s University, New York, USA. Professor Tirri was President of ECHA (European Council for High Ability) in 2008–2012, and President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2016–2017. Her research interests include school pedagogy, moral and religious education, gifted education, teacher education, and cross-cultural studies. She has published 13 monographs and numerous journal articles related to these fields. Jason Travers, PhD, BCBA-D  is an associate professor and behavior analyst at Temple University where he coordinates the special education and applied behavior analysis programs. Jason earned his doctorate at University of Nevada Las Vegas and is a former public school special educator for learners with autism. His research includes racial disproportionality among students with autism and evidence-based practices and issues for learners with autism and special education. He also studies meta-scientific issues and trends in special education research. He received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Association for Behavior Analysis and the Tom Smith Early Career Award from the CEC Division of Autism and Developmental Disabilities, among other distinctions. Alena R. Treat  NAGC GLBTQ Network Chair, has been a Director of Gifted Programs, Gifted Coordinator, Specialist, and Teacher. She directed two Javits grants, one she wrote, SOL Net (Speakers of Other Languages NETwork), that began gifted programs for English Learners in Dallas and for Navajo/Ute on the Navajo Reservation in Utah. As past chair of the NAGC

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Diversity and Equity Committee, she co-authored the NAGC Diversity Toolbox: Gifted LGBTQ Students.Alena served on the NAGC GLBT Task Force and the NAGC Workgroup on Sexually Diverse Populations. She is currently teaching university gifted courses online. Sujala Watve is the former director of Jnana Prabodhini’s Institute of Psychology, India. She currently volunteers as National Supervisory Psychologist for Mensa India. Her research interests are intelligence and giftedness. She established India’s first post-graduate diploma in gifted education under the XIth Innovative Plan of the University Grants Commission. She is the author of Why Gifted Education. She has conducted several major research projects with government bodies, written articles for print media, and delivered psychology talks on All India Radio. Frank C. Worrell, PhD  a native of Trinidad and Tobago, is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as Director of the School Psychology Program, Faculty Director of the Academic Talent Development Program, and Faculty Director of the California College Preparatory Academy. His research interests include cultural identities, gifted education/talent development, risk and resilience, scale development, time perspective, the association of psychosocial to psychological and academic outcomes, and the translation of psychological research findings into school-based practice. A member of the National Academy of Education, Dr. Worrell is the 2021 President-Elect of the American Psychological Association. Yong Zhao is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas and a professor in Educational Leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia. He previously served as the Presidential Chair, Associate Dean, and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. Prior to Oregon, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the International Academy of Education.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 13.1 Fig. 16.1 Fig. 17.1 Fig. 17.2 Fig. 17.3 Fig. 17.4 Fig. 17.5 Fig. 19.1 Fig. 19.2

Plurality of possibilities The 3C conception of gifted education A schematic representation of a nested multi-layered developmental system with two main regulatory forces: characteristic and maximal adaptation. (Based on Dai, 2017, adapted from Dai, 2005) VISCAR: An implementation hierarchy. (Originally published in Dai, 2016b) “Flattening the curve”. (Source: CDC; https://www.cnbc. com/2020/03/22/these-­charts-­show-­how-­fast-­coronavirus-­ cases-­are-­spreading.html) Three factors of development Five core traits of the PG Child Our basic cognitive structures Integral practice for the Gifted Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model (IHWM) The Schoolwide Enrichment Model Drawing component of interview Student expression in drawing component of interview Wheel of instructional modalities for holistic education Three components in a lesson plan Senior reflection on the academy experience A visual conceptualization of the TDMM Conceptualization of Jackson and Messick’s (1965) criteria for creative products (Note: The fourth response property, condensation, is focused on the very highest level of creative productivity and is associated with solution elegance and is not directly relevant to this discussion)

36 67

110 124 175 211 238 239 242 255 315 342 343 344 345 347 376

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 5.1 Table 11.1 Table 11.2 Table 11.3 Table 14.1 Table 16.1 Table 16.2

Creative experiential facets and pedagogical possibilities for transformation28 Tenets of the school-based conception of giftedness 94 Levels of development within the Theory of Positive Disintegration207 Overexcitabilities within the Theory of Positive Disintegration 212 Examples of touchpoints between the Theory of Positive Disintegration and the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom 218 On-line alumni survey questions 2021 273 Type III projects designed to help others, solve problems, and make a difference in one CT school district during a recent academic year 327 Enrichment cluster titles focusing on solving problems and helping others 328

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1 Discovering and Dismantling Enormous Barriers Hindering the Transition from Transactional to Transformational Giftedness Don Ambrose

Highly intelligent, talented, creative minds can do very good work in the world, or very harmful work. The power of those minds has been growing in the twenty-first century due primarily to advances in technology (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016a, 2016b; Bostrom, 2013; DeNardis, 2020; Mulgan, 2018). Given the complexities of trends, issues, and problems in today’s world we need to strengthen the ethical dimensions of gifted education. Fortunately, some steps have been taken along those lines. For example, Sternberg (2017) urged the field to focus on the strengthening of active, concerned citizenship and ethical leadership in the gifted. He also proposed an emphasis on transformational giftedness that would move gifted young people away from excessive emphasis on the development of their abilities for their own benefit, toward a focus on the betterment of the world (Sternberg, 2020; Sternberg et al., 2021). Karami et al. (2020) and Sternberg and Karami (2021) magnified the importance of wisdom in the actions of creatively intelligent individuals. Ambrose and Cross (2009) produced a collaborative project that explored the moral-ethical dimensions of giftedness and talent development. These examples illustrate some approaches that can be taken to help the field focus more on the twenty-first-century issues that strongly influence the lives of gifted young people. D. Ambrose (*) Department of Graduate Education, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_1

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But along with these projects we need to understand more about the barriers that stand in their way. This chapter explores some examples of large-scale barriers that block the development of transformational giftedness. First, the examples are analyzed to show how they stand in the way of attempts to shift the field from the development of transactionally gifted (self-serving) young people toward transformationally gifted individuals who want to make the world a better place. After that, some recommendations for overcoming the barriers are explored.

 arriers Impeding the Development B of Transformational Giftedness A large number of twenty-first-century problems and issues could have been explored in this section. A few were selected to illustrate how they are damaging the lives of millions or billions of people around the world, and how their complexity prevents even creatively intelligent individuals and groups from perceiving the need to address them.

Utopia or Dystopia? For thousands of years the human imagination has been captivated by utopian visions of the perfect society, and the opposite conceptions of dystopian, end-times, societal collapse (Blanes & Bertelsen, 2021). These notions of perfection tend to come from creatively intelligent minds in groups, nations, and regions (Ambrose, 2008). Here are just a few examples. Plato, the famous Greek philosopher, proposed a utopian vision of an ideal Republic, which would have three unequal groups (see Santas, 2006). Each group would be produced through purposeful selection, breeding, and education. The ruling elite would include the most gifted intellectuals in the society. The members of this elite would be well trained in critical reasoning so their leadership initiatives would aim at benefiting all in the society, not just themselves. The second class in the three layers would include soldiers to enforce laws and provide stability. The bottom level would include the masses who were incapable of sophisticated thinking and who guided their actions through their appetites. Overall, the wisdom of the elite would make the society great. Five centuries ago, the philosopher-theologian Thomas More (1516/1997) portrayed the ideal society as a centralized welfare state that was very

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democratic, free of religion, and featured gender equality. The material needs of the population would be taken care of collaboratively so private property wasn’t important. Karl Marx, the most notable initiator of communism, portrayed societies as evolving toward a utopian vision (Marx & Engels, 1848/1998). The evolution involved transitions through various stages of economic production. The first stage was primitive and communal. The next three stages were exploitative, involving slavery, feudalism, and then capitalism. The final stage was portrayed as an ideal communist society that rejected exploitation and private property in favor of collective actions for the good of all. In stark contrast, Fukuyama (1992), a prominent political scientist, claimed that the fall of European communism in the late twentieth century had produced an opposite form of utopia. Neoliberal, neoconservative ideology reigned supreme because it emphasized the economic freedom of the individual while minimizing the role of government. This represented the “end of history,” the apex of civilization. Invariably, utopian visions look promising on the surface, but they are seriously flawed. For example, the communist utopia promoted by Karl Marx never sufficiently developed the collective actions for the good of all in the nations where it took root throughout the twentieth century. Instead, economic stagnation prevailed, authoritarian rule surged, and communism collapsed in Russia and other Eastern European nations (Milanovic, 1994). In another example, Fukuyama’s neoconservative, free market, capitalist ideology ended up pushing most of the wealth and power up into the pockets of a small elite while diminishing the resources and freedom of most others (see Hacker & Pierson, 2005; Piketty, 2014; Stiglitz, 2010, 2012, 2015). The erosion of capitalism from a utopian ideal into a potential dystopia accelerated in the late twentieth century and continues to surge in the 21st, to the point where political scientist Sheldon Wolin (2008) used the term inverted totalitarianism to show how it was turning into a new form of near dictatorship run by corporate interests and the super wealthy. Considering that prominent thinkers like Plato, Moore, Marx, and Fukuyama thought their visions for society to be perfect, or at least near perfect, it becomes obvious that gifted minds can do enormous harm when large numbers of people are captivated by their notions. Consequently, utopian thinking represents a barrier to transformational giftedness because gifted individuals can think they are doing good work in the world when the products of their minds can be severely harmful.

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 n Identity Formation Battle: Particularism A Versus Universalism Ethical philosophers have shown how individuals and populations tend to view outsiders in very different ways. Outsiders are those who don’t fit one’s own identity group (race, religion, ethnicity, nationality) (Gewirth, 2009; Monroe, 1996, 2003, 2004, 2011). The distinction is between universalists who see all of humanity as worthy of respect and particularists who can be kind, thoughtful, and generous toward those in their identity group but dismissive of, or even violent toward, outsiders. Often, but certainly not always, creatively intelligent individuals rise to positions of leadership in nations and regions. If those individuals are particularists, they can do serious harm to minority populations in their locations by portraying them as unworthy or even subhuman. The results can be anything from economic exploitation, to segregation, to genocide. Racism is an especially virulent form of particularism. According to leading political scientist Abramowitz (2018), racism has become worse in recent years due to the surge in political polarization through which groups in a society push apart and perceive each other as evil enemies. There is a strong racist element to this polarization, so particularism is becoming worse in some nations, especially in the United States. Obviously, the existence of particularistic morality is a significant barrier to the development of transformational giftedness, while the presence of universalists can help others become transformational.

Powerful Psychopaths Psychopaths make up a small percentage of any population, but they tend to have outsized effect due to their deceptive, unethical behavior. Here is a brief list of some of the characteristics of psychopaths (see Babiak et  al., 2010; Babiak & Hare, 2006; Hare, 1993): • Narcissistic: a grossly inflated sense of self-importance. • Lacking empathy: seemingly unable to appreciate the problems others face. • Lack of remorse and guilt: often seek out ways to blame the victims for the psychopaths’ own unethical actions. • Superficial, slick, and smooth: can be charming and likable while speaking authoritatively on issues about which they know little.

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• Manipulative, deceitful, and irresponsible: often take pride in their ability to trick others into doing things that will benefit them. • Emotionally shallow: largely emotionless but on occasion they engage in brief, dramatic emotional displays. • Extremely impulsive: unable to delay gratification. • Poor behavioral controls: react to minor slights in highly aggressive ways. • Crave excitement: don’t deal well with routine and monotony so often engage in dangerous, deviant behavior. Psychopaths are drawn to professions featuring power and risk. They are especially attracted to corporate leadership positions, and a higher percentage of them show up in those roles than in the general population (Babiak et al., 2010). When psychopaths lead corporate or political organizations, they can do serious damage to those systems, and to the larger societies in which they are embedded. They can shape the organizational and societal cultures, making them less ethical and more damaging. One analysis resulted in the proposal that these psychopathic influences can make societies become large-scale psychopathic plutocracies that mimic the characteristics of individual psychopaths on the large scale (Ambrose, 2015). For example, the arrogance and sense of superiority of individual psychopaths translates into the societal-level promotion of individualistic vainglory. This includes portrayals of the very rich as superhuman job creators in economic systems that are market fundamentalist. The term market fundamentalism, created by a prominent economist (Stiglitz, 2012), shows how unconstrained capitalism becomes an extreme, dogmatic belief system somewhat like radical, religious fundamentalist networks. Another individual psychopathic characteristic—lacking empathy and remorse—aligns with the selfish, rational actor of neoclassical economics, which dominates psychopathic plutocracies (more on this later). Virtually all of the characteristics of individual psychopaths align well with the characteristics of psychopathic societies. If this comparison is even somewhat accurate it means that the psychopathic characteristics of such societies represent enormous barriers to the development of transformational giftedness because ethics and altruism are firmly marginalized on the large scale.

Severe Inequality Extreme socioeconomic inequality, which is closely related to the aforementioned emergence of psychopathic plutocracies, tends to grow and shrink throughout the history of societies. For the past five decades, it has been

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growing more severe in the developed world, especially in a few nations (e.g., United States, United Kingdom). When inequality diminishes, the rich are still rich, although not as much, while most others enjoy opportunities for at least some forms of economic advancement and self-fulfillment. But when inequality grows substantially, much of the economy is captured by the economic elite who also gain much of the political power. Income and wealth are funneled upward, making the deprived more economically unstable and desperate. The least ethical of the elite justify their unfair privilege by scapegoating and demonizing the poor as coming from lesser stock and being incapable of self-improvement (for an example see the description of a son of a multimillionaire corporate executive later in this chapter). This blame-the-victim strategy provides a distraction that hides the unfairness of the economic system (see Gilens, 2012; Piketty, 2014; Shapiro, 2017; Stiglitz, 2015; Temin, 2017). When inequality becomes more severe, it causes psychological and physical problems due to the biological grind that wears down the resiliency and mental capacities of most in the population, especially the deprived (Sapolsky, 2018). The term biological grind refers to damage done to the mind and body due to the chronic, long-term stress that characterizes highly unequal societies. When biological grind is severe, the following aspects of ability and health weaken and are diminished: thought capacities including planning, decision-making, impulse control, memory, and learning; motivation; and lifespan. In addition, these aspects increase: fear and anxiety; depression and drug and alcohol addiction; blood pressure and heart disease; and diabetes. According to leading social epidemiologists who compare nations according to their levels of inequality and social problems, these psychological, physical, and social problems are far more severe in the more unequal developed nations, especially the United States (Cabieses et al., 2016; Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009, 2019). In another piece of this economic puzzle, Frey (2019), an economist, revealed an historical pattern showing how poor leadership makes these symptoms of severe inequality far worse. The development of new technologies generates progress and enormous amounts of new wealth; however, those with the most economic and political power in the societies undergoing these technological transitions usually are insufficiently ethical and don’t think in the long term. They are nowhere close to transformationally gifted. In one example, the Industrial Revolution produced unprecedented wealth but also caused enormous societal disruption. The vast majority who lived through the Industrial Revolution suffered enormously from loss of employment and security. Machines and factories took over their work. Wages

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stagnated, and what work remained involved oppressive, slave-like conditions. The elite ignored these problems. Eventually, frustrated workers produced violent uprisings that damaged their societies (Frey, 2019). Frey (2019) argued that the technological revolution in the early twenty-­ first-­century is producing a similar transition because enormous amounts of wealth are being created, but most of it is being hoarded by a very few at the top and the vast majority are suffering. Whether or not violent uprisings will occur is open to question; however, the insurrection that took place in Washington, DC early in 2021 could be a sign of this phenomenon emerging. Based on the dynamics of these disturbing socioeconomic phenomena, severe inequality is an enormous barrier that encourages many of the gifted to become more transactional while discouraging the development of transformational giftedness. Those who are gifted in the small elite population are separated from those far below them in the economic system by a wide empathy gulf, which is a term employed by Shapiro (2003), a prominent political scientist. In this metaphor, those who enjoy privilege cannot see the plight of the deprived because they are on opposite sides of a vast chasm. In more egalitarian societies, that gulf shrinks considerably so the gifted individuals who are born into affluence, or rise into it due to their innovative initiatives, can look across that small divide and perceive the need for helping those who lack resources. Here’s an example of the empathy gulf in action in a severely unequal society. It fits the blame-the-victim strategy mentioned earlier. Some time ago, the author of this chapter collaborated on a project with the son of a multimillionaire corporate executive. This inheritor of privilege was a trust-fund baby who could have sat back and done nothing but enjoy his fantastic life privileges. He could have been a case of the unearned merit described by the prominent economist Amartya Sen (2000). Those who are characterized by unearned merit are born into privilege but don’t have sufficient intelligence, talent, motivation, or creativity to do much with their lives. Nevertheless, others in the society tend to view them as meritorious due to their positioning at the top of the economic ladder (also see Markovits, 2019). But the young man described here was doing some diligent, purposeful work. He also was empathetic, extending compassion and collaboration to those within his social network. However, whenever the topic of inequality arose in a discussion, his eyes would glaze over and he would start denigrating the deprived, saying they deserved their miserable life circumstances because they were dull-witted examples of genetic deficiency. It’s quite possible that his invocation of genetic determinism, which is a somewhat flawed theory (Kampourakis, 2017; Morange, 2001), was necessary to protect himself from his own altruistic

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tendencies that would force him to recognize his enormous life privileges and the unfairness they represented. When moderately intelligent, privileged individuals such as the young man described here stand on one side of an enormous empathy gulf, they see little need to address the disturbing, severely damaging effects of extreme economic inequality. Instead, they use whatever cognitive capacities they developed in their elite schooling to come up with ways to justify doing nothing that would help the deprived. Obviously, this prevents them from pushing their own development toward transformational giftedness. It pulls them back toward transactional giftedness, to the extent that they develop their creative intelligence over the long term. Of course, there are gifted individuals at the bottom of these severely unequal societies. Fischer et al. (1996) described how creatively intelligent, deprived young people sometimes become motivated and talented innovators or gang leaders on the streets. Their life circumstances push them toward illegal leadership activities, which are highly impressive nonetheless. These individuals engage in decision-making processes that are at least as masterful as those carried out by Fortune 500 executives. But, arguably, most of their actions are transactional, of necessity. The socioeconomic constraints they face drive them into survival mode and prevent them from doing much that could be described as bettering the world through transformational giftedness.

Selfish Individualism Closely related to the severe inequality problem is a rather bizarre theory that came to dominate the field of mainstream economics and, consequently, the lives of billions in many nations around the globe. The rational-actor theory portrays humans as highly rational individuals who make well-informed economic decisions for selfish purposes based on near-perfect information sets. Supposedly, these actions produced by millions of individuals come together to create a highly innovative, productive economy that serves individuals and societies very well. Of course, prominent dissenting economists have revealed the flaws in this theoretical model (Freedman, 2008; Madrick, 2014; Quiggin, 2010; Stiglitz, 2010, 2012). Humans are not highly rational. Their decision-­ making often is based on flawed ideas and beliefs. They also seldom have access to complete, accurate sets of information. And very few are extremely selfish. These flaws in the theory partially explain the reasons why economies grow rapidly and then shudder and partially self-destruct over time, with a prominent example being the 2008 economic collapse.

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In spite of these economic problems and fluctuations, the conception of selfish individualism remains resilient. Selfish corporate executives and CEOs commandeer far more of the corporate profits than they deserve. Politicians are purchased and controlled by enormously wealthy, selfish individuals and groups that capitalize on corrupt laws and loopholes in government regulation (Ambrose, 2019). One intriguing indicator of the magnification of selfish individualism is the continued prominence of work generated by the pseudo-philosopher Ayn Rand. She wrote popular novels bizarrely portraying selfishness as a virtue and compassionate altruism as a weakness (Ambrose, 2020; Auxier, 2011; Duggan, 2019). Her works exert considerable influence over the minds of some powerful political and economic leaders. Selfish individualism has become so extreme that it has resulted in the deterioration of conceptions of personal responsibility over the long term. According to Mounk (2017), about five decades ago the dominant notion of personal responsibility began to shift away from the belief that we have a moral obligation to help and support others. Until that time, ethical awareness and altruism were at the core of personal responsibility. But since then, personal responsibility has been shifting toward a narrower conception that individuals should be self-sufficient. The obligation to help others has drifted away. The consequences are noticeable. For example, the belief has fueled the disintegration of social safety nets in many nations, especially in those characterized by severe inequality. Obviously, a socioeconomic system saturated with selfish individualism and the deterioration of personal responsibility is not designed to support the emergence of transformational giftedness. The ideological winds in such a society are blowing hard in the direction of transactional giftedness.

 lobalization: Simultaneous Integration G and Fragmentation Globalization is the economic, sociocultural, and technological networking of the world. It always has been present in one form or another throughout most of human history; however, it has accelerated considerably in recent decades due to the increasing power of information technology (Lopez-Claros et al., 2020; Rosenau, 2003). As with most human innovations, it has caused a lot of socioeconomic and political turbulence, wealth and power accumulation for some, and devastating harm for others. One interesting aspect of globalization is the way it is compellingly attractive to large numbers of citizens in

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various countries while being disgustingly repulsive to many others. Political scientist Rosenau (2003) used the term “distant proximities” to capture the essence of this phenomenon. He elaborated: The forces of fragmentation are rooted in the psychic comfort individuals derive from the familiar, close-at-hand values and practices of their neighborhoods, just as the forces of integration stem from their aspirations to share in the distant products of the global economy. (p. 16)

The simultaneous, widespread, powerful growth of both globalized integration and fragmented localization is creating considerable difficulty for sociopolitical leaders and citizens. Moreover, these opposing pressures make it much harder for leaders to perceive and address other twenty-first-century problems, which include the large-scale, rapid disintegration of global biodiversity that is tearing down ecosystems; the increasing severity of income inequality; the rise of authoritarian populism and autocratic leaders; and the inclination of those leaders to reject international cooperation (Lopez-Claros et al., 2020). While the United Nations was created more than seven decades ago and had some positive effects on international collaboration, the more recent emergence and growth of the distant proximities phenomenon that is simultaneously integrating and fragmenting the world has been undermining the likelihood that humanity will be able to come together to sufficiently address large-scale, twenty-first-century problems in the near future. The prospects are grim. It is very difficult for creatively intelligent young people to even perceive the ethical dimensions of globalization because it is such a massive, complex, turbulent phenomenon. The best most can do is figure out where their talents might fit in a globalized world and then operate as transactionally gifted individuals. But globalization requires the development of transformationally gifted young people so humanity can survive and perhaps thrive in the decades to come.

 ass Deception and Mind Swamping: Unethical Media M and Internet Activity For millions of people to recognize and grapple with twenty-first-century issues they must have access to clear, accurate portrayals of what’s taking place in the world. They also need this clarity and accuracy to protect the democracies that support the pursuit of their aspirations and well-being so they can avoid falling victim to authoritarian dictatorships. Leading political scientists

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have argued for some time that ethical, objective, investigative journalism is a crucial pillar of democratic governance, but it has been disintegrating to be replaced by industrial journalism through which deceptive talking heads spew misinformation in order to attract and entertain large audiences (Belsey, 1998). This form of toxic deception has only increased over time (Howard, 2020). When the Internet became powerful in the late twentieth century, there was considerable optimism about its potential for accurately informing much of humanity. But things have not turned out the way they should have. Yes, accurate information has become more accessible due to the widespread use of information technology; however, unethical distortions of information have become far more prevalent and powerful in recent years, especially through the inappropriate use of social media (Spinney, 2020). In the words of psychologist Daniel Schacter, “The development of Internet-based misinformation, such as recently well-publicized fake news sites, has the potential to distort individual and collective memories in disturbing ways” (cited in Spinney, 2020, p. 52). Individual citizens and the groups to which they belong now believe in bizarre conspiracy theories that encourage them to do harm to fellow citizens, and ultimately to themselves. To make things worse, advances in video and audio technology are now enabling unethical individuals and groups to create highly believable fake videos and audios of prominent leaders and citizens supposedly saying or doing immoral things so their credibility can be destroyed (Borel, 2020). Along with the serious problem of mass deception, the massive growth of information caused by rapid, insufficiently guided advancements in information technology has been swamping our minds and eroding our capacities for critical thinking (Salecl, 2020). There are just too many fragments of information flying at us, and many of them are deliberately distorted. The mind partially shuts down in such circumstances. In essence, it’s easier to develop into a transformationally gifted individual when information is clear and when it flows toward us in reasonable amounts than when it is full of distortions and pours over us like tidal waves.

Trapped on the Island of Now Many of the barriers mentioned in this chapter are gigantic, twenty-first-­ century problems that have developed over decades or centuries and that will take long-term thinking to solve. Unfortunately, many societal leaders and citizens think in the short term. For example, Bjornerud (2020), a leading

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geologist, uses a metaphor portraying humanity as trapped on the island of now, which forces most of us to think primarily or only about actions, initiatives, and issues that occur in the present, very near future, and very near past. Consequently, big bodies of metaphorical water separate most of humanity from the landmasses representing the more distant future and past. For these reasons, “the problem, in essence, is that rates of technological progress far outstrip the rate at which human wisdom matures (in the same way that environmental changes outpace evolutionary adaptation in mass extinction events)” (Bjornerud, 2020, p. 164). Thus, the vast majority of leaders and citizens ignore the well-being of future generations, and the sustainability of the ecosystem itself in favor of short-term materialistic gain. Bjornerud went on to say that we “lack both the appetite and political-economic infrastructure for intergenerational action” (p. 167). Reich (2018) made similar arguments about short-term thinking by pointing out the ways in which many of the very rich operate within a system that largely ignores the future. The philanthropy they engage in aims to make improvements for rather narrow purposes while ignoring the needs of future generations. Other analyses of the problem of shortsightedness in today’s complex world show up in Sternberg (2019) and Ambrose (2016). The island-­ of-­now trap discourages those who might potentially develop transformational giftedness from making much progress along those lines because they don’t consider the long-term implications of their actions or the actions of others.

Proposals for Overcoming the Barriers The enormous barriers hindering the development of transformational giftedness described in this chapter are only examples. It would take a lengthy book to encompass portrayals of many more twenty-first-century problems. The analysis becomes almost as complex when we consider ways to address the barriers. This section includes discussions of some ways gifted individuals, the parents, counselors, and educators who work with them, and transformationally gifted sociopolitical and economic leaders can come to understand and begin to dismantle and overcome the barriers. These recommendations include the proposed strengthening of thought processes that can break down dogmatism, the application of knowledge about the networking of diverse minds for global problem solving; active searching for hidden, ethical brilliance; and the magnification of scholarship and practice that connects with transformational giftedness and the barriers that stand in its way. As with the

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preceding descriptions of the barriers, these proposals about how to respond also are examples. There are many other ways to respond, and some of them show up in other chapters in this volume. Sternberg (2021) provides a helpful overview of some practical responses while describing various forms of giftedness.

 se Nuanced, Jurisprudential Judgment to Discover U Opportunities for Transformational Giftedness to Work Against the Big Barriers Dogmatic individuals tend to lock themselves firmly and inescapably into one side or the other of a controversial issue (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2012; Ambrose et al., 2012). In contrast, nuanced judgment is the ability to perceive shades of gray between opposing perspectives (Elder & Paul, 2012; Resnick, 1987). People with this ability defer judgment until sufficient credible evidence comes forth, then they make an informed decision. Without nuanced judgment, decision-makers end up superficially surface skimming over complex issues and fall prey to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. The jurisprudential critical thinking strategy is designed to help participants engage in nuanced judgment (Ambrose, 2021; Arends & Kilcher, 2010; Joyce & Weil, 1992). In this process, participants establish two opposing positions on an issue and find evidence and arguments in favor of them. They put these two opposing positions in column one and three in a three-column table. The nuanced thinking occurs when they come up with a compromise position in the middle column of the table, finding arguments and evidence for it as well. An important rule of the process is that the compromise position cannot grossly violate either of the opposing positions. It can lean toward one or the other, but not too far. Shiller (2013), a prominent economist, provided an example of the nuanced judgment and jurisprudential thought processes needed in times of the extreme selfish transactional behavior that emerges from the economic theory mentioned earlier in this chapter. He showed how the financial industry shed itself of empathy and ethical awareness and became more exploitive and prone to collapse every now and then, damaging the lives of citizens in the process. He also showed how the financial industry has a good side that needs to be reclaimed and strengthened. It has produced innovations such as pensions, mortgages, and insurance systems that help the average person over the long term, and it’s capable of producing even more benefits for the common good if it is guided by forms of leadership that we would call transformational.

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 trengthen Cognitive Diversity and Networked S Ethical Innovation Nielsen (2012), a physicist, and Suresh (2013), former NSF president, pointed out a strong and growing trend toward interdisciplinary, international networking for STEM innovation. In the past, scientists used to work in isolation or in collaboration with a few colleagues in a particular location. But now, they are networking throughout the world. The result is an acceleration of the development of new ideas and products. A related phenomenon has been reported by economist and complexity scientist Scott Page (2007, 2010, 2017) who pointed out that diverse teams tend to outperform homogenous teams even when the latter include superior intelligence. A cognitively diverse team includes people with differing backgrounds, beliefs, and problem-solving heuristics. Helping gifted young people understand that scientific innovation and economic actions in the world require ethical awareness and guidance is crucial if we want to ensure that these accelerations in team-based innovation are beneficial to humanity, and to all life on earth. Consequently, bright young people who are interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and business need to explore the ethical implications of work in these areas. While the investigations of scientific networking and cognitive diversity are confined largely to STEM fields and business, might it be possible to encourage more interdisciplinary, international networking of diverse teams both within and beyond STEM and economic initiatives? Political theorist Thomas Rochon (1998) provided a promising way to think about how cultures can change rapidly and profoundly when small critical communities comprised of critical thinkers share their ideas to create new cultural values that don’t fit the established value systems. If those working with the gifted can encourage them to engage in international collaborations on the exploration and solution of problems pertaining to STEM, business, and sociocultural phenomena they might be able to strengthen transformational giftedness by injecting cognitive diversity and ethical networking into the learning of bright, young people.

Strive to Discover Hidden Transformational Giftedness Earlier in this chapter there was a brief discussion of some ways in which impressive transactional creative intelligence arises in severely deprived populations. Some gang leaders and other street innovators come up with

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impressive initiatives that are comparable to those produced by the most high-profile corporate executives. But can transformational giftedness be hidden within some of these creatively intelligent, risk-taking, transactional leaders on the streets of the inner city? There actually is a group of altruistic, highly creative counselors and mentors at the inner-city University of Winnipeg, Canada. They run a program called Lost Prizes because their purpose is to find deprived young people who are in trouble, some running afoul of the law, and then help them discover their aspirations, talents, and empathic capacities (McCluskey, 2017; McCluskey et  al., 2005). After helping them correct their mistakes, to the extent possible, they guide them toward transformationally gifted actions. In one example, they helped an incarcerated young person change direction and eventually become a physician. In another example, the author of this chapter met one of their mentees at a conference in Canada. We sat together at a table while the conference was just getting started. The young man was huge and muscular, covered with tattoos. He also was very sullen. Surprisingly, they called him to the front because he was the keynote speaker for the evening. It turns out he was a formerly incarcerated street gang leader who became a highly talented artist as well as a mentor for young people who were pursuing the criminal path he had followed in his teen years. Now, he courageously and altruistically goes out onto the streets to find these young people and guide them toward more productive, transformational paths. Can educators and counselors around the world follow the lead of the Lost Prizes group and discover transformational giftedness in those lost in poverty?

Develop Long-Range, Broad-Scope Vision It becomes evident from the overviews of the barriers hindering transformational giftedness, and in the recently mentioned cognitive diversity/networking proposal, that the enormity and complexity of the barriers require forms of thinking not usually employed, even by creatively intelligent individuals and groups. Their complexity requires interdisciplinary thought and collaboration. For example, understanding the massive problem of severe inequality requires insights from sociologists who investigate issues of social justice, political scientists who clarify the ideological systems that sustain and magnify inequality, economists who can describe ways economic systems could be modified to make them more just, and social epidemiologists who carry out international analyses to illustrate connections between inequality and social problems. Also, given the very long time frames encompassing the emergence

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and strengthening of these barriers, we also need to elevate our gaze and consider the long term, both into the future, and into the past, as described in Bjornerud’s (2020) aforementioned island of now metaphor. Educators, counselors, and parents might aim to develop panoramic scanning capacities in gifted young people. Panoramic scanning is the ability to understand complex phenomena by thinking both long-term and broad scope (Ambrose, 1996, 2009). One way to begin the development of panoramic scanning capacities is to engage bright young people in collaborative and independent study interdisciplinary projects involving the exploration of the barriers mentioned in this chapter. Such inquiries could give creatively intelligent youth a desire to continue the exploration over the long term, with the intent to participate in the solution of some large-scale problems. This desire might promote the development of more transformationally gifted individuals

Concluding Thoughts Of course, this chapter only scratched the surface of the gigantic barriers standing in the way of the development of transformational giftedness. It is intended to help theorists, researchers, and practitioners in gifted education broaden and extend their thinking about how they might encourage creatively intelligent young minds to expand and broaden their vision while looking for opportunities to do good work in the world. Fortunately, there are transformationally gifted individuals out there who can serve as examples. A few of them are mentioned in this chapter and many others are described in other chapters in this volume. Let’s take a first step by allowing them to inspire us, and the audiences we are attempting to influence. Let’s also use this inspiration to magnify the importance of moving gifted education away from narrow-­minded identification and learning processes that emphasize proficiency with superficial, narrow-minded, verbal-symbolic information processing while ignoring big-picture, ethical capacities.

References Abramowitz, A. I. (2018). The great alignment: Race, party transformation, and the rise of Donald Trump. Yale University Press. Ambrose, D. (1996). Panoramic scanning: Essential element of higher-order thought. Roeper Review, 18, 280–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199609553760

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2 The Beautiful Risk of Moving Toward Pedagogies of the Possible Ronald A. Beghetto and Vlad P. Glăveanu

…if [students] do not follow the prescribed course penalties will accrue; while if they do, they may expect, some time in the future, rewards for their present sacrifices. (John Dewey, 1922, pp. 64–65)

What if we designed learning experiences for young people that moved beyond the transactional pedagogies of sameness and toward transformative pedagogies of the possible? The aim of this chapter is to explore this question, including the assumptions, challenges and implications surrounding this question. Prior to doing so, however, we must first recognize that any calls aimed at changing prototypical pedagogical practices and traditions must be rooted in the reality of just how difficult it can be to imagine, let alone enact new possibilities. Indeed, educational and creativity scholars have long recognized that so much more can and should be done with the time young people spend in this “place called school” (Goodlad, 2004) and how difficult it is to realize the potential for doing something more meaningful, lasting, and

R. A. Beghetto (*) Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] V. P. Glăveanu Webster University Geneva, Bellevue, Switzerland University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_2

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transformative in the here-and-now of schools and classrooms. This is evidenced in the fact that the urgent calls for change from early nineteenth and twentieth century educational philosophers, such as John Dewey’s (1922) remarks we open this chapter with, still ring true today. Indeed, reflecting on the persistent calls for change can make it feel like we are forever frozen in the today of some hoped for school of tomorrow. Still, even the today of transactional educational practices, which focuses on the exchange of student’s time for ever increasing content and custodial coverage, has its basis in the hope of gaining something more someday. In this chapter, we assert there is still hope for realizing something new, different, more meaningful and even transformative in the here-and-now. We assert that transformation can and must happen in the schools of today if we want to see those transformations continue into the schools of tomorrow. Change is always possible and there is a long history of new pedagogies imagined and realized by educators (e.g., Friere, 1970; Froebel, 1895; Malaguzzi, 1998; Montessori, 1912). It is also worth noting that even the often lamented project of formal and free public education, found in many countries around the world, is itself a remarkable innovation. In more recent years, scholars in the fields of gifted education and leadership (e.g., Bass, 1998; Bass & Avolio, 1994; Sternberg, 2017, 2020, 2021a, 2021b; Sternberg et al., 2021) have also called for a shift in focus from a transactional ethos (i.e., what people get based on what effort and talents they share) toward a transformative ethos (i.e., what people can do with their skills and abilities to transform the world into a better place) and from individual-based conceptions to distributed and participative frameworks (see Glăveanu & Kaufman, 2017). Along these lines, Sternberg (2021a) outlined a taxonomy of nine different possibilities that can help stimulate educators’ move toward educational experiences aimed at supporting young people in using their “gifts” in ways that make the world a better place. The taxonomy spans nine different categories, which include three transactional, three transformative, and three destructive possibilities for how people might employ their skills, effort, talents, and abilities. Sternberg’s (2021a) sixth type describes a “fully transformative” possibility whereby young people can transform themselves and others. We align ourselves with this sixth possibility whereby we encourage movement toward pedagogies of the possible (Glăveanu & Beghetto, in press), which are aimed at providing young people and the adults who work with them opportunities to transform themselves, others, and the world around them in mutually beneficial ways. When we call for transformative pedagogies of the possible, we do so out of a recognition that so much more can be done in the pedagogical practices of the here-and-now. We are thereby not anti-education and not

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critics of teachers. Rather our goal is to invite all of us to continue the project of imagining and realizing even more hopeful and transformative possibilities for teaching and learning. Imagining and realizing something new is, of course, a risk and with all risks there are potential benefits and potential hazards (Breakwell, 2014). Given the long history of persistent teaching practices and failed reform efforts (Tyack & Cuban, 1995), some may understandably be cautious about trying, yet again, to transform teaching and learning. We would argue that imagining and realizing transformative pedagogies of the possible is not just a sensible risk, but a beautiful risk. Beautiful risks refer to uncertain endeavors that stand to make a positive and lasting contribution in the learning and lives of others (Beghetto, 2019a). Imagining and enacting pedagogies of the possible (Glăveanu & Beghetto, in press) represents a beautiful risk  on two levels. First, those involved in designing and implementing such pedagogies have the potential to transform the core experiences of education itself. In this way, it is a beautiful risk for the designers and educators willing to try to enact such pedagogies. Second, as will be detailed in this chapter, pedagogies of the possible provide opportunities and encouragement for young people to take beautiful risks themselves. In this way, students have an opportunity to leverage their energies, passions, and interests in an effort to make the world a better place now and into the future. As we will discuss, pedagogies of the possible move beyond challenging young people with accelerated, advanced, and compacted academic experiences. Pedagogies of the possible also move beyond a focus on identifying who is the “best” or “brightest” and toward learning experiences that enable all students to put their learning, interests, passions and “gifts” to creative work – tackling challenging problems and issues in the here-and-now with the goal of making their schools, communities, and world a better place (see Sternberg, 2017, 2021a, 2021b). In the sections that follow, we briefly discuss why we conceptualize prototypical pedagogies as transactional and why it is necessary to move toward more transformative pedagogies. We then introduce our conception of Pedagogies of the Possible (Glăveanu & Beghetto, in press) and discuss how such pedagogies represent a particular case of creative learning experiences. We close by discussing the core features of Pedagogies of the Possible, highlight an example of a curricular experience that reflects those features, and the kinds of new possibilities and transformations that come from such experiences.

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From Transactional to Transformative Pedagogies The prototypical learning experience can be thought of as having its basis in a transactional ethos, which involves “giving something” with the expectation of “gaining something” in return. Although there are various transactional relationships involved in formal schooling, the typical arrangement resembles a kind of educational promissory note. In this arrangement, students give increasing amounts of time and effort in return for access to predetermined knowledge, skills, and training with the expectation that, at some later date, their promising note can be “cashed out” in the form of further educational and employment opportunities, access to valued aspects of society, and other assumed desirable personal ends. Unfortunately for far too many students this promissory note feels more like a Ponzi scheme, than valuable return on investment (see Kozol, 1991; Scott-Clayton, 2018). Moreover, even when the educational promissory note does pay out in more hoped for outcomes, we still maintain that the transactional ethos underwriting the pedagogical process unnecessarily limits the horizon of the possible. This is because the transactional ethos of the prototypical learning experience conspires against a more transformative ethos. It tends to privilege pedagogies of sameness whereby a group of same-age students are expected to learn the same curriculum, in the same way, at the same time, and produce the same results. In such cases, important differences, which are at the heart of creative learning experiences become minimized and suppressed (Beghetto & Vasquez, in press; Beghetto & Yoon, 2021; Glăveanu & Beghetto, 2016). This is not to say that there are no promising specialized, personalized, and advanced learning programs that embrace difference and disrupt the pedagogy of sameness by offering more individualized and tailored learning experiences. Still, we maintain that even more tailored, individualized and accelerated experiences often remain within the broader constricting confines of the promissory transactional ethos, that is, “If I do this now, then I will someday get [desired outcome].” We suggest that transformative pedagogies of the possible offer a more hopeful alternative, while still acknowledging that even pedagogies of the possible can have transactional features. The primary focus of transformative pedagogies, however, is not on what individuals will someday gain by giving their educational time and efforts now. Rather, the focus is on what can be done now and into the future to make positive and ongoing contributions to others and the world around us.

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Pedagogies of the Possible Pedagogies of the possible represent a special case of creative learning experiences (Beghetto, 2016). Whereas prototypical learning experiences are based on a transactional logic, focused almost entirely on outcomes, pedagogies of the possible focus on cultivating and sustaining creative learning experiences that help young people and educators establish themselves with other people and the world around them. Although creative learning involves subjective creative sensemaking of academic subject matter, creative learning also includes possibilities for young people to make continuous creative contributions to others in and beyond the immediate school and classroom learning event (Basu & Beghetto, 2021; Beghetto & Vasquez, in press). Pedagogies of the possible represent a more encompassing aspect of creative learning experiences in that they focus on designing and enacting novel person-world encounters, which are characterized by open-endedness, nonlinearity, pluri-­ perspectives and future-orientation (Glăveanu & Beghetto, 2020). Table 2.1 summarizes these facets of creative experiences in relations to pedagogies of the possible. In what follows, we briefly discuss each of the pedagogically defined creative experiential facets, highlight possible manifestations of these components in teaching and learning, and discuss what gets transformed through enactments of pedagogies of the possible.

Open-Endedness As described in Table  2.1, open-endedness refers to teachers’ and students’ willingness to explore emerging possibilities by going off-script and engaging with the unexpected. This involves moving away from known-answer questions and topics and toward engaging with uncertainty and the unknown. Such engagement is reflected, for example, in the decision to ask ‘unknown’ questions in an educational setting. It is quite common in the classroom for teachers to raise questions that test the knowledge and understanding of students rather than further their own knowledge and understanding (Thompson, 1997). The big advantage of asking ‘unknown’ questions rests in the fact that teacher and student can co-construct knowledge together. This practice acts as somewhat of an equalizer of power relations, a defining feature in every educational context, and as an invitation to initiate an experience of collective wonder (Glăveanu, 2020b). It is precisely this act of wondering that contributes to open-endedness by helping teachers realize the value of ‘not knowing’.

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Table 2.1  Creative transformation Facets of creative experiences Open-­ endedness

Non-linearity

Pluri-­ perspectivism

Future orientation

experiential

facets

Pedagogical definition

and

pedagogical

Pedagogical possibilities

Asking “unknown” questions Accepting to not know Improvisation Lesson unplanning Mistakes can be Willingness to pursue good unpredictable, Multiple discontinuous (back pathways to and forth movements) goals and often ephemeral trajectories of teaching Finding detours and learning endeavors Fostering student and experiences choice Perspective-­ Teachers and students taking committed to inviting Dialogical and engaging with experience various perspectives on topics and experiences Delaying closure placed in dialogue Building on life with each other experience Multiple Teaching and learning futures aimed at generating Focus on something that is complex coming into being, challenges connecting the past to Utopian the future through thinking means of the present Cultivating responsibility Willingness to explore emerging teaching and learning possibilities, go “off script,” engage with the unexpected, and open to changing views and outcomes

possibilities

for

Potential transformations Transforming the self by expanding its horizon of possibility, including possible ways of being

Transforming action by inviting chance events and serendipitous encounters and learning from them

Transforming social relations by fostering perspective-taking and openness to other ways of seeing the world

Transforming society by considering the future implications of our present day creative actions

One of education’s greatest ideals is certainly that of instilling knowledge in younger generations and, with it, the capacity to function as active, informed citizens in society. This emphasis on knowledge, however, comes at the price of predetermining most aspects of teaching and evaluation. Teachers are expected to know what they are supposed to teach and to do it in highly regular, standardized ways in order to reach present goals. In this manner, the end goals of education are anything but open. To balance and go beyond

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this prototypical approach, we need to make room for generative states of not knowing in the classroom, states in which we become aware of an expanded field of possibility and engage in its exploration (Glăveanu, in press). This exploration in particular can take the form of improvised practice, another tool that helps foster open-endedness. Many people could think of improvisation as a less perfect solution for dealing with problems whereby we apply whatever knowledge and skills we have to a new challenge, without any guarantee of success. However, to improvise doesn’t mean to throw away all structure and take unnecessary risks – in fact improvisation always builds on an existing framework and set of knowledge and skills (Montuori, 2003; see also Sawyer, (2011). This dialogue between new and old, freedom and constraints, speaking and listening, that is at the heart of improvised practice makes it a marker of excellent teaching. Of course, it is often hard to rely purely on improvisation in the classroom and one of the most horrifying thoughts for a teacher is probably coming to class without any plan or structure. And here is why we should note that open-endedness is not a synonym for completely unstructured, messy or aimless teaching. In fact, as proposed by Beghetto (2017a), educators should engage in lesson unplanning for specific aspects of their teaching in which they aim to foster creative openings – moments within an otherwise structured sequence in which singular, pre-determined aims are questioned and discussion paths become non-linear.

Nonlinearity A pedagogy that has a basis in nonlinearity recognizes the dynamic nature of creative teaching and learning processes and, in particular, how they rarely move from one predetermined point to another. Rather there is always some level of indeterminacy within an otherwise supportive learning environment (Beghetto, 2017a, 2019b). This is not to say that there are no rules, guidelines or criteria, performance. Indeed, as noted just above, possibility and creativity always occur within some level of structure and constraints, but it is important to understand structure and constraints as malleable and to playfully engage with them in nonlinear ways. In practice, this can be achieved by recognizing mistakes and failures as useful in education. Just as in the case of not knowing, making mistakes is actively discouraged in the classroom setting. Despite the fact that they have been recognized, from early on, as an integral part of a learning process (Swartz, 1976), their role is often assigned to that of a cautionary tale that is told precisely in order to avoid future mistakes. This view is not in line with what we propose here as pedagogies of the possible in

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which a wrong answer can represent the beginning of a creative thought process that could, especially when facilitated well, lead to new insights and to deeper forms of learning. This is because committing an error means stepping outside a given plan and, therefore, it becomes an opportunity to reflect on the plan itself and its linear relation between stages and outcomes. Usually at school such plans are embedded within the curriculum and rely on reaching specific objectives in specific ways. Setting aims and objectives in education is certainly not at fault. Even if, as we argued just before, it is always useful to leave room for open-endedness and the unexpected within a learning process, objectives still offer some of the constraints needed to create and to improvise. The challenge is to allow for more than one path to a given goal or objectives. Understanding the fact that each educational aim can be approached from multiple angles  – in the way a mountain can be climbed using different paths – is crucial for fostering a non-linear approach to teaching and learning. In addition, we need to also question the fixation with efficiency in the classroom defined as the shortest time spent on working on a task that achieves maximum outcomes. It is undeniable that many teachers not only feel but are under serious time constraints when it comes to delivering their curriculum, yet this shouldn’t blind us towards the value of detours in education (for a discussion of the role of detours in research see Wegener et al., 2018). Taking an unexpected, ‘longer’ path to teaching and/or learning a given content has its merits within pedagogies of the possible precisely because it allows the teacher and learner to experience a different vantage point from which to consider the discipline or problem at hand and potentially a useful perspective to use in the future. In order to maximize the benefits of diverse pathways and detours, finally, it is important to offer learners the choices and sense of agency they need to construct their own learning trajectories (e.g., Clements & Sarama, 2004) and, in doing so, to take ownership of their education and the opportunities embedded within it.

Pluri-Perspectivism Pluri-perspectivism represents a commitment to acknowledging and engaging with a multitude of different perspectives because multiple points of view serve as a basis for the emergence and novelty inherent in creative learning experiences. Arguably both creativity and learning are based on the process of acquiring new perspectives on self, others and world in the process of acting on and interacting with each of them (Glăveanu et al., 2019). An important quality of these perspective is their multiplicity or the fact that one can always

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consider things from more than one perspective and, in doing so, ‘see’ and understand it anew. It is our capacity to re-position ourselves vis a vis a problem that allows the development of new perspectives and most often this repositioning places us, in fact, in the position of another person. Through acts of position exchange (Gillespie & Martin, 2014) and perspective-taking (Glăveanu & de Saint Laurent, 2018), teachers and students alike get not only to understand each other’s point of view but to explore new ways of relating to the world, including to the themes and topics covered in education. Human existence is fundamentally pluri-perspectival in the sense that we strive towards grasping the positions and perspectives of others and making sense of their experience. This ability, including perspective-taking and empathy, tends to be focused on in the early stages of education, particularly in kindergarten and primary schools. Once it’s assumed that students can understand the perspective of someone else – what in psychology is called ‘theory of mind’ (Wellman, 1992) – then the emphasis is shifted on other areas. And yet, the acquisition of knowledge and our capacity of creative expression continue to depend on the range and depth of perspectives. In this case, it is important to go beyond simply noticing that other perspectives are available and engaging with them in a dialogical manner. This refers to the effort of understanding what is new and what might be different in the perspective of others; and, instead of overcoming this difference by ignoring, rejecting it or quickly aligning points of view, trying to appreciate its meaning and value. Differences of perspective are treasured in pedagogies of the possible, as explained from the start, because it is in difference that creativity and learning originate. And even if these differences are eventually overcome  (or maintained) it is important to avoid early closure of the process of creative thought. As long as we have difference and tension, we have something to think about, something to learn and something to create with. The moment difference morphs into sameness we have learned something and perhaps created something (e.g., a new synthesis) but we are no longer engaging dialogically in these processes. In order to keep the dialogue going in the classroom, we can pay particular attention to the life experience of each participant. Even in the most homogenous of groups, students and teachers still bring a personal history of positions, perspectives and concerns. Exploring these in more depth and using them as opportunities for learning not only makes teaching relatable and meaningful but it fosters the kind of pluri-­ perspectival worlds that open up educational experiences to the possible and to the future.

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Future Orientation Pedagogies of the possible orient teachers and students towards multiple and essentially unknown futures. Human action is intrinsically future oriented in the sense that whatever we do, including remembering the past, responds to the needs of the present and, implicitly, is oriented towards an anticipated future (Valsiner, 2001). However, education rarely recognizes this fundamental relationship with the future. In many ways, to receive an education means to participate in the transmission of old knowledge, skills and mindsets. While this has some value in its own right, it is also alarming from the perspective of students having to live and work in dynamic, ever-changing contexts or what is increasingly being called VUCA worlds (ones described by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). The only way to prepare today’s learners for this kind of environments is to prioritize futures literacy (Miller, 2007) or the ability to envision, critically assess and construct multiple, open futures. This can be achieved, for example, by presenting them with complex real-life challenges and asking them to envision solutions for them. A defining feature of these solutions is precisely that they carry consequences for self, others, and for the future. Being able to reflect on what these implications are and what kinds of futures we are contributing to should be an essential part of education. This means also recognizing learners as agentic and already concerned by what is to come which is a different mindset compared with more current assumption that students are the future, just not yet. Educators can also be bolder in the ways they scaffold students’ ability to imagine the future. Usually what is being ‘trained’ in the classroom whenever the future becomes a topic is the capacity to predict the lost likely outcomes. However, forecasting is different than foresight (Poli, 2017) in the sense that students should be able to envision futures in plural and go beyond what is most likely to happen. In fact, we can cultivate a capacity for utopian thinking, for imagining futures that are desirable and yet virtually impossible. This exercise is not futile  – it enables learners to understand the kinds of constraints and possibilities they do have in imagining and changing the world around them. It also enables them to think deeply about the consequences of utopias and the many ways in which utopian visions can turn dystopian or already be dystopian from the perspective of other people. Engaging with the future is never a self-centered exercise but one that helps students understand that they live in a shared world in which the future of the self is interdependent with that of others. This means, on the one hand, that we all depend on

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others when it comes to building a desired future and, on the other, that we can also help shape other people’s expectations and futures. This realization invites the topic of responsibility and ethics in the way we educate for possibility. As such, the ethics of the possible should be an ever-present companion of our attempts to educate for the present and for the future.

Realizing Pedagogies of the Possible Movement toward pedagogies of the possible requires reimagining learning experiences guided by the principles of open-endedness, nonlinearity, pluri-­ perspectives and future-orientation. Although this kind of movement may seem like a radical departure from the prototypical transactional pedagogies found in most schools and classrooms, we would offer that this change can occur from making continual, slight shifts in how students and teachers use their time and energy (Beghetto, 2019a). Legacy challenges (Beghetto, 2017b, 2018, 2019b) represent one promising curricular design that exemplifies the transformative potential of pedagogies of the possible. Similar to other efforts aimed at promoting creative and real-world problem solving in gifted and general education settings (e.g., Battistoni, 2002; Boss, 2015; Renzulli et al., 2004; Stanton et  al., 1999; Torrance & Torrance, 1978), legacy challenges represent a curricular opportunity for young people to productively engage with uncertainty and make a transformative contribution to their schools, communities and beyond. Legacy challenges not only offer students opportunities to engage in the core (and sometimes overlooked) creative work of finding, defining, and representing ill-defined problems (Pretz et al., 2003), but to assume the role of transformative creative leadership by designing and managing projects that can make a difference in the world around them (Sternberg, 2017, 2021a). More specifically, legacy challenges use a simple four-part structure that invites young people to: • Identify problems that matter (e.g., What is a problem or issue that you would like to address in your school, neighborhood, community or beyond? Is this a problem that we know about or something people have not paid much attention to or do not even view it as a problem?); • Develop a rationale for why this problem matters (e.g., Why does this problem matter? Why do you want to address this problem? Who is impacted by this problem? How might you get feedback from multiple audiences and perspectives on this issue? What will happen if the problem isn’t addressed?);

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• Take creative action (e.g., What are you going to do about it? What resources and expertise do you need to address this problem? What first steps can you take to start addressing this problem? Are you prepared to seek out additional perspectives and assistance when needed? Who can provide this feedback and assistance? How will you identify setbacks and make adjustments when facing those setbacks, including taking new actions and exploring emergent possibilities in pursuit of more promising directions?); • Ensure positive and sustainable solutions (e.g., How will you make sure this work you are doing does not have unintended, negative consequences? How will you continually monitor progress and outcomes and make needed adjustments? How will you ensure that this work carries on even if you are not able to continue with this work? Who can you involve now to ensure long term sustainability of the work into the future?) The above legacy structure can be used with any age and level of student, from preschoolers to advanced graduate students. At the University level, this structure can be incorporated into existing courses, programs of study, or even extra-curricular learning experiences. In fact, this simple legacy challenge structure, developed by Ron (first author), was used as the core curricular experience implemented for first and second year undergraduate students when he was directing Innovation House at the University of Connecticut. Although the framework is quite simple (comprised of just four predetermined elements), it is the to-be-determined features of the experience that open up the possibilities for it to be a transformative learning experience, whereby young people have an opportunity to find purpose and meaning in their lives by learning how to solve problems, address  injustices and issues confronting them and others that can make the world a better place, even in small ways (Sternberg et al., 2021). This is because the to-be-determined features are developed by students. Students have the opportunity (in some cases for the first time in their learning histories) to identify and act on issues, challenges, and problems that matter to them and that can make a difference to others. This streamlined curricular framework provides scaffolding in the form of encouraging students to develop, share, refine, and seek out needed supports to transform their ideas into contributions that can benefit others. Unlike other curricular projects, there is no conclusive end-date for such projects. Some projects can be realized during the scheduled sessions, others change multiple times, and still others take years to develop and refine until

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they are ready to be realized, such as the development and production of a tasty nutritional bar for children in food-insecure households1. These kinds of creative curricular experiences are not limited to University students, K12 teachers and students can (and have) develop and implement such projects (see Beghetto, 2018). Even devoting a minimum of five-minutes a day to creative learning endeavors can, over time, result in transformative learning opportunities. All that is needed is a simple creative curricular framework, like the legacy challenge framework, and the willingness to engage with the various possibilities that emerge from such pedagogical designs. Admittedly, the willingness to make the shift from more transactional to more transformative pedagogical possibilities is often the most challenging aspect of enacting pedagogies of the possible. One reason people find this shift challenging is because many teachers and students may not have encountered the possibilities afforded by pedagogies of the possible in their previous teaching and learning experiences. Figure  2.1 illustrates a few of these associated possibilities. As illustrated in Fig. 2.1, many of the possibilities are not often focused on, encouraged or even welcome in the prototypical classroom learning environment. When designing and enacting pedagogies of the possible, people (i.e., teachers, students, administrators, parents, and community members) may need support in transforming some of their assumptions, commitments, and comfort level with these possibilities. Movement towards pedagogies of the possible, involves movement beyond working on predetermined problems that have predetermined solutions and toward the uncertainty and not knowing of allowing students to identify complex and challenging problems that matter to them, even though there is no clear path for how to address such problems or the outcomes of doing so. Although creative teaching and learning involves working with and through uncertainty and not knowing (Beghetto, 2019a), such pedagogical efforts are often sustained by possibilities of anticipation, hope and care. Indeed, given that pedagogies of the possible are aimed at moving from what is to what could or should be and enabling our capacity both to imagine and anticipate (Poli, 2017) new futures. This is not simply forecasting what could be, but building toward possible futures in the here-and-now, drawing on relevant past experiences and knowledge to carrying the work forward into new and more hopeful possibilities (Solnit, 2016; Sternberg et al., 2021). 1  See, for instance, this news release from UConn today describing how an idea generated by students engaged in this creative curricular experience at the University Connecticut’s Innovation house was developed into a novel protein bar that aims to address this important issue (https://today.uconn.edu/2021/05/ student-entrepreneurs-use-nutritional-bar-to-reach-out-to-those-in-need#)

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Fig. 2.1  Plurality of possibilities

Moreover, the pedagogical effort is guided by a commitment to making schools, communities, and world a better place (even if it is in a small way). This commitment engenders new possibilities for hope and care by moving the focus beyond the self (which is often the focus in more transactional educational efforts) and towards concern, care, and hope for improving the learning and lives of others. This includes anticipating and supporting the emotional dimensions of such work (Dernikos et al., 2020) as well as the emotions and experiences inherent in failure and setbacks. Indeed, creative work is often punctuated by moments of failure (von Thienen et  al., 2017), sometimes painful failures. Failure and mistakes in this context, however, can be leveraged as important and productive learning experiences in their own right (Kapur, 2016). Educators can help young people recognize the productive features of failure by sharing their own and other people’s favorite failure’s and invite young people to reflect on how working through failure and setbacks, even painful ones, can represent a productive and important aspect of creative work (Beghetto, in press; Beghetto & McBain, in press). Ultimately, pedagogies of the possible involve continual encounters with movement and responsibility. Movement here refers to a full range of dynamic possibilities, including, physical, temporal, symbolic, and psychological. Whether it be moving between perspectives (Gillespie & Martin, 2014) and dialogues (Glăveanu, 2020c) to

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moving knowledge and ideas into states of creative action (Beghetto, 2017b) pedagogies of the possible animate new possibilities of movement. Within the context of pedagogies of the possible, encouraging and supporting young people’s engagement in life as creative citizens manifests the possibilities of responsibility for everyone involved. This is because young people focus their energies not simply on what they can get, but rather how they might assume the responsibility of putting forth their energies, passions, and talents toward projects and endeavors that are both “self- and other-­ transformational” (Sternberg et al., 2021, p. 7). These responsibilities reach beyond the self and beyond walls of the school and classroom. Moreover, because other people are involved, the responsibility includes continuous monitoring and consideration of how even seemingly beneficial actions can have potential unintended consequences for oneself and others (Ambrose, 2009; Merton, 1936; Sternberg, 2021a). Pedagogies of the possible thereby present us with the responsibilities of monitoring the impact of our efforts by engaging with different perspectives and experiences to ensure that our efforts are not inadvertently diminishing, marginalizing or discounting different communities and perspectives. Indeed, as Sternberg (2021a) has outlined in his taxonomy of how young people can deploy their energies and talents, seemingly transformative efforts can actually be pseudo-transformations  – resulting in destructive consequences for oneself and others. Consequently, the shared responsibility of pedagogies of the possible is to move toward the productive plurality, otherness, and openness of “societies of the possible” (Glăveanu, 2020a).

Concluding Thoughts on Transforming Education The need to transform education is a popular theme in society and has always been so given the close relation between the two. The role of education is to form citizens in the mirror of society’s values, norms and ideals while any societal organization depends on educational systems for its survival and development. It is therefore easy to establish a dynamic in which the conservative instincts of societies and their institutions are supported by practices of schooling that are risk and change-averse. It can also be tempting to develop transactional educational programs aimed at identifying the “best” and “brightest” and provide them with accelerated experiences to develop their “gifts” and “talents” with the hope that they will someday do great things (Sternberg, 2017, 2020). As we have discussed, such a focus is problematic because it reflects a transactional, promissory-note approach that exchanges

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students’ time today with the hope that “they may expect, some time in the future, rewards for their present sacrifices” (Dewey, 1922, p. 65). Throughout this chapter we have maintained that a transformative approach represents an important shift both in the temporal and functional ethos of education, because it focusses on providing young people with opportunities to put forth their efforts, energies and talents toward benefiting others in solving problems and challenges faced in the here-and-now and into the future. As the theme and contributors to this volume evidence, strides are being made in the fields of gifted education and leadership by helping educators, educational leaders, policy makers, scholars, parents, and concerned citizens make a shift in their thinking toward a more transformative ethos in gifted education. This ethos is aimed at providing young people with the kinds of educational experiences that help them move beyond a focus on what gifts they possess or how they might personally benefit from those gifts and toward how they might use their talents to contribute to the common good (Sternberg, 2020). Our perspective on pedagogies of the possible endeavors to take this perspective one step further by asserting that all young people, not just those identified and served in gifted education programs, can benefit from transformative educational experiences. More specifically, we assert that pedagogies of the possible represent an effort aimed at democratizing the transformative ideas and efforts in the fields of gifted education and leadership and ensuring that all young people have the opportunity to learn how to contribute to the learning and lives of others by identifying and addressing complex challenges in their schools, neighborhoods, communities and beyond. Making this shift requires changes in both education and society  – but where should this process start? This has the potential of becoming a chicken and egg problem for as long as we don’t recognize and enable the transformative forces present in both education and society. And these forces can be understood, we propose, under the framework of the possible as a marker of human existence. In Table 2.1 we outlined the fact that creative experience, situated at the heart of the pedagogies of the possible, triggers at least four types of transformation: of self, action, social relations, and society as a whole. It’s open-endedness enables the self to explore new possibilities, including new forms of being. The topic of possible selves is, in this regard, highly relevant for teachers and yet more needs to be done for its scope to be widened beyond adult education (Rossiter, 2007). Nonlinearity invites us to reflect on the nature of human action and interaction and break away from unidirectional models of causality that are so pervasive in psychology and in education (perhaps the most famous of them being the stimulus – response schema; for an early critique see Dewey, 1896). This move would help us highlight the

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role of chance and ‘happy accidents’ in teaching and learning and, beyond it, the role of serendipity in the way we encounter the world and act upon it. Pluri-perspectivism substantiates the possible and it is the cultivation of multiple perspectives in education – including through educating processes like perspective-taking, empathy, and dialogue – that opens up new ways of relating to the multiple challenges we are confronted with today. These are challenges the young generations of learners are not spared of and, if the recent engagement of young people in protesting against climate change and injustice has shown us anything, it is that the students are citizens and that their future, the future of all of us, is what rightfully concerns them. An education geared towards exploring the future and the (im)possibilities associated with it would go a long way towards transforming society. None of these transformations are easy and they certainly present us with their own array of challenges. Encountering a world of possibility is as unsettling as it is liberating. Jumping into it and guiding its transformation is even more so. These are, after all, the most beautiful risks pedagogies of the possible present us with and prepare us for.

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Glăveanu, V. & Beghetto, R. A. (2016). The difference that makes a creative difference. In R. A. Beghetto & B. Sriraman (Eds.), Creative contradictions in education: Cross-disciplinary paradoxes and perspectives. Switzerland: Springer. Glăveanu, V. P., & Beghetto, R. A. (2020). Creative experience: A non-standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, early view. Glăveanu, V.P., & Beghetto, R.  A. (in press). Pedagogies of the possible. In V. P. Glăveanu (Ed.), The Palgrave encyclopedia of the possible. London, Palgrave. Glăveanu, V. P., & de Saint Laurent, C. (2018). Taking the perspective of others: A conceptual model and its application to the refugee crisis. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 24(4), 416–423. Glăveanu, V.  P., & Kaufman, J.  C. (2017). Socializing giftedness: Toward an ACCEL-S approach. Roeper Review, 39(4), 226–229. Glăveanu, V. P., Johanne Ness, I., Wasson, B., & Lubart, T. (2019). Sociocultural perspectives on creativity, learning, and technology. In C.  A. Mullen (Ed.), Creativity under duress in education? Resistive theories, practices, and actions (pp. 63–82). Springer. Goodlad, J.  L. (2004). A place called school: Prospects for the future. New  York: McGrall-Hill. Kapur, M. (2016). Examining productive failure, productive success, unproductive failure, and unproductive success in learning. Educational Psychologist, 51, 289–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1155457 Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. Crown. Malaguzzi, L. (1998). History, ideas, and basic philosophy: An interview. In C. P. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach – Advanced reflections (2nd ed.). Ablex. Merton, R. K. (1936). The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. American Sociological Review, 1, 894–904. https://doi.org/10.2307/2084615 Miller, R. (2007). Futures literacy: A hybrid strategic scenario method. Futures, 39(4), 341–362. Montessori, M. (1912). The Montessori method. Frederick A. Stokes Company. Montuori, A. (2003). The complexity of improvisation and the improvisation of complexity: Social science, art and creativity. Human Relations, 56(2), 237–255. Poli, R. (2017). Introduction to anticipation studies. Springer. Pretz, J. E., Naples, A. J., & Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Recognizing, defining, and representing problems. In J. E. Davidson & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The psychology of problem solving (pp. 3–30). Cambridge University Press. Renzulli, J. S., Gentry, M., & Reis, S. M. (2004). A time and a place for authentic learning. Educational Leadership, 62, 73–77. Rossiter, M. (2007). Possible selves: An adult education perspective. In M. Rossiter, S. Imel, & J. M. Ross-Gordon (Eds.), Possible selves and adult learning: Perspectives and potential (pp. 5–15). Jossey-Bass. Sawyer, R.  K. (2011). Structure and improvisation in creative teaching. Cambrige, England:Cambridge University Press.

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Scott-Clayton, J.  E. (2018). The looming student loan crisis is worse than we thought. Evidence Speaks Report, 2, #34. https://www.issuelab.org/resources/ 18380/18380.pdf Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. Haymarket Books. Stanton, T. K., Giles, D. E., & Cruz, N. I. (1999). Service-learning: A movement’s pioneers reflect on its origins, practice, and future. Jossey Bass. Sternberg, R.  J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39, 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2017.1318658 Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42, 230–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/0278319 3.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R. J. (2021a). Identification for utilization, not merely possession, of gifts: What matters is not gifts but rather deployment of gifts. Gifted Education International. https://doi.org/10.1177/02614294211013345 Sternberg, R. J. (2021b). Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.3390/ jintelligence901001 Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness. Educational Science, 11, 1–9. https://doi. org/10.3390/educsci11050192 Swartz, R. (1976). Mistakes as an important part of the learning process. The High School Journal, 59(6), 246–257. Thompson, G. (1997). Training teachers to ask questions. ELT Journal, 51(2), 99–105. Torrance, E. P., & Torrance, J. P. (1978). Future problem solving: National interscholastic competition and curriculum project. Journal of Creative Behavior, 12, 87–89. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-­6057.1978.tb00163.x Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering towards utopia: A century of school reform. Harvard. Valsiner, J. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44(2-3), 84–97. von Thienen, J., Meinel, M., & Corazza, G.  E. (2017). A short theory of failure. Electronic Colloquium on Design Thinking Research, 17, 1–5. Wegener, C., Meier, N., & Maslo, E. (Eds.). (2018). Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise of detours. Palgrave. Wellman, H. M. (1992). The child’s theory of mind. The MIT Press.

3 Respecting the Invisible: Transactional and Transformational Approaches to Giftedness Dowon Choi and James C. Kaufman

When Westerners encountered Easterners in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were struck by numerous philosophical, religious, and political differences. It was challenging to understand Eastern culture from their perspectives (Voltaire, 1756/1759). For example, a Western Jesuit Father, when translating the Bible into Chinese, translated the word God into Lord of sky/ heaven (天: tian in Chinese), which was probably the most compatible concept with the Western God (Longxi, 2020). Later, a Korean scholar who studied Catholicism interpreted the Chinese translation of sky/heaven as humans are sky/heaven (in-nae-cheon in Korean) (Cho, 1997). Europe’s God, when interpreted through the Eastern perspective, was transformed into humans in Korea. People, including scholars with fundamentally different philosophical roots, generate different realities or understandings due, in part, to different presuppositions or common grounds (Nisbett, 2003). The Pulitzer Prize-­ winning Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015), described this phenomenon in his book, The Sympathizer, as in this excerpt: “There’s something fishy around here … Oh, fish sauce! How we missed it.” The word,

D. Choi Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA J. C. Kaufman (*) University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_3

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fishy, often perceived by Westerners as either smelly (or suspicious), can be associated with delicious and essential home food among Vietnamese people. In the field of giftedness, there used to be many different views on giftedness in the Western world (not even taking into account the disparate Eastern conceptions). However, the current norm in most gifted programs has boiled down to transactional giftedness (i.e., more resources given depending on individuals’ levels of performance or estimated ability; Sternberg, 2020), with an emphasis on high test scores, grades, teacher recommendations, and awards. Children obtain access to educational opportunities as a result of observable high academic performance or potential (Davis et al., 2011). Yet as much as that seems to represent a single perspective, the transactional giftedness approach comes from the merging and blending of two quite discrepant points of view: strict positivism (reality is objective and based on what we can measure or perceive with our senses) vs. phenomenology (our reality is comprised of our subjective experiences and perceptions). Regardless of a heavily test-reliant practice, the current field of gifted education has been moving toward the process-oriented developmental perspective rather than the identification of underlying ability, since even innate abilities should be ultimately developed, and highly accurate identification processes are also challenging (Gagné, 2004; Subotnik et al., 2011; Tannenbaum, 2009). Historically, these philosophical differences go back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when genius was seen as being hereditary and biopsychological versus it being a psychosocial outcome (Witty & Lehman, 1930). Galton (1892), Lombroso (1895), and Terman (1922) were in the former deterministic category, arguing that certain people were born with natural gifts. Hirsch (1896) and James (1902) were in the latter category. They argued that no single component comprised genius. They focused instead on the function of social interactions among researchers and audiences to create the commonly grounded meaning of giftedness. In this tug of war, which side part has been more dominant in the real world? Galton’s contributions to intelligence measurement have had a long-­ lasting influence as intelligence-based tests are still major bases for identifying giftedness (Callahan et al., 2013; Lubinski & Benbow, 2021). Hirsch and James’ perspectives survived as a transactional form by scholars such as Borland (1997), who strongly argues that giftedness is socially constructed and shaped. Key points of his arguments include the unfair educational opportunities afforded based on inaccurate gifted identification processes. The scholars in this category might use the term high-achieving students instead of gifted individuals and delay to offer additional resources until some students clearly

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need more customized educational experiences for learning in the uniform, mainstream curriculum. Our current notion of transactional giftedness in most schools also has a hidden assumption: True giftedness exists, and IQ scores or standardized test scores are indicators of true giftedness. Although high IQ scores are merely indicators, they can be misunderstood as being equal to giftedness. Such an (incorrect) conception seems to be widespread; an old Eastern lesson warns that people do not look at the moon (the truth; giftedness) but instead only look at their index finger (an indicator of the truth; IQ scores) pointing toward the moon. Even if practitioners or educators understand that we need to search for giftedness from multiple perspectives, they are usually constrained by limited resources. This is an example of what has been called the Lucky Charms problem (Kaufman, 2015; Kaufman & Kaufman, 2015). Although the ads proclaim that cereal is only part of a nutritious breakfast, most people will often only eat the cereal and skip the juice, toast, and bacon. Similarly, people may theoretically want to consider many different variables in determining which students are gifted. However, in the end IQ scores may be the only or dominant measure because of time, expense, and simplicity. Sternberg’s (2020) notion of transformational giftedness has rekindled some of the phenomenological arguments from the positivist side of the gifted field (e.g., giftedness exists, and it is clearly observable without contextual consideration). Sternberg defined transactional and transformational giftedness in a contrasting way. His conception of transactional giftedness refers to an individual pursuing their own interests, rewards, and success. Most successful lawyers, medical doctors, professors, and business people are examples of this group. However, they are not necessarily prosocial, moral, or wise. They are simply gifted and talented in their fields. Some even use their talents to do damage to the world and to society. In contrast, transformational giftedness is more than pursuing self-interest. Transformationally gifted individuals’ contributions are not restricted to self-interest or self-preservation but more toward the benefits of community. A shift to transformational giftedness makes even the idea of a Utopia conceivable (which we will explore later in this paper). First, however, we will address the question of how giftedness has been shaped in the United States?

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Traditional Views: Giftedness Exists Conceptions of giftedness have been actively discussed in the field of U.S. education since the Soviet Union successfully launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik (Davis et al., 2011). The field of gifted education was spurred by competition between two different ideologies (i.e., capitalism vs. communism). Regardless of political or economic competition among communities, however, gifted education has been justified for individuals because highly motivated, creative, and intelligent students otherwise may lose their learning opportunities to fulfill their potential due to an unchallenging school curriculum. The Marland (1972) report defined gifted and talented children by offering six criteria for early identification and specialized education. The criteria aimed to capture multiple ways to recognize such students: general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing arts, and psychomotor ability. Gifted education has offered a variety of learning models and systems, such as accelerated curriculum (Borland, 2009; Stanley, 1996), differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, 2001), and enrichment extracurricular activities (Reis & Renzulli, 2014). If these learners are trained and educated appropriately, then, in return, their nations or communities also should benefit from their contributions to sustaining and improving community systems and cultures (Renzulli, 2012). For example, communities need brilliant research teams and scholars to develop new vaccines to save people’s lives, new industries to create more jobs, and new ideas to solve our global environmental issues. Thus, our gifted field has developed many models, identification instruments, and educational systems to help these students whose giftedness is based on the transactional model.

 ransactional Giftedness Versus T Transformational Giftedness Early researchers in the field of gifted education developed measures to quantify giftedness based on the assumption of the superiority of certain children. For example, Terman (1922) believed that some children are born with higher abilities than others and that such promise could be revealed by the children’s IQ test scores. Terman’s longitudinal research studies shed light on understanding people with high IQ, although these studies had numerous limitations (e.g., sample representation, confounding factors between IQ scores and their well-being and academic outcomes, and test biases). Terman’s goal,

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viewed in a positive light, was to distribute resources more efficiently. However, his work has been seen by some as justifying the notion of more resources for the gifted, which thereby supported a vicious cycle of inequality and disenfranchisement, particularly for the economically disadvantaged (Plucker et al., 2015) and diverse learners (Donovan & Cross, 2002). In sum, IQ scores measure certain cognitive abilities and predict future performance to a degree in some specific areas. However, this perspective has limitations. Those with high IQ scores are more likely to gain more educational opportunities to fulfill their potential in a system where high-stakes standardized tests are highly correlated with IQ scores (Frey & Detterman, 2004; Koenig et al., 2008). Such problems are inherent in the transactional giftedness approach. Transformational giftedness, in contrast, has equivalent perspectives in many areas, such as academic, socioemotional, and leadership domains. Most of them, however, are still based on the assumption that there exist specifically gifted people. In the academic domain, Sternberg’s (2009) WICS (Wisdom Intelligence Creativity Synthesized) model emphasized the critical role of wisdom, requiring more than only intelligence. WICS is the synthesized ability to learn efficiently and to apply acquired knowledge creatively and wisely in order to contribute to a field in context. Sternberg and his colleagues (2006) assessed routinely-measured analytical intelligence as well as practical intelligence and creativity to identify talented students, and they found that their holistic assessment approach could include more diverse learners rather than only disproportionately middle-class White students (see Sternberg, 2010). They also developed a curriculum to foster students’ WICS abilities. For example, students have opportunities to interact with leaders from various domains and practice their newly acquired leadership skills in a group or individual project. Sternberg and his colleagues’ series of efforts are chipping away at the monumental challenge to quantify the contextual quality of WICS. As an example of this challenge, wisdom requires a balanced perspective in order to reason judiciously. A wise person must go beyond fixed rules or principles because our environment endlessly changes with uncertainty (Glück, 2018). This dynamic and dialectical cognition of wisdom is situation-specific and process-­ oriented (Brienza et al., 2018). To an extreme, even though some patterns or tendencies exist in a certain place and time, every moment can be a brand new situation, similar to Heraclitus’s famous quote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” In the social and emotional domains of giftedness, Dabrowski’s TPD (Theory of Positive Disintegration; 1964) tried to explain how certain people

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go through developmental stages to achieve their authentic and autonomous personality, which can be similar to Maslow’s self-actualization. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Eleanor Roosevelt can be examples of people who reached the highest development responsibility, inner psychic transformation, and self-control based on self-awareness (Piechowski, 2008). The TPD theory was embraced in the gifted field based on the assumption that gifted populations may display innate social, emotional, and behavioral sensitivity (i.e., overexcitability) as indicators of a potential for personality development (Daniels & Piechowski, 2009; Winkler & Voight, 2016). Although their sensitivity could be negatively presented as neuroticism or emotional instability during the development process, inner struggles or conflicts are considered as a pivotal stepping-stone to become a maximized moral and prosocial human. The TPD theory and the concept of overexcitabilities are useful tools in clinical settings because the theory offers to reframe heightened sensitivity or inner struggles with the potential of personal development (Peterson, 2012; Wood & Peterson, 2018). Unfortunately, it has not yet been fully established how educators can recognize and guide those populations in a formal educational setting. In the educational setting, character education was designed to facilitate students’ social, emotional, and behavioral development. Although character education rooted in religious values has a long history in the United States, more secular schoolwide social and emotional education is not universally prioritized or adopted. There are response-to-intervention models for intervening with students’ social, behavioral (e.g., bullying), and emotional issues (e.g., Kauffman et al., 2012). However, it is hard to find a transactional system to recognize and reward socially and emotionally competent students. In part, the self-actualizing process is so individualized that it seems difficult to have a generic curriculum for all gifted students with high levels of leadership qualities and emotional intelligence. Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences has made a contribution to the field of giftedness, and his multiple-intelligences concept undermines the foundations of general intelligence or general giftedness. Later, Gardner (2006) expanded his focus on the intelligence to minds. He argued that we need to cultivate five minds (i.e., the Disciplined, Synthesizing, Creating, Respectful, and Ethical Minds) to be a good global citizens to prepare for the future within and beyond the school system. Gardner (2020) especially encouraged future leaders to synthesize interdisciplinary information and multiple intelligences in one’s context. Difficulties in measuring dimensions of his conceptual framework at a level suitable for high stakes situations have limited its potential impact..

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Models of giftedness and talent such as WICS, Dabrowski, and Gardner have only been implemented in a limited number of educational settings. Their conceptual frameworks could inspire many more educators, students, and parents.

Shade Exists Because of Light From Versus Toward And Sternberg’s (2020) contrasting views on transactional and transformational giftedness are useful to start to see and recognize unapparent things with clarity. Culture is an example. Air is similar to culture since we hardly recognize the importance or existence of air until we do not have it (Sue & Sue, 2016). As depicted in the film, Minari (Chung, 2020), a Korean family could only truly appreciate their Korean culture after they immigrated to the U.S. In Eastern philosophy, if there is no east, there is no west; the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi highlighted our inability to perceive or discern stimuli in an absolute way by saying that we can perceive something short because of the existence of long, beauty because of ugliness, and existence because of non-­ existence (Boisen, 1996). Two opposite concepts legitimize each other. Similarly, Sternberg and his colleagues (2021) noted that transactional and transformational giftedness are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, Sternberg (2021) even included negative sides of giftedness (i.e., self-­ destructive, other-destructive, and fully pseudo-transformational giftedness) in the nine different categories of transactional and transformational giftedness. This model incorporates Sternberg’s (2021) three categories of transformational giftedness that also embraced not only other-oriented gifted behavior but also self-oriented transformational giftedness. So, the quadrants of transformational giftedness, if plotted on a coordinate plane with the axes of self-­ transformational and other-transformational directions, are (1) high self and high other = Transformational giftedness, (2) high self and low other = Self-­ realized giftedness, and (3) high other and low self = Other-realized giftedness. The fourth quadrant represents non-transformational giftedness (Sternberg et al., 2021). In sum, giftedness seems intuitively like a positive quality that needs to be developed for the benefit of both gifted individuals and society. However, it also has the potential to lead to harmful consequences. Although transformational giftedness is often highlighted with the quality of prosocial tendencies, it can also be focused on the self.

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Toward Implementing Transformational Giftedness Sternberg’s transactional and transformational giftedness was inspired by transactional and transformational leadership (Sternberg et al., 2021). In the field of leadership, the dimensional constructs of transformational (e.g., morale and motivation) and transactional leadership (e.g., reward) were originally contrasted, and transformational leadership was especially highlighted as a powerful form to make changes (Burns, 1978). However, the two types of leadership are currently considered complementary rather than polar (Bass & Avolio, 1994; Gavan O’Shea et al., 2009; Lowe et al., 1996). In other words, two leadership styles have a different place and time for a group’s successful outcomes and productivity (Aga, 2016). What are the best methods of promoting transformational giftedness? One possible way is to identify transactionally gifted individuals (which we generally know how to do) and to then teach them to also be transformationally gifted. For example, there has been exciting work that builds off traits that underlie creativity, such as openness (Butrus & Witenberg, 2013; Corazza & Agnoli, 2020), cognitive flexibility (Gocłowska et al., 2013, 2014), or both in tandem (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013). Some promising studies have shown that offering interventions that emphasize these traits can help people increase tolerance and decrease prejudice (Groyecka-Bernard et al., 2020; Sparkman et al., 2019); such effects could help transactionally gifted students gain insight into a transformational mindset. If transactional measures (such as IQ tests and standard creativity assessments) can be somewhat objective indicators of specific qualities of giftedness, such as reasoning skills, acquired knowledge, and solving new problems, there is no reason not to use them. Indeed, Sternberg (2020) notes that successful transformatively gifted students should have some element of transactional giftedness. Identified transactionally gifted students can also develop transformational giftedness in a transactional way. For example, suppose that a group of transactionally gifted scientists, in the course of their daily work in their profession, making good money at a reputable job, can develop new vaccines against a virus. As a result, even if they are pursuing this for self-interest, they are contributing to society. Their transactional gifted behavior is useful itself without transformational giftedness. Indeed, our current focus on transactional giftedness has led to numerous issues in deciding what the most efficient, humane, and moral pathways are for distributing the vaccine. The United States had to offer rewards to get many people to consider getting vaccinated while millions around the world continued to die from COVID-19 because they did not have access to any vaccines.

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It is worth noting that the positive behaviors that should emerge from transformational giftedness may well be interpreted in other ways depending on the temporal, geographical, or sociocultural context. Good Samaritans can be bad Samaritans if they define only a certain group of people (e.g., nationalistic demarcation of citizens and foreigners) as their neighbors with clarity (Chang, 2008).

Utopia Means “No Place” We earlier alluded to the possibility that transformative giftedness might lead to a utopia. We will now discuss the reasons why such a utopia is likely impossible, although through no fault of transformational giftedness. Firstly, someone’s utopia can be another’s dystopia. Secondly, even if we successfully build a perfect utopia for all, we cannot perceive it as a better place without a counterpart. An example of both of these reasons can be seen in an episode of The Twilight Zone, “A Nice Place to Visit” (Beaumont & Brahm, 1960). Rocky, a criminal, dies in a shootout with the police, only to wake up to see Pip, an older man dressed in white. Pip takes him to an elegant apartment with gorgeous furnishings and any food he would like. Rocky goes gambling and wins every time. He asks out beautiful women and everyone says “yes”. Rocky can’t figure out why he’s in Heaven; with Pip, he goes to the Hall of Records and finds only a list of his misdoings. Yet he returns to his gambling and carousing. Getting bored, he summons Pip and decides to plan a robbery; Pip assures him there is no chance he will be caught. Rocky finally is so bored that he decides he wants out of Heaven and would prefer the other place. Pip then delivers a quintessentially Twilight Zone wham line: “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea you were in Heaven…? This is the other place!” Rocky’s Hell is particularly devastating because it is contrasted to what he might have once seen as Heaven. Similarly, a person not addicted to risk-taking, malevolent behavior may well genuinely see Rocky’s situation, with his every wish fulfilled, as a genuine Heaven. There are many scenarios where it is difficult to judge what constitutes good or bad, in part because of ambiguity and differing perspectives. Korea’s national hero, An Jung-Geun, assassinated the first Japanese prime minister, Itō Hirobumi as a result of 15 indictments accusations (e.g., massacring innocent Koreans) during the Korean resistance to Japanese colonization. Memorial halls dedicated to his legacy are in Seoul, South Korea and Harbin, China to honor his sacrifice. However, An Jung-Geun was considered a criminal by the Japanese government (Rausch, 2013). Had Japan won the war, history might have judged his actions quite differently.

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Similarly, Columbus’s arrival in America can be seen as the beginning of tragedy for Native Americans, yet it was a national holiday in the United States until recently (and still is celebrated in some states). Europeans’ advanced scientific knowledge and ensuing technology (e.g., gunpowder as a weapon or development) has been tragic to certain communities on Earth (Diamond, 1999). Economic development and human dominance over nature has severely damaged our environment (McNeely, 2021). At this point, we want to raise a question. In measuring transformational giftedness, how do we impartially judge whether certain actions are benevolent or not? The answer is simple but unsatisfying: It depends. There can be multiple truths and realities when we look for a clear demarcation of good or bad. However, history can be shaped by political power; only the victors are alive to write history. Chomsky (2015) has raised the issue of the Seminoles, a Native American people, many of whom were killed or forced to move their reservations or become refugees. Later, they became the mascot of Florida State University. Chomsky looks at this phenomenon quite differently from many others by asking, “If the Nazis had been victorious, perhaps Jews and Gypsies would survive as mascots of the Universities of Munich and Freiburg” (p. 9)? If a powerful group filled with the transactionally gifted makes a wrong judgment about what benevolence is, it can create a catastrophe. In the trailer of the Academy-award-winning documentary, The Fog of War (Morris, 2003), the commentator resonates with our repeated mistakes in history, “How much evil must we do in order to do good?” The documentary includes an interview with 85-year-old former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sharing his lessons from the Vietnam War, in which he played a major role. It is obvious that this Harvard-educated businessman and cabinet member is transactionally gifted at an extreme level. Yet, too many Americans and Vietnamese were killed during the war, and the tragedy is ongoing. Agent Orange victims and survivors with traumatic memories are still suffering, with some effects being felt across generations. In the documentary, McNamara says, “Maybe we make the same mistake three times but hopefully not four or five.” We are hopefully close to making the last series of mistakes. We return to Laozi’s paradox: Good and bad are inseparable, yet can be understood. Laozi’s presents one solution, wuwei (non-action or non-doing), for the political leaders and governance, but the concept is still useful for educational reform (Moon, 2015). A contemporary interpretation of wuwei can be Let’s Not Love (Kim, 2012), implying that our loving and helping actions can cause harm. The concept of wuwei warns that good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes for all, particularly as long as there is a clear line to

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distinguish us from them. Two such examples are ecotourism and donations after a major disaster. The tourists who visit wildlife around the world do not have bad intentions and likely believe that the money they spend will help local populations. Yet the germs they bring with them (usually unintentionally) can kill the same wildlife they want to see (Holmes, 2018). Similarly, there are usually floods of donations after major disasters around the world. But many donations are not practical or even useful (consider a box of frisbees donated to Haiti after a major earthquake), leading to much-needed human resources needing to be devoted to sorting (and often disposing of ) such gifts. Some organizations call the wave of unneeded donations the “second disaster” (Fessler, 2013). Such nuance in what is good and what is helpful makes it difficult to determine the best path to enhancing transformational giftedness. This is why we suggest that capturing both visible (leadership levels) and invisible (community levels) of transformational giftedness seems necessary for all. In this context, community levels of transformational giftedness can be defined as temporal and geographical summations of small transformational actions within countless dynamic social interactions.

Transformational Giftedness for All Transformational giftedness for all may initially seem absurd since the concept of giftedness or leadership implies exclusivity. If someone says, “Everyone is gifted,” we can intuitively connect that statement with “No one is gifted” without effort. Logically, a paradox can be an erroneous statement due to internal contradictions. However, our collective effort or actions altogether can transform our community as a whole as much as or even more than one genius. Invisible transformational giftedness can be ubiquitous, like air. We may have a chance to take a glimpse only when the situation allows. The world witnessed that a courageous 17-year old girl, Darnella Frazier, videotaped the police officers’ murder of George Floyd. Darnella testified at court, “When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles” (Yancey-Bragg, 2021). There were no boundaries between George and herself. When herd invisibility becomes visible, which it did with her video footage, many people’s collective mini levels of transformational actions (e.g., one person protesting against implicit racism) can make big social changes (“George Floyd protests,” 2021).

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Maslow’s (1968) self-actualization focuses on an individual’s effort to develop a transformational personality quality to encourage people. The following are his words about self-actualizing or self-transcending people: Self-actualizing creativeness stresses first the personality rather than its achievements, considering these achievements to be epiphenomena emitted by the personality and therefore secondary to it. It stresses characterological qualities like boldness, courage, freedom, spontaneity, perspicuity, integration, self-­ acceptance, all of which make possible the kind of generalized self-actualizing creativeness, which expresses itself in the creative life, or the creative attitude, or the creative person. (p. 30)

Choi and Kaufman (2021) also highlighted the pivotal and significant role of collective creativity consisting of interactions among small creativities. They gave examples of Anne Frank’s writing and the building of the Hoover Dam, although the creative interactions were often imperceptible. If everyone can be creative and develop their potential to some degree, it seems wise to respect every individual’s transformational effort, attitude, and action. It is not only quality matters in history; quantity does, as well (Carr, 1961).

 onclusion: Navigating Transformational C and Transactional Giftedness Transformational giftedness is a key pathway for making the future brighter. That does not mean transactional giftedness is inherently bad. We instead would focus on the general assumption that giftedness has to mean “elite.” How can we renew our field of giftedness for everyone? We believe that for maximum positive impact we should aim to combine existing models and philosophical work from diverse contexts. In an ideal world, every individual, as an agent, would develop self-­ governing skills and transformational seeds to make a big change collectively, even if they will never be recognized or awarded individually. Further, traditionally gifted students would leverage their transactional talent to move beyond self-interests and focus on societal good – whether they understand this instinctually or come to embrace it via education and interventions. In the end, paradoxically, if Utopia does exist, it may be a place in which there is no demarcation between gifted and non-gifted populations.

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4 From I to We: The Three C’s Conception of Gifted Education Aakash A. Chowkase

and Sujala Watve

Ātmano mokṣārtham jagat hitāya ca For one’s salvation and welfare, progress, and stability of the society and world community. —Swami Vivekananda

Gifted education has long focused on meeting individual needs. However, with few honorable exceptions, the field has largely ignored the fact that human lives are intricately connected, and that an individual’s development can hardly be viewed as disconnected from their social connections. Small individual actions have large impacts on others, including society and the planet. So, do “individuals” really have an option not to care beyond themselves, especially in an increasingly globalized world rife with growing

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. We would like to thank Dr. Girish S. Bapat for his time-to-time guidance on this topic and comments on the previous versions of this manuscript.

A. A. Chowkase (*) Department of Educational Studies, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Watve Jnana Prabodhini’s Institute of Psychology, Pune, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_4

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challenges to human existence? Certainly not. Thus, we propose to shift the focus of gifted education away from preparing children with gifts and talents for individualistic achievements toward inculcating a concern for others so that they can contribute to the common good. The dictum mentioned at the onset of this chapter summarizes our vision of transformational gifted education—education that prepares children with gifts and talents to transform the world—to make it a better place for all. We argue that gifted behaviors be seen as an interplay of three C’s: competence in action, commitment to the task, and concern for others. In this chapter, we share our vision of transformational gifted education where we use the three C’s conception to identify, nurture, and motivate individuals for prosocial contribution. We believe this conception can be extended to general education and is relevant to all individuals including those with gifts and talents.

Paradigm Shifts in Gifted Education Several conceptions of giftedness and talent development exist in the literature (Bloom, 1985; Feldhusen, 1994; Gagné, 2004; Renzulli, 1978; Sternberg, 2020; Subotnik et  al., 2011; Tannenbaum, 2003). These conceptions have evolved with time. Lo and Porath (2017) argued that the field of gifted education has witnessed three major paradigm shifts—demystification (i.e., moving away from giftedness as manifested miracles), identification (i.e., giftedness as measurable predictions), and transaction (i.e., effectuation of human possibilities). Historically, societies across the globe viewed people with unusual levels of precocity with wonder and often held superstitious beliefs about the origins of precocity (Jolly & Bruno, 2010). In the demystification paradigm, early scholars such as Galton and Cattell started to investigate and measure giftedness in more systematic ways using scientific methods, founding gifted studies as a formal field of academic inquiry. Early work in gifted education, such as that of Terman and Hollingworth, began with conceptualizations of giftedness as a set of unitary, dichotomous, and fixed traits. Scholars in the early 1920s focused on identifying gifted children based on their early performance on intelligence tests and advocated for the special academic needs of promising students. Consequently, the pedagogical dimension began to invite more attention from the field, giving rise to the use of psychometric testing for special-education services. With novel discoveries regarding the nature of gifts as developing talents, scholars proposed increasingly complex and multifaceted models of talent development. Although the influence of positivistic, IQ-based conceptualizations of

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giftedness still exists, giftedness is now often being viewed as dynamic and socially constructed (Borland, 2005; Matthews & Dai, 2014; Ziegler & Stoeger, 2017). From the perspective of developmental psychology and epistemological constructivism, many scholars today view giftedness as a malleable set of cognitive and non-cognitive capabilities and potentials that develops with the optimal scaffolding from the environment. This view emphasizes the gradual development of natural abilities into domain-specific talents over time (Bloom, 1985; Feldhusen, 1994; Subotnik et al., 2011). Giftedness is, indeed, a social construct. As Borland (2005) argued, conceptions of giftedness, and, therefore, gifted education have been shaped by social, political, and economic movements and needs of the respective times. Therefore, it becomes important to consider the current sociopolitical realities of human society and the contemporary needs of the world as scholars examine the conceptions that exist today and the purposes they serve. To that end, slowly and sparsely, some scholars (see Ambrose, 2013; Ambrose & Cross, 2009; Ambrose et al., 2012; Miller & Cohen, 2012; Renzulli, 2020; Sternberg, 2020) are pushing the field to move away from the individual-centric conceptions to other-centric gifted education. These scholars focus on how and for what purposes do individuals use the gifts they possess. They highlight the goal of the development of talents for solving humanity’s problems and making positive contributions to society. Magnifying this vision of gifted education that highlights the ethical-moral development of individuals with high potential can contribute to encouraging these individuals to pursue more promising forms of self-fulfillment while helping to create a better world (Ambrose, 2013). However, this focus on talent development for a positive social change is rare and relatively new in the field, and therefore, deserves more attention. More importantly, the world today is facing an unprecedented pandemic of a globalized era; political polarization is on the surge globally; human actions are endangering own existence and ecosystems; and economic inequities and power imbalance are on the rise (see Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016). Consequently, scholars in the field should continue to reexamine the purposes of gifted education and how the field can progress to align better with the changing times and contribute to pressing challenges. The abovementioned thrust to transform gifted education toward a more other-centric vision will also contribute to remedying some of the most harmful consequences of acute inequalities in the field of gifted education (Ambrose, 2013). Thus, this book could not have been put together at a more opportune time.

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Purpose The purpose of this chapter is to present an other-centric, socially constructive conception of gifted education. The focus of this conception is on the goal of solving pressing problems of society and making positive contributions to its common good while also leading a personal transformation to reach higher human ideals. This two-fold focus aligns with a recent extension to the theory of transformational giftedness (Sternberg et al., 2021) that now includes self-­ oriented and other-oriented transformation as a part of fully transformational giftedness. However, a key distinction from the theory of transformational giftedness is that we do not view transformational giftedness as a type of giftedness; rather, we argue that developing all types of gifts and talents toward a transformational function of giftedness should be the central focus of gifted education. We begin by laying out the philosophical foundation of our conception and further present three focal constructs of the conception: Competence, Commitment, and Concern. Because competence and commitment have been discussed in various existing models in the field, we focus more on the construct of concern. The following guiding questions offer a broad framework for transformational gifted education. 1 . What is concern for others? (Concept) 2. Why develop a concern for others? (Aims) 3. Why should concern for others be included in a gifted education framework? (Need) 4. Can concern be developed? How early? Until when? (Age-Specific Objectives) 5. How and to what extent can concern be developed in youth? (Content and Pedagogy) 6. How can concern be assessed quantitatively and qualitatively? (Assessment) Given the need to limit the present chapter to a reasonable length, we present the discussion of the first five questions in highly condensed form. Before we present our conceptual model, we first explain our view on the possession of gifts and talents by an individual. This view stems from the Indigenous Indian value of trusteeship (Bapat, 2017).

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Trusteeship of Gifts and Talents We view individuals as trustees of their gifts and talents and not as those in ownership of them. This view of trusteeship of gifts and talents distinguishes our conception from those proposed by many others, as described further. The traditional view construes individuals with gifts and talents as needing special services owing to their unique needs. Indeed, the interplay between the advanced abilities of individuals with gifts and talents and their environments often results in unique learning and social-emotional needs (Subotnik et al., 2011). Thus, proponents of gifted education often argue that the role of school education is to support the unique needs of the youth with gifts and talents. Some researchers push this argument further to claim that the youth with gifts and talents have the right to an education that fits well with their cognitive and psychosocial wiring. Although there is certainly some merit in this view, the rights-based arguments excessively focus on the gifted child and give the impression that the individuals possess ownership of their gifts and talents. Phrases such as serving gifted youth are commonly used in the field of gifted and talented education. Also, when compared against the needs of youth with special needs, this argument of serving the needs of youth with gifts and talents becomes less defensible (Feldman, 2003). This is evident from the declining dollars for gifted education in the United States and several school corporations discarding gifted programs. In another view, scholars often argue that the goal of gifted education is to develop future innovators, creative thinkers, problem solvers, and leaders who will develop the products and services that will make human lives better, generate new ideas, and find solutions to the leading socio-economic and environmental problems (Renzulli, 2012; Subotnik et al., 2011). They argue that educators should craft programs and create environments that will increase the number of individuals who develop their talents to extraordinary levels for the betterment of all mankind. This view takes a prosocial stand and contributes to broadening the goals of gifted education. This is a welcoming deviation from the traditional transactional view of gifted education (Sternberg, 2020, 2021) that highlights what individuals with gifts and talents can do for others in return for what they receive from gifted education. Although this view is prosocial, it is still somewhat transactional. It construes human beings as resources and replaces individual gains that were being transacted via gifted programs by extrinsic expectations for prosocial contributions. For instance, Renzulli (2012) argued,

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If … the purpose of gifted programs is to increase the size of society’s supply of potentially creative and productive adults, then the argument for special education programs that focus on creative productivity (rather than lesson-learning giftedness) is a very simple one. (p. 151)

Construing human beings as resources has serious implications for the field of education, as this view rests on the evaluation of an individual’s worth to contribute to societal progress. Such an evaluation is externally induced and is prone to manipulations by market forces. This view may also undermine an individual’s autonomy, thereby negatively affecting their intrinsic motivation to contribute to the common good. That is, should individuals with gifts and talents be burdened with another social expectation to contribute to the common good? Should they be made to feel obligated to transform the world, be it at any scale? This, as Renzulli (2012) has argued, certainly makes the case for gifted education a “very simple one” (p. 151); however, it is founded in a somewhat transactional view of gifted education. Gifted individuals are not a nation’s resources for leadership or innovation; rather, they are part of the nation; they constitute the nation just like their non-identified peers. Thus, we propose an alternative approach that finds roots in the Indigenous Indian value of trusteeship (Bapat, 2017). Foundational to this approach is a belief that one’s gifts and talents are a function of an individual’s innate potential, social environment, early opportunities, social and cultural privileges, various environmental supports, and chance factors. After eliminating the contribution of non-innate factors from the individuals’ gifts and talents, little is left with the individual to claim the sole ownership of one’s gifts and talents. Therefore, instead of conceptualizing individuals as owners in possession of their gifts and talents, it might be meaningful to conceptualize the individuals as trustees of their gifts and talents. That is, the gifts and talents belong to the nation, society, and humanity, and not just to the individual possessing them. Trusteeship of talents is a philosophical disposition that construes an individual as a trustee, rather than an owner, of their gifts and talents. Trustees of a board assume the responsibility to act in the best interests of the trust beneficiaries to manage their assets. Similarly, when the gifts and talents of an individual are construed to belong to the nation, society, and humankind, these individuals are trusted with making the best use of these societal assets in the interest of others. This is what we call a transition of gifted education from I to We. Inculcating this view may help the individuals to intrinsically utilize the gifts and talents in their trusteeship for the welfare of others rather than limiting them to individualistic pursuits. Certainly, individuals, societies, and

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nations have different notions of we, and a vision for trusteeship of talents may manifest differently in different societies. For example, it is feared such a collectivistic vision may reflect the impulses of autocrats and dictators. Although this is a possibility, we hope that an education that is geared at self and other-oriented transformation and is based on the values of trusteeship and self-transcendence will likely empower the individuals to transcend narrow-­minded and self-serving motives of such powers. Several cultures and religions emphasize prosocial beliefs, thereby highlighting the universality of the principle of serving the common good. We believe a secular manifestation of this vision is possible and has been described further in this chapter. The underlying hope is that engendering trusteeship could be immensely empowering, yet humbling for individuals with gifts and talents, especially during the impressionable school years, and intrinsically motivating them to deploy their gifts and talents toward the common good.

The 3C Conception of Gifted Education Drawing on the philosophy of trusteeship of gifts and talents, we conceptualize gifted education as the development of competence in one’s action, commitment to task, and concern for others (see Fig. 4.1). Broadly, competence relates to the abilities and skills needed to efficiently perform a task. Task commitment refers to one’s motivational drive to persist in a task. And concern for others refers to the ability and attitude to understand the needs and challenges of others, to relate with them, and to develop a willingness to act. In a world rife with disparities, the development of gifts and talents, as proposed

Competence in Action

Commitment to Task

Concern for Others

Fig. 4.1  The 3C conception of gifted education

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in this conception, is necessarily an interplay of these three constructs, none of which is sufficient by itself. Each of these constructs can be viewed as a cluster of traits, abilities, skills, attitudes, and behaviors.

Competence in One’s Action Individuals possess a variety of gifts from intellectual and academic gifts to creative and visual and performance-related gifts, and gifts in the leadership and psychomotor domains. Development of giftedness, be it transformational or not, inarguably involves the development of competence in one’s action. Competence refers to the abilities and skills needed to efficiently perform a task. Attaining a high level of competence in one or more domains is central to an individual’s talent development. Talent development is a long-term process that focuses on the gradual development of childhood potential into creative/productive contribution in adulthood (Gagné, 2004; Tannenbaum, 2003). This process is often conceptualized in terms of developmental trajectories consisting of intermediate stages and transitions between them, from potential to competencies, mastery, expertise, and eminence (Subotnik et al., 2011). Notably, gifted education cannot and should not lose its focus on developing competence in youth through educational programs commensurate with their potential, interests, and developmental stages. However, a solitary focus on the development of competence can be myopic, especially if the goal of gifted education needs the kind of paradigm shift argued for in this book.

Commitment to Task Task commitment refers to one’s motivational drive to persist in a task. It represents a non-cognitive cluster of traits such as determination, volition, and perseverance, and is described as a focused form of motivation (Renzulli, 1978). One’s ability to commit to a task for a long time and to strive despite challenges is an essential ingredient to catalyze their talent development; therefore, gifted education, if it aims to bring out the fullest potential of an individual, should have an undeterred focus on the development of task commitment. The development of non-cognitive factors, especially task commitment and self-regulation, is a critical aspect of talent development that contributes to self-fulfillment and social contribution by these individuals (Bapat, 2017; Gagné, 2004; Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2015; Tannenbaum,

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2003). Thus, the role of task commitment in talent development is complementary to that of competence, and efforts geared at the development of competence should always be integrated with the development of task commitment. This view is aligned with Renzulli’s (1978) three-ring conception of giftedness where the development of gifted behaviors is an outcome of above-average ability, creativity, and task commitment. In our 3C conception of giftedness, above-average ability corresponds to competence. And we hold that creative development is a manifestation of creative competence and task commitment. Furthermore, highly competent and task-committed individuals can grow into indifferent experts having a low concern for others. For example, world leaders who lack compassion have jeopardized the wellbeing of people and democratic structures in numerous instances even in recent times. A lack of concern for others can therefore have devastating consequences for people, societies, and nature. Thus, we add concern for others to competence and commitment in our conception.

Concern for Others Concern for others involves perceiving the needs and challenges of others, developing belongingness with them, experiencing the emotional urge to help, and cultivating motivation to act. Humans, by virtue, have an innate ability to vicariously experience others’ suffering and feel motivated to alleviate it. However, when these innate abilities are not enhanced, intentionally and effortfully, they may remain dormant and underdeveloped. Further, a concern without action is hollow. Rather, a concern for others should translate into meaningful prosocial actions. Bapat (2004) theorized that the development of a prosocial action from a prosocial concern involves five sequential processes; first, perception of and attention to one’s surroundings; second, awareness of similarities among and oneness in all human beings—this includes the feelings of commonness in emotions, needs, expectations, and aspirations; third, understanding the progress, desperation, and hardships of other individuals and groups of individuals around one; fourth, willingness to experience or empathize with others’ realities; and fifth, finding happiness in others’ progress and willingness to act toward others’ wellbeing. Thus, concern for others involves an interplay of empathic, compassionate, and prosocial behaviors that help an individual to understand others’ realities and strive for their wellbeing. Gifted education currently lacks a focus on the development of concern for others—empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Therefore, we argue

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that gifted education scholars and educators who resonate with teaching for transformational giftedness should turn their attention to the development of concern for others.

 hy Have a Concern for Others: Because Human W Lives Are Interconnected! A short answer to why have a concern for others is because human lives are intricately interconnected. This is not merely a philosophical proposition. Rather, it has deep scientific roots. A popular concept from chaos theory, the butterfly effect (Lorenz, 1963), posits that even a small change in the initial conditions of a setup can lead to catastrophic changes in the result owing to the exponential growth of errors, also known as deterministic chaos. If a butterfly flaps its wings at a place, it can change the course of a hurricane a thousand miles away. That is, a tiny change in a complex system can affect everything. To that end, all humans are connected with each other, the planet, and the universe as one huge complex system. Thus, an individual’s actions can have exponentially large effects on the other parts of this system. One small change in human habits can have long-term effects on almost every aspect of human life, including relationships, education, work, finances, and so on. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is an excellent example of this phenomenon. A virus that originated in one place halted the regular functioning of the entire world. Similarly, climate change is a common threat to human and natural systems regardless of country and place. Uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to have widespread impacts on global warming and all parts of the climate system (IPCC, 2021). Furthermore, ecosystems and biodiversity are under constant human attack. Ecosystems are in a delicate situation in one-fifth of the world’s countries for more than 30% of the countries’ area (Swiss Re Institute, 2020). This has direct repercussions on vital issues such as freshwater production and climate regulation. Pollution continues to threaten biodiversity, contributes to climate change, and has become a global health threat. Crop burning in an Eastern European country can have a considerable bearing on air quality across Europe for two months every year. Industrial waste such as arsenic and lead continues to enter the global food chain. Uncontrolled mining has not only polluted natural resources in tribal lands of India, the United States, and elsewhere (Amnesty International, 2010; Lewis et al., 2017), but has also devastated the balance of local ecosystems including human health and culture.

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The issues that highlight the interdependence of human lives are not limited to the environment and natural resources all humanity commonly shares. They can be social, cultural, political, historical, and economic. Globalization and the free market directly or indirectly influence the economics, politics, and environment of almost every country in the world. Economic collapse in Thailand in the December of 1997 triggered a global recession, bringing down with it the economies of Southeast Asia, Korea, Russia, Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, and many more countries in just nine months (Friedman, 2000). Political crisis in one country threatens the national security of the bordering countries and continents. Tensions between neighboring countries paralyze the development of the conflict-affected regions. Misleading and provocative tweets from a leader can cause a violent insurrection against a political institution. Religious fanaticism spawned in one place affects the education of millions of children worldwide. Let alone economic downfall, a war inflicts unspeakable atrocities, forced migration, and long-term trauma for thousands of people and their future generations. The list is endless. All these issues are the results of human actions, and in an increasingly connected world, the consequences are even more compounded. Individual actions affect others. Does it leave anyone with a choice to not have a concern for others? Can individuals today afford to only think about themselves when their actions may threaten the existence of other humans, societies, and the planet? Do individuals have the liberty to overlook the disparities and suffering in the world? Not just today, but did humans have a choice to not care about others, their suffering, or their wellbeing at any time in history? We argue, it never was, and it should never be a choice. Humans have an innate ability to connect with other humans—cognitively, emotionally, and socially. Humans share a common range of emotions, mental capacities, and communication tools, and feel a common need for connection. Humans often can gauge the emotions of another just by seeing or listening to them. Unlike other beings, humans can work with strangers and people from outgroups. Humans can innately cognize the sufferings of others and feel an urge to alleviate the suffering. Humans share the tendencies to help others, care for them, collaborate with them, and share their possessions with them. Although humans compete, they also complement each other. Humans are intricately interdependent. Therefore, having a concern for others is being human. Having a concern for others is as innate to human beings as it is to have competence and commitment. And just as humans can develop competence and commitment through education, they can also develop a concern for others the same way. Therefore, our vision for gifted

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education places equal emphasis on the development of competence, commitment, and concern for others.

Development of Concern for Others We view concern for others as a malleable set of traits, abilities, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Central to concern for others are perceiving the needs of others, developing belongingness with them, experiencing the emotional urge to help, and cultivating motivation to act. Thus, we argue focal constructs of concern for others are empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Each of these consists of cognitive, emotive, motivational, and behavioral aspects. We provide a rationale and nurturance evidence for each of these three constructs below.

Empathy Empathy is defined as an individual’s ability to mirror emotions and take the perspective of other beings around one (Davis, 1983). Empathy consists of emotive and cognitive aspects; therefore, it is often categorized into affective empathy (or empathic concern) and cognitive empathy (or perspective-­ taking). Davis (1983) defined empathic concern as feelings of warmth, compassion, and concern for others. Similarly, he defined perspective-taking as the tendency to adopt the point of view of other people in everyday life. Further, individuals use one or both facets to help others, which is the third facet of empathy, also known as prosocial motivation (Batson, 2011; Zaki & Ochsner, 2012). Experience sharing (or affective empathy) and mentalizing (or cognitive empathy) exhibit very different neural profiles (Zaki & Ochsner, 2016). Therefore, empathy interventions are better designed with a focus on both subprocesses, that is, experience sharing and mentalizing.

Why Is Empathy Important? Empathy has many benefits for perceivers and targets. More empathetic people are more likely to help others, despite any costs they may incur to their self-interest (Batson, 2011). Empathy also drives support provisions such as spending money on others and providing emotional support when in distress (Batson, 2011; Davis, 1994; Morelli et al., 2015b). Empathy can have lasting

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effects on the well-being of those providing support to others (Morelli et al., 2015a). It can also help in the global fight against racism (Todd et al., 2011). Empathy is also a moral force; it can provide emotional meaning to moral actions (Zaki, 2018). Empathy-based morality can have a multitude of benefits over actions driven only by moral principles. More broadly, empathy is important to cohesion and social fabric. Former President Obama (2006) often made references to an empathy deficit in American society. To that end, Konrath et al. (2011) studied changes in empathy in American college students over three decades. Their findings revealed a sharp drop in empathic concern and perspective-taking. In summary, the rising political polarization worldwide (Carothers & O’Donohue, 2019), the surge of bullying among adolescents (Wang et al., 2009), the distress caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic across the globe (Galea, 2020), and many other developments in the world, warrant educators’ attention to undertaking efforts to build more empathetic future citizens. These efforts are especially needed in gifted education and talent development fields as these individuals are more likely to become future leaders—from local to global levels—and have an influence on the future of many others around them (Renzulli, 2020).

Empathy-Building Interventions Empathic capacities develop during childhood and grow in adolescence (Davis, 1994). As children mature cognitively, they develop perspective-­ taking, self-other distinction, and regulation of negative emotion (Hoffman, 2008). Engaging in perspective-taking increases empathic concern (Hoffman, 2008). The findings of several studies indicate empathy is malleable and can be developed through interventions. However, the empathic concern is situational and depends on the situation’s power to invoke an emotional response (Davis & Begovic, 2014). Empathy interventions can be categorized into four categories (Davis & Begovic, 2014). The first category includes perspective-taking interventions. Researchers have used two kinds of interventions—direct and indirect perspective-­ taking. Direct perspective-taking involves active role-playing aimed at experiencing, at least to some extent, the real experience of target populations (e.g., an overnight stay at a hospital). Indirect perspective-taking interventions focus on instructing the participants to imagine the thoughts or situation of the target. Although instructional sets are most popular in

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perspective-­taking interventions, other methods such as asking participants to imagine and write a journal about a day in another person’s life are also used. The second category of interventions focuses on instructional approaches. Major instructional approaches are didactic instruction, discussion groups, and activity-based learning. Most interventions typically use a mix of these instructional strategies to encourage the active participation of participants while also conveying information on the topic. In the third category of empathy interventions, educators have effectively used audiovisual material, real and fictional, as well as from popular entertainment sources such as movie clips. The fourth category of empathy interventions takes a skills-training approach, which focuses less on experiencing empathy and more on expressing or communicating empathy from the observer to the target. Three central skills are observing, listening, and responding. Expressing empathy is an important aspect of empathy, and therefore, educators must include it in empathy-building interventions. In addition, educators should integrate motive-based approaches with traditional empathy interventions (Weisz & Zaki, 2017). Motive-based approaches include targeting participants’ implicit beliefs about empathy’s malleability, highlighting that empathy is socially valued and has benefits, and addressing concerns about the affective costs of empathy. In summary, empathy-building interventions are effective when they address cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral aspects of empathy using multiple instruction techniques such as role-playing, discussions, didactic instruction, home practice, and skill training.

Compassion Although compassion and empathy seem to share evolutionary roots, they are two distinctly separable constructs (Zaki, 2014). Compassion is a mental state or an orientation toward the suffering of others. It is the capacity to perceive and desire to alleviate other’s suffering (Goetz et al., 2010). Compassion has four parts: cognitive (i.e., bringing awareness or attention to recognizing that there is suffering), affective (i.e., feeling emotionally moved by that suffering), intentional (i.e., wishing there to be relief from that suffering), and motivational (i.e., a readiness to take action to relieve that suffering) (Jazaieri, 2018). From a Buddhist perspective, compassion is an extension of wisdom that requires mindfully engaging with the suffering of others, experiencing a kind response to their suffering, and recognizing human interconnectedness that leads to a sincere yearning to lessen suffering (Jinpa, 2015). In this view, self

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and other compassion have three subcomponents: kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness (Neff, 2003). Kindness is in being caring toward and concerned for others who are suffering, accompanied by a desire to support them. Common humanity emphasizes recognizing the oneness of all human experiences, both hardship and a sense of connection, in response to suffering. Mindfulness is the awareness of the present moment; a type of balanced awareness of others’ pain, willingness to listen, and pay attention to others when they are suffering.

Why Is Compassion Important? Like empathy, compassion motivates altruistic and caring behavior, concern for others, and a desire to alleviate others’ suffering (Batson, 2011). Compassion is a strong motivator of prosocial behavior, and even short-term compassion training can influence prosocial behavior toward strangers (Leiberg et  al., 2011). Compassion may also motivate moral judgments and harm-reducing actions (Haidt, 2003). Moreover, compassion can fuel heroism that leads to social transformation (Zimbardo et  al., 2017). Compassion, when transformed into the social action of heroism such as in opposing police brutalities and racial discrimination, or in opposing religious fundamentalism and promoting girl-child education, has the potential to combat the societal evils and bring about a possibly enduring positive change in the world. Compassion, unlike empathy, does not require the vicarious experiences of others’ emotional states. It emerges from seeing suffering in the world around you. Therefore, in testing times such as those presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, compassion can motivate people to work toward the alleviation of suffering without themselves having to go through it. Therefore, scholars argue that the world today needs compassion more than empathy to sail through this devastating pandemic. It is rather more important today to ask how I can better structure the broken world not because I may suffer but because others are suffering, and things need to change for them (Galea, 2020). To fix things for the better, compassion would be instrumental in healthcare, governance, education, corporations, and almost every unit of life including families.

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Compassion-Building Interventions Ample evidence shows that compassion, like empathy, can be cultivated. Adolescence is arguably the most opportune time for compassion-building interventions (Jazaieri, 2018) given the neural and psychological plasticity in this developmental stage. Further, compassion education is particularly important during adolescence, given the developmental need for purpose and self-transcendence (Roeser & Pinela, 2014). Compassion scholars have developed several compassion-building interventions. Buddhist followers have for centuries emphasized a practice of mindfulness and compassion meditation (Lavelle, 2017). Yet others have focused on compassion modules that involve knowledge and training of compassion. A widely used approach for teaching compassion is called Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a secularized form of compassion meditation derived from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of lojong. Lojong refers to systematically conducted mind training or thought transformation from self-­ centeredness to enlightened other-centeredness and places a focus on the cultivation of compassion, love, forbearance, and perseverance (Jinpa, 2014). Another similar Buddhist approach is known as Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT; Jinpa, 2010). CCT involves focusing and settling the mind, cultivating loving-kindness and compassion for a loved one, cultivating loving-­kindness and compassion for oneself, cultivating compassion for others through a recognition of common humanity, cultivating compassion for all beings, and developing active compassion through the practice of tonglen or sending-receiving (Jinpa, 2010). Like CBCT, CCT aims at building compassion through a process of reasoning and analytical meditation. An analytical meditation-based compassion practice such as CBCT and CCT may be suited to adolescents with intellectual gifts and talent because of their cerebral prowess. Jazaieri (2018) made four recommendations for teachers of adolescents: compassionate listening with others, being with suffering, compassion for oneself, and loving-kindness for oneself. Compassionate listening exercises can be conducted in dyads focusing on attentive and non-judgmental listening. Interventions can include home-based or community-based exercise to be with someone who is suffering. This direct experience with suffering can help students develop compassion for others. Helping adolescents overcome self-criticism by using self-compassion techniques like the common humanity approach can be greatly useful. Finally, practicing loving-kindness can help

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adolescents to think about the other side of the coin, the brighter one, and help them build compassion for themselves and others.

Prosocial Behavior Prosocial behavior depicts a broad range of actions intended to benefit one or more people other than oneself—behaviors such as cooperating, sharing, helping, and comforting (Batson, 2011; Caprara et  al., 2005). Prosocial behavior stems from self-transcendence values—values oriented toward the concern for others’ welfare (Schwartz, 2007) and communal orientation—an interpersonal proclivity that emphasizes closeness, interdependence, and personal responsibility for the welfare of others (Clark & Mills, 1994). Self-­ transcendence values are further categorized into two subcategories. They are values of universalism—understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection of the welfare of all people and values of benevolence—preservation and enhancement of the welfare of close persons. Scholars have, for long, construed humans as intrinsically selfish beings and that prosocial behavior requires governing these basic instincts through effortful control (Stevens & Hauser, 2004). However, more recent research indicates prosocial behavior appears to stem from intuitive, reflexive, and automatic processes (Zaki & Mitchell, 2013). This research makes a case that prosocial behavior represents an impulse of its own and not just the ability to control selfish impulses.

Why Is Prosocial Behavior Important? Prosocial behavior has several benefits for individuals and society. The actor and target, both benefit from prosocial behavior. During adolescence, prosocial behavior is positively associated with positive developmental outcomes such as academic achievement in the short-term and long-term (Gerbino et  al., 2018), self-esteem, (Zuffianò et  al., 2014), interpersonal self-efficacy (Caprara et  al., 2015), and life satisfaction (Zuffianò et  al., 2018). On an interpersonal front, prosocial behavior has been positively associated with peer relationships (Eisenberg et al., 2006), civic engagement during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood (Luengo Kanacri et al., 2014), and a sense of belonging to the community context (Young & Glasgow, 1998). Besides, prosocial behavior may counteract bullying behavior (Raskauskas et al., 2010) and aggression in adolescents (Caprara et al., 2015). Most importantly, when many people start practicing prosocial behavior with

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positive intentions, the world starts to become a more just, equitable, humane, and sustainable society. For example, when people act with the values of universalism (i.e., understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection of the welfare of all people), they are less likely to inflict violence on minorities and less powerful individuals and groups.

Prosocial Behavior Interventions Extant research indicates prosocial behavior can be strengthened through psychoeducational interventions. Intervention by Caprara et al. (2015) consisted of a series of sessions based on sensitization to prosocial values, emotion regulation skills, perspective-taking skills, interpersonal communication skills, and precursors of civic engagement. Similarly, another intervention consisted of activities such as watching a video about prosociality, answering the questions about one’s identity, sharing about one’s value system and goals, charting out and implementing a plan to help others, reflecting about one’s prosocial act and understanding its implication for self and others (Baumsteiger, 2019). A recent review (Laguna et al., 2020) indicated effective interventions used a mix of strategies from behavioral, cognitive, and emotional approaches. Behavioral strategies included encouraging and reinforcing prosocial behavior through group activities such as modeling and demonstration and verbal and non-verbal feedback/reinforcement. Cognitive strategies consisted of knowledge-­based approaches (e.g., how and when to help) and cognitive problem-solving skills. Emotional strategies included emotion recognition, enhancing emotion regulation skills, and building empathy and emotional understanding. Importantly, these strategies were used in combination in many interventions. Therefore, we suggest combining behavioral, cognitive, and emotional strategies using the above-mentioned strategies.

Realizing Transformational Gifted Education In conclusion, we believe the two-fold purpose of transformational gifted education, that is, self-transformation and other-transformation can be achieved via two complementary pathways. An individual can lead a self-­ oriented transformation to attain an other-oriented transformation and vice versa. The first path from self to other transformation can be facilitated by inculcating self-awareness and self-reflective activities such as meditation and journaling into regular practice. The second path from other to

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self-­transformation can be catalyzed by experiencing a diverse range of social realities. These experiences may include participating in community service, volunteering for relief work, fieldwork in underprivileged social settings, and working with an issue-based organization. Developing responsiveness to external stimuli is the foundation of developing a concern for others. The concern is an awareness of other’s existence—physical, psychological, moral existence; basic needs, safety and security needs, self-respect, need for expression, and fundamental rights. Immersing oneself in other’s realities can engender a connection of oneness among humans, human societies, and nature. Increasingly widening one’s self and integrating it with family, community, society, humanity, and nature is the essence of our vision of transformational gifted education. It is when the collective vision for gifted education moves from I to We we can hope to attain the ultimate aims of transformational gifted education. Such a shift in the vision will necessitate a focus on the development of a concern for others. On that path, K-16 educators can begin with the teaching for empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. A compelling body of research points at the positive impact of school-based social and emotional learning programs (e.g., Durlak et al., 2011). These programs often target self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making skills, which are integral to empathy and compassion. Such programs not only improve attitudes toward self and others and lead to increased prosocial behavior but also reduce problem behavior and enhance academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011). We hope these results serve as motivators for schools across cultural and ideological spectra. Ultimately, a common sustainable future for nature including humans is only possible when we focus more on similarities and interconnectedness of lives and less on differences and disconnectedness. That, we argue, depends on a concerted global shift in thinking from I to We.

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5 A Catalyst for Change: Improving the World Through Talent Development Jennifer Riedl Cross and Tracy L. Cross

In the United States, children spend at least 10,000  hours of their lives in primary and secondary school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018), with most of these hours compressed into 180 days of each year. In this critical developmental period, they will be influenced by teachers, principals, school boards, and legislators, but also peers, siblings, parents, neighbors, television, the internet, and local and world events (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Schools play an outsized role in development, in part because lives are structured around it during the K-12 years. Schools and the people in them can determine the course of students’ lives, in positive or negative directions. Schools are an institution designed to do this very thing: to shape future citizens in a desirable mold. The accountability movement in education has amplified the transactional nature of schools; services (e.g., lessons, resources, opportunities) are provided with the expectation of a return, such as the student’s performance or achievement. Do well on a test and opportunities will follow. Tests determine what is taught and, often, how it is taught. Students who perform are rewarded, and those who do not are rejected, sometimes harshly (American Civil Liberties Union, 2021). Gifted education exists within this system, offering select students a service, which they accept (or do not) in return for opportunities and credentials.

J. R. Cross (*) • T. L. Cross William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_5

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Sternberg (2020a) points out that gifted education built on this transactional model focuses attention on who should be served, how they should be identified, what content they should be provided, and in what manner. In the twenty-first century, these students’ exceptional abilities can be put to much better use than the ones this model prepares them for. Sternberg proposed that we re-examine the field in light of what the world needs in these challenging times: transformationally gifted students with “exceptional ability or talent that can enable or has enabled an individual to make one or more extraordinary and meaningful contributions to the world that help to make the world a better place” (p. 225). To develop the students who can and want to make these contributions, many aspects of society must be engaged and schools will have a central role. The transactional schools of today would be hard pressed to make the changes necessary to foster the attitudes and abilities needed for fully transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2021). The time and resources applied to identifying giftedness within a student could be better spent in efforts to develop the talents of all students. In this chapter, we make an argument for a system of education for talent development that will be up to this task.

Challenges from a Misguided History Gifted education has faced many challenges over the years. With nearly a century since Terman’s (1925) work inspired the birth of gifted education, anyone in the field who works in higher education can tell you that there is very little support for gifted studies in colleges of education. With limited exceptions, few, if any, hours of a preservice teacher program will be dedicated to learning about teaching students who are exceptionally academically capable. The field has struggled for decades to earn the support of school superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and even students, including gifted students (Bégin & Gagné, 1994; Besnoy, 2005; J. R. Cross, Cross, & Frazier, 2013; Wiener & O’Shea, 1963), while the field of special education for students with disabilities has flourished. Throughout these struggles, an entire system of education has been built around a conception of intelligence that can be measured, with little regard for how accurately that measurement predicts the successful achievement of what is needed in society (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2017). In the process, gifted education has sometimes served as an enabler of those who wish to exploit it for personal gain and as a mechanism

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for enhancing the social hierarchy and maintaining social inequality (Ambrose, 2013; J. R. Cross, 2013). Stakeholders regularly complain that gifted education as it is commonly practiced is elitist (Bain et al., 2007; Brown & Wishney, 2017; J. R. Cross, 2013; J.  R. Cross, Cross, & Frazier, 2013; Matthews & Kitchens, 2007), offering a superior education to privileged members of the dominant group at the expense of the majority of students, and we have seen the gross inequities in representation of diverse students in gifted education programs (Ford & Whiting, 2007; McBee, 2010; National Center for Education Statistics, 2019a). The field’s historic emphasis on student differences and the maximization of potential among a select few does not contribute to a better world for all. Given the monumental challenges we are facing at the individual, community, national, and global levels – record numbers of deaths from the proliferation of guns, climate change, income inequality, the instability caused by our current technological revolution, civil unrest, not to mention worldwide public health disasters – it is critical that every student maximally develop their potential, including those students with special gifts and talents. Gallagher (2005, 2011) considered this a national security imperative. For gifted education to fulfill the objective of developing the talents of every student with exceptional ability or potential, it will have to change. At present, it often contributes to the problem of increasing social inequality and is successful in the development of talent only in limited disciplines, and only for those identified through accepted practices, a very narrow segment of the population of students who could be performing at an exceptional level. Why might people be opposed to a specialized education focused on students with gifts and talents? Limited research has examined the reasons for opposition, beyond the fear of elitism. One reason may be a distaste for its exclusivity. Schools spend millions of dollars each year attempting to identify who meets specified criteria, so only they can be served with a special, often superior, education (J. R. Cross, 2013). In addition, students participating in gifted education are often separated from their peers, if not for their entire schooling, generally for a large part of it. This isolation can lead to misconceptions about how different from their peers high-ability students are (Coleman & Cross, 1988; T. L. Cross et al., 1995), in addition to narrowing their opportunities to interact with their diverse schoolmates (J. R. Cross, 2016). Because of our evolutionary tendency to be attracted to similar others, or homophily (Fu et al., 2012; McPherson et al., 2001), a common observation among all social creatures, students in segregated gifted education may find themselves the outsiders in their schools, with few opportunities to find peers with shared characteristics other than intellect. On the other hand, such programs offer

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opportunities for students to find their intellectual peers. Lost in these nuances of program design is the schools’ impact on intergroup relations (Arnetta & Sidanius, 2018). Considering the normal distribution of most human characteristics, the majority of people in the majority of environments will have by definition near-average scores on a test of intelligence. Public schools, as institutions designed to serve all children in our communities (47.3 million students were in public schools in 2016; National Center for Education Statistics, 2019b), have many more students who would score in the average range on a standardized test of intelligence (68.2% within one standard deviation from the mean or 95.4% within two standard deviations, according to the normal distribution) than students with high intelligence test scores (2.2% with scores more than two standard deviations from the average). Of course, these figures assume much about the significance and accuracy of intelligence testing (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2017). Regardless of how they are measured, however, some subset of students who are actually different from the norm is exceptional. According to the definition of the National Association for Gifted Children (2019), “Students with gifts and talents perform – or have the capability to perform – at higher levels compared to others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more domains” (p. 1). Not only are there likely to be few of these exceptional students in a school, their deviation from the average may make them unattractive both for social interaction (Coleman & Cross, 1988; J. R. Cross et al., 2019; T. L. Cross et al., 1991, 1995) and for consideration in the plans of decision makers, as evidenced by the lack of support for appropriate specialized education. Educators and administrators may view curricular offerings targeting average students as adequate for everyone. Given the vast numbers of schools across the US and the tens of millions of students being served in schools, gifted education has become many things to many people. While astute educators might see gifted education as part of the science of pedagogy that, when effectively implemented, helps meet the educational needs of a large number of students, it has become the perceived right of the privileged within our schools. It often is seen as superior education, an advantaging education, the mark of a better, more valued group of students, of a country’s future, made up of the middle or upper middle-class students, many who are white. Those of us who work with schools regularly hear stories from coordinators of gifted programs describing their experiences with parents, from those who express worries about their child getting into the gifted program to those who actually threaten the gifted coordinator in their intense desire for a spot for their child. The coordinator of gifted education for a large

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school district in the Southern US recently shared that she was frequently threatened by parents upset that their children were not admitted into the gifted program. Some of these parents demanded that their children be admitted. The coordinator was so fearful for her safety that she very carefully chose to live in a community quite a distance away from where she worked, resulting in a long commute. The parents who threatened her believed that their children’s futures were hanging in the balance, not because they were being denied an appropriate education, but because they would miss out on the social benefits of being anointed “gifted”. Without the anointment, their families would be ostracized in their middle-class community. The coordinator left the position after one year, describing her inability to sleep due to the chronic fear she felt after having been threatened by so many in her school community. As these examples reveal, providing for students of high ability gets interpreted in diverse ways within the broader US culture, with its long history of unequal treatment of people, its vastly different funding practices across schools, the confusing messages about what gifted education is actually attempting to accomplish, the overreliance on snapshots of abilities via tests that often reduce opportunities for some students and make room for others, within the longstanding legacy of racism. Some will interpret such provision as everything from a Rorschach test about the future opportunities of children; to a vehicle of the state to keep children separated, often by race and socioeconomic status; to the pathway to a higher paying job or a future of giving back to the community; all this based on children having received a high-quality gifted education. Creating conditions where something (gifted education and being anointed “gifted”) is believed to provide a brighter future for a small portion of society, at the expense of the much larger portion of the “unanointed” student body, is destined to create fear, worry, desperation and even hostility toward those seen as gatekeepers. Although gifted education in its current form presents numerous challenges to its general acceptance, the goal of producing transformational giftedness among students simply cannot be met without the enthusiastic pursuit of it within schools. Schools are not only places of academic learning. The time spent in schools has an enormous impact on students’ identities, motivations, and moral character. To foster their identities as capable, caring individuals; their motivations to effect change in their environments (local or global); and their morality to be and do good; schools must be on board.

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 ow Schools Can Develop H Transformational Giftedness As we contemplate a perfect world in which our education system (including gifted education) produces wise citizens with an expansive view of the world and the desire and ability to make it a better place, it is important to consider how, exactly, that dream can be realized. Students must be able to see opportunities for enhancement, to recognize problems that need to be fixed, to have the knowledge and skills to apply to the problem, and have the desire to do so. Theorists have no difficulty imagining such an education system. Parents who value benevolence and a peaceful, just world may already be working toward this goal in their own families (J.  R. Cross & Cross, 2016). Communities, too, can foster change through tax-funded programs with transformational goals. These stakeholders may bring about incremental change, but without the adoption of these objectives in our schools, true social transformation cannot happen. Public schools are community institutions where the possibility exists for such transformation to occur. A first step in bringing about change is to shed our notions of what gifted education should look like, adopting a more inclusive and, likely, more effective approach.

Committing to Talent Development for All The history of gifted education is, first and foremost, a history of identification of giftedness in children. Terman (1925) was determined to find “genius” among the primarily white, primarily male subjects of his decades-long study, seeking their differences from the average. To educate these exceptional students, the students first needed to be identified. Today, test scores, behavioral checklists, assessment of products, and interviews all focus on identifying differences from the average. In the seventeenth century, the dominant mechanistic worldview was characterized by taxonomies of the natural world, an effort to discriminate between objects to find the true identity of things (Foucault, 1970). These taxonomies led to a deeper understanding of shared functions in organic structures, but it took centuries for this learning to progress beyond naming and discriminating between objects. Gifted education is locked into this seventeenth century mode of attempting to ever more clearly describe who is “gifted.” Glimmers of a deeper understanding of the functions of giftedness can be seen in early conceptions that focus on the development of talents (e.g., Coleman, 1985; Feldman, 1986; Tannenbaum, 1983). Rather

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than emphasizing who is gifted, a talent-development approach to gifted education focuses on the shaping of potential into mature, outstanding accomplishments, a significant function of their giftedness. Among the many disagreements about what giftedness is and how it should be defined, one important debate (J. R. Cross, Ambrose, & Andersen, 2013) has been whether giftedness is about being (an innate characteristic at the core of the self; e.g., Delisle, 2003; Silverman, 2013) or doing (observable accomplishments of value; e.g., Coleman & Cross, 2005; Subotnik, 2001, 2003). In this debate, talent-development approaches to gifted education come down clearly on the side of doing. Cross and colleagues (T. L. Cross & Coleman, 2005; T. L. Cross & Cross, 2020, 2021), building on Coleman’s (1985) earlier work, proposed a school-based conception of giftedness and talent development (see Table 5.1) that clarifies how a talent-development approach can work in a school setting. Central to this school-based conception is the assumption that “Giftedness exists at the intersection of the child and his or her context” (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2021, p. 90). Both schools and students are responsible for the development of talent and all students should have access to opportunities for talent development. One important difference from current practice is the recognition that schools are limited in what they are able to pursue for students. They are limited by “cultural, environmental, and temporal” (p.  90) conditions, which will lead to the possibility that some students will have outstanding abilities in a domain that is outside the scope of a school’s perceived responsibility. For those domains that are within their responsibility, it is incumbent on schools to provide ample opportunity, scaffolding, and increasingly sophisticated challenge to students. At early ages, students should learn the foundations of the domains in which they are expected to perform when in secondary school. Students who do not engage consistently or who do not express advanced achievement do not need to continue in advanced services, but this exclusion is predicated on schools doing everything they can to ensure students have had adequate, interesting, appropriate opportunities for learning in the domain. Curriculum should be designed around the development of talents in each domain, with planned, progressive acceleration through which students can move rapidly when able. Training to foster students’ psychosocial skills will boost their ability to take advantage of the opportunities that the schools provide. Identification of giftedness in T. L. Cross and Cross’s (2021) school-based conception of giftedness and talent development is not reliant on standardized tests of ability. Ability testing would be used to identify potential in young students and in students who are often missed by other methods (e.g.,

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Table 5.1  Tenets of the school-based conception of giftedness #1 #2

Giftedness exists at the intersection of the child and his or her context Schools are a unique context, charged with the development of specific, societally valued knowledge and skills, and bounded by cultural, environmental, and temporal limitations #3 In schools, giftedness is conceptualized as a context-limited, age-related phenomenon. In the early grades, children who are gifted show “high general cognitive ability, either through potential (ability), actions (performance), or rapid learning in school-related domains” (Cross & Coleman, 2005, p. 59) #4 In later grades (i.e., secondary), giftedness is the expression of potential in the form of advanced development in a foundational domain or production of creative works in some societally valued area, with consistent engagement in activities associated with either type. Without such expression, the secondary student should not be considered gifted in school #5 Assessments should reflect differences in age and context. Ability testing should be used for identifying potential among young and nonmodal students who may not have had opportunities to develop through achievement. Subsequent assessment should be based on achievement #6 Education should be in the form of planned, progressive acceleration in a domain, as opposed to dispersed forms of enrichment #7 Schools are responsible for providing opportunities for the development of exceptional talent, offering scaffolding in foundational domains at early ages and increasingly sophisticated challenges in performance domains at secondary school ages #8 Schools are responsible for ensuring students can readily transition through grade levels as they are able, including to post-secondary education, uninhibited by policy or a lack of appropriate educational resources #9 Schools are responsible for eliminating systemic impediments to the development of talent in school-related domains. For example, the domains should be presented in an appropriately paced and interesting manner. Students should not be inhibited in the development of their abilities by untrained teachers or gatekeepers who can subvert their pursuits, based on behavior or other non-domain-related assessments #10 Students are responsible for pursuing domains of interest to them, exhibiting early potential and showing increasing commitment as they move through school. Gifted students are those who perform at a significantly higher level than peers in a school-related domain #11 Psychosocial skills training should be part of the school’s curriculum to foster students’ abilities to pursue talent development opportunities

Source: T.  L. Cross and Cross (2021). Reprinted by permission from Springer Nature: Palgrave Macmillan, Conceptions of Giftedness and Talent by R.  J. Sternberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), 2021

low-income, non-White or non-Asian, English language learners, etc.). Testing can be informative but should not be used as a gatekeeper to opportunities. Tests play an important role in diagnosing student strengths, weaknesses, and misconceptions, but they should be used to support students

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rather than to exclude them from opportunity. All students in this model would be developing their talents, with many more likely to show exceptional abilities than through a traditional system of identification. The reward for performance in this talent-development model is greater opportunity to develop talents in which the student has abilities and interest. When the goal of finding “truly gifted students” is no longer operative, many problems of social comparison and the desire for anointment will be resolved. The millions of dollars spent each year on testing to identify students for gifted services can be reallocated to instruction. The simultaneous responsibilities of the school and the student are based on mutual respect: schools for the students and their unique needs and students for the schools and the efforts made for their development. Schools must commit to developing the talent of their charges. They must contribute resources, academic supports, psychosocial supports, and, most importantly, opportunities for advanced learning experiences (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2021). Anything short of a full commitment will lead to failure in the form of dissatisfied, disaffected students and unrealized potential. The commitment must be to all students, as well. No students can be left out of this effort. There may be students whose talent is unrecognized at either end of the ability spectrum. Ample opportunity, with appropriate scaffolding and pacing (fast or slow) and other accelerative techniques, will ensure all students are able to realize their potential. The school-based conception of giftedness and talent development (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2021) removes the transaction of services for rewards by emphasizing intrinsic motivation, passion for learning, and a willingness to work hard among students. Mastery of content and skills, including psychosocial skills, along with advanced opportunities to perform/show what they can do in a domain of interest to them will be rewarding for the students. Such schools will build students’ sense of agency and their competence, requisite characteristics for the expression of transformational giftedness.

Clearly Defined Objectives A talent-development approach takes into account that schools are systems of production. They can develop talent by taking on the roles and responsibilities of T. L. Cross and Cross’s (2021) school-based conception, but to develop students who want to and can make the world a better place, the domains chosen and the content to be taught are key. Schools must have clearly defined objectives to carry out their responsibilities. To produce the wise citizens we

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desire, schools must analyze the final objective and determine what components will be required to achieve it. Developing a skill, such as reading or mathematical calculation, is relatively easy for a school to accomplish. Producing wise students, on the other hand, will require additional concepts to be identified and clarified. Prosocial behaviors, for example, are a necessary component of fully transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2021). Defined as “voluntary actions aimed at benefiting others” (Gerbino et al., 2018, p. 247), prosocial behaviors can be effectively taught in schools (Spinrad & Eisenberg, 2009). Service-learning lessons offer opportunities to enact prosocial behaviors on a larger scale and many schools require students to engage in community volunteering (Education Commission of the States, 2014). From character education (McGrath, 2018) to emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) to grit (Duckworth, 2016), schools have attempted to shape children and adolescents into model students through the latest trends in non-academic learning. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has gained popularity, with more than half of states in the US implementing SEL guidelines or adopting SEL standards (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning [CASEL], 2018). While many positive outcomes have been associated with each of these trends, they can be soundly criticized for the deficit model on which they are founded and the values they attempt to transmit (Ford, 2020; Hoffman, 2009; Staub, 2016). For schools to produce a transformationally gifted person who will make the world a better place, “better” will have to be defined. Is a better world a safe one? Safe from what or whom? Is a better world an egalitarian one? Or one where resources are predictably controlled by one group? In a study of supporters of gifted education, J. R. Cross et al. (2010) found what some supporters believed is “best” for gifted students is a self-contained classroom where cooperative learning is seldom used. For others, “best” is a heterogeneous classroom with differentiated instruction or cluster grouping with frequent use of cooperative learning. How would schools define the outcome they need to teach in this morals-based, value-laden realm, without neglecting the strengths and orientations of all students and their communities? To be successful in teaching for transformational giftedness, stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, administrators, legislators) must be able to agree upon desired outcomes. Clarity of foundational objectives is necessary to develop curriculum and assess student success. One possible direction can be found in the history of modern diplomacy. Following the devastation of the second world war, the 50 countries represented in the United Nations General Assembly agreed on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR; United Nations, n.d.). The articles of the UDHR begin with an agreement

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that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Were this agreement to underpin our system of education, making the world a better place for all of humanity would come naturally. Students would learn, on a regular basis, in every subject area and at every developmental level, that they matter and so does everyone else. The framework of the UDHR would make a powerful, progressive foundation for curriculum development. On the other hand, is a humanity-focused paradigm what we need? To make the world a better place, the most effective foundation for our system of education may be best developed by drawing the lens back to take a more holistic perspective. In her book on the role of humans in animal welfare, King (2021) challenges our anthropocentric approach to world problems. In one of her many examples, King cites the extermination of beavers, who are killed in large numbers by the Wildlife Service of the U.S.  Department of Agriculture for the “nuisance” they create for humans. In reality, beavers could be playing a vital role in our struggle with global warming, as their activities can restore damaged ecosystems. “In Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, beaver activity on twenty-seven streams stored carbon in amounts equivalent to what 37,000 acres of American forests can do” (p. 91). A focus on the future of humanity predisposes us to lose perspective on the well-being of other life on this planet, sometimes to our detriment, as this example illustrates. Placing a priority on what is best for the beavers would benefit us, as well. A humanity-focused paradigm shift in schools would be short-sighted. To actually make the world a better place, we must come up with a new paradigm to guide our education system. Making the world a better place means doing so for all its current and future inhabitants; the thriving and flourishing of all lives on the planet. The UDHR may be a step in the right direction, but fully transformationally gifted individuals (Sternberg, 2021) will require a broader perspective. For schools to be part of their development, that perspective will need to be clearly defined.

A Curriculum for Transformation In addition to clearly defined objectives, schools will need to build a curriculum from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Current curriculum development in most public schools is built around state and national standards (Education World, 2021). Schools excel in teaching academic subjects. When given the resources and environmental supports to do so, schools can effectively and,

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usually, efficiently, get their students from Point A to Point B.  Whether a school with resources and supports is prepared to take a student to Points C, D, E, or Z depends on its commitment to students’ talent development. The school-based conception of giftedness and talent development (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2021) acknowledges the local control of curricular content in schools across the US. Communities are free to identify valued domains for the focus of their instruction, but T. L. Cross and Cross (2021) advise them to consider life beyond high school graduation in making decisions about content. The talent-development approach requires a deep understanding of the trajectories of expert progress in a domain (Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2016). Students who are unprepared for post-secondary work in a discipline due to a lack of academic training in their local communities face the very real possibility of unrealized potential. Even as communities exercise their right to choose valued content to be taught in their schools, a commitment to developing the talents of all students will necessarily transform what is taught, how, and when. All students are capable of making the world a better place. To do this, they will require knowledge and skills. Those who are exceptionally capable will require advanced knowledge and skills. Schools teach these by providing content, assessing learning, and rewarding accomplishment of goals. This transactional nature of schools (Sternberg, 2020a, 2020b, in press) fits our competitive, winner-take-all capitalist society and creates an illusion of a meritocracy (Ambrose, 2013). Students learn that they will be rewarded for their academic performance with accolades, opportunities, and resources. Rewards can be subjective, as in the case of grades and teacher nominations, or (purportedly) objective, as in the case of standardized tests. A talent-development approach could have these same characteristics, but not if the school adheres to the responsibilities laid out in Table 5.1. A school culture based on a commitment to these responsibilities avoids transactional pitfalls. Efforts at more student-centered instruction happen often at the teacher level, but rarely does an entire school attempt to move away from a transactional system. The principles of autonomy-supportive instruction, designed to fulfill one of the psychological needs identified in Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory, prioritize students’ intrinsic motivation over external rewards (Reeve, 2016) and studies of teachers learning to be autonomy supportive are abundant. Reeve (2009) cites research on the benefits of teacher-provided autonomy support to students’ motivation, engagement, development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being. Principal leadership style can foster teacher behaviors that are autonomy supportive (Ham & Kim, 2015), but administrative pressures interfere with teachers’ efforts to support students’ autonomy (Pelletier & Sharp, 2009; Reeve, 2009). The stress placed on students to achieve in an environment that demands

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conformity to adult-driven norms can lead to alienation, underachievement, dropout and worse (T. L. Cross et al., 2020; Finn, 1989; Kanevsky & Keighley, 2003). A commitment to supporting transformational giftedness through a talent development approach calls for schools to adopt not only autonomy-­ supportive teaching, but a culture of autonomy support for teachers, administrators, and all stakeholders. When all members of the community are able to fulfill their self-determination needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000), schools will become a place where students thrive.

Planning for a Paradigm Shift At a time when society cannot agree on the simplest of things, it will be a challenge to modify our system of education into one with the objective of making the world a better place. In a 2014 study of more than 3000 American adults, the Pew Research Center found that most parents (93%) agreed that an especially important quality they want their children to have is “being responsible” (Pew Research Center, 2014). Beyond this agreement, however, there were wide disparities in what parents with conservative or liberal beliefs considered to be the most important qualities to teach their children. Only a small percentage of parents, those who were the most consistently liberal, considered empathy and curiosity to be in the list of the top three qualities, and most parents highly prized responsibility and hard work. Differences in opinions such as these are frustrating, but the lesson to be taken from this study is that there is common ground. A focus on the objectives on which parents across the political, economic, and cultural divides can agree will be an important starting point in developing a curriculum. Schools cannot be everything to everyone. Creativity will be required to reach agreement on the types of objectives that will help make the world a better place. As public schools in the US have focused ever more narrowly on individual achievement, their purpose as a socializing institution has been diminished. Sternberg’s (2021) fully transactional giftedness is a predictable outcome of this disconnect between individual and societal development. Transactions at this level engender egocentric goals. Using metrics such as future income to indicate a student’s success may be psychometrically sound (Sternberg, 2021), but immaterial to the greater good. The accountability movement was a dramatic paradigm shift for schools. Regular, standardized testing would help identify weaknesses, such as poor instruction, low standards, or inequities, which could then be ameliorated. The power of the purse attracted schools across the country to shift their instruction to fit this test-driven paradigm. In the process, schools have abdicated their role as socializing institutions.

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Conclusion The coronavirus pandemic has wrought such changes in education; now may be a critical time to make another paradigm shift (Freitag, 2020). This global catastrophe revealed the relative acceptance of inequality in educational opportunity and illustrated the critical role of government in creating equal opportunities, such as supplying internet access and technology to rural or low-income students. This is evidence that our public-school systems and government at all levels can work together to generate the resources and opportunities that create the conditions for all students to maximize their potential. As schools emerge from this global catastrophe, it is in a world that has a new appreciation of their value to society. Through research and advocacy, the field of gifted education has sought an appropriate education for a small portion of students. Over the years, it has become clear that the traditional model is inadequate to the task of finding and maximizing the potential of all highly able students. Gifted education can be a catalyst for change in our schools, by demanding the best education for all students, including those with gifts and talents. Identifying transformational objectives and committing to developing the talents of all students will bring about a new era in education.

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Brown, E. F., & Wishney, L. R. (2017). Equity and excellence: Political forces in the education of gifted students in the United States and abroad. Global Education Review, 4(1), 22–33. Coleman, L. J. (1985). Schooling the gifted. Addison-Wesley. Coleman, L. J., & Cross, T. L. (1988). Is being gifted a social handicap? Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 11, 41–56. Coleman, L. J., & Cross, T. L. (2005). Being gifted in school: An introduction to development, guidance and teaching (2nd ed.). Prufrock Press. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2018). State scorecard scan. https://casel.org/wp-­content/uploads/2018/09/csi-­scorecard-­sept2018.pdf Cross, J. R. (2013). Gifted education as a vehicle for enhancing social equality. Roeper Review, 35, 115–123. Cross, J. R. (2016). Gifted children and peer relationships. In M. Neihart, S. Pfeiffer, & T. L. Cross (Eds.), Social and emotional development of gifted children (2nd ed., pp. 41–54). National Association for Gifted Children. Cross, T.  L., & Coleman, L.  J. (2005). School-based conception of giftedness. In R.  J. Sternberg & J.  E. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (2nd ed., pp. 52–63). Cambridge University Press. Cross, J. R., & Cross, T. L. (2016). The macroproblem of conflicting values in 21st century education. In D. Ambrose & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems and huge opportunities (pp. 111–136). Sense. Cross, T. L., & Cross, J. R. (2017). Challenging an idea whose time has gone. Roeper Review, 39, 191–194. Cross, T. L., & Cross, J. R. (2020). An enhanced school-based conception of giftedness. In T.  L. Cross & P.  Olszewski-Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 265–287). Prufrock Academic Press. Cross, T.  L., & Cross, J.  R. (2021). A school-based conception of giftedness: Clarifying roles and responsibilities in the development of talent in our public schools. In R. J. Sternberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent (pp. 83–98). Palgrave Macmillan. Cross, T. L., Coleman, L., & Terhaar-Yonkers, M. (1991). The social cognition of gifted adolescents in schools: Managing the stigma of giftedness. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 15, 44–55. Cross, T. L., Coleman, L. J., & Stewart, R. A. (1995). Psychosocial diversity of gifted adolescents: An exploration of the stigma of the giftedness paradigm. Roeper Review, 17, 181–185. Cross, J. R., Cross, T. L., & Finch, W. H. (2010). Maximizing student potential versus building community: An exploration of right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and preferred practice among supporters of gifted education. Roeper Review, 32, 235–248.

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Cross, J. R., Ambrose, D., & Andersen, L. (2013, November). Social inequality, gifted education, and Frank Sinatra: Are we avoiding a necessary debate? Presentation at the annual conference of the National Association for Gifted Children, Indianapolis, IN. https://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/jrcross/ sinatraandgiftededucation Cross, J.  R., Cross, T.  L., & Frazier, A.  D. (2013). Student and teacher attitudes toward giftedness in a two laboratory school environment: A case for conducting a needs assessment. NALS Journal, 5(1). http://digitalcommons.ric.edu/nals/ vol5/iss1/1 Cross, J.  R., Vaughn, C.  T., Mammadov, S., Cross, T.  L., Kim, M., O’Reilly, C., Spielhagen, F., Pereira Da Costa, M., & Hymer, B. (2019). A cross-cultural study of the social experience of giftedness. Roeper Review, 41, 224–242. Cross, T. L., Cross, J. R., Dudnytska, N., Kim, M., & Vaughn, C. T. (2020). A psychological autopsy of an intellectually gifted student with attention deficit disorder. Roeper Review, 42(1), 6–24. Delisle, J. (2003). To be or to do: Is a gifted child born or developed? Roeper Review, 26, 12–13. Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. Scribner. Education Commission of the States. (2014). High school graduation requirement or credit toward graduation  – service-learning/community service. http://ecs. force.com/mbdata/mbquest3RTE?Rep=SL1301 Education World. (2021). Curriculum: National and state standards. https://www. educationworld.com/standards/ Feldman, D. H. (1986). Nature’s gambit: Child prodigies and the development of human potential. Basic Books. Finn, J.  D. (1989). Withdrawing from school. Review of Educational Research, 59, 117–142. Ford, D. (2020, February 6). Social-emotional learning for Black students is ineffective when it is culture-blind. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. http://diverseeducation.com/article/166341 Ford, D., & Whiting, G. (2007). A mind is a terrible thing to erase: Black students’ underrepresentation in gifted education. Multiple Voices, 10(1 & 2), 28–44. Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. Pantheon. Original work published 1966. Freitag, E. (2020, October 30). Let’s fight about the future of public education. Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/10/30/21540098/ lets-­fight-­future-­of-­public-­education Fu, F., Nowak, M. A., Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). The evolution of homophily. Scientific Reports, 2(1), 845. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00845 Gallagher, J. J. (2005). Neglecting creativity: National security and educational excellence. Education Week, 24(38), 40–32.

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Gallagher, J.  J. (2011). A response to Ambrose, VanTassel-Baska, Coleman, and Cross: A NASA approach to gifted education. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 34(4), 559–568. https://doi.org/10.1177/016235321103400402 Gerbino, M., Zuffianò, A., Eisenberg, N., Castellani, V., Luengo Kanacri, B.  P., Pastorelli, C., & Caprara, G. V. (2018). Adolescents’ prosocial behavior predicts good grades beyond intelligence and personality traits. Journal of Personality, 86(2), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12309 Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam. Ham, S.-H., & Kim, R. Y. (2015). The influence of principals’ instructional leadership on teachers’ use of autonomy-supportive instruction: An analysis of three Asia-Pacific countries. Asia-Pacific Educational Research, 24(1), 57–65. Hoffman, D. M. (2009). Reflecting on social emotional learning: A critical perspective on trends in the United States. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 533–556. Kanevsky, L., & Keighley, T. (2003). To produce or not to produce? Understanding boredom and the honor in underachievement. Roeper Review, 26, 20–28. King, B.  J. (2021). Animals’ best friends: Putting compassion to work for animals in captivity and in the wild. The University of Chicago Press. Matthews, D.  J., & Kitchens, J. (2007). Allowing idiosyncratic learners to thrive: Policy implications of a study of school-within-a-school gifted programs. Journal of School Choice, 1(4), 27–52. McBee, M.  T. (2010). Examining the probability of identification for gifted programs for students in Georgia elementary schools: A multilevel path analysis study. Gifted Child Quarterly, 54(4), 283–297. https://doi. org/10.1177/0016986210377927 McGrath, R. E. (2018). What is character education? Development of a prototype. Journal of Character Education, 14(2), 23–35. McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J.  M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444. National Association for Gifted Children. (2019). Position statement: A definition of giftedness that guides best practice. https://www.nagc.org/sites/default/files/ Position%20Statement/Definition%20of%20Giftedness%20%282019%29.pdf National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). State Education Practices: Table 5.14 Number of instructional days and hours in the school year, by state: 2018. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_14.asp National Center for Education Statistics. (2019a). Table 204.90. Percentage of public school students enrolled in gifted and talented programs, by sex, race/ethnicity, and state: Selected years, 2004 through 2013–14. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/ digest/d19/tables/dt19_204.90.asp National Center for Education Statistics. (2019b). Fast facts: Public and private school comparison. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55

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6 Ten Changes That Will Render Gifted Education Transformational David Yun Dai

Education is usually conceptualized as a process of developing knowledge and character in a way that leads to a productive, fulfilling life. Gifted education is no exception. Historically, gifted education has two main strands, one based on the special-needs argument, and the other the human capital argument (Borland, 1989; Dai & Chen, 2013). The former views gifted education as part of special education, serving the special needs of the gifted, not unlike the needs of children with disabilities or other exceptional conditions. The latter views gifted education as educating the most promising children to be future scientists, engineers, scholars, artists, historians, and other professionals and social leaders, and so on and so forth, who can make contributions to society with their expertise, wisdom, and creativity (for the history of gifted education, see Dai, 2018; Robinson & Jolly, 2014). Gifted education, like other strands of education, is always a value-laden endeavor, reflecting what educators believe is important in terms of educational aims and desired outcomes. When Renzulli (1986, 2009) emphasized engendering a sense of purpose or the motivation to make social impact in gifted individuals with their creative productivity, he was advocating a gifted education that is potentially transformational in the sense of making a significant difference in others’ lives. Sternberg (2017) advocates concerned D. Y. Dai (*) University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA East China Normal University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_6

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citizenry and ethical leadership as qualities central to the mission of gifted education. In this approach, character building and the commitment to certain human values become part of a distinct identity in gifted education. In my decades of effort in building a new foundation of gifted education, I noticed a historical inertia; that is, gifted education has long been dominated by what I call the Gifted Child Paradigm (Dai, 2011; Dai & Chen, 2013, 2014). It uses a categorical approach to defining and identifying gifted children and tends to reify giftedness as inherently present in some children but not others, rather than something that is more dynamic and needs to be fully developed through gifted education. Therefore, I developed the notion of giftedness as contextual, emergent, and dynamic (Dai, 2010; Dai & Renzulli, 2008). More recently I proposed an Evolving Complexity Theory (ECT) of talent development that further puts a premium on characteristic and maximal adaptation to environmental opportunities and demands as the essential pathway to excellence (Dai, 2017, 2020, 2021). Two main impetuses drive my work. One is that the traditional approaches to gifted education are too piecemeal, lacking in a long-term, personal development perspective (see Dai, 2019; Feldhusen, 2003 and Horowitz, 2009, for a similar view). Talent development, due to its broader psychosocial basis, provides a remedy. The other impetus is the changing landscape of demands and supply of human talent. The stagnation of gifted education becomes more poignant in the face of a vastly changing world. With the rise of information technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), the nature of human talent and talent development itself may change in a fundamental way. What was considered talent decades ago may not be so now or in the future (Zhao, 2016). It is sensible to argue that gifted education should play a major role in creating innovative nations (Kao, 2007) in terms of being capable of producing an innovative generation or creative class (Florida, 2002), and it is desirable to even go beyond that to embrace the notion of transformational giftedness as defined and promoted by the editors of this volume. For the purpose of this chapter, transformational giftedness can be defined briefly as a kind of quality that enables someone to make positive instrumental changes in society. Transformational giftedness is proposed in contrast to transactional giftedness in the traditional educational accountability system. Put in a different way, transactional giftedness, however defined, will be cultivated and realized for the individual in question just for other individuals, whereas transformational giftedness looks beyond individual interests at how gifted students are enabled to tackle major problems and challenges facing the world (Sternberg et al., 2021).

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While it is laudable to envision something bigger than oneself with the notion of transformational giftedness, is it possible without gifted education itself being reformed in the first place? Here is my argument: Without some transformation of gifted education, transformational giftedness in terms of being able to make a positive difference for the betterment of society would not be a reality (Sternberg et al., 2021). Several years ago, I (Dai, 2015b) proposed ten mega-trends in gifted education, not only based on what is happening, but as demanded by the economic, social, and technological conditions in the twenty-first century. Along the same line, in this chapter, I elaborate on these trends with an emphasis on how gifted education can be made more proactive, future-oriented, and productive—capable of producing a reservoir of talent for future leaders, innovators, and transformers, not merely excellent technicians and technocrats. More specific to the central topic of this volume, transformational giftedness, how gifted education can be reformed in a way responding to the reconceptualization of giftedness. In the following, the ten trends I propose reflect systematic changes in (a) the vision of gifted education as well as its research apparatus, (b) in the Infrastructure and capacity-­building, (c) practices of identification and assessment as well as instructional approaches, and (d) how stakeholders are mobilized and what kind of leadership role universities can take on.

 Critical Change in the Epistemology A of Giftedness and Gifted Education Epistemologically, gifted education started with a reductionist approach to the development of human potential, seeing giftedness as a natural endowment residing within the person in a permanent fashion, only to be brought to bear upon experiences. The new, emergent epistemology views human potential in a more interactive and dynamic way, giving primacy to action and activity (or interactivity) that shapes the way one’s gifted potential evolves and expresses itself (Sternberg, 2021). Accordingly, giftedness in the making (Dai, 2010; Dai & Chen, 2014) or person-in-action in a particular context (i.e., actiotopes; Ziegler, 2005), rather than static personal traits, IQ or otherwise, becomes the focal point (see also Dai & Sternberg, 2021). Methodologically, emergent system properties, those involving real-time action and meaning-­ making, rather than broadly defined components of the system in isolation, gain more importance (Sawyer, 1999, 2002; Ziegler & Phillipson, 2012). These new approaches ultimately change the way we ask research questions,

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and the way we design research, and the role research plays in its relation to theory and practice. For example, the traditional positivist approach is concerned only with technical rationality—that is, whether a strategy works or not. This technical approach will be replaced by a design approach that addresses the issue of whether a strategy works in what context and for what purpose (see Dai, 2012; Dai & Chen, 2014). A broader psychosocial basis of talent development means a shift of focus from static traits to contextual, dynamic processes of person-environment interaction. Much of what we know about giftedness comes from a research approach that can be labeled the gifted-nongifted comparison paradigm by which “gifted” characteristics are derived from comparing the gifted with the regular or “non-gifted” populations (see Dai & Chen, 2014 for detailed discussion). This approach tends to perpetuate static trait conceptions of giftedness—that is, the notion that giftedness implies of a set of stable characteristics of cognitive, affective, and motivational nature that are inherent in the person like height or weight (see McBee et al., 2018, for a critique). In contrast, ECT treats the person as an open, dynamic, and adaptive system, constantly in interaction with an environment with its distinct opportunities and challenges. The “evolving complexity” is meant to convey the dynamic, interactive nature of human potential at multiple levels; with the emergent individuality (e.g., intellectual potency) that cannot be reduced to basic traits. As shown in Fig.  6.1, even the manifestation of aptitudes and dispositions at the basic foundational level reveals dynamic qualities that can be understood only in interaction with certain task and social environments. Furthermore, as one develops, new properties, such as characteristic adaptation, or purpose and personal strivings, emerge, representing higher levels of self-organizing principles. Methodologically, this contextual, dynamic, and interactive view of Characteristic Adaptation

Aptitudes & dispositions

(

(developing individuals

Characteristic adaptations

Construction of self/future

social-cultural mediation)

)

Sociocultural mediation

Maximal Adaptation

Fig. 6.1  A schematic representation of a nested multi-layered developmental system with two main regulatory forces: characteristic and maximal adaptation. (Based on Dai, 2017, adapted from Dai, 2005)

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human potential entails an approach that pays close attention to developmental processes. This view of understanding gifted potential also sees gifted education as inherently developing “gifted” qualities rather than merely identifying them (Renzulli, 1986, 1999; Sternberg, 2021). As shown in Fig. 6.1, the embedded nature of the developmental system calls for research that addresses how a person’s talent development is social-culturally mediated with tools, resources, and support. In short, the evolving complexity of one’s individuality can be revealed only when a non-reductionistic or emergentist approach is used (Dai, 2005; Sawyer, 2002), a conception of giftedness that include purpose and identity is more conducive to the cultivation of transformational giftedness.

 Major Change in the Nature, Purpose, A and Means of Identification The traditional approach to identification classifies a group of individuals as “gifted,” often in a once-and-for-all fashion. A status definition is used with some arbitrary cutoffs (e.g., IQ at the 97th percentile), which, by default, defines anyone who do not make the cut, so to speak, as not-gifted. This categorical approach, rightly criticized from within and without (see Borland, 2003), has to give way to a more inclusive and flexible approach. The new approach would recognize the multi-faceted and evolving nature of human potential (Feldhusen, 2003; Treffinger & Feldhusen, 1996), seeing human exceptional competence as contextually and dynamically shaped and manifested through interactions with the environment, and becomes increasingly differentiated and integrated over time through development and education (Dai & Renzulli, 2008). The purpose of identification, with this new approach, is not to create a gold standard of generic “giftedness” for everyone and find a litmus test that can distinguish the “truly gifted” from the non-gifted. Instead, identification should be viewed as a situated, pragmatic diagnostic decision as to whether an individual is ready to pursue a particular academic challenge or is suitable for a particular line of talent development. In essence, identification must be made more contextual and dynamic, recognizing a diverse range of skills and talents, as well as distinct dispositions and inclinations in situ. While relevant merit-based selection mechanisms may still be needed for certain programs or selective schools, local authorities should have some autonomy and flexibility with respect to who can participate in specific advanced learning activities, and how selective a program should be. In many situations,

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identification-related decision making is on an individual-by-individual basis (e.g., subject- or grade-based acceleration, taking an AP calculus course in high school, or pursuing an independent study), as in the case of advanced academics (Peters et al., 2013); no formal selection is needed when decisions can be made through self-selection and consultation. In some countries, identification schemes are based on a formula imposed by a national policy; funding for gifted education used to be based on the number of students identified as “gifted” by a particular cutoff point on IQ or other standardized tests, and much time and resources are expended on establishing the gold standard of giftedness and one’s gifted status. In the future, identification criteria and procedures should be made more specific to the purpose of educational programming (e.g., developing STEM talents), more responsive to current authentic performance in relevant domains, using local norms whenever feasible (Lohman, 2009). In the future, I propose that national policy provide only general guidelines for identification (e.g., person-­ domain fit, and the identification-programming match), leaving implementation details to the discretion of local governments or school districts. Priorities in expenditure will be shifted from identification of “the gifted” to developing the school’s capacity to provide a range of advanced learning opportunities for differentiated and advanced learning experiences (Peters et al., 2013), or even what Borland (2003) called a “gifted education without gifted children” (p. 119). When we move away from the “Gifted Child Paradigm” and instead focus on “giftedness in the making” (Dai, 2010) in identification practice, we are one step closer to the promotion of transformational giftedness.

 Structural Change in the Curricular and Social A Organization of Learning The traditional social organization of learning is efficiency-driven, based on measurable progress made against a fixed curriculum standard or pathway. Schooling of this kind operates as a one-size-fits-all, production-based education system, characterized by age-graded, uniform standard curriculum, and standardized evaluation. It is a legacy of industrialization, fashioned after mass production in industry. It puts students in the box, so to speak, disregarding their individuality. This outdated mode of education should give way to learner-centered, individualized social organization of learning, especially when the mission of gifted education is cultivating an inquisitive mind and innovative spirit. Social organization of learning in the twenty-first century

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will set people free to learn in a way that is personally meaningful and capitalizing on their strengths and interests, leading to their unique contributions to society (Subotnik & Coleman, 1996; Zhao, 2016). This vision of education is in start contrast to one that views schooling as mass production of good test scores that enhance the chance of getting into prestigious colleges, and little beyond such personal or family ambitions. Thus, the new vision of curricular and social organization of learning is akin to the argument that transformational giftedness should take priority over transactional giftedness in terms of payoff expected by some school bureaucracy (Sternberg et al., 2021). The Gifted Child Paradigm can be seen as part of a social efficiency model of education in that students are stratified or classified into categories, and educated accordingly. In contrast, an education system that is responsive to the diversity of students in terms of abilities, interests, and preferences should be flexible and adaptive. For example, the Talent Development Paradigm entails a variety of advanced learning opportunities that can accommodate diverse talent development trajectories and pathways, including disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and integrated inquiries coupled with technical and social support (Dai, 2016a). Practically, the scope of talent development blurs the distinction between formal and informal learning, and crosses the boundaries of home, school, and community in creating a self-sustaining learning ecology (Barron, 2006). This is in line with the general trend toward a collapse of the boundaries of traditional institutions for a variety of social functions, including education (Zhao, 2012), be it working in makerspace or university labs. The Differentiation Paradigm requires the teacher to modify curriculum and instruction deemed fit to optimize individual learners’ learning experiences, which means that social organization of learning (e.g., is the curriculum fixed for everyone, how many options are provided to students) cannot be rigidly prescribed. Ideally, a pyramid of learning opportunities, formal or informal (in and outside of school), should be provided, as much as the system can afford, and as far as the student can reach. When that happens, gifted education would be fully integrated into an educational system (see Eyre, 2009, for the English Model). When this curricular and social reorganization of learning occurs, we will be one step closer to building transformational giftedness. The main reason is that one’s personal agency and a sense of moral responsibility instead of entrenched bureaucracy will be the main driving force for personal and social changes.

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A Transformation in Pedagogy Learning in and for the twenty-first century is redefined in a fundamental way. If learning in the twentieth century could be characterized as absorbing information passed on by teachers for developing a finite set of skills, learning in the twenty-first century should be more active and self-directed, involving critical thinking and productive use of knowledge in solving real problems and generating new ideas (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016; Bransford et  al., 1999; Collins & Halverson, 2009; Pink, 2006; Sawyer, 2010). In effect, it is a renewal of John Dewey’s spirit in the twenty-first century (Dewey, 1916). This trend means deep changes in pedagogy, that is, the way learners are engaged in learning and the way teachers teach. The implication of this trend for gifted education is profound: Properly understood, the essential mission of gifted education is not identification, but rather pedagogy, in the sense that how we cultivate talent and creativity through the right pedagogy is more central to our mission than how to identify a category of a very small percentage of children we consider “gifted” (Renzulli, 1999). Although there is no unique gifted pedagogy in the sense of something being only suitable for the “gifted” (Kaplan, 2003; Tomlinson, 1996), we can argue that gifted pedagogy is a pedagogy of talent development and creative productivity that is modeled after professional and critical practices, and capitalize on individual strengths, interests, and preferences (Renzulli, 1986; Subotnik & Coleman, 1996; see also Dai & Chen, 2014). Thus, fifth-grade elementary school students engaged in “creative knowledge work” by exploring the work of Gregor Mendel or discovering how light works (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006; Zhang, 2012) is an exercise of gifted pedagogy; so is 9th grade students working to master computer-based design and drafting, or sorting through the primary sources of information about Abraham Lincoln in an historic inquiry. They are ushered into the realms of engineering or history and acquire the modus operandi of a domain or discipline (Aulls & Shore, 2008). For the new century that relies heavily on innovations, Daniel Pink (2006) advocated six essentials of using our minds: design, storytelling, symphony (i.e., creating something new by orchestration of many elements), empathy, play, and meaning. These components should be featured more prominently in learning in and outside of the classroom. Instead of relying on the old mode of acquiring “presented knowledge,” these deep changes in pedagogy will ultimately change the way students learn and think, not merely what students gain in term of content knowledge. Ultimately one’s cultural individuality in terms of a unique representation or vision of the world is viewed as the essence of giftedness and

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source of personal creativity (Shavinina, 2009), and such individuality is always achieved through education and long-term development. The teacher does not just teach things; she inspires as well. Transformational giftedness implies character building of some sort that can truly makes a positive difference in how one views the world and the self. Pedagogy serves as a catalyst for personal growth (e.g., building interest, identity, and vision) rather than merely a technical orientation of building school-based knowledge and skills.

 Deep Change in Assessment of Learning A and Achievement Related to the changes in curriculum and pedagogy is a deep change in assessment. In an efficiency-driven education system, assessment is meant to hold schools accountable for some externally imposed standards. In a learner-­ centered and talent-driven education, the role of assessment will change dramatically. The focus is not whether a student meets the standards set up for all (like a manufactured product), but rather how to help individuals find their niches and optimize their development. In other words, a production-­centered education should be transformed into a client-based education (Wile & Tierney, 1996). Especially pertinent to transformational giftedness is the shift of focus from schoolhouse giftedness to creative productivity in assessment (Renzulli, 1986). Assessment implies a set of criteria for judging effectiveness of a program. Just as authentic learning is a favored pedagogy for gifted education, a professional model of assessment, such as using portfolios and performance-based assessment, rather than the typical school model of assessment through paper-­ pencil tests, will be used more frequently. Beyond professional standards, what constitutes talented performance and expertise also changes; as new professions and new niches are created as innovations, the term talent or expertise gains new meaning and dimensions (Zhao, 2012). In that sense, confining assessment of gifted and talented performance to traditionally defined academic disciplines or domains will prove too rigid and narrow. Technically, creativity and innovation are likely interdisciplinary and multi-­ dimensional, rather than unidimensional or even confined to academic knowledge. Indeed, it might involve ethical leadership (Sternberg, 2017). The traditional method of indexing creativity or creative potential using traditional divergent thinking tests that produce a single metrics might have to give way to more complex rubrics of performance and behavior in authentic

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settings (Leighton & Gierl, 2007). Likewise, modeling adaptive expertise in complex problem solving and reasoning can provide a good benchmarking device for such diagnosis (Shute & Kim, 2012). The new way of thinking about assessment for talent development makes formative assessment more distinct. Different levels of learning engagement, from interested to critical engagement (Bangert-Drowns & Pyke, 2001), for instance, may take the center stage in such a manner that assessing how students learn becomes as important as, or even more important than, what students learn. For summative evaluation (i.e., student achievement or learning outcomes), a new set of standards is needed. Baker (2007), for example, argued that the current system of curriculum standards and evaluation is too uniform to allow a variety of talents to flourish. She suggests that a certification system be established, which recognizes a variety of talent accomplishments and excellence in high school as part of credentials of high school graduates. Echoing the new social organization of learning discussed in the previous section, flexibility and choice (e.g., a range of advanced course offerings) afforded by such a system would provide a new outlet for expression and development of talents, a new form of providing for the diverse educational needs of highly capable students, and consequently a new set of criteria for judging student progress. All in all, transformational giftedness entails a set of criteria that are different from those for transactional giftedness in terms of common school standards. Just as curricular and pedagogical changes are meant to produce different learning and developmental outcomes, assessment fundamentally serves as checks and balances to make sure that the new vision of transformational giftedness is successfully implemented.

 Significant Improvement in the Technology A of Advanced Learning Like it or not, the rapid development of information technology has not only changed the way we learn (Craft, 2010) but potentially will change the way gifted education is provided and even conceptualized. Today’s students can take an advanced course on-line or get connected with a top scientist via the internet without much difficulty. What was not possible even 20 years ago becomes possible nowadays with new technological assistance. A technology-­ enhanced education will feature customized learning, learner control, and connectivity of ideas, skills, and people (Collins & Halverson, 2009). Creative learning and talent development become increasingly personalized in the

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digital age (Craft, 2010). Technology use will change delivery models and make gifted education more accessible (i.e., Enable); it will enhance the quality of formal and informal learning through its learning platforms and pedagogical devices (i.e., Enhance); and it might ultimately change gifted education from reliance on gifted programs to offering a variety of customized services, and from serving “special needs” to building a connectivity of ideas, values, and worldviews among a group of like-minded learners worldwide (i.e., Transform; see Chen et al., 2013 for the Enable/Enhance/Transform model of technological use in gifted education). For example, the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University has taken major steps to use technology to reach out to the world as a world-wide talent support center, with its on-line courses, social networks of talented students, professionals, and parents, and counseling and guidance services made available on-line (see cty. jhu.edu). Renzulli Learning (Renzulli & Reis, 2009) makes enrichment experiences readily available to hundreds of thousands of students who might otherwise miss the opportunity to learn and develop their talent. Mentoring and other services can also be facilitated through the internet (Siegle, 2005). As setting a stringent cutoff for eligibility for gifted programs is partly dictated by limited resources and limited means of delivery, in the foreseeable future, with technology use, we might see an infusion of talent development opportunities into school, home, and community in a way that changes the way we understand and practice gifted education. One distinct characteristic of technological age is that personal initiative becomes more viable. Consider Elon Musk with respect to how he has carried out his futuristic vision, and how he summon up the scientists and technicians around him in ambitious endeavors on many fronts. The problems he tries to tackle traditionally cannot be taken on by individuals, but his personal initiatives are made possible with the contemporary technological and industrial infrastructures. Just as personalized learning is made viable nowadays, transformational giftedness as demonstrated by Musk is also made more viable.

A More Prominent Role of Universities Historically, university professors and researchers, from Terman and Hollingworth to Stanley and Renzulli, were instrumental in creating education provisions and psychological support to gifted and talented students (see Robinson & Jolly, 2014). In the global knowledge economy of the twenty-­ first century, the university will play a more prominent role through its visionary scholarship, cutting-edge research, and expertise on the frontiers of

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knowledge and technology. American experiences (e.g., Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, National Consortium Specialized STEM Schools, NCSSS) show that universities can perform the following five functions in gifted education: • Conducting research and development and refining theoretical frameworks, and identifying alternative educational strategies. • Providing national leadership through advocacy, policy deliberation, and knowledge dissemination. • Acting as both a direct service provider (delivering courses and programs) and consultant, as in the case of many university-based centers in the United States. • Developing new curriculum materials especially geared toward frontiers of knowledge and tailored to the need for more depth and complexity by advanced learners through university-school partnerships. • Facilitating teacher training and education, particularly in-service learning and development, making teachers better equipped to identify educational needs of advanced students and explore new possibilities of promoting excellence. In short, deep university involvement and leadership become necessary and essential when frontiers of discovery and innovation go way beyond the purview of K-12 school institutions. As the center of knowledge building and technological innovation, universities will inevitably be the engine of gifted education, especially when transformational giftedness is concerned. First of all, transformational giftedness is future-oriented, anticipating what kinds of leadership and skill sets are essential for future leaders to make a positive difference. University as an intellectual hub is in a good position to take on the task of transformational leadership by setting up an educational agenda for school as well as community so that the younger generations of talented individuals can be empowered through education to truly make a difference.

 n Increase in Local Initiatives A and “Reverse Innovations” Traditionally, gifted education is a centralized endeavor, with national policy and even laws stipulating how gifted children should be defined and identified, and what provisions should be provided. Consequently, gifted education

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becomes part of educational bureaucracy. In historical hindsight, this practice can hardly be sensitive to the diverse demands for advanced learning on many fronts of education. Reverse innovations will diversify gifted education and make it more responsive to local needs, more robust and innovative. “Reverse innovation” originally refers to a business strategy used by General Electric (GE) to fashion new products and services. Rather than following its historical path of developing high-end products at its R&D centers and then adapting them for emerging local markets, A big company like GE can develop local technologies in remote local settings (e.g., East Asian countries) and then distributing them globally (Immelt et al., 2009). Regardless of how GE actually benefited from such a strategy, or even whether GE is a success or failure story after all, suffice to argue that bottom-up innovations are usually more robust rather than top-down ones. A main reason for the robustness of bottom-up innovations is that people in local settings know best what kinds of products or services can meet local needs and satisfy local constraints. More specific to gifted education, given the diversity of local agendas and priorities in terms of talent pipelines as well as student diversity and resource constraints, models developed at the local level are more robust than those imposed top-down upon schools. For example, many high schools in the United States (and recently in China as well) rely on locally developed university-­school partnerships to meet educational needs of more advanced students (e.g., mentorship programs); along the way, a deeper understanding of the contexts, processes, and constraints that make an educational innovation work is achieved. It is helpful to give schools and teachers more autonomy to fashion new provisions and permit more administrative flexibility if gifted and talented education is to become more innovative in serving its constituents. More local or “ground-up” initiatives do not mean all local initiatives are valuable ones, and that national-level advocacy or policy is not useful anymore. Indeed local school leadership can be narrow in vision and even provincial, or just outright prejudiced regarding certain educational agendas. Thus a broad vision still has to be present at the local level to combat anything that is regressive rather than progressive, truly transformational rather than ill-­ informed and repressive. In terms of specific agendas, local schools and education agencies can develop their own strategies, services, and programs based on local priorities, conditions, and comparative advantages (resources and expertise available). The establishment of North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) as a state initiative collaborated between by local university leadership (e.g., Duke) and state leaders in 1980s is a great example of how local initiatives can be potent and viable. Whether a centrally

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managed top-down system or a locally governed bottom-up system works better also depends on the size of the country or state in question. With a population of several millions (e.g., Singapore or Hong Kong), the centrally managed system might work just fine as long as the government has the right agenda. But with a population of over one billion (e.g., India or China), widely varied in economic and social conditions, a top-down hierarchical system will not be effective, be it an educational or economic one, regardless of whether the nation has the right agenda or wrong one. The main idea, in short, is that a highly centralized system tends to produce more bureaucracy rather than true leadership; at best transactional giftedness would be preferred to transformational one. With more autonomy on the part of schools and teachers, and the support of local communities, including universities, students’ personal agency and transformational giftedness is more likely to be valued and cultivated.

Toward a New Form of “Elite Education” The term “elite” has a bad rap nowadays because it is often equated with elitism. It does not seem to square with the principle of equity and social equality in the sense that no one should enjoy some privileged status based on birth, social origins, and alleged superior physical or mental qualities. This being said, it is quite common worldwide to have education or training programs aiming to develop cultural “elites” in terms of highly-cultivated, refined minds, specialized skills, and aesthetic sensitivities beyond the regular education mandate. A caveat is in order, to be sure, that there are many self-­ proclaimed elites who are only interested in maintaining their own privileges and power rather than making the world better. This said, as long as various elites (e.g., of technical, athletic, academic, artistic kinds) exist, elite education should exist (and indeed they exist in any civilized society; see Dai, 2015a for a Jeffersonian vision of productive yet equitable education). In other words, elitism is wrong, but elite education should be preserved, to be sure, with equitable participation in mind. One can even argue that preserving and building the cultural heritage entails such cultural elites. Tannenbaum (1998) warned that the sound and fury of post-modern commercialism, consumerism, and materialism might numb sensitivities and dumb down sensibilities, ultimately threatening the very existence of gifted thinking and feeling on the planet! For that reason, a form of cultural or intellectual elite education should still be an integral part of education for the twenty-first century. In fact, the private sector in Western countries still

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maintain a tradition of elite education aiming to develop intellectual prowess, cultivate aesthetic sensitivities, and pursue excellence in its own right, whether it is the kind of liberal education featured prominently at Princeton or Columbia, or innovation and leadership at Harvard or MIT. The public sector can also justify the provision of elite education (e.g., many governor schools in the United States), not for creating an aristocratic class but promoting excellence on major fronts of human endeavor. In this regard, we should also heed the voices of criticism levied against elite universities in that sometimes they are not up to the task of transformational leadership and indeed they can be complacent and falling prey to bureaucratic expediency, having excellence without a soul (Lewis, 2007). Rather than enjoying unearned and unwarranted privileges, being an elite can mean more responsibility and personal integrity, or knowing what is the “right thing” to do, not just for oneself, but for the common good (Gardner et al., 2001); indeed ethical leadership is an inherent component of cultural and intellectual elites. If the goal of gifted education is to produce elites that can lead a nation toward more prosperity and the improved quality of life for everyone, developing character, purpose, and vision through education is as equally important as developing talent (Dai & Speerschneider, 2012; Renzulli, 2009). Unfortunately, with the call for equality in society and education, gifted education gains legitimacy only when it serves a direct utilitarian function, such as a national strategy of strengthening their talent pool in STEM domains. Gifted education becomes viable in the eye of policy makers only if it supports a country or region’s economic development. This approach is short-sighted. The intrinsic value of pursuing truth, justice, the common good, aesthetic qualities, or simply doing the “right thing” is as important as advancing technologies that lead to instrumental changes. Indeed here lies the essential difference between transactional and transformational giftedness. The American culture is known for its pragmatism. Cultivation of intellect is as good as it brings about tangible practical results but in itself does not carry special significance (Ross, 1993). There is even a tradition of anti-­intellectualism in the American culture that often comes and goes, depending on the tide of times (Hofstadter, 1963). It can be argued that a true elite spirit, whether reflected in ancient Greece or China, is by nature not utilitarian, as it affirms the fundamental value of the cultivation of knowledge, mind, and soul as a virtue in its own right, leading to self-perfection for the benefits of self as well as the common good. We shall see gifted education as carrying a tradition of liberal “elite education” in the twenty-first century as well as an instrument for transformational changes in society.

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 Significant Shift from Educating a Handful A of the Gifted to Making the Pursuit of Excellence More Equitable Historically, gifted education tried very hard to establish its own distinct identity (Dai, 2018), and separate itself from general education. As a result, it has tended to be insulated from general education or at best as an add-on to regular education. The times have changed. Desired qualities such as critical thinking, creativity, leadership skills, traditionally preserved for “the gifted,” are now advocated as the twenty-first century skills par excellence (Partnership for 21st century Skills, 2009). Better coordination and collaboration with “general education” becomes possible when both share the same vision of educational excellence, believing that everyone has a role to play and can contribute to the society in one’s unique way (Renzulli, 1998). Gifted education and regular education may reflect a division of labor, but their vision of excellence, good citizenship, and self-fulfillment for their students should be the same (Eyre, 2009). A better relationship with general education also makes educators and school leaders more receptive to gifted education instead of perceiving it as creating a divide in school between the “elected” and the “damned” (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Sapon-Shevin, 2003). When gifted education no longer takes a categorical or status approach (i.e., gifted-nongifted bifurcation as discussed earlier), integration of gifted education into general education becomes easier in the spirit of “rising tide lifts all ships” (Renzulli, 1998, p. 105). Granted that there will still be merit-based selective schools, academies, or programs, just as there are honors colleges in university, gifted education can be made as inclusive as possible. Opportunities for talent development and excellence can be made available to everyone who is willing to try and demonstrate that they can meet the expectations. Curricular and instructional differentiation for more advanced students can be a seamless part of education. It is unfortunate that gifted education often gets marginalized in education-­ reform discourse, mainly because it is seen as irrelevant to school reform in general. However, when gifted education is envisioned in a way described above, as more open and accessible, it will become a force for education reform, moving the school out of its comfort zone, breaking the one-size-fits-­ all factory model of education, and making schools more responsive to twenty-first century opportunities and challenges, and more mindful of optimal individual development. By making gifted education open and accessible, it will avoid the nagging problem of being seen as privileging the already

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privileged, a de facto tool for social class stratification in school in favor of wealthy people (Cross, 2013), as faulted in the American history (Margolin, 1994). When personal excellence becomes a mainstream value, the excellence-­ equity tension will be eased. At this point, without policy changes, it would still be difficult to implement something similar to the English Model, which itself has to demonstrate its efficacy at the practical level how excellence prevails in a school culture. However, We can agree in principle that selectivity of gifted programs and services should be such that the system is flexible enough to manage the entry-exit policy in gifted education, and self-selection and choice becomes part of the process.

Conclusion: Putting It All Together Ultimately, transformational giftedness and transformation of gifted education need to be understood in a changing world that is paradoxical for education as well as for society. For one, the world is changing for the better, with enormous wealth and prosperity accumulated over the past century and a dazzling speed of technological advances that have transformed the world. However, ironically, we have also witnessed increased poverty and even dwindling of the middle class because “the winners take all.” We also have also witnessed the deterioration of environmental conditions (global warming). Many old societal issues, such as domestic economic and political disparities and international conflicts and immigration crises, have become more acute in recent decades. As a result, populist sentiments, left or right, domestic or global, threaten the democratic institutions, and eroded the constitutional fabric of Western democracies (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016). Advocates of gifted education often claim that gifted education is meant to produce young generations of leaders, but what if we only produce a group of elites who are only concerned about their own well-being and complacent about their own success, and who only know they are safe and well with good life boats, but have no idea that the Titanic of the world is sinking? Then, are they really capable of leading in the first place? There is another paradox brought up by Yuval Noah Harari in his “A Brief History of Tomorrow” (Harari, 2017). On the one hand, although the knowledge and creative economy calls for a better pipeline of talent on many fronts of human endeavor to enhance living conditions and the quality of human life, Harari warns the world that the talent pool in developed countries will be shrinking in the future, leaving the world to the hands of one percent of technocratic “superhumans” ruling the 99% fools. As a matter of fact, digital

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control already is looming large, and when left to its own devices, it will become a dominant force penetrating every aspect of our life and enslaving people in a seamless manner. As Tannenbaum (1998) warned, when the numbing of our sensibilities is so common, would the dumbing down of our mind be far away? On a more pragmatic note, AI has already become part of the fabric of the society, for better or for worse. Many demands for human talents (especially quota talents as per Tannenbaum, 1983) have been and will increasingly be replaced with AI (Harari, 2017). Can advocates of gifted education still run business as usual and refuse to get out of their traditional comfort zones? Regardless of how one views these paradoxes, the essential questions linger as to what are the heart and soul of gifted education, and for that matter, what kinds of changes in gifted education are imperative if we are to advance this practical endeavor as worthy of our energy and time and valuable to our constituents as well as to humankind in general. It seems that well-informed reflection, even some soul-searching, is warranted. For that matter, the ten changes proposed in this chapter call for a systematic scrutiny of what we have been doing for the past century, and how we can do better in light of the changing world in the new century. Elsewhere I proposed a model of implementation hierarchy (VISCAR) whereby each of the ten changes I delineate here can find its place (Dai, 2016b) (Fig. 6.2): VISCAR in this implementation model is an acronym for five basic elements: Vision, InfraStructure, Capacity, Agency, and Research. Changes in epistemology of giftedness and gifted education (No. 1 changes) proposed in this Vision to Inspire and Guide Programming (Macro-Level)

Infrastructure to Provide Tools, Resources, and Support Research to Develop, Guide, and Control Capacity to Provide A Range of Learning Opportunities

Agency to Enact Learning Experiences (Local-Level)

Fig. 6.2  VISCAR: An implementation hierarchy. (Originally published in Dai, 2016b)

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study involves both Vision and Research, such as having the right conceptual and methodological approaches called for by the notion of transformational giftedness. Likewise, calling for opening up gifted education for more equitable participation (No. 10 Changes) and a new “elite” education (No. 9 changes) also represents a new Vision that sets itself apart from the traditional gifted education. Changes in Vision of gifted education (what kind of giftedness and what gifted identification is for) will in turn lead to changes in identification (No. 2 changes). As pointed out earlier, a more dynamic, multi-level conception of giftedness that incorporates purpose and identity fits better with the notion and impetus of transformational giftedness. In comparison, Proposed changes in curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and technology (No. 3, 4, 5 and 6 changes) involve changes in Infrastructure and social organization of learning, as well as Capacity building in terms of technological support and teacher education/development that will enable teachers to effectively carry out their teaching with the new Vision in mind. The most interesting part of this implementation hierarchy is Agency is conceptualized as a local-­ level function, as compared to Vision, which is considered more of a global feature in the model. The point is that it is the local agency in terms of all stakeholders involved that determines how vigorously the Vision will be pursued and implemented. This is consistent with the argument for local initiatives and “reverse innovations” (No. 8 changes). It can also be argued that such local initiatives should be better off with university-school partnership, consequently enhanced resources as well as leadership (No. 7 changes). From a systems perspective, VISCAR permits a diagnosis of strengths and weaknesses in the implementation hierarchy when transformational giftedness is advocated.

References Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016). Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems and huge opportunities. Sense. Aulls, M. W., & Shore, B. M. (2008). Inquiry in education: The conceptual foundations for research as a curricular imperative. Erlbaum. Baker, E. L. (2007). The end(s) of testing. Educational Researcher, 36, 309–317. Bangert-Drowns, R. L., & Pyke, C. (2001). Student engagement with educational software: An exploration of literate thinking with electronic literature. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 24(3), 213–234. Barron, B. (2006). Interest and self-sustained learning as catalysts of development: A learning ecology perspective. Human Development, 49, 193–224.

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7 Promoting Transformational Giftedness Through Service Learning Ophélie Allyssa Desmet

The aim of education is not only to prepare students for productive careers, but also to enable them to live lives of dignity and purpose; not only to generate new knowledge, but to channel that knowledge to humane ends; not merely to study government, but to help shape a citizenry that can promote the public good. (Earnest Boyer, 1990, pp. 77–78)

Gifted education should emphasize gifted students’ potential to give back to society and the world. Sternberg (2020, 2021) recently introduced a paradigm shift from a focus on promoting transactional giftedness to a focus on promoting transformational giftedness. Transactional giftedness involves “seeking personal benefit in exchange for some amount of effort devoted toward a societally sanctioned endeavor” (Sternberg, 2021, p. 1). In comparison, Sternberg (2020, 2021) described transformational giftedness as identifying serious problems in society and creating opportunities to address those problems. Transformational gifted individuals are those who seek to positively change the world at some level. According to Sternberg (2021), some foundational characteristics of transformational giftedness include positive creativity, and general wisdom. So, I thought, what better way to support students’ ability to identify societal problems and create the opportunity to “give back” than through service learning? Thus, in this chapter, I present service learning

O. A. Desmet (*) Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_7

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as a critical component of transformational gifted education. To do so, I first examine why a paradigm shift toward transformational giftedness is necessary. Then I discuss the consequences of such a paradigm shift for identification and programming. Specifically, I argue that promotion of transformational giftedness requires dynamic assessments of learning potential and programming that provides affective support and integrated opportunities to contribute and be productive through service learning.

 ransformation as a Fundamental Part T of Gifted Education As I am writing this chapter, the world is facing many crises. We are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic; various parts of the world are confronted with fires, floods, and other natural disasters likely caused by climate change; extremism is rising globally; and approximately 811 million people are undernourished across the world (United Nations, 2021), to name just a few examples. Given this state of global crisis, the world is in desperate need of gifted and talented individuals who are willing and capable of solving our world’s problems and contributing to positive change. Yet, few gifted education programs directly focus on talent development for social change. Recognizing the need for gifted and talented individuals who are focused on making the world a better place, Sternberg (2020, 2021) recently introduced the concept of transformational giftedness. Transformational gifted individuals are those who seek to positively change the world at some level. These individuals seek opportunities for positive, meaningful, and transformative contributions. Educators who are contributing meaningfully by educating our youth, scientists working on sustainable global food systems to increase food security, and activists advocating for the rights of suppressed groups are all transformational gifted individuals in their own ways. Although all types of giftedness can potentially be important or valuable, transformational giftedness is essential to solving our many global crises and should be central to gifted education.

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Identification for Transformation Through Dynamic Assessment of Learning Potential Transformational gifted education, or education that prepares children to contribute to the world in positive, meaningful, and transformative ways, inherently stems from a developmental and malleable perspective on giftedness. For many will engage in self-transformational processes as they contribute to transforming the world (Sternberg et al., 2021). Therefore, identification procedures for transformational gifted education should focus on identifying students’ learning potential for transformation rather than focusing solely on prior transformational achievements. Students’ potential for transformation will gradually develop given the proper scaffolding. So, identification procedures for transformational gifted education should focus on identifying students who, with some academic support, have a reasonable chance of being successful at contributing to the world in transformational ways. Traditional, static assessments of achievement and cognitive ability may not be well-suited to capturing students’ transformational potential. Static assessments capture acquired skills and knowledge. Whereas dynamic assessments capture students’ ability to acquire skills and knowledge and thus lends itself to measuring learning potential. Identification of transformational giftedness requires a dynamic assessment of learning potential. The concept “learning potential” is based on Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1962) and Feuerstein’s theory of structural cognitive modifiability (i.e., learning potential; Feuerstein, 1979, 1980). The zone of proximal development refers to the zone between what a student can do independently and the zone of what a student cannot yet do independently. This zone, therefore, captures students’ guided or aided performance. Similarly, the theory of structural cognitive modifiability suggests that higher levels of cognitive functioning depend on the students’ opportunities to benefit from mediated learning experiences, such as instruction and feedback. Thus, learning potential can be understood as an indicator of what a child can do, given the right circumstances and supports. Learning potential is an aptitude or capacity to master certain skills. This potential or aptitude is demonstrated through improvements in performance as a response to a learning opportunity such as instruction, feedback, or repeated exposure to learning material.

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Learning potential cannot be measured by static measures of acquired knowledge and skills commonly used in traditional gifted identification procedures. It requires a dynamic assessment approach. Like the concept of learning potential, dynamic assessment stems from the theory of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1962). It is an umbrella term that captures various dynamic approaches to assessment (Lidz & Elliott, 2000). Dynamic assessment typically involves some purposeful instruction or feedback that occurs within the testing situation. Interventions and testing are linked to determine the responsiveness of the student to the intervention. This responsiveness is also known as modifiability or learning potential. As such dynamic assessments capture students’ learning potential and provide crucial information on students’ learning profiles. The use of dynamic assessment in gifted education is not new. Several researchers used dynamic assessment in the early 1990s and 2000s to identify students with gifts and talents (Bolig & Day, 1993; Borland & Wright, 1994; Lidz & Macrine, 2001; Matthews & Foster, 2005; Passow & Frasier, 1996). At the time, dynamic assessment was particularly of interest to improve equitable identification of culturally and linguistically diverse students (Bolig & Day, 1993; Lidz & Macrine, 2001; Matthews & Foster, 2005). Results show that dynamic assessment successfully identified students with gifts and talents that were not identified through traditional intelligence tests. Yet, the research remains scarce, and a stronger psychometric foundation for existing dynamic assessment measures is necessary (Elliott, 2003; Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1998). The need for a dynamic assessment of learning potential rather than using the traditional static measures of achievement or ability within a transformational gifted education program comes down to fair selection. Fair selection of students is of critical importance for any gifted education program, given past inequities in gifted education. It becomes even more critical within a transformational gifted education program because of the innate focus on making the world a better place. Therefore, student selection or identification procedures should take into account the necessity of academic support for students who have previously been disadvantaged. Dynamic assessment originated from a dissatisfaction with traditional, static assessments of achievement and cognitive ability and the need to create culturally sensitive and responsive instruments that account for cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and educational differences (Lidz & Elliott, 2000). Traditional cognitive-ability and achievement tests rely greatly on previous educational experiences and therefore discriminate against those with limited access to educational experiences (Chiu & Khoo, 2005; Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018). Consequently, we should

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focus on identifying individuals who have the potential for development even though past experiences currently limit their transformational abilities. Furthermore, Sternberg (2020, 2021), who introduced the concept of transformational giftedness, argued that adaptive intelligence, positive creativity, and general wisdom are among the foundational characteristics of transformational giftedness. These are characteristics that are not currently actively encouraged in most education systems. Therefore, using traditional, static assessments of achievement and cognitive ability focused on measuring present performance would limit the selection of students for transformational gifted education programs to only those who explicitly showcase their adaptive intelligence, positive creativity, and wisdom. This approach then essentially excludes a large body of students who may show great potential for transformational giftedness when giving some support and exposure to transformational learning opportunities. Therefore, we need to consider dynamic assessment approaches focused on identifying students’ potential for transformation rather than their current transformational performance. To illustrate my point, let us take a look at ten-year-old Jane. Jane is passionate about tinkering and loves to problem-solve. She scores high on standardized engineering skills tests but lacks social awareness and is not particularly oriented toward social change. When looking at acquired skills and knowledge only, we may conclude that Jane is not transformationally gifted. After all, she did not seem to be concerned with wanting to make the world a better place. We could conclude that Jane is not suited for the transformational gifted education program, or we could allow Jane to participate in a session on engineering for social change and evaluate her transformational potential. We may find that Jane takes a great interest in the topic and can generate multiple ideas for improving sustainable access to clean water. Furthermore, Jane may exceed our expectations and show signs of great empathy that lead her to conclude that community co-design is foundational to engineering for social change, something the session did not cover explicitly. Thus, we may find that Jane has potential for transformational giftedness after all. She just needed some support to see how she can apply her passion for tinkering to solving the world’s problems. Therefore, more emphasis should be placed on potential than specific achievements, skills, or abilities when identifying students for transformational gifted education programs to avoid being too exclusive.

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 ransformation Through Affective Development T and Service Learning Recently, my colleagues and I expanded upon Sternberg’s initial model of transformational giftedness to add the distinction between self-­transformational giftedness and other-transformational giftedness (Sternberg et al., 2021). Self-­ transformational giftedness refers to making a transformative, positive, and meaningful difference to oneself. Other-transformational giftedness refers to making a transformative, positive, and meaningful difference to the world and is most similar to the initial concept of transformational giftedness as discussed until now. We made this distinction because for many individuals, self-transformation may be a preliminary to other-transformational giftedness. In other words, to truly transform others, one must first transform oneself. This self-transformation happens within the affective domains of human development. Thus, support for students’ affective development (self-­ transformation) and opportunities for service-learning (other-transformation) are essential to any transformational gifted education program. In what follows, I elaborate further on both aspects.

Affective Support for Self-Transformation At its core, self-transformation is about self-fulfillment. It centers on identifying a purposeful and personally meaningful life and achieving a state in which one lives that life (Sternberg et al., 2021). This life’s purpose or meaningful existence does not have to be in function of others, but it can be and would need to be to become other-transformational giftedness. Thus, one cannot transform self or others without purposeful action. Therefore, conative development and motivation-related processes and skills are central to transformation and transformational giftedness. The Achievement Motivation Enhancement Curriculum (Desmet, 2020; Desmet et al., 2021; Desmet & Pereira, 2021) is an example of an affective intervention targeting motivation-related constructs that would lend itself well to a transformational gifted education program. This curriculum intervention is centered around small-group discussion and achievement coaching. Students explore their identity related to their goals with a caring adult and a supportive peer group. The Achievement Motivation Enhancement Curriculum targets self-perceptions, self-regulation, and goal valuation to promote achievement. The curriculum is built on the idea that behavior is driven by a value integration process in which expectancy, value, and cost are compared

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to determine decision-making around behavior (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). Therefore, it leverages students’ identity, ideas around personal purpose, and self-fulfillment to promote self-regulation and goal-oriented behavior. Building on self-fulfillment as a central tenet of self-transformation, this curriculum intervention can thus foster foundational skills to kickstart a self-­ transformational process. Helping students identify personal, meaningful goals and teaching them to leverage their identity to make choices toward goal-directed behaviors will also contribute to other-transformational giftedness. To establish the latter, the Achievement Motivation Curriculum could be applied alongside an intervention that directly targets social awareness. Prajna Prabodhan Varg is an example of an affective intervention focused on affective supports in the inter- and intrapersonal sense, which targets both self- and other-transformation (Chowkase et  al., 2021). Prajna Prabodhan Varg is an Indian program developed to motivate intelligence for social change. This program operates within a holistic-talent development framework, meaning it targets both affective and cognitive skills. Prajna Prabodhan Varg’s affective intervention targets two themes: know yourself (self-­ transformation) and know your society (other-transformation). The know yourself theme focuses on self-awareness and self-management. The know your society theme focuses on social awareness and social responsibility. The program provides an immersive experience for students to become acquainted with rural life, including people and their livelihoods, economy, culture, and social reality while engaging in leadership development workshops. As students gained social awareness through the immersive rural experience, they gained leadership, communication, and collaboration skills necessary for enacting social change through the leadership workshops. Some of the workshops were hosted by rural community leaders and designed to spark conversation around social change. Research shows that the program effectively improved students’ social awareness regarding rural life in India and improved students’ self-awareness and self-reliance (Chowkase et al., 2021). The program and its focus on knowing yourself and your society kickstarted students’ self-transformational journey. An increased interest in social change, improved self-awareness, and improved social awareness lay an essential foundation for (other-)transformational giftedness (Chowkase et al., 2021).

Other-Transformation Through Service Learning As discussed above, other-transformational giftedness refers to making a transformative, positive, and meaningful difference to the world. This other-­ transformational giftedness is most aligned with the initial concept of

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transformational giftedness, as Sternberg (2020) introduced. This orientation toward transforming the world, contributing to societal change, or giving back is centered in service. Therefore, I believe service-learning is an ideal pedagogy to foster (other-)transformational giftedness. Although the concept of “service learning” was not coined until the 1960s, the idea of service-learning has been present for centuries (Sigmon, 1979). The service-learning pedagogy found its roots in constructivist notions of education such as John Dewey’s experiential learning. Service-learning involves giving students opportunities to learn through active participation in service experiences that address actual needs in students’ communities (Alliance for Service Learning in Education Reform, 1993). These service-­ learning opportunities are thoughtfully designed to integrate curricular objectives and enhance typical learning experiences through real-world application and fostering a sense of caring for others (Alliance for Service Learning in Education Reform, 1993). According to Terry and Bohnenberger (2004), there are three levels of service learning: community service, community exploration, and community action. Community service involves volunteerism with a lesser focus on learning, for example, tutoring or caring for the elderly. Community exploration typically consists of exploring a community issue linked to a classroom topic and the application of knowledge in the community. A typical example of community exploration is an internship program. Community action is considered the highest level of service-­learning and the most relevant to transformational gifted education. Community action involves having a positive impact on the community. Students are empowered and encouraged to identify community problems and create opportunities to address those problems. Examples of community action involve activism, legislative initiatives, grant writing, and other services or actions that positively impact the community. Given the emphasis on positive community impact, community action service-learning is a natural fit for transformational gifted education because it centers on contributing to positive change. Several researchers have discussed the relevance of service-learning for gifted education and enrichment in general, yet service-learning programs remain scarce (Bruce-Davis & Chancey, 2012; Lee et al., 2008; Terry, 2003, 2008; Terry & Bohnenberger, 2004; Terry et  al., 2008). Service-learning encourages real-world connections and enriches the academic curriculum through community partnerships. Therefore, it provides a unique opportunity to develop transformational giftedness because of the wide variety of skills and attitudes that are stimulated while engaging in service learning. Engaging in community activism involves advanced problem-solving, critical

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thinking, leadership ability, adaptive intelligence, wise thinking, creativity, social skills, empathy, moral sensitivity, and so much more. Researchers have found that students are more committed and more sensitive to social justice after engaging in service-learning (Stewart et al., 2013; Terry, 2003). Service-­ learning stimulates students’ affective needs (Delisle & Galbraith, 2002; Stewart & Bai, 2010) and simultaneously benefits communities who reap the benefits from students’ social change endeavors, which is why service-learning provides an excellent framework for promoting and practicing transformation. One example of effective community action service-learning projects with gifted students was documented by Terry (2008). Students created a “state-­ approved Solid Waste Management Plan for their county” (p.  47). What started as a recycling activity turned into a three-year project and led to students receiving a Presidential Environmental Youth Award. Students identified a community problem and collaborated with community partners to propose a solution. Students applied research skills, collaboration skills, communication skills, leadership skills and learned local politics and waste management. This project positively impacted the local community by resolving an ongoing issue and providing an efficient and money-saving solution. Research showed that engaging in this type of learning activity positively influenced future civic participation (Terry, 2008). So, service learning directly engages students in transformation and involves teaching students knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for future transformative endeavors.

Conclusion In conclusion, the aim of gifted education is not only for students to generate knowledge but for students to use their knowledge to contribute to society in positive and productive ways. To this end, a paradigm shift focused on transformational giftedness is necessary. Transformational gifted education can be achieved through service learning because this type of learning is designed around contributing to society in transformative, positive, and meaningful ways. The shift to transformational gifted education requires a shift in programming and one in gifted identification procedures. Dynamic assessment of learning potential is central to transformational gifted education because of the developmental nature of transformational giftedness. To avoid becoming too exclusive, we need to recognize that students’ response to transformational learning opportunities is more relevant than their existing transformational achievements. Thus, I encourage educators and policymakers to

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reevaluate what they hope to achieve in their gifted education programs and consider implementing some of the principles discussed in this chapter to promote transformation.

References Alliance for Service Learning in Education Reform. (1993). Standards of quality and excellence for school-based service learning. Council of Chief State School Officers. Bolig, E., & Day, J. D. (1993). Dynamic assessment and giftedness: The promise of assessing training responsiveness. Roeper Review, 16(2), 110–113. https://doi. org/10.1080/02783199309553552 Borland, J. H., & Wright, L. (1994). Identifying young, potentially gifted, economically disadvantaged students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 38(4), 164–171. Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bruce-Davis, M.  N., & Chancey, J.  M. (2012). Connecting students to the real world: Developing gifted behaviors through service learning. Psychology in the Schools, 49(7), 716–723. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21622 Chiu, M. M., & Khoo, L. (2005). Effects of resources, inequality, and privilege bias on achievement: Country, school, and student level analyses. American Educational Research Journal, 42(4), 575–603. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312042004575 Chowkase, A., Desmet, O.  A., Datar, K., Deshpande, A., & Khasnis, S. (2021). Affective outcomes of a summer talent development program: What do students say? Manuscript Under Review. Delisle, J., & Galbraith, J. (2002). When gifted kids don’t have all the answers: How to meet their social and emotional needs. Free Spirit Publishing Inc. Desmet, O. (2020). The achievement motivation enhancement model: Evaluating an affective intervention to resolve underachievement (Doctoral dissertation, Purdue University Graduate School). Desmet, O.  A., & Pereira, N. (2021). The achievement motivation enhancement curriculum: Evaluating an affective intervention for gifted students. Journal of Advanced Academics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202X211057424 Desmet, O., Crimmins, D., Seigfried-Spellar, K.  C., & Gentry, M. (2021). AME+Cyber: Evaluating the online delivery of a holistic cyber-related talent development program. Gifted Education International. https://doi. org/10.1177/02614294211054361 Eccles, J.  S., & Wigfield, A. (2020). From expectancy-value theory to situated expectancy-­value theory: A developmental, social cognitive, and sociocultural perspective on motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101859. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101859

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Elliott, J. (2003). Dynamic assessment in educational settings: Realising potential. Educational Review, 55(1), 15–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131910303253 Feuerstein, R. (1979). The dynamic assessment of retarded performers. The learning potential assessment device, theory, instruments, and techniques. University Park Press. Feuerstein, R. (1980). Instrumental enrichment: An intervention program for cognitive modifiability. University Park Press. Grigorenko, E. L., & Sternberg, R. J. (1998). Dynamic testing. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 75–111. Lee, S. Y., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., Donahue, R., & Weimholt, K. (2008). The Civic Leadership Institute: A servicelearning program for academically gifted youth. Journal of advanced academics, 19(2), 272–308. https://doi.org/10.4219/ jaa-­2008-­773 Lidz, C. S., & Elliott, J. (Eds.). (2000). Dynamic assessment: Prevailing models and applications. Jai. Lidz, C. S., & Macrine, S. L. (2001). An alternative approach to the identification of gifted culturally and linguistically diverse learners. School Psychology International, 22, 74–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/01430343010221006 Matthews, D.  J., & Foster, J.  F. (2005). A dynamic scaffolding model of teacher development: The gifted education consultant as catalyst for change. Gifted Child Quarterly, 49(3), 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698620504900304 Passow, A. H., & Frasier, M. M. (1996). Toward improving identification of talent potential among minority and disadvantaged students. Roeper Review, 18(3), 198–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199609553734 Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 29(8), 1358–1369. https://doi. org/10.1177/0956797618774253 Sigmon, R. (1979). Service-learning: Three principles. Synergist, 8(1), 9–11. Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R.  J. (2021). Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/ jintelligence9010015 Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness. Education Sciences, 11(5), 192. https://doi. org/10.3390/educsci11050192 Stewart, T., & Bai, H. (2010). Community service self-efficacy and summer service-­ learning: Comparative analyses among academically talented youth. Gifted Education International, 27(2), 149–160. https://doi. org/10.1177/026142941002700205 Stewart, T., Webster, N., & Bai, H. (2013). Understanding the impact of summer service-learning program on the social dominance orientation of gifted adoles-

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cents. Journal of Community Positive Practices, 13(4), 71–88. http://jppc.ro/en/ index.php/jppc/article/view/218 Terry, A. W. (2003). Effects of service learning on young, gifted adolescents and their community. Gifted Child Quarterly, 47(4), 295–308. https://doi. org/10.1177/001698620304700406 Terry, A. W. (2008). Student voices, global echoes: Service-learning and the gifted. Roeper Review, 30(1), 45–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783190701836452 Terry, A.  W., & Bohnenberger, J.  E. (2004). Blueprint for incorporating service learning: A basic, developmental, K-12 service learning typology. The Journal of Experimental Education, 27(1), 15–31. https://doi. org/10.1177/105382590402700103 Terry, A. W., Bohnenberger, J. E., Renzulli, J. S., Cramond, B., & Sisk, D. (2008). Vision with action: Developing sensitivity to societal concerns in gifted youth. Roeper Review, 30(1), 61–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783190701836478 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2021). End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal2 Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. MIT Press.

8 Fairminded Critical Thinking and Depth of Knowledge as Essential to Gifted Education Programs That Advance the Common Good Linda Elder

Introduction Gifted education has historically had the professed goal of addressing and fostering unique and individual talents. The realization of this goal, which has been only very marginally met, is necessary but not sufficient for cultivating thinking that results in students making significant contributions to the greater good over the long run. Contributing significantly to the advancement of human societies requires strong foundations in both critical thinking and ethical reasoning; otherwise, how will students know they are actually contributing to the greater good (rather than causing more harm) when faced with complex ethical issues? Consider the well-meaning social worker, concerned to support the well-being of families who, through intellectual arrogance and hasty judgment of misperceived neglect or abuse, has children unnecessarily removed from their parents, causing life-long trauma and permanent emotional scars to perhaps everyone in the family, when a less traumatic solution could be found through deeper criticality – a solution which would aid the family rather than destroy it. In short, students may lack the necessary intellectual skills and understandings of ethical foundations to adequately reason through complex, multi-­ logical questions and issues. The cultivation of both critical thinking and

L. Elder (*) Foundation for Critical Thinking, Tomales, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_8

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ethical reasoning have been largely ignored in gifted education programs throughout their histories, where they should always have been front and center. Fostering critical thinking skills throughout education is in itself complex; this is a primary reason why skills of criticality have seldom been a priority in schooling. And, unfortunately, high-level ethical reasoning is far more difficult to instill in students than are traditional, more limited critical thinking skills and abilities that leave out ethics. This is true for a number of reasons. First, ethical reasoning is largely misunderstood in human societies, with ethical principles typically taken to be implicit in (and therefore mixed up with) social, cultural, religious, and legal ideologies. Schools tend to be, and have historically been, apologists for these ideologies, rather than teaching students to critically analyze them. Gifted education programs have tended to follow suit. Second, students are generally not taught to be vigilant in detecting egocentric and sociocentric thinking at work in their own minds; this seriously impedes their ability to reason fairmindedly and reach their potential. Third, the cultivation of intellectual virtues, which is required for advancing the common good, is largely ignored in both human societies and schools. The idea that it is important to bring ethics into education is, of course, not new. Its historical roots reach back to at least Socrates, 2400  years ago. Distinguished thinkers from diverse fields of study have commented on the importance of advancing virtuous thinking in education and in life, including the Stoics (e.g., Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), Comenius, John Henry Newman, Bertrand Russell, Erich Fromm, Paulo Freire, and many others. Notably, in a 1982 article entitled “Teaching Critical Thinking in the Strong Sense,” Richard Paul1 detailed his conception of strong-sense critical thinking. This conception focuses on the importance of going beyond the atomic teaching of individual critical thinking skills to an emphasis on teaching that fosters ethical critical thinking, or in other words, critical thinking that contributes to a better world while also nourishing itself. This conception, which is still widely ignored in schooling at all levels – including gifted education programs  – can be found in succinct form in A Glossary of Critical Thinking Terms and Concepts (Elder & Paul, 2013):

1  Throughout his career and over several decades until his death in 2015, Richard Paul made many significant contributions to a rich conception of critical thinking. His work lies at the heart of the field of critical thinking studies. This article can be found in Critical Thinking: What Everyone Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World by Richard Paul. 2012. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking (Chapter 26).

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Strong-sense critical thinkers: fairminded critical thinkers; skilled thinking characterized predominantly by the following traits: (1) the ability and tendency to question deeply one’s own views; (2) the ability and tendency to reconstruct sympathetically and imaginatively the strongest versions of viewpoints and perspectives opposed to one’s own; (3) the ability and tendency to reason dialectically (multilogically) in such a way as to determine when one’s own point of view is at its weakest and when an opposing view is at its strongest; and (4) the ability and propensity to change one’s thinking when the evidence would require it, without regard to one’s own selfish or vested interests . . . Teaching for strong-sense critical thinking entails routinely encouraging students to explicate, understand, and critique their deepest prejudices, biases, and misconceptions, thereby discovering and contesting their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies . . . (pp. 70–71)

Strong-sense critical thinking education, which is education that advances strong-sense critical thinking, is essential to transformational gifted education: It provides the vehicle for cultivating the intellect at the deepest levels, as well as, importantly, fostering skilled ethical reasoning based in sound ethical principles. Education should certainly advance individual rights, talents, and capacities. At the same time, it is obligated to cultivate fairminded thinking toward mankind as well as other sentient creatures, and to contribute to a better world. Almost four decades have passed since Paul argued for the importance of incorporating a rich, explicit, integrated conception of fairminded critical thinking into education. But we can go back much further in time to find distinguished thinkers advancing the importance of intellectual virtues in everyday living as well as the importance of teaching these virtues. In Plato’s Apology, which documents Socrates’ words at his trial as he is being sentenced to death for exploring and teaching how to live the ethical life, Socrates (circa 470–399 BCE) emphasizes the importance of doing what is right and contributing to the common good through developing one’s own mind  – and teaching others to do so. He illuminates the danger in trying to live in accordance with what is right in a state where powerful politicians are threatened by critical thinking (still, of course, a formidable problem today). Socrates says: You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting justly or unjustly, like a good man or a bad one . . . (p. 54) I shall never stop practicing philosophy and exhorting you and indicating the truth for everyone that I meet… Are you not ashamed that you give your

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a­ ttention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?…Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state . . . (pp. 55–56) You will find that throughout my life I have been consistent in any public duties that I have performed, the same also in my personal dealings: I have never countenanced any action that was incompatible with justice on the part of any person . . . (p. 60) When my sons grow up, gentleman if you think that they are putting money or anything else before goodness, take your revenge by plaguing them as I plagued you; and if they fancy themselves for no reason, you must scold them just as I scolded you, for neglecting the important things and thinking that they are good for something when they are good for nothing. If you do this, I shall have had justice at your hands– I and my children. (p. 70)

Stoic philosophers largely built on the intellectual and ethical foundations envisioned by Socrates. Seneca (circa 4 BCE–65 CE), distinguished statesman and philosopher, emphasizes the importance of living according to what is good. He says: . . . no one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper routes through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you made already. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good. (p. 63) . . . we need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything is if he saw what we were doing . . . there is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. (p. 56)

Comenius (1657, 1907), seventeenth century educator and philosopher, wrote extensively about the importance of cultivating virtuous thinking in students. He says, for instance: . . . in order to educate the young carefully it is necessary to take timely precautions that their characters be guarded from the corruptions of the world, that

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the seed of honour sown in them be brought to a happy growth by pure and continuous teaching and examples . . . (p. 15) Education is indeed necessary for all, and this is evident if we consider the different degrees of ability . . . But in reality those who are clever need it far more, since an active mind, if not occupied with useful things…an excellent intelligence becomes filled with fanciful notions, if it be not sown with the seeds of wisdom and of virtue … an active mind, if void of serious things, entangles itself utterly with vain, curious, and noxious thoughts, and becomes the cause of its own destruction. (pp. 55–56)

In 1950, distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell (1950; 2002), in an essay entitled The Functions of a Teacher, explores what he considers to be the proper role of teachers in civilized societies. Russell says: Teachers are more than any other class the guardians of civilization. They should be intimately aware of what civilization is, and desirous of imparting a civilized attitude to their pupils. We are thus brought to the question: What constitutes a civilized community? . . . Civilization . . . is a thing of the mind . . . Some men have been inspired by love of mankind; some by supreme intellect have helped us to understand the world in which we live; and some by exceptional sensitiveness have created beauty. These men have produced something of positive good to outweigh the long record of cruelty, oppression and superstition. These men have done what lay in their power to make human life a better thing than the brief turbulence of savages.… All this should be in the mind and heart of the teacher, and if it is in his mind and heart he will convey it in his teaching to the young who are in his care. (pp. 129–130)

As should now be clear, though the view that ethics (i.e., contributing to what is right and good) is essential to education has been available to us for more than two millennia, we have yet to embrace this idea, broadly speaking, either in gifted education programs, in education programs more generally, or in societies at large. If students are to develop as contributing members of society, they will need foundational understandings largely now missing from mainstream and gifted education programs. They will need to understand how to use their thinking to help open up new possibilities for human beings. This means understanding and employing a rich conception of critical thinking, as well as a developed, clear understanding of ethical reasoning. Further, students will need to gain command of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies which are common to all human beings yet to some degree uniquely expressed in each of us. Students need to recognize these tendencies

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as formidable barriers to their development. Through this kind of deep understanding, students are better positioned to embrace fairmindedness and contribute to the common good (rather than merely to their own self-interest) as a way of life and as a matter of course. If they are to contribute to the common good over the long run, students will also need to be openminded, well-rounded thinkers, while at the same time focusing on their own mental well-being. This means they will need to actively cultivate a positive emotional life. And because broad ethical and deep historical understandings are required to live the examined life, gifted students will need to become widely read in the best classic literature (which will give them essential intellectual foundations), rather than simply narrowing into a specialty.

 asic Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities Are B Essential to Gifted Education In the ideal gifted education program and in any ideal education program, a cluster of critical thinking skills, abilities, and virtues are routinely fostered in all coursework, in daily classroom communication, and in all interactions among teachers, staff and students. It is the routine employment of these abilities and embodiment of these virtues that results in the educated person, properly so-called. For a rich conception of education, with clear connections with critical thinking principles, we can again reach back in history: More than 150 years ago, John Henry Newman (1852; 1996) developed and delivered a set of lectures labelled Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, which in 1852 was published as the book The Idea of a University. Through these lectures, Newman worked out a rich, eloquent, persuasive conception of education, a concept mainly ignored in colleges of education (in the same way critical thinking has been largely ignored). In these lectures Newman says, for instance, Truth, of whatever kind, is the proper object of the intellect; its cultivation then lies in fitting it to apprehend and contemplate truth... We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but…by a mental process, by going round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual correction, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and exercises of mind… it is not mere application …which introduces the mind to truth, nor the reading of many books, nor the getting up of many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor

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attending many lectures…a man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge…he may have no grasp of things as they are…no power of discriminating between truth and falsehood…of arranging things according to the their real value. Such a power is an acquired faculty of judgment, of clearsightedness, of sagacity, of wisdom... The eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit. (p. 109)

Though some rare people may achieve the intellectual discipline detailed by Newman implicitly, for the most part people need explicit tools for intellectual and ethical development. In the following brief definition of critical thinking, we find direct links to Newman’s concept of the educated person. Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fairminded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop and embody the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-­ interest, and vested interest. They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-­ improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, untenable world. (Elder, 2007)2

The definition above can be integrated with all scholarship in the field of critical thinking studies3 as well as established definitions of education. For 2  This definition was slightly altered from the definition of critical thinking found at: https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766 3  It should be noted that though the field of critical thinking studies has developed extensively since the 1980s, critical thinking is still not recognized as a bona fide field of studies on its own terms. For an argument on the importance of critical thinking as an independent field of academic study with first princi-

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instance, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “education,” in terms of relevance to our concerns herein, as “The culture or development of personal knowledge or understanding, growth of character, moral and social qualities, etc., as contrasted with the imparting of knowledge or skill. Often with modifying word, as intellectual education, moral education, etc.”4 The following section entails a brief introduction to the basic concepts in critical thinking, beginning with skills and abilities that come from explicitly understanding reasoning and how to improve reasoning. In the section thereafter, intellectual virtues are presented as essential to the responsible person and effective, contributing citizen.

What Is Reasoning and Why Is It Important to Education? All humans reason. We cannot escape our reasoning. We continually reason as we go through our day, every day. Reasoning is at the core of every viable subject, academic discipline and profession. Reasoning is at the heart of the intellectual discipline Newman refers to in the quote above. Yet few people understand what reasoning entails, how to take reasoning apart, and how to assess reasoning for quality. Despite its ubiquitous nature, like critical thinking more generally, an emphasis on reasoning is largely missing from the classroom at all levels, including the gifted education classroom. Our understanding of reasoning has developed considerably in the last four decades. We now have explicit tools for taking reasoning apart and examining those parts – to improve thinking in every day life. It is reasoning that determines the quality of one’s thinking and therefore of one’s life. The quality of one’s reasoning determines the quality of one’s emotions. The quality of their reasoning determines the quality of student work in all courses. The reasoning we engage in gives rise to or underlies all of our actions. And, again, it is reasoning that gives life to all subjects, disciplines, professions, and domains of human thought. It is reasoning that leads us toward, or away from, contributing to a better world. Yet how many gifted education teachers can delineate the elements of their reasoning or the reasoning of others? Without command of the elements of thought, or parts of reasoning, students are handicapped. Therefore, in the ideal educational environment, all ples, see my article entitled Richard Paul’s Contributions to the Field of Critical Thinking and to the Establishment of First Principles in Critical Thinking in the journal Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across The Disciplines, Spring 2016, Vol. XXI, No. 1, pp. 8–33. 4  Definition found on May 20, 2021 at https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59584?redirectedFrom=edu cation#eid

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students will learn to take command of their reasoning by routinely and systematically deconstructing it, and they will learn to deconstruct the thinking of others focusing on the same elements. What are these elements of reasoning? The diagram below briefly introduces these elements or parts of thinking: All Thinking Is Defined by the Eight Elements That Make It Up Eight basic structures are present in all thinking: Whenever we think, we think for a purpose within a point of view based on assumptions leading to implications and consequences. We use concepts, ideas and theories to interpret data, facts, and experiences in order to answer questions solve problems, and resolve issues. Thinking, then: generates purposes ralses questions uses Information utlllzes concepts makes Inferences makes assumptions

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

Point of View Purpose frame of reference, goal, perspective, objective, orientation, function Implications world view and Consequences that which follows Elements logically, effects Assumptions presuppositions, axioms, taking for granted

of Thought

Concepts theories, definitions, laws, principles, models

generates Impllcations embodles a point of view CONTEXT

Question at Issue problem, issue

Information data facts, evidence, observations, experiences, reasons Interpretation and Inference conclusions, solutions CONTEXT

Each of these structures has implications for the others. If you change your purpose or agenda, you change your questions and problems. If you change your questions and Problems, you rae forced to seek new information and data. if you collect new information and data... Diagram taken from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, 2020, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., p. 14.

When students understand these elements or structures of thought, and are explicitly focusing on them, they routinely ask important questions implied by them. In the diagram below, you see one core question that emerges from understanding each element. When students understand the elements of reasoning, and command their use, they are able to articulate an unlimited

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number of additional questions, in context, that emerge from understanding each element.5

To Analyze Thinking Students Must learn to Identify and Question its Elemental Structures 8 to answer a question or solve a problem.

7 based on concepts and theories

6

to make inferences and judgements

What is the most basis concept in the question?

6 What are my

4

8

1 What is my fundamental purpose?

Universal Structures of Thought

most fundamental inferences or conclusions? What information do I need to answer my question?

5

based on assumptions

3

Leading to implications and consesquences

5

What is the key question I am trying to answer?

2 Within a point of view

Universal Structures of Thought

We use data, facts, and experiences

7

1 Whenever we think we think for a purpose

2

What is my point of view with respect to the issue? What assumptions am I using in my reasoning?

3

What are the implications of my reasoning (if I am correct)?

4

Diagram modified from the diagram on page 8  in The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, 2019, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

 For more on the elements of reasoning see The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, Elder 2019. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman& Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 5

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 ow Do Students Assess Reasoning Once They Have H Deconstructed It into Its Elements? To evaluate the elements of reasoning once they have been identified, students need reasonable standards for judging the reasoning. In the diagram below, nine essential intellectual standards are briefly defined.

To Evaluate Thinking Students Must Understand and Apply Intellectual Standards Reasonable people judge reasoning by intellectual standards. When students internalize these standards and explicitly use them in their thinking, their thinking becomes more clear, more accurate, more precise, more relevant, deeper, broader and more fair. Note that we focus here on a selection of standards. Among others are credibility, sufficiency, reliability, and practicality. Some questions that employ these standards are listed on the following diagram.

Clarity: understandable, the meaning can be grasped Accuracy: free from errors or distortions, true Precision: exact to the necessary level of detail Relevance: relating to the matter at hand Depth: containing complexities and multiple interrelationships Breadth: encompassing multiple viewpoints Logic: the parts make sense together, no contradictions Significance: focusing on the important, not trivial Fairness: justifiable, not self-serving or one-sided

Diagram modified from the diagram on page 9  in The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, 2019. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Some Essential Intellectual Standards for All Human Thought Clarity

Could you elaborate further? Could you give me an example? Could you illustrate what you mean?

Accuracy

How could we check on that? How could we find out if that is true? How could we verify or test that?

Precision

Could you be more specific? Could you give me more details? Could you be more exact?

Relevance Depth Breadth Logic

How does that relate to the problem? How does that bear on the question? How does that help us with the issue? What factors make this a difficult problem? What are some of the complexities of this question? What are some of the difficulties we need to deal with? Do we need to look at this from another perspective? Do we need to consider another point of view? Do we need to look at this in other ways? Does all this make sense together? Does your first paragraph fit in with your last? Does what you say follow from the evidence? Is this the most important problem to consider?

Significance Is this the central idea to focus on?

Which of these facts are most important?

Fairness

Do I have any vested interest in this issue? Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others? Have we fully and fairly considered all the important information relevant to the issue?

Sufficiency

Do we have sufficient information to answer the question? Are we unfairly leaving out information we would rather not consider in order to get more for our group while ignoring or downplaying the rights and needs of others?

Diagram taken from page 10 in The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, 2019, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

When students master the elements of reasoning and intellectual standards, they develop micro-skills essential to sound reasoning, such as: • • • • • •

articulating clear purposes gathering relevant information identifying faulty assumptions thinking precisely about thinking, using critical vocabulary distinguishing relevant from irrelevant facts exploring logical implications and consequences

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Fairminded Critical Thinking and Giftedness While mastering the elements of reasoning and intellectual standards is essential to the educated mind, such mastery alone will not necessarily lead to character transformation, nor concern for making the world a better place. For this, educators must foster intellectual virtues which define the fairminded critical person and transform one’s character. The most advanced reasoners in every field of study embrace and embody these characteristics. In doing so they become critics of their disciplines; they are able to see the actual strengths and weaknesses in how professionals in their fields tend to formulate questions and purposes. They understand what types of information those in their field tend to gather in reasoning through problems and issues, how they tend to interpret this information, and through which lenses or viewpoints. They are able to detect assumptions prominent in the field and examine these assumptions objectively and autonomously, using standards of criticality. They see implications of reasoning in the field frequently missed by others. They seek the best reasoning in their fields, reaching back through history. They actively seek connections between and among their field and other related fields of study. They do not confine their thinking to tradition, nor are they carried along by trends in the field that do not adhere to standards of good reasoning. The following diagram gives an overview of some essential intellectual virtues that should be fostered throughout schooling and gifted education programs, and would be routinely fostered in fairminded critical societies:

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Intellectual Virtues of the Fairminded Critical Thinker Fairminded thinkers pursue their own needs, desires, and goals while also considering, to the same degree and in good faith, the rights and needs of others. Yet it is possible to learn to use one's skills of mind in a narrow, self -serving way—many highly skilled thinkers do just that. Those who wish to develop as ethical critical reasoners work to embody the following character traits:

Intellectual Integrity Intellectual Autonomy

Intellectual Empathy

Intellectual Humility

Intellectual Virtues

Confidence in Reason

Intellectual Perseverance

Intellectual Courage Fairmindedness

Diagram taken from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, 2020, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., p. 23.

Briefly, intellectual autonomy entails thinking independently while adhering to intellectual standards. Intellectual empathy entails the propensity to reason within multiple and alternative viewpoints even when those viewpoints differ from one’s own. Intellectual courage entails the willingness to routinely examine one’s own views and change those views when attention to the facts, along with good reasoning, requires it. Intellectual humility implies the capacity and propensity to accurately distinguish between what one knows and what one does not know. Confidence in reason is premised on the belief that humans are best served by following the facts and the best reasoning available, rather than blindly following authority figures, political leaders, religious ideologies,

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group beliefs, etc. Intellectual perseverance entails the propensity to continue working through difficulties, even in the face of confusion and discomfort, when reasoning through issues, problems, and projects. Fairmindedness is the propensity to consider all relevant viewpoints before coming to conclusions and proceeding with decisions. Fairmindedness also implies a commitment to acting in accordance with the common good. These eight intellectual virtues are interrelated and connect with other intellectual virtues such as intellectual responsibility, intellectual curiosity, intellectual civility, and intellectual discipline.6 As students develop intellectual virtues in concert with essential critical thinking skills, they develop macro-skills and abilities as well as the affective dimension of thought. They begin to consistently: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

refine generalizations and avoid oversimplifications examine or evaluating assumptions for justifiability make plausible inferences, predictions, or interpretations evaluate evidence and alleged facts appropriately compare analogous situations, transferring insights to new contexts develop their perspectives: creating or exploring beliefs, arguments, or theories recognize contradictions in their own and others’ reasoning clarify issues, conclusions, or beliefs clarify and analyze the meanings of words or phrases develop criteria for evaluation: clarifying values and standards evaluate the credibility of sources of information question deeply, raising and pursuing root or significant questions analyze and evaluate arguments, interpretations, beliefs, and theories generate and assess solutions analyze and evaluate actions or policies read critically, clarifying and properly critiquing texts listen critically, engaging in the art of silent dialogue make interdisciplinary connections clarify and question beliefs, theories, and perspectives reason dialogically, comparing perspectives, interpretations, or theories reason dialectically, evaluating perspectives, interpretations, or theories think independently develop insight into their own and others’ egocentricity and sociocentricity

6  For more on intellectual virtues, see Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, 3rd edition, by Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2012). Rowman & Littlefield.

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exercise fairmindedness explore thoughts underlying feelings and feelings underlying thought develop intellectual humility and suspend judgment develop intellectual courage develop intellectual good faith or integrity develop intellectual perseverance develop confidence in reason

In sum, if gifted students are to achieve their potential as thinkers, as well as contribute to the advancement of human societies, they will need to embody essential intellectual virtues that lead to deep knowledge and insight. The active, consistent, routine cultivation of these character traits will need to be incorporated into schooling at all levels, in all subjects, across teaching and learning. Without this active commitment to fostering intellectual virtues, teachers may inadvertently foster the opposites of intellectual virtues, such as intellectual arrogance instead of intellectual humility, intellectual hypocrisy instead of intellectual integrity, closemindedness instead of intellectual empathy, selfishness instead of fairmindedness, conformity instead of intellectual autonomy, blind faith instead of confidence in reasoning.

 thical Reasoning Must Be at the Heart E of Education Schooling practices, as they have developed historically, have tended to ignore not only basic critical thinking skills and intellectual virtues, but also the ethical dimension of thought (which is implicit, if not explicit, in most intellectual virtues). Similarly, some theoreticians still ignore the ethical dimension of thought in their concept of critical thinking; but this would be an inappropriate, misleading, incomplete view of critical thinking. Further, it is still common for fields of study either to disregard the ethical dimension implicit in the questions they pursue, or to have an impoverished view of ethical considerations within their fields (such as psychology, psychiatry, social work, medicine, the military, the police, etc.) To understand ethics, which is necessary to advance the common good, requires that students become clear about certain distinctions. The diagram below, which offers a beginning place, outlines important differences between ethical questions and questions with which they are often confused, such as religious, social, or legal questions.

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If we are ever to reach a point in human development where skilled ethical reasoning is the norm, each of us must cultivate in ourselves the ability to determine whether any belief system, practice, rule, or law is ethical. To be skilled at ethical reasoning means to develop a conscience not subservient to fluctuating social conventions, theological systems, or unethical laws. Consistently sound reasoning in any domain of thought presupposes practice in reasoning through cases and issues in that domain. As students face problems in their lives, they must distinguish the ethical from the non-ethical and the pseudo-ethical, and apply appropriate ethical principles to those problems that are genuinely ethical problems. The more often they do so, the better they become at ethical reasoning.

Religious

Social

Legal

Ethical

Questions (divergent)

Questions (divergent)

Questions (divergent)

Questions (divergent)

deal with the nature of spirituality (and are therefore subject to unlimited theological debate)

deal with the customs, traditions, and taboos of groups (which vary enormously from group to group)

deal with what has been codified into law in particular societies (and which may or may not have an ethical basis)

deal with helpful or harmful behavior toward people or other creatures (ethical principles converge across cultures and groups)

Diagram taken from The Thinker’s Guide to the Ethical Reasoning by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, 2020, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., p. 15.

When students are taught the distinctions in the diagram above, and are given routine practice in delineating these different modes of thinking, they are then in a position to reason through the ethical questions at the heart of advancing the common good. When students lack these distinctions, they may easily confuse ethical issues and concerns with social ideologies, customs, taboos, religious beliefs, and legal questions. It is not enough to be a goodhearted, well-meaning person if one is to think and behave in an ethical manner. It is not enough to have basic critical thinking skills if one is to be an ethical person. The development of intellectual character and ethical virtues is required for transformative education that leads students to actually make the world a better place.

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For instance, gifted students who show an inclination may be encouraged by their teachers to become attorneys to contribute to a better world. While studying in law school, they may be taught that the most noble goal is to adhere to the rule of law. On the face of it, this sounds well and good, especially given the rhetoric around the importance of abiding by the law. But what if a given set of laws in fact discriminate against certain groups of people, such as the laws against African Americans before the civil rights movement in the United States? What are these attorneys to do when the rule of law is unethical? Unless students understand the important difference between ethics and the law, they will likely contribute not to a better world, but to greater injustice.

 hat Holds Students Back from Achieving Their W Potential and Making Significant Contributions: Egocentric and Sociocentric Thinking For students to become high-level ethical reasoners, it is not enough to merely understand how ethics differs from other modes of thinking (including those with which it is often confused, as described above), nor is it sufficient to routinely emphasize cultivation of intellectual virtues in the classroom. Educators must also explicitly teach students the formidable barriers to advancing human societies that we can roughly label egocentric thinking and sociocentric thinking, to which all humans fall prey. Gifted people are no more exempt than anyone else from the power of selfishness, narrowmindedness, the inappropriate and often dangerous need for group validation, and any other manner of fallacious thought. Indeed, because gifted students tend to naturally develop implicit critical thinking skills and abilities due to their precociousness, they may be even more likely than people with fewer critical thinking skills to use their reasoning selfishly or merely for the interests of their own groups  – unless they are taught the importance of commanding their own egocentric and sociocentric propensities. Egocentric thinking, in brief, refers to thinking which is either narrowminded and rigid or thinking which is selfish. Sociocentric thinking entails thinking which is either narrow-mindedly locked within the logic of groupthink, or which is concerned with advancing the agenda of a given group without regard to the rights and needs of others. I refer to this latter tendency as groupishness, which means “group selfishness” and parallels the egocentric tendency of individual selfishness.

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The Human Mind is Frequently Irrational While Having the Capacity for Rational Thought The Human Mind

Is naturally egocentric and sociocentric

Naturally develops some intellectual skills

Requries the active cultivation of intellectual traits, ethical sensitivities, and many intellectual skills

Essential Idea: All humans are innately egocentric and sociocentric. Humans also have (largely undeveloed) rational capacities. Humans begin life as primarily egocentric creatures. Over time, infantile egocentric self-centered thinking merges with sociocentric group-centered thinking. All humans regularly engage in both forms of irrational thought. The extent to which any of us is egocentric or sociocentric is a matter of degree and can change significantly in various situations or contexts. While egocentric and sociocentric propensities are naturally occurring phenomena, rational capacities must be largely developed. It is through the development of rational capacities that we combat irrational tendencies and cultivate critical societies.

Diagram taken from The Thinker’s Guide to the Human Mind by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, 2020, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., p. 15.

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Distinguishing Rational from Egocentric and Sociocentric Motives Egocentric Thinking

Strives to advance its selfish interests

Strives to validate its current way of thinking

Sociocentric Thinking

Strives to advance its group’s vested interests

Strives to validate the group’s way of thinking

Rational Thinking

Strives to consider the rights and needs of others

Strives to see things as they are

Essential Idea: Though egocentric, sociocentric and rational throught may be complex, we can capture their basic motives.

Diagram taken from The Thinker’s Guide to the Human Mind by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, 2020, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., p. 16.

Though most problems in human thinking can be linked to egocentric and/or sociocentric thinking, these prominent tendencies in human life have, like critical thinking more generally, been fundamentally ignored in education at all levels and in all classes. And many, if not most, of the reasons why gifted people frequently fail to achieve their potential can be traced to their own insecurities and other bad habits of thought such as, again, procrastination, intellectual arrogance, hypocrisy, closemindedness, prejudice, bias, distortion, the need for validation, feelings of inferiority, and the tendency to have blind faith in authority. In short, an educational program that transforms gifted students so that they contribute to the common good will include a prominent and core

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emphasis on critical thinking skills, abilities, and virtues, as well as on a rich conception of ethical reasoning. It will also entail a keen awareness of the many ways in which egocentric and sociocentric thinking impede people’s abilities to achieve at the level of their capacity.

 ncouraging Students to Develop Their Innate E Capacities and Personal Propensities One of the apparent goals of gifted education programs historically has been to foster the unique capacities and proclivities of gifted students. The extent to which this has been achieved is varied depending upon the quality of teachers’ thinking and pedagogical abilities. Traditional schooling, on the other hand, has tended to deny students the right to develop according to their capacities and their desires. For the most part, throughout history, mainstream schooling has been designed to indoctrinate students into the ideologies of the culture, and into the established views of the country and political environment within which schools operate. Like students not labeled “gifted,” gifted students are indoctrinated into the beliefs of teachers and administrators who come from cultures in which they themselves have frequently been indoctrinated and who tend to have very little knowledge of fairminded criticality. If we hope to cultivate gifted students so they contribute substantially to the advancement of human societies, they will need to have a firm grasp of their own abilities, capacities, weaknesses, desires, and needs. School programs will need to focus primarily on developing the capacities and propensities of individual students, rather than trying to make students fit into the often-impoverished programs and systems created by impoverished schools. No two people are the same; every person on the planet is unique. Accordingly, all students deserve to have their unique capacities cultivated and encouraged within the societies in which they live, and in the schools they attend. The best thinkers in every field of study are people reaching toward their highest potential in areas of interest to them while also contributing to the development of ideas and products important to improving cultures and societies. These areas of interest must be personally chosen, and students must learn (while in school) how to continue developing themselves when they leave our schools. This can only be done when we respect and support the intrinsic capacities and propensities of every individual student, and when we

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encourage them to develop in their own right while learning the skills and characteristics of the fairminded person. Creating climates where gifted students learn the skills, abilities, and virtues of critical thinking, while encouraging these students to reach for the highest level of their capacity as mentally well, happy, self-actualizing people, is our best hope for realizing a world in which gifted persons are contributing to the greater good. When people are held back from achieving their capacity, when they lack fundamental critical thinking skills and dispositions, when they feel crushed within an irrational world, they will likely never realize their potential and will be prone to experience mental health problems. Therefore, schools must be concerned not only with cultivating traditional academic skills, but must consider the development of the entire person, which includes emphasis on students taking command of their own mental health in a world which is in many ways unreasonable and perverse. Again, many gifted people never reach their potential due to insecurities, the need to be validated by others, irrational fears, neurotic tendencies, extreme sensitivities, and other dysfunctionalities. These tendencies, common in human life, should not be ignored but rather addressed at the front and center of student development and cultivation. In other words, the development of the mind should not be divided into the cognitive and the emotional. All students, along with all people, have an emotional dimension running throughout the course of their lives. This emotional dimension is directly connected with the “thought” dimension, both of which must be fostered in schooling if students are to achieve mental well-being. Students should come to value themselves as unique persons capable of taking care of themselves physically as well as mentally, and of achieving happiness. All of these considerations must be an intrinsic component of schooling if we are to encourage students to develop as individuals on their own unique path.

 s Students Bring Us Forward, They Should Also A Reach Backward for the Best Ideas and Highest Ideals There are many paths to fairminded critical societies. All of these paths emerge out of knowledge that has come to us from the past, and that been built upon over the last 2400  years or more. To move forward with depth of vision, humans must study and remember the past. We need deep historical understandings that help us avoid the mistakes of earlier generations. We need to

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study the most significant and enlightening literature that has come to us through history so we can internalize these ideas and, where possible, improve on them. In every field, professionals need to study and pay attention to the best thinking that has been achieved in their fields of study, rather than studying only the “newest” ideas which may be of mixed quality (the latter being the overwhelming focus in academia). This is especially true in the humanities, in social studies, as well as in fields that consider themselves to be scientific, but which can never be fully scientific, such as psychology and psychiatry. Gifted students need to learn to command and integrate the best ideas we have developed as humans; if they cannot improve on those ideas, they need to adhere to those best ideas rather than creating merely “novel” ideas in order to gain attention, money, or prestige. To put this another way, those who make the greatest contributions in a given field are chiefly those who understand most thoroughly their own specialties, including its history, and who then add something of value to the field. But creating societies in which the majority of people contribute to the greatest good, and in which gifted people take the lead in this, requires something more. It requires a well-read and well-rounded mind that goes far beyond one’s professional specialty. It requires a mind, in other words, that has considerable command of classic thought. In using the phrase “classic thought,” I refer not to all literature going back to the beginning of recorded history, but rather to those classics that set the highest standards for human thought and action in any given field, and that reveal the most reasonable standards for living a rational, ethical life generally.7 Our students need to reason as good citizens – as citizens of the world with concern for all persons and sentient creatures. They need to reason biologically, chemically, botanically, etc. They need to understand and command their own psychology as well as beware of sociologic forces that may inappropriately influence them. They need a developed, personal philosophy that guides how they live every day. All of this takes depth of vision that is achieved only when our students learn to take their own reasoning seriously, as well as the best reasoning that has come to us from every field of study since the beginnings of recorded thought. 7  For our purposes, the term classic is used to mean: (1) “of the first or highest quality, class, or rank,” “serving as a standard, model, or guide,” “of enduring interest, quality, or style” (definitions taken from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/classic). When I refer to the classics in this chapter, I am referring to classic works deriving from distinguished thinking. By this I mean books, photographs, works of art, and music; I refer to the best anthropological thinking, the best sociological thinking, the best economic thinking, indeed the best thinking in any domain of human thought and action.

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This takes us directly back to the explicit tools of critical thinking, because to discern the best thinking within the classics as well as within any form of modern thought requires the skills, abilities, and characteristics of the fairminded critical person. We study the classics to better understand ourselves and our development as humans. We study the classics to build on the best ideas that have been conceived and developed through history. We study the classics in our fields of study to thoroughly understand the best ideas that have been cultivated within them. We study the classics to converse with those considered to have reasoned at the highest level of quality within their fields and beyond. With deep foundations set within classic thought, students also have foundations for continuing learning and growing intellectually once they leave our schools. Again, at least to some degree, we place gifted students on a path focused on their propensities – for instance, musical students are encouraged to play music, athletic students are encouraged to engage in sports, and artistic students are encouraged to produce artistic works. This is good in and of itself – assuming students are learning to adhere to high-level standards within these areas of study. However, encouraging students within a narrow range of interests will not result in the “educated person,” broadly speaking. In other words, we need gifted people to be generalists as well specialists. Gifted students need to have both a deep and broad education. We need them to use the ideas developed throughout history that focus on identifying problems in thinking, not only to correct those problems, but also to create solutions that can guide humans into a more sane and sustainable future. The problem of overspecialization has been the subject of more than one distinguished thinker. Paulo Freire (1974; 2018), renowned Brazilian education critic, writes: . . . an analysis of highly technological societies usually reveals the “domestication” of man’s critical faculties by a situation in which he is massified and has only the illusion of choice. Excluded from the sphere of decisions being made by fewer and fewer people, man is maneuvered by the mass media to the point where he believes nothing he has not heard on the radio, seen on television, or read in the newspapers. He comes to accept mystical explanations of his reality. Like a man who has lost his address, he is “uprooted.” Our new education would have to offer man the means to resist the “uprooting” tendencies of our industrial civilization . . . In our highly technical world, mass production as an organization of human labor is possibly one of the most potent instruments of man’s massification. By requiring a man to behave mechanically, mass production domesticates. By separating his activity from the total project, requiring no total

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critical attitude toward production, it dehumanizes him. By excessively narrowing a man’s specialization, it constricts his horizons, making of him a passive, fearful, naïve being. And therein lies the chief contradiction of mass production: while amplifying man’s sphere of participation it simultaneously distorts this amplification by reducing man’s critical capacity through exaggerated specialization. (pp. 30–31)

Not only does Freire illuminate the problem of over-specialization in the passage above, he also highlights problems implicit in a society that views people according to their ability to fit into a system of mass production and to become, in essence, automatons. Gifted students will need to figure out how to avoid simply assimilating themselves into established pathological systems and instead work toward ways to develop more rational, reasonable systems. This will require extensive knowledge of problems in human ideologies and in societal customs, practices and taboos. Prominent psychologist Erich Fromm (1955; 1990), in his book The Sane Society, writes extensively about patterns that emerge in human thought and action when people are treated as robots: Today we come across a person who acts and feels like an automaton; who never experiences anything which is really his; who experiences himself entirely as the person he thinks he is supposed to be; whose artificial smile has replaced genuine laughter; whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech; whose dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements can be made about this person. One is that he suffers from a defect of spontaneity and individuality . . . at the same time, it may be said that he does not differ essentially from millions of others who are in the same position. For most of them, the culture provides patterns which enable them to live with a defect without becoming ill [for the reason that the society in which he lives is itself sick and therefore the defect is not noticed]. (p. 16)

At present, in schooling, we increasingly ignore classic works such as those by Freire, Fromm, and many others that have added to the voluminous knowledge that has been detailed by the human species and which, if taken seriously, could have significantly transformed humans into ethical critical thinkers long ago. A tremendous amount of new knowledge is produced every day by humans thinking in many domains of human life. Most of this knowledge is not taken seriously and therefore is of little consequence. But if we were to take seriously all the best ideas that have come to us through history from all fields of study, combined with deep understandings of the

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constellation of principles in fairminded critical thinking, we could see great advancement in the thinking, happiness, and fulfillment of humans. In short, the tragedy of the human condition is that we have so much knowledge and so much understanding of the human mind and yet we would rather sweep knowledge that comes to us from the past under the rug and instead create novel ideas that make us feel like we are unique and of the “new generation.” But if gifted students are to reach their potential while contributing to the common good, they will need to be widely read in the deepest thinkers, from the past as well as the present.

Conclusion I admire all people who are able to find happiness, fulfillment, and self-­ realization in today’s highly narrowminded and limiting world. As many eminent thinkers have illuminated through history, people tend to become caught in the grindstone that has become the human condition. Most people end up compromising their values to fit into society, to fit into a work situation, to fit into a relationship. Education should teach students that they have many options as well as responsibilities. Education should speak to the unique inner voice of the individual. Education should encourage students to use their intellectual power for good. Everyone should feel at home in our schools. They will feel at home when we are cultivating their development according to their own capacities, talents, and inclinations. Within that reality, all students should be required to learn basic tools of criticality and of ethical reasoning, since the quality of their lives depends on the quality of their reasoning and because all humans must take into account the rights and needs of others. I hope, but do not trust, that we can reach a time in history in which human reasoning is valued, studied, and taken seriously in every part of human life. Only then will we be able to solve the many pressing problems facing us as a species. Fairminded critical thinking, though it has largely been ignored to date, will either eventually be embraced by humans, or humans will be doomed. Gifted education, whether focused on music, art, or any other subject, should begin with and deeply incorporate core understandings of critical thinking skills, abilities, and virtues. This is true because reasoning is at the heart of all academic and professional disciplines and guides the advancement (or degradation) of these disciplines. Critical thinking provides tools for improving critical reasoning in all domains, and it is required in critiquing all social practices, customs, and taboos. Critical thinking is needed to

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reasonably critique all social, political, and religious ideologies and practices. Critical thinking is required to take command of one’s own life and destiny. Therefore, critical thinking must be at the heart of every gifted education program, and it must include strong emphasis on developing the ethical dimension. Further, gifted education programs should entail broad readings in the classics from multiple fields of study. By studying the best classic authors, artists, and thinkers, students come to clearly see standards for best thinking in any field. Gifted education programs should advance the civic-minded, open-minded person of integrity. Students should learn to think within any viewpoint in good faith. They must learn to deal with their own egocentric pathologies that, if they fail in this, will hold them back from achieving their potential and developing their ability to contribute to a better world. Through serious study in the classics, students expand their minds, have a better perspective of the history of human thought, and have a path for further development when they leave our schools, colleges, and universities.

References Comenius, J. (1657; 1907). The great didactic. Adam and Charles Black. Found in open source at Cornell University Library. https://archive.org/details/ cu31924031053709/page/n3/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater Elder, L. (2007). Definition found at: https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/ defining-­critical-­thinking/766 Elder, L., & Paul, R. (2013). A glossary of critical thinking terms. Foundation for Critical Thinking Press. Freire, P. (1974; 2018). Education for critical consciousness. Bloomsbury Academy. Fromm. (1955; 1990). The Sane Society. NY: Henry Holt and Company. Newman, J. (1852; 1996). The idea of a university. Yale University Press. Plato. (c. 398 BCE; 2003). The last days of socrates. Penguin Books. Russell, B. (1950; 2002), Unpopular essays. Routledge. Seneca. (c. 64; 2004). Letters from a stoic. Penguin Books. Sternberg, R. (2020). Tranformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 42(4), 230–240.

Further Readings For deeper understanding of how to teach strong-sense critical thinking, read Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, 4th edition by

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Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2022) Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & LIttlefield, and How to Improve Student Learning by Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2012). Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefied. For deeper understanding of the problem of egocentric and sociocentric thinking, read Liberating the Mind by Linda Elder (2019). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefied.

9 Be Prepared for the Complexities of the Twenty-First Century! Joachim Funke

Introduction What key skills do young people need in the twenty-first century? Classical school education, which has emphasized the teaching of basic knowledge, is reaching its limits: As important as the teaching of basic content and skills from the areas of reading, writing and arithmetic are, these competencies are not sufficient in the face of a global and networked world. The half-life of knowledge is becoming shorter and shorter, especially in the natural sciences. Students who leave university after several years of study with a degree sometimes have to forget the content that was painstakingly acquired in the initial semesters. When the acquisition of certain content becomes less important, other skills come into play all the more, for example, the ability to learn throughout life. A central competence concerns dealing with uncertainties and intransparency in complex and dynamic contexts. Simple explanations no longer exist; they are usually wrong because they are not appropriate to the complexity. Systemic thinking is necessary, which refrains from one-dimensional evaluations and which classifies complex situations appropriately in multiple contexts. Solving complex problems is a skill that is indispensable in the twenty-first century.

J. Funke (*) Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_9

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In a recent Special Issue of the “Journal of Intelligence,” the editors (Robert Sternberg, Andrew Conway and Diane Halpern) have asked their contributors to respond to the (provoking?) statement: “How intelligence can be a solution to consequential world problems”. I found that question not easy to answer (Funke, 2021), because two questions arise: First, what exactly are consequential world problems? Second, why should intelligence (intelligent behavior) be a candidate for their solutions? What other skills would help in solving world problems? It is not easy to scale and prioritize the challenges to mankind because there are many different perspectives. Lomborg (2007), for example, tried to define “the world’s biggest problems” in terms of costs and benefits. From my point of view, this approach suffers from giving a monetary value to human life. I cannot follow the idea that you can compensate a human life for money. By constitution: “all lifes are equal”. Then, how to define world problems? As “grand societal challenges” one might define those problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet: Climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air, and clean water, access to education, and much more. The next section will elaborate on these problems. The world around us presents a lot of challenges to mankind: Not only the human-made climate change but also the demand for food and water supply for a world population that soon might reach 8 billion people on this planet. Clean air and clean water are not available in large parts of the world, migration from failed states to more promising ones happens. The United Nations have compiled 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” that represent a suitable collection of such world problems (see https://sdgs. un.or). These goals are concerned with the survival of the planet earth and its inhabitants. They are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. What is psychology’s answer to these grand societal challenges? Let me take a look at research on problem-solving which is my favorite perspective on these challenges that have to be addressed by gifted children. Problem-solving research has produced different approaches for dealing with non-routine situations. We can hopefully learn from their concepts and from their insights. But what is “transformational giftedness”? In analogy to transformational (not transactional) leadership, transformational giftedness is defined by Sternberg (Sternberg, 2020b, p. 231) as follows: “I will define transformational giftedness as giftedness that is transformative— that by its nature seeks positively to change the world at some level—to make

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the world a better place”. A definition of giftedness that clearly relates to problem-solving, since problem-solving is defined as transforming an initial state into the desired target state. Because the desired state is unclear, we see an ill-defined problem here. For the analysis of the current state, one needs analytical intelligence; for the vision of the target state (“a better world”), one needs values that give meaning to life (wisdom); and for the transformation steps, motivation and creative ideas for solutions are important. In addition, in a world in which more and more people have to live together, it is also a matter of shaping this coexistence in a humane way. It is also about “the better place”: humanity, about humanistic values, about an understanding of democratic politics that makes it possible for people with very different ideas to live together without conflict. This is a question of ethical education and the teaching of human values – Tirri and Nokelainen (2007) talk about “ethical sensitivity” that is needed. But let’s start with the competence to solve complex problems. Here we need to understand what the characteristics of such problems are and what these characteristics mean for the problem solver.

Features of Complex Problems Complex problems (alternative names: “ill-defined problems”, “wicked problems”, “clumsy problems”; Hartmann, 2012; Simon, 1973; Verweij et  al., 2006) are characterized by five features: Complexity, interconnectedness, dynamism, lack of transparency (“opacity”), and multiple objectives (“polytelism”). These features are described in more detail below. As an illustrative example, consider the Corona pandemic, which has all the characteristics of a complex problem situation. 1. Complexity: The complexity of what is happening is high – very many construction sites have to be kept in view at the same time. In addition to health, which is threatened worldwide, we see a threatened global economy. But behind these major global problems are thousands of detailed problems. This overwhelms our limited human processing capacity. What is the consequence? Simplification! Especially conspiracy myths, which are booming in these times, offer wonderful simplifications: Sometimes Bill Gates is the culprit, sometimes the Chinese state government Staatsregierung (for dealing with conspiracy myths the “debunking handbook” is highly recommended: Lewandowsky & Cook, 2020). The “bounded rationality” postulated by Nobel laureate Herbert Simon (see, e.g., Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001) also leads to the fact that we cannot keep many complex

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problems in mind at the same time, which was pointed out by “Fridays for Future” with their action #FightEveryCrisis on 24.4.2020. Dörner and Schaub (1995) also describe this state of affairs as “overvaluing the current motive.” 2. Interconnectedness: In the past, people lightly said “What do I care if a sack of rice falls over in China?” – today, we know that this could be of concern to us. The legendary flap of a butterfly’s wings that sets off a tornado, or the grain of sand that sets off an earthquake (so the title of Buchanan, 2001, which is well worth reading), shows the significance of seemingly distant events for our immediate daily lives. The interconnectedness of our global world shows side effects in places where we did not expect them. A good example of interconnectedness is provided by the Corona infection source in the South Tyrolean ski resort of Ischgl, from where the virus was presumably spread by ski vacationers to various places in the FRG, but also appeared in Iceland. 3 . Dynamics: “We are dealing with a dynamic outbreak,” said Chancellor Merkel at a press conference on March 12, 2020 – meaning that the situation (and thus the situation assessment) can change rapidly. Constant readjustments are being made. In the background, a non-linear process of virus spreading is taking place that is beyond our imagination. The famous grain of rice, which is supposed to be doubled from square to square on the 64 squares of a chessboard: it starts quite harmlessly with 1-2-4-8-16, but already at 64-128-256-512-1024 we notice that the numbers grow rapidly. So if we have 12,000 infected people on day X, in X plus four more days (12-24-48-96) there are already 96,000 and after another four days 1.5 million (192-384-768-1536). What a dynamic! Of course, this exponential growth has an upper limit and is over at some point…1 The “flattening the curve” program resulting from such considerations (see Fig. 9.1) attempts to dampen growth, which at a certain point becomes explosive, and thus makes the massive burdens on the healthcare system manageable. In countries such as Italy, Spain, or even the USA, this has failed and the collapse of the healthcare system has cost additional lives. 4. Lack of transparency: Novel situations such as the Corona pandemic are extremely opaque and raise many questions (When is exponential growth over? What are the important indicators?). This opacity creates a need for information whose limit is unclear: When do I have enough information to act? What information is important and reliable, and what is misleading 1  A logistic function (more precisely: a sigmoid function) describes this process more adequately, since it includes saturation processes (how many people can still be infected at all?).

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Fig. 9.1  “Flattening the curve”. (Source: CDC; https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/22/ these-­charts-­show-­how-­fast-­coronavirus-­cases-­are-­spreading.html)

or superfluous? On the one hand, it is a great moment for the sciences, which are now in demand (and provide answers, e.g., here: Leopoldina, 2020), but of course do not know the answers to all questions (serious information can be found for Germany at the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, or worldwide at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, ML). On the other hand, it is also a time of half-truths and fake reports (Nocun & Lamberty, 2020). Not knowing anything for sure causes fear – and fear is a bad advisor for problem-solving. Whereas politicians initially said that it was possible to “ease up” if the reproduction figure was below one, later the number of new infections was also used. This number, in turn, depends on the number of tests performed. The number of beds in intensive care units should also be known. The diffuse mixed situation creates uncertainty through lack of clarity – but transparency and clarity are unfortunately not easy to achieve in a complex problem. 5 . Multi-objective (“polytelism”): Even if there is a reasonably clear overall objective (to prevent the spread of the virus and keep the health care system functioning so that people stay healthy or, if infected, do not die), there are many secondary objectives: to keep the economy running, at least in basic areas; to maintain social contacts; to uphold basic civil rights; etc. These conflicts between different goals are what politicians try to resolve with their decisions (radical curfews versus moderate curfew restrictions). Compromises are inevitable; fundamental rights can sometimes clash irresolvably. Clear value orientations are very helpful in polytelic problem

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s­ituations because they help to set priorities. In addition, the multi-­ objective nature of the pandemic is overlaid by the secondary goals of German politicians, who hope, for example, to have better chances of running for chancellor if they can present themselves as sovereign crisis managers (similarly in the U.S. because of presidential elections). So much for the five characteristics of a complex problem. More about this can be found e.g. in Dörner (1980, 1996) or also in Funke (2003, 2012). The “Logic of Failure” by Dietrich Dörner (1989) is a good readable introduction to this topic even for laymen. – A potentially important sixth feature (time delays) that is often overlooked comes up in the next section. Time Delays  One of the unpleasant properties of dynamic processes are time delays in their various varieties in the information about the state of the system (e.g., as the dead time between the intervention in a system and the subsequent reaction: One clicks on an app, but has to be patient during the loading process; e.g., as delayed feedback when system states are displayed: The temperature indicator on a car reports the actual temperature with a delay). Such delay elements in complex systems complicate the controllability of a system. Time delays as characteristics of complex systems are listed here as a keyword separately beside the five characteristics of complex problems described above because they occur at different places in the problem space. Time delays exist, for example, in the spread of the virus (incubation period): someone who is infected today will not become ill for 10–14 days. There are time delays in the reporting of case numbers (after weekends, the number of cases in the FRG rose exceptionally strongly several times, because the reports of the weekend case numbers arrived only with delay). The case numbers of today show the situation of 14  days before. Policy decisions (e.g., on the development of a Corona tracing app) were made early but implemented late. Vaccine development was eagerly anticipated but took time. Much research has been done on the adverse effects of delayed feedback by the group led by Swedish psychologist Berndt Brehmer (e.g., Brehmer, 1992, 1995; Brehmer & Allard, 1991); in addition, John Sterman’s idea of the “misperception of feedback” (Sterman, 1989) is certainly worth mentioning. 

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The Ethical Dimension Our current concept of intelligence (as a measure of giftedness) is missing an ethical dimension. During the education process of individuals, we do not solely teach facts and knowledge but we also teach values. The education process, in general, is a process of character formation (Funke, 2020). One of the long-term results of character formation can be seen in the development of wisdom which I see as an important ingredient to transformational giftedness. As Tuchman (1984, p. 21) defined wisdom: “the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information.” Is wisdom the result of successful character formation? Is wisdom one of the components of transformational giftedness? In her recent review, Glück (2019, Table 16.1, p. 310) presents twelve definitions of wisdom. Only one of them mentions “values” explicitly, namely the “balance theory of wisdom” from Sternberg (1998). According to that theory, wise people know – besides other competencies – that different people can have different values. This idea of “value relativism” in wise persons is also one of the five criteria for wisdom within the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (see, e.g., Baltes & Staudinger, 2000). However, to know that there are different perspectives on dilemmata does not imply that one has clear moral values – it is a kind of meta-knowledge, free of any special content. Values allow for “Sinn” (German, “meaning”) in life. Similarly, Fischer (2015) argues for a context-free view of wisdom and sees it as “independent of one’s values and context.” On the other hand: Fischer has collected 12 propositions that were commonly known to wise men from four different cultures (Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, Buddha). Those four wise persons show huge parallels concerning certain wise content (e.g., Proposition 10: “Good people (and children) make a good company”). Once again, there is no idea about the acquisition of these pieces of wisdom. We all know that reading alone those “wise” propositions will not make us a wise person instantaneously. To become a wise person is a process that normally takes some time and needs life experience.

Conclusion What skills do young people need in the twenty-first century? The term “literacy” describes the ability to absorb, understand and reflectively apply knowledge. However, we must not stop with this general recommendation but must specify which form of “literacy” is meant: It is about “complex systems

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literacy”, i.e. the ability to absorb knowledge about complex systems, to understand complex systems appropriately in their structures and processes, and to use this knowledge thoughtfully to manage and control complex systems. The action-guiding goals behind this knowledge should be value-soaked, i.e., serving the good of society as well as the good of individuals, not seeking selfish advantage, but maximizing benefit for the good of the majority. In the study of complex problems, controversial discussions about the epistemic value of computer-simulated scenarios have taken place in recent years (for an overview, see Dörner & Funke, 2017). As part of the international school performance study PISA, the 2012 survey assessed the problem-­solving performance of 15-year-old students using computer-simulated scenarios  – Germany and America were in the middle of the pack, and Asian countries were at the top (Csapó & Funke, 2017; Dossey & Funke, 2016). What can we learn from previous research on solving complex problems? Quite a lot, in my opinion! Here are a few “highlights”: (1) There are (unfortunately!?) no patent remedies. (2) Nobody knows what the best solution to the problem is. (3) One should stay calm and not lose the overview despite uncertainty and insecurity. (4) Mistakes will be made – it is important not to cover them up, but to try to learn from them. (5) Time delays make it difficult to create an adequate picture of the situation. What helps, in any case, is the competence to “think critically” (one of the best books on this topic: Halpern, 2013) and to think in systems (see also Funke et al., 2018). Understanding global events is very difficult, but reductionist thinking, i.e., tracing complex chains of events back to individual causes, does not help and leads astray. Together with “ethical sensitivity”, this mixture can give rise to “transformational giftedness”, which we so urgently need.

References Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55, 122–136. Brehmer, B. (1992). Dynamic decision making: Human control of complex systems. Acta Psychologica, 81(3), 211–241. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/1462786 Brehmer, B. (1995). Feedback delays in complex dynamic decision tasks. In P. A. Frensch & J. Funke (Eds.), Complex problem solving: The European perspective (pp. 103–130). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Brehmer, B., & Allard, R. (1991). Dynamic decision making: The effects of task complexity and feedback delay. In J. Rasmussen, B. Brehmer, & J. Leplat (Eds.), Distributed decision making: Cognitive models for cooperative work (pp. 319–334). Wiley. Buchanan, M. (2001). Das Sandkorn, das die Erde zum Beben bringt: Dem Gesetz der Katastrophen auf der Spur oder warum die Welt einfacher ist, als wir denken. Campus. Csapó, B., & Funke, J. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of problem solving. Using research to inspire 21st century learning. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.178 7/9789264273955-­en Dörner, D. (1980). On the difficulties people have in dealing with complexity. Simulation & Gaming, 11(1), 87–106. https://doi. org/10.1177/104687818001100108 Dörner, D. (1989). Die Logik des Mißlingens. Strategisches Denken in komplexen Situationen. Rowohlt. Dörner, D. (1996). The logic of failure. Recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations. Basic Books. Dörner, D., & Funke, J. (2017). Complex problem solving: What it is and what it is not. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(1153), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2017.01153 Dörner, D., & Schaub, H. (1995). Handeln in Unbestimmtheit und Komplexität. The Organ, 3, 34–47. Dossey, J.  A., & Funke, J. (2016). Canadian and United States students’ performances on the OECD’s PISA 2012 problem-solving assessment. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 16(1), 92–108. https://doi. org/10.1080/14926156.2015.1119332 Fischer, A. (2015). Wisdom—The answer to all the questions really worth asking. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 5(9), 73–83. Funke, J. (2003). Problemlösendes Denken. Kohlhammer. https://doi.org/10.102 4/1016-­264X.15.4.313 Funke, J. (2012). Complex problem solving. In N. M. Seel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the sciences of learning (Vol. 38, pp.  682–685). Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­1-­4419-­1428-­6_685 Funke, J. (2020). Character formation from a psychological point of view: Search for values, search for “Sinn”. Heidelberger Jahrbücher Online, 155–170. https://doi. org/10.17885/heiup.HDJBO.2020.0.24178 Funke, J. (2021). It requires more than intelligence to solve consequential world problems. Journal of Intelligence, 9. Funke, J., Fischer, A., & Holt, D. V. (2018). Competencies for complexity: Problem solving in the twenty-first century. In E. Care, P. Griffin, & M. Wilson (Eds.), Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills. Research and applications (pp. 41–53). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­65368-­6_3 Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (Eds.). (2001). Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. MIT Press.

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Glück, J. (2019). Wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Funke (Eds.), The psychology of human thought (pp. 307–326). Heidelberg University Publishing. https://books. ub.uni-­heidelberg.de/index.php/heiup/catalog/book/470 Halpern, D. F. (2013). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking (5th ed.). Psychology Press. Hartmann, T. (2012). Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: Planning as expectation management. Planning Theory, 11(3), 242–256. https://doi. org/10.1177/1473095212440427 Leopoldina. (2020). Dritte Ad-hoc-Stellungnahme: Coronavirus-Pandemie – Die Krise nachhaltig überwinden. https://www.leopoldina.org/uploads/tx_leopublicat i o n / 2 0 2 0 _ 0 4 _ 1 3 _ C o r o n a v i r u s -­P a n d e m i e -­D i e _ K r i s e _ nachhaltig_%C3%BCberwinden_final.pdf Lewandowsky, S., & Cook, J. (2020). Das Handbuch über Verschwörungsmythen. http://sks.to/conspiracy Lomborg, B. (2007). Solutions for the world’s biggest problems. Costs and benefits. Cambridge University Press. Nocun, K., & Lamberty, P. (2020). Fake Facts: Wie Verschwörungstheorien unser Denken bestimmen. Quadriga. Simon, H. A. (1973). The structure of ill structured problems. Artificial Intelligence, 4(3–4), 181–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/0004-­3702(73)90011-­8 Sterman, J.  D. (1989). Misperceptions of feedback in dynamic decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 43(3), 301–335. https:// doi.org/10.1016/0749-­5978(89)90041-­1 Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2(4), 347–365. Sternberg, R. J. (2020a). Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. Olszewski-­ Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 203–234). Prufrock Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R.  J. (2021). Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9(15). https://doi.org/10.3390/ jintelligence9010015 Tirri, K., & Nokelainen, P. (2007). Comparison of academically average and gifted students’ self-rated ethical sensitivity. Educational Research and Evaluation, 13(6), 587–601. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803610701786053 Tuchman, B. W. (1984). The march of folly. From Troy to Vietnam. Ballantine Books. Verweij, M., Thompson, M., Verweij, M., & Thompson, M. (Eds.). (2006). Clumsy solutions for a complex world. Governance, politics and plural perceptions. Palgrave Macmillan.

10 Addressing Access, Equity, and Missingness to Transform Gifted Education Marcia Gentry

Introduction Transformational Giftedness So much of what is written concerning gifted education is on how to identify who is or who is not gifted, and accordingly, who then receives what type of program because of being identified as gifted. Less work exists on discovering and developing giftedness; on giftedness as a route to social justice; or on what outcomes should result from gifted education in general. Currently humans are facing unprecedented problems (e.g., global warming, disease, pandemic, pollution, hunger, war) that will require incredible talents to mitigate. What are we doing in the field of gifted education to develop these requisite talents among youth attending schools today? What if the primary focus in gifted education was how to develop and use gifts and talents to create a better world, to improve society, and to address the very real problems facing humanity? Clearly, the idea of transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2020) as a goal of education reaching beyond transactional giftedness, reflects the evolution of Sternberg’s thinking about successful intelligence (1997), wisdom (2000), leadership (2005), and how one’s talents might importantly be directed toward the greater good, toward solving the challenges facing humanity and Earth today. According to Sternberg (2020), individuals who develop

M. Gentry (*) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_10

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transformational giftedness make extraordinary and meaningful contributions to improve the human condition and make the world a better place. Similarly, Renzulli (1978) differentiated between schoolhouse giftedness and creative-productive giftedness by placing real-world problem solving and societal importance on the manifestation of giftedness. Who can argue with transformational giftedness, given the challenges of the twenty-first century? One might ask, what is the purpose of schooling if not to develop youth into citizens equipped to solve the challenges of the present and future. Instead, during the past three decades, it seems, at least in the U.S., the purpose of schooling has become to improve student responses to standardized or standards-based assessments. These assessments are then used as a basis to judge teaching and learning and even to decide teachers’ pay. Reducing the scope of education to how well students consume knowledge and to something that can be assessed by multiple-choice tests is shallow and dangerous. Education is the foundation of society, importantly producing a literate electorate of individuals who can tell the difference between truth and propaganda; who can distinguish between science and opinion; who can think critically and creatively to solve problems and challenges of the world; and who can develop the wisdom and values to live lives that enhance humanity. However, with so much external pressure and intrusion on education from politicians and others, one might argue that education has lost its way. The purpose of education remains, but outcomes have been co-opted. This is clearly playing out in states with governors who refuse to allow educators to require masks, let alone vaccines, during COVID 19 pandemic surges. In this chapter, I address the current inequity in and missingness from gifted education of minoritized children. I tie the pervasive and longstanding issue of inequity to the trend of gifted program elimination as a solution to inequity and make a case for fixing rather than eliminating these potentially transformative programs. Finally, I highlight several indigenous perspectives of giftedness aligned with transformational giftedness. In doing so, I explore how diversifying gifted programs can not only benefit the students but also enrich the programs themselves.

Inequity Gifted education in general needs a complete overhaul, as it remains largely unchanged and at the fringe of general education. It shows glaring and longstanding equity issues surrounding the inclusion of students who are American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Latinx, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – those

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who come from low-income families or who attend schools in poor neighborhoods, and those who are learning to speak English (Gentry et al., 2019; Peters et al., 2019). As long as inequity exists in gifted programming, two problems will persist. First, students from underserved groups who would benefit from such programs will miss out on this opportunity. Second, programs will miss out on rich, diverse perspectives and perpetuate the status quo in gifted and talented programming. This is a lose/lose proposition. For decades gifted programs have been comprised primarily of upper-income White and Asian youth who score high on any number or aptitude tests. These programs would be enriched by diversification, multicultural perspectives, and enriched interactions of participants from all income, racial, language, and cultural groups. How bad is the inequity? Pretty terrible. With colleagues, we examined census data from every public school from 2000, 2012, 2014, and 2016. This work followed up on work we published in 2009 that went back to 1978 (Yoon & Gentry, 2009), but with some more nuanced ways of looking at these data (Gentry et al., 2019). In short, we found little to no improvement in the past 20 years, consistent with the no improvement finding from 2009. So, from 1978, despite the focus in the field on finding and serving underrepresented youth, nothing has really changed. Gifted education in the United States has a long, persistent, and pervasive history of inequity in identification and services for youth who come from poverty; youth who are American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Latinx, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and/or who are learning to speak English. This long history of unequal representation in these programs, results in part from conceptualizing and identifying giftedness with a narrow dominant culture and colonialized view (Sternberg et al., in press), and using instruments for identification known to yield disparate results (Gentry et al., 2021). Similarly, education for these same children has a legacy of being inferior to that of White and Asian students and students whose families have financial means (Ambrose, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 2006). For decades, scholars have written about how students from poverty (including poor White students) and students who are “minoritized” are disadvantaged in schools, and how their talents often go unrecognized and undeveloped (e.g., Ambrose, 2013; Passow et al., 1967; Renzulli, 1973; Torrance, 1968; Witty & Jenkins, 1934). Literally volumes of literature exist about disparities in educational opportunity, educational quality, and educational outcomes, with some of that work focused on development and identification of talent. Sadly, little has changed, as underrepresentation persists. Because of these inequities in identification and services, many scholars and practitioners

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outside the field of gifted education raise concerns about racism, classism, and elitism within the field. Meanwhile, some scholars in the field of gifted education work to understand and solve inequity, as others continue to defend inequity and the undue reverence it places on standardized test scores as the gold standard of identification. They dismiss the disparate results such tests often yield and defer to these measures as truth (Gentry et al., 2021). In our recent report, Access Denied/System Failure (Gentry et al., 2019), we examined four waves of population data from the Office of Civil Rights, from 2000 through 2016 for access, equity, and missingness in gifted education. We examined access to, equity in, and missingness from gifted programs by race and school poverty status reporting findings nationally and by state. Access was defined as attending a school that identifies youth with gifts and talents. Nationally, in 2015–2016, 67.38% of students had such access, and these students attended 55.58% of schools in the country. Access has decreased since 2000 when 73% of students attend schools where they could be identified. We examined access by race and school poverty status, and in general, found that access to schools that identify students with gifts and talents is equitable. In fact, more Title I1 schools than Non-Title I schools identify students with gifts and talents. However, in these Title I schools, even though students are more likely to be more equitably identified by race, about 50% fewer students are identified as gifted than in non-Title I schools. Equity in gifted identification was examined using representation indices (RI), which are simply the percentage of a group identified as gifted divided by its percentage in the general population. The underlying assumption here is for programming to be non-discriminatory, the proportion of students from any racial group in special programs should be similar to its proportion in the general school population (MacMillan & Reschly, 1998; Peters et al., 2019). For example, if a school district is comprised of 40% Black students, but its gifted program is made up of only 20% Black students, this yields an RI of 0.50, or half the proportion of Black youth in the gifted program as in the school population. Equity was defined as having an RI of at least 0.80, a threshold we borrowed from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Known as the four-fifths rule and codified by law (29 C.F.R. § 1607.4(D), 1978), this threshold denotes adverse impact as follows, A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths or 80% of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded 1  In the United States, schools with a Title 1 status designation enroll 40% or more students who are eligible for federal meal subsidies, due to family poverty. Title 1 status is a proxy for poverty in a school.

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by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact, while greater than four-fifths rate will not generally be regarded by Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact.

An RI of 1.00 indicates perfect proportional representation. We referred to RIs greater than 1.00 as “well-represented” rather than “over-represented” as the goal is to improve representation not remove students from programming. Racial equity was so bad across the states, here we report the only equitable RIs by underrepresented group. For each state RIs by race were generated overall for schools that identify youth with gifts and talents as well as for Title I and Non-Title I schools: • For AIAN youth, RIs above 0.95 exist in Delaware, Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Hawaii (overall); Wyoming, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Oklahoma (Non-Title I); and Delaware, Alabama, North Dakota, Hawaii, Oklahoma (Title I). RIs from 0.80 to 0.949 exist in Georgia, New York (overall), Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, West Virginia (Non-Title I); and Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida (Title I). • For Black youth, RIs above 0.95 exist in no states (overall); Illinois, Michigan (Non-Title I); Utah, Wyoming, New York, Michigan (Title I). RIs from 0.80 to 0.949 exist in New York, Michigan, Utah, Arkansas (overall); no states (Non-Title I); and Arkansas, Maryland (Title I). • For Latinx youth, RIs above 0.95 exist in no states (overall); no states (Non-­ Title I); and Utah (Title I). RIs from 0.80 to 0.949 exist in Florida, Texas (overall); Louisiana, Maryland (Non-Title I); and in Florida, Colorado, Texas, California, Nevada (Title I). • For NHPI youth from the 20 states where they have sizeable populations, RIs above 0.95 exist in New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Virginia (overall); Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Utah (Non-Title I); and Virginia, New Jersey, Utah, Nevada, Georgia, Colorado (Title I). RIs from 0.80 to 0.949 exist in Utah, Georgia, California, Nevada (overall); Virginia, Georgia (Non-Title I); and in California, New York (Title I). In all the rest of the states, severe inequity exists for these underserved youth. State report cards can be found here (http://www.purdue.edu/geri). A breakdown by race, Title I status, and Locale further reveals the inequity across the country for underserved groups and for students who attend schools in Town or Rural locales. We defined missingness as students who could/should have been identified, based on the percentages identified in each state. Missing students come

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from two sources: schools in which students have no access to identification (schools that do not identify students) and schools in which some groups of students are underidentified. Nationally, in 2015–2016, 3,255,232 students were identified with gifts and talents, but between 2,092,850 and 3,635,533 were missing either because they attended a school that did not identify any children, or because they were a member of a group underidentified in schools that do identify students. This represents from 39% to 52% of students missing from gifted identification. When broken down by race, these missing students come largely from underrepresented groups with the following ranges of percentages of each race missing from gifted education identification: AIAN, 48% to 63%; Asian, 20% to 26%; Black, 63% to 74%; Latinx, 53% to 66%; NHPI, 59% to 72%; TMR, 29% to 49%; and White, 29% to 42%. Students from underserved groups are missing out on gifted education programs and their potential benefits. Equally important, but less frequently discussed, gifted programs are missing out on diverse views, talents, and contributions, as they have for decades systematically prevented full participation in these programs by students who come from low-income families; students who are Black, Indigenous, or Latinx; youth who are learning to speak and write in English; and youth with disabilities. By embracing a narrow, colonialized view of giftedness as high performance in school, the field is failing to develop the talents of these diverse youth in favor of continuing to identify White and Asian youth who perform well on standardized tests, whose parents have the social capital to advocate for them, and who are recommended by their teachers. “Colonization’s legacy is about power: who has it, and who is denied it? Power has to do with material existence and lived experience: access to and use of resources (money, housing, transportation, energy, healthy food, clean water), knowledge, influence, self-determination and economic potential and clout” (Seward, 2019). By extension special programs for gifted youth that are disproportionately filled with privileged youth reflect and amplify this legacy. The antiquated and continued use of standardized ability tests that were neither normed on nor developed for use with diverse youth perpetuate this narrow definition of giftedness (Gentry et al., 2021). This type of programming does not represent transformational giftedness, which has as its focus important contributions to improving the world. Rather it emphasizes high test scores and high academic performance and perpetuates the status quo with segregation, racism, and elitism. For every Black child identified for gifted services, three are missing. This is a staggering loss of human potential. Readers can go to https://ocrdata.ed.gov/DistrictSchoolSearch to examine Office of Civil Rights race data from their school or school district. They can

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follow the methods described in the Access Denied Report (https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/new-­publications/gifted-­education-­in-­the-­united-­ states/) and examine the extent to which students in their school are underrepresented in gifted programs. This will provide them with a baseline from which to improve. The baseline of course is just the beginning, and it will help educators understand the extent to which underrepresentation exists in their gifted programs. Programs must be grounded in meaningful actions designed to help develop the potentials of students who come from all economic, racial, and language backgrounds. Like Renzulli, 1978), I view giftedness as a behavior that can be developed among many more youth than presently are identified for services. Manifestation of this behavior involves the development of interests, creativity, knowledge, skills, and assets coupled with ethics and wisdom (Karami et al., 2020; Sternberg, 2000). Students who develop their gifts and talents make important, unique contributions to a variety of human disciplines and endeavors, and can become transformationally gifted (Sternberg, 2020). Imagine if we deliberately engaged in programming to develop this type of giftedness? Maybe we would begin to see changes in how young people grow and interact with world challenges. Maybe gifted behaviors would become the rule rather than the exception to schooling.

 rogram Elimination in a Time When Programs Are P Needed More Than Ever Proponents of gifted programs have often had to fight to gain and retain services for youth with gifts, creativity, and talents, and these programs largely serve White, Asian, and students from moderate to high-income families with plenty of social capital. In 2016, about two-thirds of students attended schools in which students were identified for gifted services (Gentry et al., 2019). However, identification protocols, programs, and services vary widely in their scope and quality, making their justification sometimes challenging. Add to this the perpetual inequity of these programs, and gifted education is at the center of a perfect storm that threatens its very existence at a time when arguably it is needed more than ever to develop and prepare students to face and solve the challenges facing society. Recently, as issues of race, social justice, and equity have become more central in discussions of society, schooling, and policing, gifted education programs have been eliminated in alarming numbers due to stark inequities (e.g., Elsen-Rooney, 2020; Furfarro & Bazzaz, 2019; Shapiro, 2019). These inequities are not new; in fact, gifted education in the United States has a long,

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persistent, and pervasive history of inequity in identification and services for youth who come from poverty; who are American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Latinx, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and/or who are learning to speak English (Gentry et al., 2019). Similarly, education for these same children has a legacy of being inferior to that for White and Asian students and students whose families have financial means (Ambrose, 2013; Grantham et al., 2020; Ladson-Billings, 2006). However, because the establishment of gifted programs is contentious, often involves parents who strongly advocate for their children’s identification, is sometimes expensive, and is almost always inequitable, it is an easy fix for predominately White administrators to say, “let’s eliminate this headache.” The issue with the wholesale elimination of gifted education services due to inequity is that doing so hurts the very populations who are underrepresented. There is plenty of evidence of the benefits of gifted education programs for underserved youth who are included in gifted education programs (e.g., Hébert, 2018; Lee et al., 2010), and removing these services means none will ever benefit again. The better solution is to overhaul programs, fix the pervasive inequity problems, and develop more talents, not to eliminate existing programs and withhold talent development opportunities from all students. Doing so is tantamount to educational neglect. Back in the 1970s, when massive inequities in sports program existed between boys’ and girls’ sports, the solution was to invest in equal programming for women’s sports, not to eliminate all sports due to inequity. Although not perfect, young women in middle school through college now have equal access to sports experiences, scholarships, and coaching due to Title IX (Education Amendments Act of 1972, 2018). Gifted education needs a Title IX (2018) approach, but to offer integrated, equitable placement of children from all groups who are currently underserved. One hundred percent of youth should attend schools with programs to discover and develop gifts, creativity, and talents of youth from all racial, language, and income groups. We should see an increase, not a decrease, in school services that improve equity in this field.

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 iversification: Examples of Native Ways D of Thinking and Defining Talent Sternberg lays out a strong case for, definition of, and actions to develop transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2021, Cite chapter This volume). Some cultures, certainly not those in mainstream public education in the U.S., have at their core philosophies or guiding principles that near this mark. In this section, I examine examples of non-colonial, Indigenous views of giftedness and talent as well as interconnectedness and strengths of cultures that have been systematically omitted from gifted education since its inception. These viewpoints and underpinnings might be key to transforming gifted education into something more meaningful for students and society. During the last decade, I have had the privilege of working with three different Native American tribes as well as reading about other indigenous ways of knowing. Through these years I have watched, listened, and asked questions. What strikes me the most is how these indigenous people approach learning, knowing, and culture. I chose to focus on their teachings and on their conceptions of giftedness here to illustrate how diversifying programs for youth with gifts, creativity, and talents and incorporating non-mainstream, non-dominant, non-White views, could serve to strengthen, broaden, and expand how we view giftedness, and how doing so might move us a step close to developing the transformational giftedness we so desperately need in this world. Some of the views I will discuss are much more community based, focused on giving back; whereas dominate capitalist views tend to focus on individual gain and use, rather than preservation of resources. I also chose to focus on these views because the European colonization of the United States, the subsequent genocide of indigenous populations, and efforts to eliminate their cultures has resulted in marginalization and invisibility of these peoples today (Alfred, Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). Further, these actions coupled with small numbers of indigenous people has resulted in little attention paid to their cultures, ways of life, or world views – all which are steeped in history, tradition, and have much to offer mainstream culture, which through capitalistic greed is destroying Earth at an alarming rate. Currently there are 573 federally recognized tribes in the U.S., each one a distinct cultural group, together comprising about 1.04% of the U.S. student population (U.S. Office for Civil Rights, 2018). Here I highlight the views and values of only a select few to illustrate what we are missing by not including diverse views in gifted education. Imagine the richness their knowledge and traditions could offer. The same could be said if programs expanded to

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include equitable numbers of Black and Latinx children. Diversifying the programs will diversify the focus, outcomes, and effects of gifted education beyond the simple “achievement oriented” focus most programs have today.

Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk Lara-Cooper (2014) studied the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk people who live on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation (HVIR) in Northern California. She conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with individuals, aged 18–95, who had various roles in the community. In addition, she surveyed 230 members of the tribes to learn about their conceptions of giftedness. From her data she described how they defined giftedness from a community perspective, inclusive of indigenous knowledge, both things they believe are essential components of developing the gifts and talents of their youth. She offered the following definition of giftedness from the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk people: Giftedness can be defined through k’winya ’nya:n-ma ’awhiniw (“the human way”), meaning to live in balance and harmony with the world by having honor and respect for community members, the environment, self, ancestors, and creation. The human way is guided by language and culture and is characterized by honor, humility, patience, gratitude, discipline, compassion, a good heart, and generosity, responsibility, and respect; maintaining relationships with the human, natural, and spiritual realms; understanding and valuing the HVIR [Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation] worldview; and making a contribution to the HVIR community. (p. 6)

Díne We work with the Díne through our youth programs at Purdue University. They approach education, in general, through the Díne Philosophy of Learning: Thinking (east), Planning (south), Life (west), and Hope (north). The Dine conceptualize giftedness very differently from European American perspectives. According to Begay and Maker (2007), there are three categories of gifts, viewed as a special maturity from the deities. Category 1 involves extraordinary transcendent power to cause effects (Ayoo Ba’iiliil). Category 2 is the skill to cause a consequence in concrete and immediate matters (Ayoo Ba’iideelni), and Category 3 centers on exceptional abilities to do or make things in the right way exemplifying desirable character values (Ayoo t’aa doo

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le’I nizhonigo iil’I). Though viewed over a lifetime, these gifts may be apparent during childhood and include, for example, empathy, leadership, self-­ discipline, skills in traditional arts, cooking, working with livestock, storytelling and teaching. In addition, the Díne people recognize the following as gifts: peacemaking, caretaking, having special tendencies for healing, and communicating with deities in ceremonies. Elders who observe the child’s gifts gradually introduce them to appropriate knowledge and skills to nurture the gifts. A special school to nurture the gifts of Díne youth, Navajo Preparatory Academy in Farmington, New Mexico, has as its focus: • To develop inquisitive, compassionate life-long learners and leaders through a challenging curriculum of international education and assessment. • To promote a strong foundation of Navajo Philosophy and a holistic world view that fosters intercultural understanding and respect in a global society; and • The mission is reflected in the IB [International Baccalaureate] Learner Profile and the School’s motto: “Yideeskaago Naat’aanii – Leaders Now and Into the Future.” (Navajoprep.com, n.d.) Their school colors represent traditional Díne beliefs and their mascot, the Eagle, is sacred to the Díne as the leader of the sky people. It represents the Academy’s goal for their students to “…reach their highest goals…[and] to soar beyond their shortfalls.” • White represents dawn, spring, corn, Kin yaa’aanii, infancy, the mind, and thinking. • Turquoise represents the midday, summer, beans, To’ahani, childhood, the body of, and motor skills. • Yellow represents twilight, autumn, squash, Todich’ii’nii, adulthood, social responsibilities, and the ability to communicate effectively. • Black represents night, Winter, tobacco, Hashtili’ishnii, elderly life, emotional stability, and patience. (Navajoprep.com, n.d.) The Díne view of giftedness is complex and different from traditional school-based definitions. This view aligns well with transformational giftedness.

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Lakota The Lakota people believe all children are gifted. The word “Wakanyeja” means children, but it translates literally into “Wankan” for sacred and “yeji” for gift (villageearth.org, n.d.). Children are placed in the center of the sacred circle for protection and for nurture. They are fragile as children, and they are the future of the people. Their educational framework is defined by Lakota virtues. These include fortitude, courage/bravery, integrity, honesty, humility, and generosity, and they tie nicely with ideas of wisdom, and transformational giftedness. Students from our partner schools on the Standing Rock Reservation took active roles in their communities. They were involved in pipeline protests and in the integration of their language and culture in their studies. Unlike in White, mainstream schools, these virtues are taught and integrated into learning at their Lakota school.

Ojibwe No word in the Ojibwe language exists for gifted (Reynolds, 1991). The Sweetgrass Ojibwe in Ontario rejected Renzulli’s Three Ring Conception of Giftedness. Rather, the Ojibwe people follow the seven grandfather teachings as guiding principles of traditional knowledge needed for community survival. Together these teachings can serve to foster giftedness, creativity, and talents among youth, but notice how these things become collective rather than the more Western individual expression of talents. Respect, love, truth, bravery, wisdom, generosity, and humility are these teachings. In our partner school in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, these teachings underpin academics and provide grounding for the children in their culture as they grow and develop. Importantly, the seven teachings must be used together, not individually, as they work in harmony to create a meaningful life (https://nhbp-­nsn.gov/ seven-­grandfather-­teachings, n.d.).

Broadening Understanding It is easy to appreciate the richness of these conceptions and teachings and to understand how such conceptions could broaden thinking about what giftedness means or does not mean across cultures. Incorporating these views and understandings as well as those from other cultures not addressed here would strengthen gifted programs, by making them more inclusive and by providing

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multiple values, principles, and perspectives. Lara-Cooper (2014) provided a roadmap of methods for replicating her work, which could be used by other cultures to develop understandings similar to those she shared from the HVIR from which to build programs. These definitions and views contrasted with any number of official (e.g., various state definitions, USDOE, NAGC) definitions highlight the dominant, and not necessarily better, view of giftedness. NAGC (n.d.), for example, has an official definition that includes verbiage about race, culture, and economics, and it reads in part, “Students with gifts and talents perform – or have the capability to perform – at higher levels compared to others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more domains. They require modification(s) to their educational experience(s) to learn and realize their potential…” Most of the state definitions involve comparison to others and focus on individual performance. Yet, in these cultural views, the individual is a part of the greater community, first, and an individual, second. Widesspread underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx youth underscores the clear need for systemic changes (e.g., Gentry et al., 2019) to develop a more inclusive and relevant programming.

 pportunity for a Revolution and Transformation O in Gifted Education This set of challenges together with diverse, collective, connected views of giftedness present an opportunity for revolutionizing and transforming gifted education to address the talent development needs of students in today’s schools. In doing so, we can create gifted programming that reaches beyond the typical pull-out or separate program in which students received advanced subject area instruction. Instead, we can develop programs that intentionally discover and develop the kinds of giftedness we see in Malala (Pakistani advocate for human rights, youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient), Greta (Swedish environmental activist, named 100 most influential women at age 18), and David Hogg (American gun control activist, Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor). Rather than being rare anomalies, young people such as these can be nurtured and developed in programs for youth with gifts, creativity, and talents by focusing on their strengths, interests, and talents and helping them identify problems, ask important questions, and set about solving the issues they identify. They can be encouraged with principles, wisdom, and ethics, to work together to help make the world a better place. Imagine

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integrating the notions about giftedness of the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk; the Díne, the Lakota, the Ojibwe, and those from hundreds of other indigenous cultures. With just these four views, commonalities emerge that transcend the high achievement, performance-based, individualist, dominate view of giftedness toward a more community and world-centered view of harmony and doing good things – something desperately needed in today’s world.

Programming Education of youth with gifts, creativity, and talents must begin in the general education program. It requires methods that focus on the strengths, interests, and talents of youth, rather than on their weaknesses and on pedantic sets of learning standards to be consumed, one-size-fits-all, at the same pace by all students. The idea of gifted education has been a contentious afterthought for most of its existence, due in part to the misconceptions about the educational needs of youth with gifts and talents and the lack of mandated services and funding. In addition, teaching age-based groups rather than individual students and focusing on meeting a set of standards as the bar for education contribute to batch processing rather than to development of individual potentials. It is time to integrate gifted education with general education so that it becomes an important part of the school day and delivery services. The longstanding myth about gifted education is that “gifted students will make it on their own.” This view means that gifted programs are extra and not really needed because smart kids, are, well, smart and they will achieve regardless of whether they receive special services. The truth is that students with gifts, creativity, and talents need help discovering and developing these things, and they need this help in school from their educators. What is also true is that wealthy parents will take care of their kids. If the public schools stop providing gifted education services, then these parents will send their students elsewhere, taking funding and programming with them. This leaves children of less wealthy parents stuck in a now-inferior public school that does not focus on talent development because these programs were eliminated in the name of equity and fairness. How unfair to deny talent development services to students who would benefit from such services. One could easily argue that schools in impoverished neighborhoods need gifted education programs more than other schools. Another issue with gifted education in its current state is the identify-then-­ serve approach. Districts spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and energy engaging in elaborate systems to identify who is and who isn’t gifted

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before delivering any services. Instead, they should program as if all students have gifts, creativity, and talents to enable those strengths, talents, and assets to emerge. Unfortunately, education has become a giant test-preparation endeavor, with little time left over for inquiry, interests, and talent development. Preparing for test-taking is the opposite of deep thinking and problem solving that the world needs and that many students crave. Time must be built into school schedules for learning and enrichment that matters and that can uncover latent talents (Renzulli et al., 2014). I submit that the schools with the highest poverty and highest concentrations of under- represented youth need the most programming for gifted, creative, and talented youth. In our Access Denied report, we found some disturbing trends (Gentry et al., 2019). First, underrepresentation and missingness were not a result of unequal access to programs; rather, even with equal access, Black and Brown students were severely underidentified in most states. Second, Title I schools identified, on average, only about 60% as many students as did non-Title I schools, despite Title I schools being more likely to have gifted programs. Finally, in many states, the higher the concentration of the underserved race (Black, Indigenous, or Latinx), the worse the representation index for that population. For example, in Alaska, where indigenous students comprise 24% of the student body, they are only 8% of the gifted students with a representation index of 0.34. In Mississippi and Louisiana, where Black youth are 50% and 44% of the population, they comprise only 30% and 25% of the gifted youth, with representation indices of 0.60 and 0.59, respectively. Similarly, in New Mexico, with 61% of its students identified as Latinx, only 43% of it gifted youth were Latinx. Developing programs for youth in Title I schools and identifying them at rates equal to those for identification of students in non-Title I schools would begin to solve equity of access. Involving these students in school, local, state, national, and global problems with educators, community leaders, and experts could help develop their talents and interests and at the same time create solutions to address important issues of concern.

Identification and Programming Gifted education is neat and tidy and has served as a basis for de facto segregation for years, with little to no improvement over decades in representation of youth from these groups in programs for youth with gifts, creativity, and talents. By our estimations, more of these youth are missing from gifted programs than are identified for services, with Black youth most missing, with

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three students missing for every one student identified, nationally. Latinx and Indigenous youth are missing at rates greater than two to one. This is a national travesty, when one considers the loss of talent potential as a cost to society, communities, and the individual. Therefore, resources need to be put into developing the potentials of students in places where talented youth are overlooked and underidentified. This will involve meeting the students where they are with culturally relevant content and culturally competent teachers (Gay, 2010). It will involve eliminating the overreliance on standardized tests that were not developed for use with these populations. These tests yield disparate results when used to identify Black, Indigenous, and Latinx student (Gentry et al., 2021). Multiple pathways to identification and services must be developed and implemented, and the most important pathway cannot be a standardized test. Programming should not involve test-preparation for diverse youth so they can “qualify” for services, but it should involve talent development for them centered on their strengths, interests, talents, and ways of knowing. Enriched programming can result in identification of students and the development of services they require to develop their potentials. NAGC’s State of the States report (Rinn et al., 2020) reveals a variety of gifted programs may focus only on academics. More than half of the time, the programs are delivered in the general classroom. Secondary schools report Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment as their top-two delivery services. In my own work with schools, programs are focused on content standards. If programs exist in elementary schools, there is often a “gifted teacher” replacing general math and reading with more challenging, enriched, and/or above grade level math and reading. Sometimes there are resource rooms or honors classes, in which units or curricula are taught, and these units may or may not address larger issues of human concern. Often, they are enriched topical units developed by the teacher. Ambrose (2021) advocated for an interdisciplinary approach to identifying and solving problems. He explained that, by using such an approach, problem solving becomes more robust, more creative, and more enriched, yielding better solutions and forging relationships among scholars and fields of study. Renzulli has long advocated for developing gifted behaviors through his enrichment triad, in which students learn to solve real world problems using advanced content and authentic methods, presenting their solutions to real-­ world audiences – a combination he calls Type III enrichment (Renzulli et al., 2014). Applying ethics and developing wisdom (Karami et al., 2020; Sternberg, 2000) in concert with learning to identify and solve important problems should be at the center of all gifted programing. Grounding the

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work of these students in their strengths, interests, and talents is a beginning toward developing students who can deliberately transform their giftedness into meaningful actions.

Conclusion I imagine a school that has at its core social action and problem solving. In that school exists a gifted program that equitably reflects the faces of the students. This program serves students’ learning needs, strengths, and interests, encouraging the developing transformational gifted behaviors that will empower them as they move through life. I imagine integrating indigenous ways of knowing, leading, connecting, and making life better with compassion, character, courage, humility, respect, generosity, and harmony as the foundation for collective good. This school and this program strive to nurture and shape students to develop transformational giftedness. As a result, its students seek to make positive changes in the world. Transformational giftedness should not be a rare occurrence in schooling, rather it should be the outcome of high-quality gifted education programming.

References 29 C.F.R. § 1607.4(D). (1978). Information on impact. Retrieved from https:// www.govregs.com/regulations/expand/title29_chapterXIV_part1607_ subjgrp21_section1607.4 Ambrose, D. (2013). Socioeconomic inequality and giftedness: Suppression and distortion of high ability. Roeper Review, 35, 81–92. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2013.766960 Ambrose, D. (2021). Interdisciplinary exploration guiding conceptions of giftedness. In R. J. Sternberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent (pp. 1–20). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­56869-­6 Begay, H., & Maker, C. J. (2007). When geniuses fail…Na-Dine (Navajo) conception of giftedness. In S. N. Phillipson & M. McCann (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness: Socio-cultural perspectives (pp. 127–168). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States. Beacon Press. Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§1681–1688 (2018). Elsen-Rooney, M. (2020, January 7). NYC Education Dept. okays Brooklyn elementary school’s plan to scrap separate ‘Gifted’ courses. New York Daily News. https://www.

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nydailynews.com/new-­y ork/education/ny-­g ifted-­t alented-­e lementary-­ brooklyn-­20200107-­sik5qabkkbdehc33jekqrulgqy-­story.html Furfarro, H., & Bazzaz, D. (2019, October 22). What’s next for Seattle schools’ gifted programs? Here’s what we know so far. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/ Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice (2nd ed.). Teacher’s College Press. Gentry, M., Gray, A., Whiting, G. W., Maeda, Y., & Pereira, N. (2019). Access denied/ system failure: Gifted education in the United States: Laws, access, equity, and missingness across the country by locale, Title I school status, and race (Report cards, technical report, and website). Purdue University/Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Gentry, M., Desmet, O. A., Karami, S., Lee, H., Green, C., Cress, S., Chowkase, A., & Gray, A. (2021). Gifted education’s legacy of high stakes ability testing: Using measures for identification that perpetuate inequity. Roeper Review, 43(4), 242–255. Grantham, T. C., Ford, D. Y., Davis, J. L., Frazier Trotman Scott, M., Dickson, K., Taradash, G., Whiting, G. W., Cotton, C. B., Floyd, E. F., Collins, K. H., Anderson, B. N., Fox, S., & Roberson, J. J. (2020). Get your knee off our necks: Black scholars speak out to confront racism against black students in gifted and talented education. The Consortium for Inclusion of Underrepresented Racial Groups in Gifted Education. Hébert, T. (2018). An examination of high-achieving first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62, 96–110. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0016986217738051 Karami, S., Ghahremani, M., Parra-Martinez, F., & Gentry, M. (2020). A polyhedron model of wisdom: A systematic review of the wisdom studies in psychology, management and leadership, and education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2020.1815263 Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35, 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x035007003 Lara-Cooper, K. (2014). “K’winya’nya:n-ma’awhiniw”: Creating a space for indigenous knowledge in the classroom. Journal of American Indian Education, 53(1), 3–22. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/43608711 Lee, S.-Y., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Peternel, G. (2010). The efficacy of academic acceleration for gifted minority students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 54(3), 189–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986210369256 MacMillan, D. L., & Reschly, D. J. (1998). Overrepresentation of minority students: The case for greater specificity or reconsideration of the variables examined. Journal of Special Education, 32, 15–24. [National Association of Gifted Children]. (n.d.). NAGC. https://www.nagc.org/ resources-­publications/resources/what-­giftedness

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[Navajo Preparatory School]. (n.d.). Navajo Prep. https://navajoprep.com/academics/gifted-­talented/ Passow, A. H., Goldberg, M., & Tannenbaum, A. J. (1967). Education of the disadvantaged. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Peters, S. J., Gentry, M., Whiting, G. W., & McBee, M. T. (2019). Who gets served in gifted education?: Demographic representation and a call for action. Gifted Child Quarterly, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986219833738 Renzulli, J. S. (1973). Talent potential in minority group students. Exceptional Children, 39, 437–444. Renzulli, J. S. (1978). What makes giftedness? Reexamining a definition. Phi Delta Kappan, 60(3), 180–184, 261. Renzulli, J. S., Gentry, M., & Reis, S. M. (2014). Enrichment clusters: A practical plan for real-world, student-driven learning. Prufrock. Reynolds, K. J. (1991). Native Conceptions of Giftedness. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario. Rinn, A. N., Mun, R. U., & Hodges, J. (2020). 2018–2019 state of the states in gifted education. National Association for Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted. https://www.nagc. org/2018-­2019-­state-­states-­gifted-­education [Seven grandfather teachings]. (n.d.). Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi. https://nhbp-­nsn.gov/seven-­grandfather-­teachings/ Seward, M. (2019, April 11). Decolonizing the classroom: Step 1. National Council of Teachers of English, Diversity. https://ncte.org/blog/2019/04/decolonizing-­the-­ classroom/. Shapiro, E. (2019). Desegregation plan: Eliminate all gifted programs in New York. The New YorkTimes.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/nyregion/gifted-­programs-­nyc-­ Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Successful intelligence. Plume. Sternberg, R. J. (2000). Wisdom as a form of giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 44(4), 252–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698620004400406 Sternberg, R. J. (2005). WICS: A model of positive educational leadership comprising wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Educational Psychology Review, 17(3), 191–262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-­005-­5617-­2 Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42, 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/0278319 3.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R. J. (2021). Transformational giftedness: Who’s got it and who does not?. In R. J. Sternberg, D. Ambrose, & S. Karami (Eds.), Transformational giftedness: Identifying and developing gifted children who will make the world a better place (pp. X–X). Palgrave Macmillan. Torrance, E. P. (1968). Finding hidden talents among disadvantaged children. Gifted Child Quarterly, 12, 131–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698626801200301 U.S. Office for Civil Rights. (2018). The civil rights data collection. U.S. Department of Education, Author.

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[Village Earth]. (n.d.). Sacred Lakota Children. http://www.villageearth.org/ pages/global-­affiliate-­network/projects-­pineridge-­reservation/a-­message-­from-­ wakanyeja-­pawicayapi-­inc-­porcupine-­sd Witty, P. A., & Jenkins, M. D. (1934). The educational achievement of a group of gifted Negro children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 25, 585–597. https://doi. org/10.1037/h0075535 Yoon, S., & Gentry, M. (2009). Racial and Ethnic Representation in Gifted Programs: Current Status of and Implications for Gifted Asian American Students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 53(2), 121–136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986208330564

11 Through the Dąbrowski Lens: Wisdom, Transformational Giftedness, and the Personality Ideal Amanda J. Harper

Utopia has been defined as “a perfect society in which people work well with each other and are happy” (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Pure fantasy? Well, perhaps; however, it is more than reasonable to consider that humanity can strive toward an existence that is considerably closer to that ideal than is presently the case – one where there is a fundamental respect and value for all peoples and the planet we inhabit. Of course, the million-dollar question is: How? The answer will always be embedded in human behaviors, which are governed by human beliefs and values. There are many examples from the twentieth century where humanity has demonstrated less than ideal uses of its capabilities (Karami et al., 2020). One would hope that from these indictments there are changed behaviors into the future, perhaps as a result of our 20/20 retrospective vision. History and hindsight show us clearly that knowledge, intelligence, and power are not enough to ensure anything close to a Utopian future. Humanity is thankfully a rich kaleidoscope of peoples, each with individual needs, desires, abilities, and inclinations for their respective lives; and through this, we have hope for the future. As educators, we see learners who are passionate leaders, who care for humanity, who are developing ethical behaviors or may already have a strong sense of justice, and who are intent on making the world a better place for all.

A. J. Harper (*) University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_11

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There may well also be people of all ages, not just those in our classrooms, who are more hidden – those who, for whatever reasons, don’t make their desires in this regard easily visible. How do we identify and support all these young people, including those who may be hidden? What are some of the key traits they may display? How do we identify the capacity of these individuals to participate in the transformation of our world, whether it be at a global, national, local, or community level? How does this relate to gifted education, to the young people identified as gifted, and to us as educators? Ambrose and Sternberg (2016a, b), with colleagues, present two works focusing on the importance of creative intelligence in problem solving, particularly in consideration of both the larger challenges facing humanity as a global community; and the place of gifted education into the twenty-first century. These works advocate for a new approach, based on some stark realities of life in our present times, and the need for humanity to improve. Concurrently Sternberg (2016) introduced his Active Concerned Citizens and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model for universities, which evolved into a new method of identifying giftedness. Placing importance on factors beyond intelligence as measured by IQ tests, and engagement with this model, may help educators better equip gifted learners to engage with the future world (Sternberg, 2017). Through ACCEL, Sternberg advocates that a core goal of gifted education activities should be to support the development of the next generation of active concerned citizens and ethical leaders (ACCEL)…[noting] that the greatest problem we have in our society is not a lack of leaders with high IQs or sterling academic credentials but rather a lack of transformational leaders who behave in ethical ways to achieve, over the long term as well as the short term, a common good for all. (2017, p. 157)

Underpinning the ACCEL model is the construct of wisdom, where an individual’s knowledge and skills are specifically used in transformational ways, through the inclusion of positive ethical values. From this foundation stems the conceptions of “transactional giftedness” and “transformational giftedness” that were introduced into the gifted education literature (Sternberg, 2020b, p. 231). Transformational giftedness is transformative. A transformationally gifted person will, at their core, be altruistic in motivation, and desire to make a positive, meaningful contribution toward the betterment of the world. A transactionally gifted individual can still, of course, make a positive contribution toward the greater good of humanity. Their motivation, however, will be rooted in a rewards-based system, whether that be, for example, personal accolades, remuneration, or appeasing a sense of obligation from previously being identified as ‘gifted’. Sternberg, in his chapter in this book,

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provides a list of eight transformationally gifted young people, all of whom are inspirational humans. He rightly points out that no one focusses on their IQ scores; and in fact, their IQs aren’t really relevant. The synthesis of this thinking displays an ideal vision – one where our planet’s future, and that of humanity, is guided by transformationally gifted leaders, and whose ethical actions are based in wisdom. Neither transactional nor transformational giftedness result from being born in a certain way; rather, the form of giftedness is shaped from the “interaction between a person and the forms of instruction, mentorship, role-modelling, and socialization the person receives during the course of their development” (Sternberg, 2020b, p. 231). This is not to suggest, however, that any gifted individual who is guided and mentored in a transformational manner will, indeed, adopt that mode of being. This ideal in turn, produces three fundamental questions: 1. What is wisdom? 2. What are the behaviors and characteristics associated with wisdom that may be displayed by our gifted learners; and 3. How else can we identify these learners and nurture these behaviors and characteristics as they develop? In this chapter I reflect upon the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom as proposed by Karami et al. (2020) and the importance of the behaviors and characteristics identified with the concept of wisdom. I then introduce Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s five-level Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) (Dąbrowski, 1966, 1967). The intricacies of Dąbrowski’s theory provide an additional way of understanding the behaviors and experiences of our gifted learners, and with this understanding comes the capacity to nurture and support their developmental process.

The Polyhedron Model of Wisdom The Polyhedron Model of Wisdom (PMW) (Karami et al., 2020) was developed from a systematic review of fifty of the most cited, peer-reviewed journal articles from the disciplines of psychology, management and leadership, and education; where the construct of wisdom was included in the title and key words. The analysis of the review data highlighted seven clusters of sub-constructs within the larger notion of ‘wisdom’. Each of these sub-­constructs were identified as a ‘component’ of wisdom. Consideration of both the broader construct of wisdom, and the components within the PMW provides some of

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the answers to the previous questions (What is wisdom? and What are the behaviors and characteristics associated with wisdom that may be displayed by our gifted learners?). Component One: Knowledge Management  This component suggests that “a wise person not only possesses broad knowledge of the world and specialized forms of knowledge, but he or she also has the ability to effectively choose and apply the appropriate knowledge in varying situations” (Karami et al., 2020, p. 246). This process highlights the individual’s capacity for reflection and discernment, plus the ability to differentiate between gaining knowledge (acquisition) and the appropriate use of that knowledge (management). Component one also addresses the need for critical analysis of knowledge (which may be useful in identifying ‘fake news’ – a phenomenon that has appeared in recent years through both social and mainstream, media); and for people to be “agents in their own education” (Karami et al., 2020, p. 247). Component Two: Self-regulation  This is a complex construct that involves a fundamental capacity for self-awareness, discernment, and adjustment across multiple facets of one’s own self – including, but not limited to, emotion, intention, cognition, and behaviors. Within the PMW considerable importance is placed on the process of reflectivity within self-regulation (Karami et al., 2020, p. 247). The association between the capacity for self-­ reflection as self-regulation is also reflected in a number of other instances, for example the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (Webster, 2003, 2007) and the concept of insight within the San Diego Wisdom Scale (Thomas et al., 2019). Self-regulation, and its inherent capacity for self-awareness, discernment, and adjustment, is fundamental if an individual is to demonstrate ethical leadership and wisdom, or make a transformational difference to the world. Component Three: Altruism and Moral Maturity  This component brings together altruism and moral maturity, and associated ethical conduct and prosocial behaviors. The intersection of altruism, ethics, moral behaviors, and giftedness has been the subject of much consideration within the literature (Ambrose & Cross, 2009); however, it is also appropriate here to associate empathy with this group of traits (de Waal, 2008; Harper, 2013). Component Four: Openness and Tolerance  “Openness and tolerance are key for a world in need of peace and mutual understanding” (Karami et al., 2020, p. 249). Some authors presented by Karami et al. in Component four suggest that openness and tolerance lead to valuing relativism. There will always be room for continued academic discourse regarding the definition of

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relativism. However, what is common through the works presented is the importance of understanding and accepting that humans as individuals, and the human experience, are all different, and as such, openness and tolerance are vital, especially given the increasing globalization of our world. Component Five: Sound Judgement and Decision Making  It is difficult to separate sound judgement and decision-making from the higher-order constructs of ethical behavior, moral thinking and in turn, wisdom. It could be argued that for a judgement or decision to be wise, it must also incorporate knowledge-based processes such as those outlined in Component one: Knowledge Management, along with ethical and moral considerations. Whilst there is some dispute regarding an individual’s capacity to effectively adopt another’s perspective (Bandura, 1991; Davis, 1980, 1983), the analysis of the literature underpinning the current Component (Sound judgement and decision making) also highlights the importance of perspective taking as integral to the construct of wisdom. If a goal of wisdom is indeed to achieve an outcome for the “common good” (Karami et al., 2020, p. 250), then an authentic understanding and appreciation of, perhaps even empathy for, the situations relating to all parties must be embedded into sound judgement and decision-making processes. Component Six: Intelligence and Creative Thinking  It is not new that these two constructs are brought together. In 2016 Ambrose and Sternberg curated two influential volumes addressing both creative intelligence and giftedness, and their respective places in the twenty-first century; and Karami et al. (2020), in their analysis of wisdom studies also identify numerous instances where these constructs are united. Creative thinking and intelligence are fundamental attributes for transformationally gifted learners who may provide novel, wise, and ethical solutions to world problems. Component Seven: Dynamic Balance and Synthesis Translated into Action  Importantly, key elements in Component seven of the PMW are actionable outcomes and change, that come about as a result of the processes within the combined Components. Wisdom itself is greater than the sum of all its parts, and at its very essence, the proportions of the component structure are fluid and malleable in order to allow a person to respond reflectively and appropriately to any given situation or circumstance. “When wisdom is required, dynamic balance draws on the six elements to meet a need at the right moment and the right place, for the right reasons and purposes” (Karami et al., 2020, p. 251). The PMW is both developmental and experience-driven. Powerfully, it “is the lessons learned from the successes and failures that make

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it useable” (2020, p. 252). If our gifted learners are able to harness and demonstrate a ‘dynamic balance and synthesis’ and follow up with appropriate actions, then they will indeed be demonstrating the potential to make a transformative difference into the future. Having reflected upon the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom and its components (Karami et al., 2020), and discussed their relevance to transformationally gifted learners, I will now introduce the Theory of Positive Disintegration. This is a complex theory of personality development, which provides an additional, valuable approach for educators of gifted learners to use, as we attempt to identify students who have the potential to make a positive, transformative difference to our world.

The Theory of Positive Disintegration Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) is a grand theory of personality development, comprising five levels of development that are non-ontogenetic, meaning they are not based on biological maturation or age levels. In considering Dąbrowski’s theory, it is pertinent to consider its genesis. Dąbrowski lived through World War I and was impacted significantly by many experiences, not the least of which was a battle near his hometown. Reflecting on his experiences, he said: The juxtaposition of inhuman forces and inhuman humans with those who were sensitive, capable of sacrifice, courageous, gave a vivid panorama of a scale of values from the lowest to the highest. (Dąbrowski, 1975, p. 233)

It is this juxtaposition, the contrasting scale of values, and the processes of development that Dąbrowski explains through his theory. Dąbrowski uses a number of terms within the TPD. Many of these may exist in contemporary usage but have a slightly different meaning within the TPD context. The first of these is ‘disintegration’. At its core, this refers to the collapsing or significant questioning of an individual’s understanding of their own place in the world, their values, and their own sense of self-worth. This collapsing or questioning can range from a ‘minor personal meltdown’ through to a ‘major existential crisis.’ Disintegration will most often resolve upwards or downwards. If the resolution is downwards, the individual will re-integrate at the lower level. If the resolution is upwards, this is a positive disintegration with movement to (usually) the next higher level. The catalysts and mechanisms that trigger and facilitate disintegration will be discussed later.

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Levels of Development The numbering of the five levels of development within the TPD reflect their place in the process of development, with Level I being the lowest, and Level V being the highest. These are depicted in the following table along with a brief summary. Additional detail is provided following the Table 11.1. At the centre of the TPD are two “qualitatively different phases of mental development…[The lower phase, or portion, is] unconscious or only partly conscious and is determined by biological forces or the influences of the external environment” (Dąbrowski, 1970, p. 5). The higher phase is self-aware and deliberate, cognizant of the developing self, with a sense of place in the Table 11.1  Levels of development within the Theory of Positive Disintegration Level Name V

IV

III

II

I

Secondary integration

Abbreviated description

Only a small number of people will ever achieve this level. There is no internal conflict around how one should live life because behaviors and values are in full alignment. Dąbrowski (1996, p. 20) describes people who have achieved this level as the epitome of “universal compassion and self-sacrifice” Self-development moves to the forefront of an individual’s Organized life. This is not sporadic, but focused and conscious, guided multilevel disintegration by a clear set of personal values, aims and life goals that are independently shaped, irrespective of peer norms Greater awareness of the inner self versus the external Spontaneous world, highlighted by introspection, self-assessment, and a multilevel disintegration sense of becoming a better version of yourself Awareness of higher and lower levels in terms of values, ethics, and behaviors Regret for past failings and determination to ‘improve oneself’ in the future, however personal crises relating to these feelings are spontaneous Unilevel This is a transitional phase, with periods of brief crises, with disintegration the opportunity for reflection on the purpose of one’s life Frustration and uncertainty regarding choices/decisions/ course of future action People experiencing Unilevel disintegration will generally either resolve back to primary integration, or move up to spontaneous multilevel disintegration Primary Needs are primary: Food, shelter, money integration Egocentric behaviors and stereotypic responses Desire to ‘fit in’ with a peer group; with little or no desire or capacity to differ from that peer group Responsibility and blame always eternalized to others, for example “You’re wrong, I’m right” or “Look what you made me do”

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environment and awareness of the developmental power of authentic, deliberate choices. The higher phase reflects the non-ontogenetic nature of development. It is in this phase where the mental, or psychological, forces of an individual combine with the individual’s value system to determine the direction and degree of development (Mendaglio, 2008a). These phases exist at either end of a continuum (Tillier, Foreword in Dąbrowski, 2017). The following section elaborates further upon each level of development. Level I: Primary Integration  This level is akin to that with which a child is born. Primary needs such as food, sleep and basic movement, are central instinctive needs that must be met (Dąbrowski, 2015). For the average person, behavior at this level “is controlled by a combination of primitive instincts and drives and by the external forces of socialization” (Tillier, 2018, p. 55). Whilst some people will grow beyond these structures as they develop, others will retain these behaviors throughout adulthood and are unaware of, and unresponsive to, other aspects and levels of reality. At this level, both cognitive structures and emotional responses are automatic and inflexible. People functioning at this level lack the capacity for internal conflict, but will externalise conflict and responsibility (Rankel, 2008) and display an egocentric demeanor with little, if any, inhibition (Miller & Silverman, 1987). Level II: Unilevel Disintegration  This is the first stage of disintegration. This level involves a time of inner conflict, identity confusions, even anxiety or despair. Within Unilevel Disintegration, an individual may have heightened sensitivity to external factors, and experience mood fluctuations or swings, from extreme enthusiasm to a state of depression (Dąbrowski, 1996). These emotional responses may trigger a limited capacity for decision making. At this level, the sensations and transitions are linked to the biological life cycle and are not related to the more developed autonomous transformations that occur at later levels. Level II is very much a transition phase from Level I and either leads to further disintegration at Level III or to a regression back to the stability of Primary Integration. Level III: Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration  This is a pivotal level where the individual’s hierarchy of values begins to emerge and starts to influence their behavior. This change occurs as a result of self-­reflection, evaluation, and a clearer, yet still developing, view of the ‘type of person’ one wants to be. With this emergence may come significant personal inner struggle or turbulence; however, this inner struggle is essential for development (Dąbrowski, 1976). An awareness arises of the conflict between the ideal and

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existing self, and the individual, when reflecting on their own behaviors “can make conscious and volitional choices about what to emphasize and what aspects to inhibit” (Tillier, 2008, p. 106). These behaviors are molded by a hierarchy of values and life goals that emerge and transform over time as the individual progresses through the positive disintegration process. Movement to a higher level as a result of this inner struggle, rather than regressing to a lower one, Dąbrowski called ‘positive maladjustment’. At Level III, behavioral and attitudinal changes are autonomous and conscious, embedded within the emotional discovery of self and frequently accompanied by existential exploration (Harper & Clifford, 2017). Additionally, Dąbrowski (1996, p. 111) suggested that at this level people may experience an increasing “enthusiasm for moral, esthetic, and emotional values, [and have an] attitude of respect for eminent people”. The capacity for an individual to ‘step out of themselves’ to view their place in the world both subjectively and objectively, is foundational to the development of a hierarchical understanding of the world. Dąbrowski referred to this as ‘subject-object in oneself ’ and this, combined with the hierarchical view is also the basis upon which an individual’s ultimate ideal persona, which Dąbrowski called the Personality Ideal, will be shaped. The capacity to view and experience the hierarchical nature of the world is what Dąbrowski called ‘multilevelness’. These two experiences – subject-object in oneself and multilevelness – are key touchpoints between the TPD and transformationally gifted learners, who are developing the components of wisdom. Level IV: Organised Multilevel Disintegration  Here the individual takes conscious control over life and personal development. Examples are individual and personal, and will therefore differ from person to person, but may include choosing a different peer group, undertaking further learning (though not necessarily formal study), consciously walking away from situations of conflict in which they may have previously engaged, or seeking time and space for quiet contemplation or meditation. Level IV also sees an increase of stability in an individual’s hierarchy of values, and provides a platform for the reduction of inner conflict, as behaviors align more closely with the Personality Ideal. With the stabilization of the value system comes increased self-­awareness and the capacity for self-analysis. Level V: Secondary Integration  This level is only ever achieved by a very small number of people, where they reach the pinnacle of human development. In this level, there is a transcendental quality to personality and the human essence, hence Dąbrowski (1996, p. 20) describes it as the epitome of

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“universal compassion and self-sacrifice.” This level is also characterized by an “inner peace” (Dąbrowski, 2015, p. 193) that comes from the union of the very essence of one’s life with the Personality Ideal – they are ‘at one’. Dąbrowski refers to this achievement of ‘oneness’ as achieving ‘Personality’. This is the ultimate goal of the process of positive disintegration, and at this point, all elements that contribute towards the positive disintegration process cease to be individually identifiable.

Progression Through the Levels Transitioning between levels of Dąbrowski’s TPD is not automatic, is neither achieved by all individuals or is it related to chronological age. Additional aspects of the theory interweave to provide the mechanisms for movement between the levels. These are categorized into three factors of development: heredity, environmental and social influences, and the Third Factor. They are a complex matrix of influencing factors that may facilitate the transition of an individual through some, or in a small number of cases, all of the five levels of development. The following Figure aims to clarify these interactions and relationships, although it does introduce some concepts whose definition is beyond the scope of this chapter. Each factor is depicted at the top level of Fig. 11.1. Each factor is equally important, so they all appear at the same level. This figure, based on a graphical map of the Three Factors of Development (Harper et al., 2017), includes the relationship with the Disposing and Directing Center that sits within the Inner Psychic Milieu.

 xplanation of Some Elements Within the Three Factors E of Development The Factors of Development  The First Factor contains two elements: an individual’s inherited endowment, called the Developmental Instinct; and the Developmental Potential, which “determines what level of development a person may reach if the physical and environmental conditions are optimal” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 10). The Second Factor refers to aspects of the environmental and social world that may influence an individual’s development. The Third Factor is “the agent of conscious choice of development, seen as the inner self that coordinates an individual’s mental life” (Mendaglio, 2008a, p. 31). This Third Factor influences behavior through inner voices and self-­

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Fig. 11.1  Three factors of development

talk, governed by the principled development of conscience, all-the-while moving closer to the Personality Ideal. Overexcitabilities  There are five types of overexcitability (OE): emotional, imaginational, intellectual, psychomotor, and sensual. An individual’s reactions are considered an overexcitability when they are “over and above average in intensity, duration and frequency” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 71). As with all

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human reactions, overexcitabilities will manifest differently at the varying levels of development, as they are multilevel constructs. Not everyone will exhibit overexcitabilities; they may be d ­ isplayed at varying intensities. The following Table describes some of the ways the overexcitabilities may appear at the varying levels. They do not appear independently at Level V, as the ‘oneness’ of Personality sees all contributing elements merge (see Table 11.2). Some overexcitabilities indicate a stronger Developmental Potential than others. Imaginational, intellectual, and emotional OEs are considered essential for development and are sometimes known as ‘the big three’ (Mendaglio, 2008b). Emotional OE has particular significance. Higher levels of Table 11.2  Overexcitabilities within the Theory of Positive Disintegration OE type

Abbreviated description

Sensual

“Sensual overexcitability is a function of a heightened experiencing of sensory pleasure. It manifests itself as a need for comfort, luxury, esthetics, fashions, superficial relations with others… In children {it may manifest as a need for cuddling, kissing, clinging… showing off.” (1996, p. 72)

Psychomotor

“Psychomotor overexcitability is a function of an excess of energy and manifests itself, for example, in rapid talk, restlessness, violent games, sports, pressure for action, or delinquent behavior.” (1996, p. 72)

Sample of manifestations at the varying levels of development Level IV

Esthetic sensitivity, responsiveness to beauty in nature, art or music. Contributes to the expression of empathy Level Increasing introversion, less III exhibitionism, inner conflict regarding lower-­ level behavior Level Awareness of one’s sexuality. II Egocentrism in sexual activity begins to weaken Level I Excessive cuddling and kissing, excessive eating Level Psychomotor OE “provides IV the dynamics and energy for carrying out a developmental program of action.” (1996, p. 76) Level Psychomotor OE becomes III more strategic and defined, harnessing activity and busyness in a more productive manner Level Activity, whilst still II significant, becomes a little more controlled Level I Violent irritability and uncontrollable temper, restlessness, need for frequent job changes, need to be constantly on the go (continued)

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Table 11.2 (continued) OE type

Abbreviated description

Emotional

“Emotional overexcitability is a function of experiencing emotional relationships… [that] can manifest themselves as strong attachments to persons, living things, or places… [and] are not developmentally significant unless the experiential aspect of relationship is present.” (1996, p. 72)

Sample of manifestations at the varying levels of development Level IV

Emotional OE “gives rise to elevated states of consciousness and profound empathy, depth and exclusivity of relationships of love and friendship. There is a sense of transcending and resolving of one’s personal experiences in a more universal context.” (1996, p. 77) Level Emotional OE brings the III “differentiation of a hierarchy of feelings, growth of exclusivity of feelings and…[lasting] relationship of friendship and love.” (1996, p. 76) Level “Fluctuations, sometime II extreme, between inhibition and excitation, approach and avoidance, high tension and relaxation or depression…feelings of [both] inferiority and superiority.” (1996, p. 76) Level I “Aggressiveness, irritability, lack of inhibition, lack of control, envy, unreflective periods of isolation, or an incessant need for tenderness and attention.” (1996, p. 76) (continued)

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Table 11.2 (continued) OE type

Abbreviated description

Sample of manifestations at the varying levels of development

Level Imaginational “Imaginational IV overexcitability in its ‘pure’ form manifests itself through association of images and impressions, inventiveness, use of image and metaphor in verbal expression, strong and sharp visualization.” (1996, p. 72) Level III

“The multilevel characteristics of imaginational overexcitability described for level III become intensified…They serve as tools of conscious development of personality.” (1996, p. 77) “Imaginational overexcitability becomes more closely associated with emotional and intellectual forms…Dreams and visions of the ideal. Creative instinct makes contact with the instinct of self-perfection.” (1996, p. 77) Level Imagination overexcitability II may stimulate “intense visions of the future, egocentric fantasy (self-­ delusion) and anxiety states…[including frequent] dreams and daydreaming, interest in dream symbolism.” (1996, p. 77) Level I Imaginational OE may manifest in a heightened sense of self-importance. There is no evidence of humility. Public accolades and honoring are desired for oneself, based on the created self-image. (continued)

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Table 11.2 (continued) Sample of manifestations at the varying levels of development

OE type

Abbreviated description

Intellectual

“Intellectual overexcitability is Level IV manifested as a drive to ask probing questions, avidity for knowledge, theoretical thinking, reverence for logic, Level preoccupation with theoretical problems.” (1996, III p. 72)

Intellectual interests are vast and of a higher-order, expanding upon the desire for meaning within Level III. Intellectual OE “enhances the development of awareness and self-­ awareness. It develops the need for finding the meaning of knowledge and of human experience…Development of intuitive intelligence.” (1996, p. 78) Level Intellectual activity “can be II extensive and brilliant but without systematization and evaluation of knowledge, to analyze…or to arrive at a deeper synthesis.” (1996, p. 78) Level I “Intellectual activity consists mainly of skillful manipulation of data and information (‘a brain like a computer’). Intelligence rather than intellectual overexcitability serves as an instrument subservient to the dictates of primitive drives.” (1996, p. 78)

Note: This Table is derived from original source material in the text Multilevelness of Emotional and Instinctive Functions (Dąbrowski, 1996, pp. 71–78)

development are only achieved “if in the constellation of all five forms the emotional is the strongest” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 182). Advanced Emotional OE, enveloped in humility, ethical conduct, and empathy as described by Dąbrowski, may provide a means by which transformationally gifted learners can be identified. As we reflect on the relevance of the overexcitabilities to transformationally gifted learners, it is important to clearly distinguish between ‘intelligence’ and Intellectual OE. Being ‘smart’ or gaining a high score on an IQ test is not enough to claim Intellectual OE. Intellectual OE, especially as the individual

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moves in and around Level III (see Table 11.2, above; and Fig. 11.1 for the broader Levels of Development), will be based in motivation to make the world a better place. Using intelligence for selfish gain or ego-driven motivations are the polar opposite of a higher order Intellectual OE. Dąbrowski (1996, p. 78) reinforces this, saying that, at Level I, intelligence “rather than intellectual overexcitability serves as an instrument subservient to the dictates of primitive drives.” So, using the characteristics of the Overexcitabilities at their higher levels, with a particular focus on ‘the big three’ (Emotional, Imaginational, and Intellectual), along with other supporting behavioral examples, such as developmental dynamisms, may be highly significant in the process of identifying learners with the potential to become transformationally gifted. Dynamisms  A dynamism is a “biological or mental force controlling behavior and its development” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 294). This moniker is indicative of the sense of motion that underpins the TPD. There are two groups of dynamisms: dissolving dynamisms, responsible for the ‘disintegration’ part of the process, and developmental dynamisms which control the ‘positive’ rebuilding, based on the developing Personality Ideal. However, dynamisms are not transformative on their own, and are tied to, and part of, the positive disintegrative process. As with all human responses, the dynamisms can also be mapped to each level of development. The presence or absence of these dynamisms also help identify the developmental level of an associated ­behavior. For example, Dąbrowski lists syntony and empathy as two developmental dynamisms. Syntony is not a word that regularly appears in contemporary usage, however Dąbrowski (1970, p. 2) compared it to “the gregarious instinct in animals.” On the Syntonic Continuum (Harper & Clifford, 2019), syntony is a low level response from which a higher level ‘empathy’ emerges. Syntony is associated with a ‘herd mentality’, tinged with a ‘survival of the fittest’ approach at Level I. Empathy represents a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of others’ situations, and begins to emerge in the latter part of Level III. Importantly, Dąbrowski (1996, p. 70) states: Growth of empathy is one of the most powerful developmental dynamics and one which most clearly shows the progressive and hard won change from narrow egocentrism to an all-­encompassing universal love. Empathy grows out of the strong emotions of search for the meaning of life and finding it in concern and service to others, and out of the need for self-perfection as a human being. Self-­

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perfection is not possible in a vacuum but…grows out of conflicts with oneself which produce an increase in caring and appreciation of other, and a deeper humility within oneself.

Consider again the list of 8 young role models presented by Sternberg in his chapter in this book. Their actions are the epitome of empathy at the highest levels demonstrating Emotional OE. Again, their IQ is not important, however I would argue that their Intellectual OE and Emotional OE most definitely are relevant and contribute to their continued authentic development. The characteristics Dąbrowski describes for empathy are exactly those we would wish to harness in transformationally gifted learners, and as such we can use these characteristics, along with those associated with higher level overexcitabilities, to identify transformationally gifted learners.

Linking Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration to Wisdom As previously noted, additional qualities beyond knowledge, intelligence, and power are required to make the world a better place. The construct of wisdom, however, may provide this missing link. The capacity to identify people with the potential to develop wisdom, and to enhance, support, and encourage that potential, may allow us to help influence the shape of the world’s future. The notion that wisdom requires more than IQ is consistent with the TPD: Authentic wisdom involves more than intellectual knowledge. It presupposes developmental transformations of the emotional and instinctive structure of a human person. It has to draw from empathic insights and deep emotional, imaginational and intuitive resources. It has to spring from the drama of personal development and distressing experiences of the process of positive disintegration. (Kawczak, 1970, p. 16)

So, the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom (Karami et al., 2020) brings together seven components of wisdom as identified through the previously-mentioned systematic review, Dąbrowski’s TPD also describes wisdom as a higher order condition for attaining the Personality Ideal. The following table demonstrates the relationships between the TPD and the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom (PMW) (Table 11.3).

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Table 11.3  Examples of touchpoints between the Theory of Positive Disintegration and the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom PMW component Examples of TPD touchpoints 1. Knowledge management

• Aligns closely with the higher-level manifestations of Intellectual OE • Links to the developmental dynamism ‘education-of-oneself’ that may appear in Level III, but is most active and relevant in Level IV Conclusion: Altruistic motivation will be a driver of individuals displaying Intellectual OE characteristics at Level III and Level IV. They will be keen for new knowledge, and understand its appropriate application, but this will not be undertaken for egocentric reasons, so people displaying these characteristics may also achieve the ‘Knowledge Management’ component of the PMW. 2. Self-regulation • Both emotional-regulation and self-regulation, as mentioned in the PMW, require the capacity for self-reflection, which is an integral process within the TPD. Importantly, the PMW specifies that the capacity for reflecting on one’s life is integral to the ‘Self-Regulation’ component. Conclusion: The elements within the ‘Self-Regulation’ component align extremely closely to the notion of ‘subject-object in oneself’ from the TPD, and are also tied to the development of empathy. Through this scrutiny and desire to be a better version of one’s self comes an increased understanding of others. These characteristics appear as an individual moves from Level III and into Level IV of the TDP and suggest achievement of the ‘Self-Regulation’ component of the PMW. 3. Altruism and • The behaviors and emotional responses described by Karami moral maturity et al. (2020), along with the construct of empathy, are particularly significant within the TPD. • Level IV is also a significant level for the emergence of true altruistic tendencies. Prior to this any glimmer of altruistic behavior is clouded by personal gain, and only in Level III is there the beginning of a preparedness toward self-sacrifice. • People functioning at Level III or higher of the TPD will demonstrate behaviors that step away from mindless acceptance of societal norms. Conclusion: Individuals who are demonstrating considered ethical behaviors, true empathy, and active contributions toward the common good without personal reward, within a community, region, nation, or globally, are therefore likely to be functioning at Level III or IV of Dąbrowski’s TPD. They may also achieve the ‘Altruism and moral maturity’ component of the PMW, traits which align with the descriptions of transformationally gifted people. (continued)

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Table 11.3 (continued) PMW component Examples of TPD touchpoints 4. Openness and tolerance

• This underlying sentiment is echoed in Dąbrowski’s TPD through identification with others, and the emergence of true empathy in the latter part of Level III and maturing into Level IV. A cognitive and conscious desire to know and understand others (Dąbrowski, 1996; Mendaglio, 2008a) is fundamental to identification, as it emerges in the higher levels of development, • Dąbrowski (1996, pp. 36–37) gives importance to a “growth of understanding and of feeling for others…and genuine acceptance of others as unique persons”. As a person transitions from Level IV to V there is a development of empathy for everything that exists along with an altruistic attitude toward all people (Mendaglio, 2008a). • Dąbrowski is clear that, as an individual develops toward the Personality Ideal, they move completely away from an unthinking adoption of societal norms (their own or those of others) and “there is no reason to put on an equal foot the opposite conceptions of what is right and what is wrong” (Dąbrowski, 1970, p. xi), as the mindless acceptance of another’s values can, at worst, lead to mass murder, or even genocide. Conclusion: Whilst the nuances of expression may differ slightly between the PMW and the TPD in this component, there is a fundamental respect for the value of humanity. Empathy and identification come to the fore as an individual moves through Level III and into Level IV of the TPD, and people displaying these behaviors may also achieve the ‘Openness and tolerance’ component of the PMW. • The consideration of ‘what is’ versus ‘what ought to be’ is also 5. Sound judgement and at the core of the personal decision-making that underpins Dąbrowski’s TPD, and reflects the volitional choices that an decision individual makes as part of the formation of the Personality making Ideal. This process must be guided by sound judgement and decision making. Conclusion: The internal struggles and conflicts that epitomize the developmental transitions within the TPD are crucial when moving from integration to disintegration, and unilevel to multilevel experiencing (Dąbrowski, 1996). Therefore, people who achieve the higher developmental levels of the TPD must also engage sound judgement and decision making and may, therefore, also achieve this component of the PMW. (continued)

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Table 11.3 (continued) PMW component Examples of TPD touchpoints 6. Intelligence and creative thinking

• Intelligence and creative thinking are both also significant concepts for Dąbrowski (1964, p. 114), who defines creativity as “the ability for, and realization of, new and original approaches to reality. It is expressed in the new formulation of issues and in original productions arising from unique interrelationships” between the internal mind, imagination, and the stimuli of the external world. • As with all human expressions and responses viewed through the lens of Dąbrowski’s TPD, creativity is also expressed as a multilevel construct, meaning that it will manifest in a qualitatively different way depending on the level of development attained by the individual at a given time. At Level II, the experience of creativity is impulsive and spontaneous, and lacking in discrimination and evaluation. Once an individual moves to Level III, however, a hierarchy of values is evident in the creative process and output, allowing for creativity to “express the drama and tragedy, even agony, of human existence…[whilst being] a manifestation of the conjugation of emotional, imaginational and intellectual overexcitability” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 36). At more advanced levels of the TPD, individuals may exhibit rich creativity, along with significant intellectual and emotional characteristics. • Consideration of Intellectual OE aligns well with the construct of intelligence as defined in the WICS Model of leadership (Sternberg, 2005a, 2005b) where wisdom, intelligence and creativity are brought together in a synthesized whole. Sternberg describes traits and attitudes that resonate with the higher levels of Dąbrowski’s TPD. • Dąbrowski elaborates further that those individuals experiencing intellectual overexcitability will also have an enthusiasm and reverence for knowledge and logic, and be able to think in abstract and theoretical modes. Conclusion: Again, the place of creativity, and Intellectual Overexcitability within Dąbrowski’s TPD is synchronous with the findings of the systematic review underpinning the PMW and thus, people who achieve Dąbrowski’s higher levels of development may indeed also meet the ‘Intelligence and creative thinking’ component of the PMW. (continued)

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Table 11.3 (continued) PMW component Examples of TPD touchpoints • At the very core of the process of positive disintegration are 7. Dynamic growth, change, development, reflection, and transformation. balance and Nothing about positive disintegration is static. Dąbrowski goes synthesis to great lengths throughout all his writings, but particularly in translated into Multilevelness of Emotional Functions (Dąbrowski, 1996) and action The Dynamics of Concepts (Dąbrowski, 1973), to depict the perpetual motion of the development process, especially from Level III, where multilevelness becomes more apparent. Indeed, Dąbrowski (1996, p. 38) refers to Level IV as a “developmental synthesis.” Evidence of emerging wisdom does not appear until Level III or beyond. Conclusion: Wisdom is a synthesis of what has gone before, the culmination of the struggle between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’, in the development toward the Personality Ideal. This translates into the action of the new, emerged person who lives with humility, and who puts others, and the greater good, before themselves.

 ow Does This Relate to Learners Who Are H Transformationally Gifted? When considering the gifted-education context, particularly in defining transformational giftedness, Sternberg (2019, 2020a, 2020b) focuses on action: the real and tangible way a transformationally gifted person might make a positive and transformative difference. Having compared the differences between transactional and transformational giftedness, we can further subdivide transformational giftedness into self-transformational giftedness, where transformation relates to oneself, and other-transformational giftedness that is outwards-focussed. As other-transformational giftedness emerges, the individual may make “a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference to the world” (Sternberg et al., 2021, p. 4). This transformational process also mirrors the processes previously described within Dąbrowski’s TPD, whereby self-transformation occurs through the disintegration and reintegration processes of Levels II and III. As the Personality Ideal and hierarchy of values emerges in Level III and Level IV, the individual is equipped to make a more altruistically-based contribution to the world. The process of transformation is at the very core of Dąbrowski’s TPD, along with the importance of tangible action and the “ability to effect its realization” (Dąbrowski, 2015, p. 9).

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In order to support the formation of transformational giftedness, it would be helpful for all educators, including those of the gifted, to have an understanding of the intersection of the TPD and the PMW, and the relevant literature. This knowledge becomes a powerful tool in the identification of learners with the potential to be transformationally gifted, as they develop ethical, authentic wisdom and strive toward their own Personality Ideal. If the experiences associated with Dąbrowski’s TPD were identified, supported, and nurtured, where inner turmoil is not automatically seen as a negative or problematic emotion, but as a pathway to a higher level of development, we as educators may then in turn, see those individuals blossom toward their full potential as transformationally gifted young people. In this way we would contribute to a more just, creative, and meaningful world in which there are more people equipped with the capacities to appreciate, identify, and solve the problems facing humanity and the planet.

References Ambrose, D., & Cross, T. (Eds.). (2009). Morality, ethics, and gifted minds (Kindle ed.). Springer Science. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016a). Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems and huge opportunities. Sense Publishers. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016b). Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization. Sense Publishers. Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 45–103). Erlbaum. Cambridge University Press. (2021). Cambridge English dictionary. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved April 8 from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/utopia Dąbrowski, K. (1966). The theory of positive disintegration. International Journal of Psychiatry, 2(2), 229–249. Dąbrowski, K. (1967). Personality-shaping through positive disintegration. Little, Brown & Company. Dąbrowski, K. (1972). Psychoneurosis is not an illness. Gryf. Dąbrowski, K. (1975). Foreword to: A theoretical and empirical approach to the study of development. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 92, 233–237. Dąbrowski, K. (1976). On the philosophy of development through positive disintegration and secondary integration. Dialectics and Humanism, 3(4), 131–144. Dąbrowski, K. (1996). Multilevelness of emotional and instinctive functions. Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.

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Sternberg, R. J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39(3), 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2017.1318658 Sternberg, R. J. (2019). Four ways to conceive of wisdom: Wisdom as a function of person, situation, person/situation interaction, or action [Journal Article]. Journal of Value Inquiry, 53(3), 479–485. Sternberg, R. J. (2020a). Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. Olszewki-­ Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development: Enduring theories and comprehensive models in gifted education (pp. 203–233). Prufrock Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness [Article]. Education Sciences, 11(192), 192–192. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11050192 Thomas, M. L., Bangen, K. J., Palmer, B. W., Sirkin Martin, A., Avanzino, J. A., Depp, C. A., Glorioso, D., Daly, R. E., & Jeste, D. V. (2019). A new scale for assessing wisdom based on common domains and a neurobiological model: The San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE) [Article]. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 108, 40–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2017.09.005 Tillier, W. (2008). Philosophical aspects of Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. In S. Mendaglio (Ed.), Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration (pp. 101–121). Great Potential Press. Tillier, W. (2018). Personality development through positive disintegration: The work of Kazimierz Dąbrowski. Maurice Bassett. Webster, J. D. (2003). An exploratory analysis of a self-assessed wisdom scale [Article]. Journal of Adult Development, 10(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1023/A: 1020782619051 Webster, J. D. (2007). Measuring the character strength of wisdom. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 65(2), 163–183.

12 Evidence of Transformational Giftedness in the Profoundly Gifted When We Use the “Integral Practice the Gifted™” Model P. Susan Jackson

The scientific study of Profoundly Gifted (PG) learners began with Leta Hollingworth (1926, 1931, 1942). She focused on programming, pedagogy, and the unique social-emotional needs of the PG. I will discuss the necessary conditions for PG learners’ holistic development using an expanded focus of study and practice, including the dimensions of intellect, emotions, moral, kinesthetic, social, talent-based, spiritual, and gender. All these dimensions of the PG are orchestrated by a signature and directive sense of Self, evident from birth. PGs’ fully integrated, holistic development occurs when we support all facets of their experience using extraordinary, personalized programming to address inordinate socio-affective and learning needs. When we fail to address their individual needs, they cannot develop all facets of their personhood, and their worldview and sense of purpose are correspondingly stunted. The impetus for the educational and psychosocial support must be the child’s well-being based on targeted knowledge and regard for their inner world and unique motivational patterns for learning and growing. When we strategically address their emergent needs comprehensively, over time, we find that their aggregate developmental level is considerably beyond expectations for their chronological age and beyond expectations for more mildly gifted children. They exhibit transpersonal developmental markers: motivated and determined to make a difference in the world, beyond personal gain, according to advanced notions of “ideas of the good.” The behaviours associated with this developmental

P. S. Jackson (*) Daimon Institute for the Highly Gifted Inc., Surrey, BC, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_12

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advancement are in line with descriptions of other-transformational and Self-­ transformational giftedness suggested by Sternberg et al. (2021).

The Profoundly Gifted in the World I recently spoke to a kind and brilliant young man about how various life experiences have affected him. We discussed the degree to which the stimuli he experiences and the associations he makes in response to the stimuli (which can seem, to some, to be out of proportion to the original stimuli) have affected his growth and development. He scored 4+ standard deviations beyond the mean on a standardized cognitive abilities instrument and was assigned the profoundly gifted (PG) learner label1. He has (to borrow a Dabrowskian term) psychic excitability. He has a broader, more profound, and more lasting experience of all phenomena. He is highly motivated to know and understand and contribute and to impact a planet and a people that, most times, he connects to so profoundly that he is utterly lost in the experienced communion. At other times, jarringly, he is rendered senseless by it. He experiences the world in a kind of technicolour of sense experiences, internal responses, complex emotional webs of layered and interlinked feelings, fierce intellectual engagement, and creative expression. He leans into impossible questions. He imagines a world that is just and fair and full of humour and appreciation. He is horror-struck by acts of heartlessness, by mindless exploitation of resources and human lives, and by what seems to him heavy-handedness in how human beings relate to each other, organize in groups, or interact with animals. He tells me that he thirsts for the deepest of self-knowing, not as an end, but to be sure that he will “do no harm.” If he understands himself more fully (he imagines) – in all his imperfection – he is less likely to harm another with unwitting bias, narrow points of view, or unexamined perspectives. He is more likely to see others in their fullness and accept them as they are. He lives wholly as a deeply sensitive, highly imaginative, and exceptionally aware being who can chase a deep interest or emergent thought and a whole day 1  Using individually measured IQ scores with a threshold cut-off score is only part of the identification story for identifying PG learners. We must use other modes of measurement and representation of ability, emblematic traits and performance to determine the totality of a child’s potential and capacity. Further, IQ scores do not capture the whole of the PG child’s extraordinary function which includes creativity, aesthetic, moral and ethical dimensions and passion. (Jackson, 2014, 2015, 2019; Sternberg, 2017).

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disappears. He has learned to live authentically, despite rejections and misunderstanding, but he is often alone. Sometimes that is a blessing, and sometimes he is deeply lonely. I assure him he is already part of what he seeks and that his depth and quest, and capacities are vital; the world needs him as much as he loves it. I promise him that he will find others. I assure him that he has a place and that he is already part of what he seeks. (PG male, age 21, Canadian)

A second PG boy, age 8, tells me: I like things to happen. I have been accelerated five grades in Mathematics, four grades in other subjects. I appreciate the attempts made to provide for my learning and social needs, but mostly I am disappointed; with the pace of things and the adaptations they offer that are not challenging and unrelated to how things work in the world. I want to get my hands on something. (PG male, American-Austrian)

A third PG learner, a fifteen-year-old girl, tells me: I want to be able to express myself without being condemned, contested or limited. [She is a PG, globally gifted learner who excels in Mathematics, foreign languages, social sciences, dance, visual arts and Sciences. To the outside world, she is accomplished and revered. She has a gentle disposition, and her skills in diplomacy are astounding, but she longs to express the richness of her experiences.] I want to embrace a healthy way of expressing ALL aspects of who I am. (PG, female, Canadian, now an Architecture Student)

We hear from a 33-year-old African American man, a (retired) decorated professional football player, PG, a professional musician, poet, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He grew up in poverty and violence. There was no recognition, at any time, of his powerful intellect and astounding literary, scientific, and musical gifts. When I was growing up, the social dynamic around education was stigmatized. The Venn diagram of being smart did not line up with the social currency I traded in. Being smart was viewed as being a social nerd, and that association highly influenced my relationship with academics. The people I related to were not into academics of any kind – more towards drugs and gang life–, yet I was always strongly drawn towards learning.

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And it was not just the social dynamic in play preventing me from learning; there was also the influence of a system that only recently is starting to change because of people like you. Back then, there was a lot of compartmentalization of who you were and how you might learn. If it was different somehow, that was never recognized by the teachers, in my experience. Finally, Nathaniel’s Mother looks back: By one year, Nathanial was walking and talking without any daily nap. It became evident that he had an eidetic memory – he was able to recall things seen and learned with vividness and detail as if they were visible before him. Nathaniel has superb powers of concentration. He is possessed of astounding reasoning and problem solving and can tackle Math theory and logic with astonishing aptitude. He has exceptional mechanical drawing skills; a vivid imagination, and he is a natural storyteller. He reports that he can see human auras and is exceptionally sensitive to people’s feelings, expressed, and suggested. He is a deep humanitarian at his core, with a rare gift with animals, other people, and the earth. He explained the theory of gravitation at two. He reasoned why keels are necessary on sailing ships, then explained how satellites broadcast radio and television waves. At seven, he hypothesized a design for an electron microscope before knowing of their existence. I could go and on and on. (PG, male, American, now age 22, recently re-entered college after recovery from pernicious mental-health difficulties)

 eimagining Our Work with Our Most R Gifted Learners Human beings have long been fascinated with the extraordinary gifts some individuals possess and how those gifts manifest in the world. We have been especially intrigued with those most brilliant, the distinctive subset of those we identify as gifted– referred to as the Profoundly Gifted (PG). At the highest end of the gifted ability range, they are the outliers of outliers. The PG have an exceptionally high level of intellectual, specific talent or creative prowess; they are our brightest stars in a vast and primarily uncharted human universe of truly extraordinary human potential. Their remarkable capacities are generated in cognitive processes that we are only beginning to understand. When supported wholly, PGs can reach the farther reaches of human nature, capable of phenomenal creative or intellectual thought and deed, and capable of embodying advanced development in many other spheres of human experience. The deep physiological and psychological structures and emergent nature of the farthest reaches of human consciousness remains an exquisite and confounding scientific problem.

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“ Integral Practice for the Gifted™”: A Unifying Framework to Explain and Support Our Brightest Learners We live in unprecedented times – in a fruitful period of understanding the mind and extraordinary human development. For the first time in history, we have access to all the collected accumulated information about human consciousness and its potential (in which the concept of giftedness is nested). These include but are not limited to gifted education, neuropsychology, cognitive science, consciousness studies, aesthetics, counselling models and developmental psychology. Contributions from the field of psychiatry, the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness, contemplative traditions (ancient and modern), quantum consciousness, and subtle energy research also offer insights into the functioning and experience of our most evolved minds. When we cultivate the insights from diverse knowledge systems, we more fully account for the exceptional awareness, mental processes, learning efficiency, perception and behaviors, creations, and contributions of children endowed with extraordinary abilities and the capacity for advanced development. In this paper, I explore the psychology of the PG from multiple perspectives using the “Integral Practice for the Gifted™” model, formulated in 2005 and then  launched in the Gifted Education field (Jackson, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2019). IPG™ uses the core tenets of Integral Psychology (IP), which is a: psychological system concerned with exploring and understanding the totality of the human phenomenon….(which) at its breadth, covers the entire body-­ mind-­psyche-spirit spectrum, while at its depth…encompasses the previously explored unconscious and the conscious dimensions of the psyche, as well as the supra-conscious dimension traditionally excluded from psychological inquiry. (Shirazi, 2001)

The Integral Practice for the Gifted™ (IPG) model derives from multiple theoretical perspectives to create a unifying framework to consider the growth and development of the exceptionally gifted child and adult. It is a natural extension of the seminal work of Hollingworth (1931, 1942), Anne Marie Roeper and Miraca Gross (2006), who (respectively) focused on overall development, the Self, and academic and social dimensions of the PG. IPG™ recognizes the extraordinary cognitive capacity, inimitable and directive Self of

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PGs (present from birth), which combine with several other lines of development to create in PG children a more advanced, subtle and comprehensive experience of all reality. Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology (1999, 2000a, 2000b) has significantly influenced the development of the IPG™ model, as has the work of Dabrowski (1972) and Jung (1954). Evidence gathered in my thirty-year psychotherapy practice provides rich in-situ ongoing data on the psychology of the PG. The psychotherapy and research conducted is not just with children and families who present with mental health difficulties. Half of the psychotherapeutic interventions and the research investigations conducted involve non-clinical populations of PGs without mental health concerns seeking support and guidance for their unique developmental and learning needs. We work with PG people on five continents, from diverse socioeconomic, cultural, lifestyle, gender, and racial backgrounds. This diversity, across broad cultural and lifestyle dimensions, brings together many different points of view while, at the same time, ascertaining those core psychological processes that are common to PG people regardless of background and experience. This body of work – merging Integral Psychology with our understanding of giftedness – is nascent and ongoing; further research and application are welcomed.

IPG™: Commitment to Developing the Whole Child, Over Time A complete understanding of gifted learners necessitates an across-the-board integration of all aspects of human experiencing. Anything less is partial, incomplete and, in the end, grossly insufficient if our goal is to help gifted children develop fully and live optimally. No theory is adequate in gifted education if it does not acknowledge: the nature and value of the internal world of the gifted child, emotional and spiritual functioning, contextual thinking, aesthetic and intuitive knowing, critical and creative problem solving, developmental instincts, and the relationship of specific talents to overall development. The intellectual or social-emotional experiencing is central but, in an absolute sense, no less important than the gifted child’s experience of gender or kinesthetic capabilities, psycho-spiritual, or, (for some) logico-­mathematical competence or, (for all) the overriding presence of the inimitable Self. In the end, the child’s system is only as strong (and resilient) as any one of these various aspects of his/her person.

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These caveats are crucial when we consider the nature and needs of the PG. A balanced portfolio of supports is essential to help them develop extraordinary cognitive capacities, nurture their innate hyper-sensitivities, and provide optimal opportunities to develop emotionally and socially. Support for specific talents is critical, offered in concert with awareness and attention paid to all aspects of the growing child. We study and conceptualize how to best support the learning and psychosocial needs of the PG from a perspective that includes all aspects of their experience. We do so with an absolute commitment to supporting the well-­ being of the whole child, with a pledge to getting to know them as thoroughly as we can. We commit to trusting the innate developmental instincts of the child to move towards higher and more integrated levels of development. That is the goal of the IPG™ model: an integrated human being who can access and activate all their innate potentials. This commitment is the foundation of a trusted partnership between the child and the parent, the child and a mentor or teacher, and the PG adult and coach (as examples) in an informed and sacred stewardship of vast human potential. This stewardship does not assume predetermined outcomes. Rather, our study and recommendations aim to help each PG child develop fully, per their extraordinary innate capacities. There is strong evidence of an (enduring) readied instinct to learn in PG children and to connect to others. These tendencies are apparent at birth when exceptional alertness and precocious response to stimuli indicate unusual and advanced development, not just intellectually but also socially and emotionally. The support system, the giftedness paradigm employed, must accord with their inherent advanced consciousness and their unique developmental trajectory, which cannot be predetermined and typically does not fit the dictates of an educational system or standard societal norm. The following excerpt showcases this powerful sense of Self, heightened awareness, precocious development and specific talent or ability: She picked up a pencil at age five and drew a self-portrait, with no reference photo or mirror; a striking image. By the age of six, she recognized any of the great master’s artworks, having been previously exposed to them briefly. One of her first large pieces (age 7) was a picture of a female figure, depicted in a modular fashion, with a series of connected discs running through the middle of the form. When asked what this represented, she replied without hesitation: “Woman, with backbone.” Entirely self-taught, she learned to paint through spending hours at the city’s Art Gallery or (in later years) the Louvre, studying, sketching and colouring by experimentation, trial, and error. When she was tiny, with a pencil or paintbrush in her hand, she was 100% focused, and the

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outside world would slip away, all of it, including schoolwork less captivating than her art. She accelerated four years ahead in visual arts while remaining at grade level in other subjects. She was, in all ways, determined and focused in a way that defied description and was not easy to parent. Her goal then and now: to change the world using art as the medium. At the time of this writing, her commissions with several influential international institutions include large-­ scale campaigns on anti-racism, children’s rights, and raising awareness of the needs of the LGBTQ population globally. She is poised to lead a design team in changing the way we think about race in one of society’s most prominent institutions. Her deeply-held mission has not been without controversy and strife, yet she persists—a woman with backbone. (PG, female, Canadian, age 33, professional artist, humanitarian and activist)

“ IPG™”: A Model Steeped in Selfand Other-­Transformational Giftedness, with the Profoundly Gifted Leading the Way This paper links to the concept of “transformational giftedness” in several ways, especially given the recent amendments to the term (Sternberg et al., 2021), which brings it closer to the core tenets of the “Integral Practice for the Gifted ™” model as it applies to the lives of the PG. Sternberg (2020) initially characterized transformational giftedness “as giftedness that is transformative—that by its nature seeks positively to change the world at some level—to make the world a better place. (It) focuses on positive and meaningful change.” He contrasted transformational giftedness with transactional giftedness, a system of education and support that instills a tit-­ for-­tat marketplace-style ethos, with educational programming promising personal gain for the identified gifted child. In this view, children identified as gifted receive supports and opportunities permitting them to compete and excel in educational spaces and later in the world of work, thus advancing themselves, with artifacts of “societal success” such as material gain and personally coveted opportunities. By contrast, an educational system framed in a transformational giftedness model creates, with trans-personal values built into the educational and socializing opportunities and modelled by teachers and mentors, an expectation of learning and working with the greater good in mind. Sternberg characterizes much of our pedagogy and programming in Gifted Education as transactional. Students who excel in this model are adaptive. They use their skills and abilities to figure out the rules of the game, and they

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know how to respond and what to deliver to excel according to the system’s dictates. Success, in this transactional system, is derived primarily as personal gain. Sternberg et al. (2021) subsequently advanced these notions to include two more pertinent distinctions. In “Other-transformational” giftedness, the gifted person’s intentions and impact make a meaningful and positive impact on others in the world. In “Self-transformational” giftedness, individuals seek to transform their Self in line with their unique sense of purpose. In this view, gifted students develop their most profound sense of purpose by developing heightened and refined self-knowledge, paired with awareness of others. Teachers and influencers expose them to and enculturate the values of transpersonalism, taking into account others’ needs, the welfare of our planet, and the interconnectedness of humankind. A transpersonal approach in psychology and education describes when a person’s sense of identity or Self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass broader aspects of humankind, life, the psyche or cosmos (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993). The following case study shows how transactional system of giftedness most often fails our brightest learners. Conversely, a self- and other-­transformational system is reflective of the nature and needs of the PG if it is used sensitively, with great flexibility, to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of our very brightest minds. The need for flexibility and a sensitive response to the vagaries of the PG learner cannot be overstated. This system will fall short if used in a heavy-­ handed, mechanistic manner with predetermined outcomes in mind. PG children develop distinctively, with no two learners on the same trajectory. Many PG learners do not demonstrate the extent of their true potential easily or according to a linear timeline of expectations. Some PG learners have limiting deficits in how they learn. Some of our greatest thinkers are late-blooming learners. Many PG learners hide in plain sight, discouraged at exceedingly early ages by a seemingly unresponsive or harsh learning environment that runs counter to their innate learning needs and transpersonal ethos innate to most PGs. The boy in question was born in China. He immigrated to Canada at the age of five because his parents feared that he would founder in a highly competitive educational system. His profound giftedness was evident at birth in early developmental milestones, heightened awareness and, later, a Psychoeducational Assessment determined an IQ at five standard deviations beyond the norm. His interest and ability in Science, literature and world affairs were all-consuming, even as a very young child. He showed early sensitivity to the well-being and needs of others, had a keen interest in plants and animals, and showed highly evolved signs of self-reflection and self-insight.

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His well-defined sense of justice, empathy, social cooperation, and generativity was enacted, even in disadvantaged circumstances. He is an avid hiker and committed Boy Scout who converses in three languages and studies (Graduate Studies level) Mycology. He is a brilliant and empathic conversationalist. His command of written and spoken English – his second language – is remarkable. He is a delightful young man, much-­ loved by his teachers even while his unique learning style, willfulness, and irresistible desire to learn in his own way contest most provisions in his specialized PG program. He gently states: I am not bulletproof. I am sometimes swept away by my own irascibility, my own imaginings and my desire to learn in my way. I fixate on things. I am shy even while I appear to be socially competent. I am often lonely for like-minds and right experiences. I want to learn, and I genuinely want to make a difference in the world. My study of mushrooms and fungi is a direct reflection of these desires: to make a difference. I believe our knowledge of fungi can save this planet. I intend on being a part of that.

The day I am proofing this paper, I catch a fascinating report on national news about how yew trees communicate chemically with neighboring trees for their mutual defence. The method of communication? Fungi. Most plant families have obligate relationships with fungi. They need them to survive and grow and produce cones and develop optimally – to carry their genes to the next generations. And the fungi are dependent on the plant or the trees because they don’t have leaves themselves that allow for necessary photosynthesis. They engage in symbiotic relationships in that they live together in the root. They exchange these essential resources that they both might survive. It is the ultimate generative biological system. I cannot help but think our mycologist’s unwavering interest in fungi was evidence of a profound transpersonal awareness of our interdependency as a species and specifically within the biological sphere. At an incredibly young age, he explored a natural process we are only beginning to comprehend. He understood the significance of the holistic interconnections and long-term implications of a complex system working in harmony. He was both prescient and poised to effect change. His scientific inquiry was inextricably woven into his sense of Self, his sense of purpose and his desire to gain knowledge and contribute to the greater good. Unfortunately, the move to Canada was not without difficulty. These powerful, specific interests leveraged his exceptionally advanced intellect. Subjects outside of his immediate purview paled compared to what he knew through

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self-study and were eclipsed by his mission to use mycology to save the planet. Outside of school, he gave lectures to professional mycologists in two countries and communed with other specialists on mushroom forays and in labs. He exasperated the academic team in school – who made efforts to provide some differentiated programming within the usually static International Baccalaureate program. They felt “he owed them his attention and hard work, given that they were making great efforts to meet his needs.” The more they pushed this tit-for-tat agenda – the stuff of transactional giftedness – the more he withdrew. He was erroneously diagnosed with Autism as the withdrawal took root, and he was unreachable by many. He longed for a curriculum, an academic team, and true peers who found meaning in complex, interrelated subjects and studied together to better the planet: all characteristics of the Self-transformational and other-transformational giftedness paradigm. Instead, he found himself in a highly competitive, achievement and grades-­ oriented program, with little communion and no sense of purpose or understanding.

 rofound Giftedness: More Than a Big Score P on a Standardized Aptitude Test As is evident from these many examples, the profoundly gifted capacity is much more than intellectual prowess, a big score on a standardized intelligence test, or an apparent outstanding talent in the arts, as examples. It is (in its fullest expression) a much broader and deeper expression of advanced development: comprised of intellectual, emotional, extraordinary talents, social, sensual, aesthetic, kinesthetic, instinctive, communicative, intuitive, and spiritual experiences beyond the norm. These exceptional capacities are fed by perceptual and processing abilities that are highly tuned and robust and purposive from birth. PGs demonstrate a capacious desire to know the world, to know themselves and connect to other people, in their ongoing mining of knowledge and experience and their desire to participate fully in the greater whole. I will provide evidence of the conditions and attitudes necessary for PG learners’ holistic development, using an expanded focus of study and practice, including intellectual, emotional, moral, kinesthetic, social, talent-based, spirituality, and gender dimensions.

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 evelopmental Precocity: Evidence D and Implications Over the Lifespan I expanded Anne Marie Roeper’s definition of giftedness to the following: (Giftedness is) greater awareness, greater sensitivity, and greater ability to transform perceptions into intellectual, emotional, sensual, aesthetic, imaginative and behavioral experience.

We know that PGs’ extraordinary capacities – in awareness, communicative capacity, comprehension, and behaviour – are evident at birth. PG learners are more aware and more responsive to environmental cues. This developmental precocity means that to grow and develop optimally, we must be mindful of their uncommon sensitivity, the degree to which they absorb all stimuli, and how they are able, and are seemingly primed to respond to other people and their environs. While these extraordinary sensory capacities are remarkable and developmentally advantageous  – with fitting responses to uncommon and extraordinary need – there is also potential for early damage should the environment be noxious or unresponsive to their innate developmental needs. Their advanced abilities add complexity, a multi-layeredness, to all their experiences. Consider the following examples: Subject ONE, fifth-generation Canadian He was born five days overdue – an 11-pound specimen of muscly human form – following a short, precipitous labour. After his first breath, he held his head up and made eye contact with each adult in the delivery room one by one. They were nonplussed at this highly unusual behaviour typically seen in babies one to two months old. Later in the neonatal intensive care (the shortened labour triggered lung distress, needing specialized attention), the nurses reported him trying to elevate himself beyond the crib’s walls. When they attempted to settle him, he met their gaze and smiled. Issued to all NICU babies, the regulation size hat sat like an awkward addendum on his outsized head. When his mother first held him, instinctively patting his back, he reciprocated in kind within seconds—patting her back in return. Subject TWO, first-generation Chinese Canadian: From the second he was born, he made eye contact with whoever was holding him. He held his mother’s gaze steadily, alert and responsive to changes in her expression. He also responded to changes in temperature, sounds in the room, and changes in his visual field when he was transported from room to room. On the second day after his birth, the experienced pediatric team reported that he

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was able to smile at them. He was meeting their gaze and smiling. They had never seen anything like it.

In the early years, innate maturation and differentiation processes (nature) launch each of us in a growth direction. But, to grow successfully, our children need adequate support from the environment (nurture as experienced through parenting, schooling and training, cultural and social conditioning). Without the right stimulus and the right opportunities and guidance, their development will be stymied.

In the Beginning For best development, every child needs parental mirroring of their emergent experiences. We know that mirroring is a vital part of healthy infant and child development. Parents who mimic the infant’s expressions, vocalizations, behaviors, and moods help the infant associate the emotion they feel with its expression. This parental imitation validates the emotion the infant is undergoing, contributing to a felt sense of unity between their inner experience and their experience in the world. PG children will need more advanced and discrete mirroring commensurate with their overall developmental precocity in all areas of their lives. We know that they reach developmental milestones months and years ahead of the neurotypical developmental schedule, including cognitive, social and emotional, language and communication, learning, thinking, and problem-­ solving, and for some, but not all, movement and physical development. When I asked the mother of our first-generation Chinese baby when he began reading, she paused before answering: Let me think, it was before he walked, for sure. He began recognizing letters before that and could read simple words before he walked, which happened at 11 months. He learned Chinese incredibly early, as well. It was shocking how quickly he could remember Chinese characters.

And, from the Netherlands, more evidence of developmental advancement: Oh yes, I have been laughed at; when I said my son smiled at me on day two (they called it ‘accidentally,’ but on day three, he did it multiple times again), loudly protested each time when the nurse was examining him in hospital and calmed down when we put on music. Said his first actual words at eight months but was communicating clearly from the start. My daughter the same. They

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both made eye contact the minute after they were born. I remember thinking my son was examining me, just after birth, instead of the other way round. (A neuroscientist, Mother of three PG children, The Netherlands)

F ive Core Traits of PG Children: How They Present and How We Best Support Them The five core traits of the PG child are exceptionally advanced cognitive capabilities, unusual creative appetites and special talents, uncommon communication preferences, unique developmental pathways, and complex integrative drives. I will discuss each of these in turn, emphasizing how optimal programming and support that is child-centered gives rise to advanced development overall and over time. It is important to note (although beyond the space limitations of this paper to discuss thoroughly) that optimal programming and support for PG children will be, of necessity, messy because their strong sense of Self drives their learning tendencies. While they unequivocally need advanced and diverse educational opportunities that meet their various extraordinary learning needs – including grade skipping and radical acceleration, internships, enrichment and mentors – there may be tremendous variance in how these provisions are best utilized. There may be fallow times in their learning. There may be highly accelerated times. PG children must be at the center of the programming decisions, encouraged to share and lead in the planning and executing of their customized educational programs. They are well-equipped for that leadership role in their own development (Jackson, 2011) (Fig. 12.1).

Fig. 12.1  Five core traits of the PG Child

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 rait 1: Exceptionally Advanced Cognitive T Capacity and the Ability to Level Up A cognitive-developmental cluster of research articulates the increasingly complex assumptions or structures people use to make meaning of their experience. This research focuses on the beliefs about the nature, limits, and certainty of knowledge that guide how people think rather than what they think. We evolve through increasingly complex meaning-making orders as our capacity for critical thinking and abstract thought matures (Kegan, 1994). In this view, our capacity for advanced development is dependant upon our innate hardwiring, our genetic endowment, and development which itself is non-ontogenetic. Development is not a predictable age-stage process with all individuals moving through stages in roughly the exact chronological timing. Some individuals (born with a more complex neurological and perceptual system) will develop sooner and move through stages in an accelerated fashion. Some children are born at much more advanced levels of development, with indicators of a powerful developmental fund operative from the onset. PG children show evidence of highly advanced cognitive ability, which far exceeds neurotypical developmental markers. The PG child is born with extraordinary cognitive development and a palpable, penetrating awareness. Their “ground zero” cognitively, from the onset, is far beyond the ordinary. PGs arrive in the world with a mental capacity and awareness that predicts a more advanced and rapidly evolving development of the mind. Many school-age PG children exhibit a Dialectical level of cognitive functioning (see Fig. 12.2) and functioning, which is expected for some, but not all adults. Many PG children, adolescents, and adults show some or all traits

Fig. 12.2  Our basic cognitive structures

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of Transcendental Perspectivism, the highest level of cognitive capacity as outlined in the IPG™ model. In dialectical reasoning, the child can recognize multiple points of view and the interconnections between them and can acknowledge and meaningfully interact with those differing perspectives. They can balance subjectivity and objectivity, thought and emotion, and, if encouraged and given the opportunity, body and mind, and the individual and the group. The opportunities for PG children to interact with other children of like capacity cannot be overrated. They cannot develop familiarity and fluidity with these advanced cognitive capacities in a vacuum. Reciprocal relationships with other children who share a similar cognitive ability allow the PG child to develop and refine their communicative capabilities and expand and deepen their understanding of themselves and the world. PG children seek unity or wholeness in their understanding of phenomena – a quest for undivided or unbroken completeness or totality, with nothing left wanting. This quest for unity is an intense need at the core of their learning appetites and tendencies. For this coherence to be truly satisfying, the exceptionally gifted child/adult thrives when they can fully engage all aspects of their being in a learning process: their intellect, creativity, emotions, and their sensorium. To me, the gifted mind is a massive, intricate three-dimensional puzzle. It is dynamic, moving in space. New information, a new experience is absorbed into it, but if one piece or even one connection is not there, there is a sense of being disjointed, a need to sort that out. This is constant – this assimilating of new thoughts, feelings, ideas. Even one tiny thing out of place in an environment, a concept, an exchange can throw you off completely. (PG, male, Canada)

Still, other PG children or adults will reach or show aspects of Transcendental Perspectivism. At this level of cognitive development, the individual perceives reality as the truth which forms between two people as they interact. Transcendental perspectivism argues that any truth (perception) results from the person perceiving it, informed by that individual’s sensorium and experience. But, when two perceivers share a reality, that shared truth transcends the individual truth created by each individual perceiver. In this view, I cannot force the truth on another person; instead, it is freely created between myself and another person. This transcendental perspectivist level is common to many PG people and explains how they think and are motivated. They assume that other people seek a shared reality and do so freely, intending to develop a more integrated truth resulting from a shared intention and shared experience.

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I ask five-year-old Nina (PG) to draw an emoji to show me how she is feeling. In this simple (typical) warm-up exercise, I remain completely open to what might emerge, without expectations.. To begin with, she advises that I occupy myself with something else as she does not want to squander my time. “You just do something else for a moment, Sue, while I think this over.” Ten minutes later, she shows me a drawing done on two sides of one piece of paper. On one side, she depicts herself in a side profile with a particularly focused expression. On the flip side, perfectly aligned at the paper’s edge, is a second side profile featuring her in a contemplative pose. “I’m both feelings, Sue. This is a little bit of how I felt today, but I am not finished; I need to draw my brother Harry.” Again, she instructs me to busy myself. She draws similar shapes, each on one side of the paper but perfectly aligned. Harry looks alarmingly distraught on one side and somber on the other. “I think this is how he feels; I think he feels that we do not love him, but he is wrong.” For Nina to share her affective state with me, she believes she must do so in a context inclusive of her beloved brother. A neurotypical five-year-old would be operating in an egocentric manner with the ability to think conceptually far beyond her reach. Nina thinks abstractly, inclusively, and compassionately – aware of her immediate audience and their needs, aware that her assessment is merely provisional, pending verification with Harry. Nina values cooperation and connectedness, and she welcomes diversity and differences. These tendencies suggest the transcendental perspectivist cognitive level which is highly unusual in neurotypical adults but occurs for many (intact) members of the PG populace. Looking further, the drawing on both sides of the paper indicates an ability to see multiple sides of an issue – the dialectical level of cognitive reasoning – while seeking coherence in the complexity. While this is a simple example, my experience with Nina is that she has the seed states of the highest level of human cognition. Difficulties ensue for Nina when adults or other children are not operating anywhere near this state of mind. Complications occur when Nina assumes that other people are similarly motivated and able – to seek common ground – and the resultant mismatch of cognitive capacity results in misunderstanding, confusion, and hurt feelings. When I first met Nina, she had been diagnosed with agoraphobia, completely unable to leave the family home and shut down in all ways. She had just turned four. She is now fully engaged in life, with astounding executive functioning skills, extraordinary intellectual and emotional development evident, and a zest for social interaction. She reminds me often, however, that downtime is essential for her. She needs alone time to be. (PG, Female, age 5, British-Chinese)

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Further discussion of this higher-level cognitive function is beyond the scope of this paper, but this brief discussion anchors our thinking as we flesh out the other four traits of the PG.

 G Core Trait 2: Unique Developmental Pathways P in the Developmental Symphony of PGs The Integral Psychology field studies as many as 24–32 lines of development. The IPG™ framework explains how exceptionally advanced cognitive development interpenetrates world views, communicative capacity, moral development, kinaesthetic experience, and spirit in a developmental matrix unique to each PG child. Social and emotional lines interact with all of these dimensions and with creativity, psychosexuality, moral capacities, spiritual dimensions, and aesthetic perception in an unparalleled developmental pathway unique to each PG person.

 xtraordinary Development Occurs in All Aspects E of the Profoundly Gifted Child Each of these lines of development moves from a less developed form to a more differentiated and powerful manifestation as the child moves to higher and higher levels of development (see Fig. 12.3). While fleshing out the central dimensions of PG experience, IPG™ acknowledges the existence of

Fig. 12.3  Integral practice for the Gifted

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multilevelness within each developmental line. Multilevelness recognizes that inherent in each of these developmental lines are levels – which are stages of awareness and capacity. Each level has characteristic features, and each level builds in ascending complexity and faculty. None of these evolutionary steps can be skipped, and each line of development operates in its way, although affected by and affecting all other lines. Each of these lines proceeds along a necessary developmental path, and each line of development requires meaningfully appropriate responses to unfold, blossom, and flourish. None of these aspects of human experience can unfold without the right kinds of stimuli and resources to help it along. In the IPG™ framework, members of the child’s educational team and family focus on meeting these multiple developmental lines. Developing a specific talent or ability – important, but no longer the singular driving force of intervention or attention – occurs naturally as the inevitable byproduct of an integrating system. Creativity or expression is the natural outflow of a child in an optimal support system with appropriate stimulus and opportunity (Jackson, 2010). Developing advanced social-emotional awareness and fluidity occurs more intuitively when the PG child has been mirrored from birth and has opportunities to have reciprocal and sustained interactions with like-minded peers. They also need exposure to role models of effective communication and mature expression of emotions. According to the body of work in Integral Psychology, all systems move towards increasing complexity, increasing differentiation, and overall integration. Wilber notes that the cognitive line of development leads all other lines because cognition, broadly defined, determines what one can be aware of. The Self works with the cognitive-developmental line as it asks: what can I be mindful of, what do I identify with? (See Fig. 12.3). In the end, the child’s system is only as strong and resilient as any one of these various aspects of the person. We must expand our thinking about ways to work with PG children for the various lines of their development to unfold intuitively, unencumbered and unimpeded.

 G Core Trait Three: Complex Integrative Drives P Arising from a Distinctive and Directive Self To determine how PGs make sense of the world and their experiences, we must enter the inner world of that exceptional human being. In so doing, we come face-to-face with the dynamic Self of the PG person: a world of the unconscious as well as conscious feeling and thought.

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This Self, or essence, is central to what makes us individuals, different from others. Every human being (according to the Integral model presented here) has this unifying force – the Self – that integrates the various lines of development described above.

 evelopmental Advancement Is Possible in All D the Developmental Lines If the Self Is Intact and Operative For PG persons, this sense of Self is a not-to-be-ignored imperative, an internal directive demanding attention and forcing one’s compliance or participation to its dictates as if ones very life depended on it. (e.g., Jackson, 2006a, 2014, 2015; Roeper, 2007). The distinctive and directive Self is fed by and contoured by higher cognitive capacity levels discussed above, inseparable. This acutely perceived sense of Self occurs early in the PG person’s life and is unique to each PG child. This powerful dynamism interpenetrates the whole of the child’s being and is a central uniting force and determinant of every aspect of that PG’s life. If circumstances support the whole child, it is the ballast and trusted compass for the developing child throughout life. Given the unifying force of the gifted Self – whose purpose is to weld the disparate elements of their being (lines of development) into an organized unity – we must aim to know each PG child thoroughly. We must work from a place of knowledge and respect for their personhood. We aim to balance activity and respite in their lives with time to stay in touch with their inner core – their thoughts, impulses, instincts and creative appetites. If this does not occur and the child is thwarted due to lack of challenging and appropriate academic work, meagre opportunities for authentic creative or emotional expression, toxic interactions with teachers or other influencers. or an absence of true peers for normal and healthy socialization. In these cases, this core Self may founder, and all parts of the developing child will suffer as a result. PG Canadian, Kai (now 40 years old), reflects on his pre-teen sense of Self: I used to be able to exercise all aspects of my nature (wry grin). This was before a teacher ridiculed me in front of the whole school for something that I did not do. I remember developing the capacity for lucid dreaming. It was the capacity for free-flowing connection to my absolute nature. I gave it up after that incident.

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At a later date, Kai speaks of regenerating his sense of Self as a young adult, after a long experience of major depression: I constructed a new Self, – a new personality – from the bits I had on hand. I put it together. It was a bit wiser. A bit fuller. But (wry grin) I was still lacking in some areas. That was the toughest part, that was very tough. I knew the new Self had to be integrated towards wholeness, a different form. I knew I needed to reintegrate. I knew I had to consciously and physically work toward wholeness integrating my various systems: the analytical, the philosophical, the academic, the emotional, and the physical. I have always been defined by wholeness, by the need for consensus, by a sense of inter-relatedness. My new Self needed to be crafted according to those principles.

Trait 3: Uncommon Communication Patterns Introversion, PG Style PG children are typically introverted: they are mentally energized by their inner world of ideas and associations. They process their experiences internally before expressing them in the world. Their ability to expediently process vast amounts of information, sometimes at a startlingly rapid pace, means that this internal processing may not be evident to people in the PG’s outer world and may therefore be misconstrued, misinterpreted, or missed entirely. This creates an incongruity between the PG child and their environment, especially in cultures, such as ours, that value (and judge) the outer appearance of things. How PG children communicate these internally vetted concepts may be unusual to others; sometimes exceptionally subtle and exquisitely nuanced, both verbally and nonverbally, and sometimes exceedingly complicated and confusing. To “get things right,” some PG children provide extensive background, context clues, and accompanying elaborate conceptual maps. They overwhelm the unprepared recipient in the communication of the message. The following is an example of a PG boy’s earnest attempt to reach out to a future professor at his prospective university. He is 17 years old and received a substantive scholarship at a prestigious liberal arts university, with grades mainly in the mid to high 90s and a measured IQ at five standard deviations beyond the norm.

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Thank you for your responses to my first email. They are much appreciated. Coincidentally, these specific foci just so happen to be ones that really interest me  – when you mentioned middle eastern politics, is this in the context of middle eastern politics with respect to protecting Canadian interests, or just an analysis of the actors within the region? Does the university’s focus on South Asian politics encompass the greater region (the recent coup in Myanmar comes to mind), or is it mostly regarding India-Pakistan relations? Has anyone at the university ever gone on to research Chinese relations with Central Asia and the situation in Xinjiang? This is an area that really interests me – I tried learning the Uyghur language a year ago to gain a better understanding of the politics of that region, but I didn’t have the time to pursue it because of my academic load. How much of the program is courses centered on theory and how much is centered on analyzing economic and geopolitical situations at home and abroad? I’m really wanting to make the most of my course selection, even in the first year. I’m considering minoring in economics. A mix of courses that allows me to synthesize my minor and major to look at something like the economics and politics of international trade would be amazing.

As it happens, this Political Science professor, head of the department, is entirely tangential to the boy’s designated program. Still, he is deeply interested in integrating many subjects and has a detailed understanding of many multifaceted geopolitical occurrences worldwide. The professor expressed some surprise at the nature of the inquiry, gently telling our future scholar that the answer to many of these questions is beyond the undergraduate programs’ scope but offering some resources and guidance nonetheless. Most importantly, for our purposes, was the follow-up conversation with me about this correspondence. The boy was incredibly disappointed, feeling that the professor was missing his intentions entirely: “I wanted to make a connection with him, with the department; start a dialogue, develop a relationship.” I explained that the professor’s extensive, detailed email responses could be interpreted as interest and that our young scholar can learn to build on these communication signals. It is easy to see how this boy’s deeply held emergent political philosophy might have been extinguished by miscueing on the part of the professor who admitted to being unfamiliar with this level of inquiry from a freshman. Our scholar is firmly rooted in a Transcendental Perspectivist framework which reflects the core ethos of the Self- and other-transformational giftedness framework. His deepest intention is to affect change worldwide. For this to occur, he is willing to learn another language or two, network across several faculties and forge relationships with faculty and peers. He seeks both self-­ transformation and the desire to connect to others authentically and meaningfully.

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 he Self- and -Other- Transformational Gifted T Model: Both Must Be in Play with the PG For the practitioners of a transformational giftedness model, these core traits of the PG must be the guiding light in making programme decisions and forging the necessary relationships that will be the foundation of the PG’s optimal educational experiences. With the right supports and authentic interactions, the PG are hardwired to gain knowledge, skills and expertise to effect change in the world. For PGs, this knowledge acquisition is expressly tied to their Self-fidelity and self-transformation. The program breaks down when the PG child feels managed in service of someone else’s predetermined outcomes. There must be both self-and other-transformational giftedness in play simultaneously or the PG learner will shut down, often with harmful mental health outcomes. Without this in-depth knowledge of the many facets of the PG – how they communicate, their cognitive level of functioning, and how they are motivated – we make gross errors of misjudgement in our interactions with them.

 ore Trait 5: Unusual Creative Appetites C and Special Talents PG children are hardwired for prodigious learning and creative output. The amplified creative appetites of the PG child, evidenced as a bottomless desire to create and learn, akin to Winner’s “rage to master” (1997), is a striking and distinguishing feature of this sub-tribe the larger gifted group. Their exceptional abilities allies wholly to a super-charged sense of purpose, often directed towards an all-absorbing interest in a particular domain. The innate drive to explore and master a discipline, skill, or concept is all-consuming and wraps around every aspect of the PG child’s existence. It is typified by complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The PG child “locks in” and is driven to know, in a way that is so undeterred and so hyper-­ involved in the activity that nothing else seems to matter. This deep learning absorption is an enlivened activation of their rich potential. It brings with it characteristic deep absorption, engagement, a sense of fulfillment, and activated skills. Temporal concerns like time, food, and awareness of Self and others, may be overlooked entirely. The PG child enters a state of flow: complete involvement in the activity for its own sake in such a way that the ego falls away, perception of time becomes fluid, and every action, movement,

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and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, in an ever-looping spiral of the creative process. The results can be astounding in both the scope of the inquiry and in the superiority of the product created or the knowledge acquired. This deep immersion in the creative process demands full use of the child’s skills and abilities. It requires particular circumstances to be in place that will enable the PG child to wholly engage: right resources, right environment, and right state of mind. There must be sufficient challenge inherent in the learning process, just at the edge of the PG child’s current skill level. PG children are often operating at 4 or 5 grades beyond their age peers. When the materials presented are significantly beneath their cognitive level, they may find themselves entirely unable to participate in the learning process in a complete “lack of fit” conundrum.

Summary Taken as a whole, these five core traits of PG learners provide us with a conceptual roadmap to navigate the complex social-emotional and learning needs inherent in each PG child. This deep dive into the psychology of the PG – with case study material from children and adults worldwide with diverse backgrounds  – texturizes the abstract framework. Most importantly, case study material and clinical data provide rich data making sense of the need for highly individualized and dynamic programming for PG learners commensurate with the Self- and Other-Transformational giftedness paradigm. In Authentic Education, Dabrowski addresses the importance of responding to the multidimensionality of each learner. This mirrors the ethos of the IPG™ model: It is important to keep this in mind, i.e., each person is multidimensional, his psychic being functions in N-space, N-dimensions, and most importantly, each individual has his own “unique-dimensional inner-space.” It is this inner space that belongs to you and to you alone and the growth and development of this inner space is what personal freedom and authenticity is all about, and what education should be about, which involves responsibility for your actions and awareness of the inner space and property of others. (p. 3)

When the Integral Practice for the Gifted™ model is used appropriately with unshakable regard for the individual needs of each PG learner, we witness tremendous growth and development in the PG child or adult. This

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model is in line with a Self- and other-transformational model of giftedness in these ways; PG learners have a highly articulated sense of Self that is abiding, purposive and central to PG functioning. They also operate from a highly evolved cognitive level, one that considers the well-being of others and that of the planet. Transformational giftedness must be both self-realized and other-­ realized for it to be developmentally appropriate for the PG learner. We close this chapter with a quote from our visual artist – the woman with backbone  – as inspiration for what a self-transformational and other-­ transformational trajectory looks like in the lives of the PG: One of the best parts of life must be when you are living your purpose, emerging and actualizing in your truth, power, and passion through what you do. There comes a certain point when you start connecting with others doing the same, albeit in different industries and endeavours  – and you come together to do projects that positively impact the world using your diverse expertise. This is where the magic happens. I’m working with so many unbelievably gifted humans right now. This is where the magic happens.

References Dąbrowski, K. (1972). Psychoneurosis is not an illness. Gryf. Gross, M. (2006). Exceptionally gifted children: Long-term outcomes of academic acceleration and nonacceleration. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 29, 404–429. Hollingworth, L. (1926). Gifted children: Their nature and nurture. Macmillan. Hollingworth, L. (1931). The child of very superior intelligence as a special problem in social adjustment. Mental Hygiene, 15(1), 3–16. Hollingworth, L. (1942). Children above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and development. World Book. Jackson, P. S. (2006a). Tips for parents: An integral approach to the social and emotional development of the profoundly gifted. YS Online Seminar for Parents, Davidson Institute for Talent Development. Jackson, P. S. (2006b, November 5). Integral development and care of the gifted. Where body, mind, soul and spirit merge. National Association for Gifted Children 53th Annual Conference: Charlotte, NC. Jackson, P. S. (2007, November 10). Reaching beyond cognicentrism: Embracing integral practice in our work with gifted learners. National Association for Gifted Children 54th Annual Conference: Minneapolis, MN. Jackson, P. S. (2010). Integral practice and radial programming with highly gifted learners. In J. Castellano & A. D. Frazier (Eds.), Special populations in gifted education: Understanding our most able students from diverse backgrounds. Prufrock Press.

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Jackson, P. S. (2014). Profoundly gifted children: Who they are and what they need to thrive. Understanding Our Gifted, Spring, 2014. Jackson, P. S. (2015). Raising profoundly gifted children: The art, the anguish and the beauty. Understanding Our Gifted, Spring. 2015. Jackson P. S. (2019, July 24–28). Gender, sexuality and the profoundly gifted: An unexamined trinity. LGBTQ and the Gifted: Perspectives from Around the World. World Council for Gifted and Talented Children 23rd Annual Conference: Nashville, TN. Jung, C. (1954). Collected works of C.G. Jung, Volume 17: Development of personality (G. Adler & R. Hull, Eds.). Princeton University Press. Kegan, R. (1994). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press. Roeper, A. (2007). The “I” of the beholder: A guided journey to the essence of a child. Great Potential Press. Shirazi, B. (2001). Integral psychology, metaphors and processes of personal integration. In M. Cornelissen (Ed.), Consciousness and its transformation. SAICE. Sternberg, R.  J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39(3), 152–169. Sternberg, R. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42, 230–240. Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness. Education Sciences, 11(5), 192. Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (1993). On transpersonal definitions. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 25(2), 199–207. Wilber, K. (1999). An approach to integral psychology. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 31(2), 109–136. Wilber, K. (2000a). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution (Rev. ed.). Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2000b). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Shambhala. Winner, E. (1997). Gifted children. Basic Books.

13 Starting Over: An Iranian Conception of Giftedness and How It Can Transform Societies and the World Sareh Karami and Mehdi Ghahremani

 e Realized It Was the Time for a Cultural W Transformational Conception of Giftedness This chapter is based on our experiences as administrators and researchers. In fact, our research has been pretty much informed by our practices. We worked in Iran’s National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET) schools for almost a decade in various roles. NODET is the only organization responsible for gifted education in Iran. Admission to NODET schools is selective and based on an annual comprehensive nationwide entrance examination. Each year, NODET holds two national exams to select the students who will study in NODET-affiliated centers. One of these exams is the lower-secondary school’s (grade 5) entrance exam, and the other is the uppersecondary school’s (grade 9) entrance exam, each of which has two stages. The tests measure abstract-reasoning skills and academic knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, and math content. Statistically, fewer than 1% of applicants were chosen to enter the 99 middle schools and 98 high schools across the country. Unfortunately, NODET schools are the only service for students with gifts and talents in Iranian schools. Public schools do not provide any form of identification or instruction for academically talented students.

S. Karami (*) • M. Ghahremani Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Foundations, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_13

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Because of such an identification process, most students in NODET schools are academically gifted. NODET students have won hundreds of medals in the International Science Olympiads. Among the alumni of NODET are many successful academics and individuals1. Given such a record, many families believe it is important to enroll their children in NODET schools because of the high quality of their educational facilities and teachers and their upper social standing. Hence, what is valued in NODET shapes Iranian conceptions of giftedness and gifted education practices. We both had studied in NODET schools. Although we appreciated our experiences, we both realized that the schools failed to address important knowledge and skills students need to live in the twenty-first century and to solve its problems. That was why we went back to the schools. During our tenure at NODET, we served in different roles, including teachers, programmers, head of the research and extracurricular program department, and associate dean of education. We were trying to identify how we could enable the students to make the most of their skills and abilities to make our country and the world a better place in which to live. To achieve these goals, we reviewed many books, research articles, and official documents. During this investigation, we found that although Iran has offered programs for gifted students since 1968, it has not developed any official culturally specific definitions of giftedness. Instead, the definition and programs in Iran were, and still are, based on twentieth Century Western themes (mostly the work of Terman), Western conceptions, and Western research into giftedness—emphasizing intelligence, abstract-reasoning skills, and academic knowledge. There are at least two serious problems with using such definitions. First, Western definitions might clash seriously with the context of Iran (See Karami & Ghahremani, 2017). Second and more importantly, more and more scholars in Western countries are suggesting that gifted education needs to move beyond focusing on cognitive abilities and achievements, as such a focus has failed to help societies to solve the problems we are facing in the current century (Ambrose, 2016; Gentry et al., 2021; Sternberg, 2017, 2020). Cognitive abilities are not enough to address the most significant problems we face today—the ones that we need gifted individuals to address. Besides the many great challenges we face today, the fast-changing world is constantly creating complex challenges with immediate and long-term  One well-known example was Prof. Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, who was the first woman and the first Iranian honored with the Fields Medal (the most prestigious award in mathematics). 1

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impacts. The world is changing faster than ever before. It is changing politically (Brexit), socially (polarized societies), technologically (quantum computing), economically (new job markets), as well as environmentally (limited world resources, climate change) (European Commission, 2019; Lufkin, 2017). Because of such a fast-changing world, there is no certainty about what the future holds for humanity, which is a significant challenge for current and future generations to deal with. Most of today’s schoolchildren—65% by a popular estimate—will work in new job types that do not yet exist (World Economic Forum, 2020). Every change in society could change the way we think about identity, globalization, justice, sustainability, and the world. Many scholars, organizations, and countries believe that creativity and innovation can help enable us to navigate through such uncertainty (Craft, 2005; European Commission, 2019; Kuratko, 2012; OECD, 2011; P21 Framework Definitions, 2015; World Economic Forum, 2020). Hence, educating a creative individual has been a new direction for the twenty-first Century for many countries (Fullan, 2009; Hui & Lau, 2010; McWilliam & Haukka, 2008; NACCCE, 1999; Pang & Plucker, 2012; P21 Framework Definitions, 2015; White Paper on Creative Education, 2003; World Economic Forum, 2020). However, although creativity is a must, using it positively is just as important (Sternberg, 2018). Although intelligence, creativity, and knowledge have enabled us to navigate through some of the problems we face in this century, there is a long record of innovation that has led to abuses. There are creative people who use their original ideas to gain unfair advantages or to deliberately damage others (Cropley, 2010; Cropley et al., 2014). For example, some social situations, like the current COVID-19 crisis, become complex quickly when diverse and competing interests arise. Decisions made by individuals likely yield consequences affecting people outside the initial interactions (Santos et al., 2017). Wisdom-based skills are needed to balance diverse interests, immediate and/ or lasting consequences, and environmental responses vital to positive, constructive decision-making (Sternberg, 2001). The concept of creativity is a combination of cognitive abilities and motivational aspects (Palmer et  al., 2020) and not every intelligent, creative, wise person is motivated to make positive changes. Bringing positive transformation requires people passionate about solving problems that can lead the change in a constructive way (Sternberg, 2016). The world is facing many challenges and problems that require attention and solution. However, the problem is not a lack of ideas about how to solve problems; rather, it is a lack of people who are autonomously motivated to apply their gifts toward bringing positive and transformative changes. It is a lack of

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enthusiastic people who can motivate and inspire others and redirect or reinitiate their ways of thinking (Sternberg et al., 2004). Making positive changes requires gifted people who passionately seek to identify new problems and to go beyond (Sternberg, 2020). As we could not find any—Iranian—culturally specific definition of giftedness that enabled us to identify and develop gifted students who were willing to make positive changes and to address the complex problems we are facing today, we investigated culturally embedded conceptions of giftedness as evidenced in one of the most important Iranian literary canons (The Gulistan). We found that, culturally, in Iran, a wise person is considered a gifted person. Based on the findings of that study, we developed the Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model (IHWM). According to the IHW model, there are three levels to wisdom: practically intelligent, wise, and sage. We have discussed these constructs in our previous work (See Karami, 2013). In this paper, we first briefly define transformational giftedness and then define levels of IHWM in terms of its distinction from transactional giftedness.

Transformational Giftedness Sternberg (2020) introduced the concept of transformational giftedness. Transformationally gifted individuals focus, in their own way, on making positive and meaningful changes at some level. Transformationally gifted individuals try to shape the environment. They are autonomously motivated to seek and solve problems out of interest or personal importance. Transformationally gifted individuals are autonomously motivated to use their gifts toward a common good—to create a better, more harmonious world. Transformationally gifted individuals can balance their own with others’ and larger interests, over the long- as well as the short-term (Sternberg, 2020). Sternberg and his colleagues (2021) elaborated on the model and introduced two types of transformational giftedness: self-transformational giftedness and other-transformational giftedness. Self-transformational gifted individuals make a transformative difference concerning themselves. Other-­ transformational gifted people direct their giftedness toward making a transformative difference with respect to others. Transactionally gifted individuals tend to adapt to given environments. Their behavior is not self-determined, but rather, externally regulated. Their behaviors are controlled by external reward and punishment contingencies necessary for adapting to the social environment. Transactionally gifted individuals might pursue a goal to avoid criticism from society or to get

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recognition. Although transactionally gifted individuals tend more to be extrinsically regulated, they can be driven by their autonomous motivations so long as they align with societal norms, as they have deeply internalized societal norms. They might make a positive difference, but they do so because of the rewards (or recognition) that they can get because of their contribution. Transactionally gifted individuals typically put their own interests before those of others.

Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model In our initial study, Toward an Iranian Conception of Giftedness (Karami & Ghahremani, 2016), we explored culturally embedded conceptions of giftedness as evidenced in one of the most culturally influential Iranian literary canons—The Gulistan (The Rose Garden; Archer, 1964). Many scholars believe that The Gulistan serves as the best representation of Iranian culture (Archer, 1964; Rypka, 2013). The Gulistan has inspired numerous imitations in the Persian literature (Kia, 2014; Lewis, 2012). Exploring these conceptions in this instrumental work revealed what culturally counted as giftedness in the Persian-speaking culture and resulted in the development of the Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model (IHWM) which is very different from what the schools are measuring now for admission. According to IHWM (Karami & Ghahremani, 2016), there are three levels to wisdom: practical intelligence, wisdom, and sagacity. These levels of wisdom/giftedness can be acquired through a combination of education and life experiences. The three-levels construct of the IHWM is portrayed as a pyramid in Fig. 13.1. The first level, at the bottom, represents the most common level of wisdom/giftedness, practical intelligence, and the top level represents the rarest level of wisdom/giftedness, sagacity. Many people can cultivate and

Sagacity Wisdom Practical intelligence Fig. 13.1  Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model (IHWM)

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acquire practical intelligence, but only a very few individuals throughout history become sage, such as Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern (New Zealand’s prime minister). The levels build on each other. Someone who is wise is also practically intelligent but someone who is practically intelligent may or may not be wise. These characteristics are drawn from investigating The Gulistan’s stories (see Karami, 2013; Karami & Ghahremani, 2016). Below we discuss these levels and the characteristics of people at each level as described in the Gulistan. They might have similarities and differences with theories in the fields.

First Level: Practical Intelligence According to the IHWM, people at this level have intellectual abilities that are above average. Although intellectual ability is a key component of practical intelligence, practical intelligence involves much more than intellectual abilities. It is different from the kind of intelligence associated with academic success (the one Iran assesses in their identification process to gifted schools). Practical intelligence, similar to Sternberg’s (1986) “practical” intelligence and Gardner’s (1983) “interpersonal” and “intrapersonal” intelligences, deals with giftedness as it applies in relations with others and with daily life problems and situations. Practically intelligent people are very knowledgeable about human nature and the life course. Not only do they have broad knowledge of everyday life and its complexities (“know that”), but they also “know how” to flexibly use the understanding of these complexities to reach their valued goals. Practically intelligent individuals have internalized societal norms, values, and goals. They know what one needs to know to achieve those goals (e.g., good grades, good test scores, admission to a prestigious college, and a high-status job). Individuals at this level have accurate self-awareness. They know who they are, what interests them, and what they want to accomplish. They engage in self-evaluation; they evaluate whether their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors follow their standards and values. They are aware of their fallibility and try to develop as people. They value self-actualization—a person’s desire for fulfillment and the desire to achieve everything within their potential (Maslow, 1943). Experience plays an important role in gaining practical intelligence. However, experience per se does not increase practical intelligence; rather, what matters is what one learns from the experiences (Sternberg et al., 2000). Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the people at this level are older

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individuals. However, individuals can reach this level in their youth through how they utilize education and experiences. Practical intelligence is strictly transactional. Practically intelligent individuals’ goals involve advancing themselves and those they perceive as their tribe or on their team. Their goals center around the individual, such as the desire for self-actualization, popularity, prestige, power, prosperity, or pleasure. Practically intelligent people are more concerned with their own interests than those of others. They focus on their own decisions and personal lives. They are not contentious; they know what society expects of them and how to fulfill those expectations. They often can see when an opportunity presents itself and then take advantage of it. In fact, they are experts in adapting to environments. However, we are part of a greater community and hence need to learn to balance multiple interests and consequences to maximize a common good. Hence, we need to go beyond practical intelligence.

Second Level: Wisdom Wisdom in the IHWM has similarities to current conceptions of wisdom, such as in the balance theory (Sternberg, 1998), Berlin paradigm (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000), Polyhedron Model of Wisdom (Karami et al., 2020), and Three-Dimensional Model (Ardelt, 2003, 2004, 2005). According to the IHWM, wisdom is about seeking a common good within a given existing system. Wise people have abilities of practical intelligence and more. They are active problem solvers who shape their environments for the better, not just for themselves but also for others in their environment. Wise people account for the interests of others who are not perceived as in their tribe or on their team. Like practically intelligent people, wise people see the opportunities and take them. However, wise people look out for others as well. Hence, they provide other people with opportunities to succeed too. Like practically intelligent people, wise people are self-aware. Wise people know themselves and are open to understanding other people. As a result, wise people are tolerant, a rare trait (Kaztaevna et al., 2015). They have tolerance for others’ opinions and actions. They can accept people with different views without irritation. They respect the beliefs of others and do not try to prove their exclusive correctness. They realize that views of the world are different and should not be reduced to just their own. Wise people do not take their own views for granted. They are reflective. They pay attention to their experiences in the world and note how they are

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behaving and feeling in a specific situation. Wise people are reflexive. They use their advanced higher-order thinking skills to think critically about life experiences (theirs and others) and to analyze them. They step outside of themselves and examine their views, values, and ideas from various perspectives. They are willing to listen to feedback. They acknowledge the relativity of values held by themselves, others, and society. Wise people realize that no matter how intelligent they are, the real world is vastly more complicated than the image of it that they carry around in their heads. Wise people recognize that personal and relative values influence their own and others’ knowledge, views, and ideas. Hence, they do not merely internalize the dominant moral views of society. They do not feel pressured to do what other people expect of them. They are willing and able to stand up to falsehoods and misleading assumptions that most other people are thinking and acting upon. Wise people are creative problem-solvers. They actively seek out problems to solve or products to create. They redefine problems, analyze their ideas, and try to persuade others that their ideas are valuable. They know they cannot expect others to accept them willingly. Wise individuals are persuasive; they can convince others to accept their ideas. Their creativity, problem-solving skills, transparency, capacity for understanding others’ perspectives, reflectivity, and courage get people to trust and follow them (Nordstrom, 2020). Wise people are usually highly persuasive speakers whose speeches are well-timed and perceptive. They think before they speak. They value silence as well as speaking. Wise people know when to quiet their inner dialogue and listen to those around them. Wise people are transformational. They have fully transformed themselves and have translated their self-transformation into a transformation that also impacts people around them. Not only have they found a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives, but they also have made extraordinary and meaningful contributions in whatever environment they happen to find themselves in. However, they are not fully other-transformational. Although they have directed themselves toward making positive changes in their environment, they are not trying to change the world as it requires them to push themselves and others to do what seems impossible. In Saadi’s view, wise people are ideal for leadership positions. However, they usually avoid leadership positions because they know it requires a strong commitment to being more concerned with the needs and wishes of others than with their own. They realize that transforming the world might involve sacrifice.

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Third Level: Sagacity Sagacity is an extremely rare quality. Very few individuals in history have achieved this level. Yet, these are the most influential people we know; they have done something that genuinely contributes to our world—people such as Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern (New Zealand’s prime minister). Individuals at this level are creative individuals with revolutionary, society-changing ideas, and they believe in their ability to change. Their enthusiasm, along with their superior higher-order thinking skills, enable them to recognize and/or solve problems that other people cannot solve. Sagacity is about seeking a common good by transforming the current system into a better one. Sage people are transformational. They have transformed their lives and have added undeniable value to the world through their work and contributions. They actively explore their strengths and weaknesses to achieve self-­ actualization. They have found a very important purpose in their lives that is larger than themselves. They are passionate about their purpose. They sincerely care about the world and people. They try hard to make significant positive, meaningful transformations globally and convince other people to be part of that transformation. They are resilient and courageous. Sage people understand that challenges and failures are inevitable, but they see such difficult experiences as opportunities that trigger profound personal growth. They muster motivation and purpose even during stressful periods of their lives. They are honest about who they are—with all their strengths and weaknesses. They do experience emotional pain and fear. They acknowledge their fears and choose to face them and stand up for their higher purpose. Their great goals inspire sage individuals to incur the risk they bring about. Sage people have the capacity to greatly influence others. Sage individuals are necessarily identified as leaders. They willingly encourage others to rise to challenges and to confront obstacles. They have relentless enthusiasm that motivates people to accomplish amazing things and to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones. One of the remarkable features of sage people is that they serve as role models, showing and teaching others how to view the world. Their revolutionary ideas survive over time and serve as a guide to other people throughout history. Sage individuals transform many people’s (not only people around them) attitudes, beliefs, values, and lives. The difference between wisdom and sagacity is that wisdom involves changes within the

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system that exists, and sagacity involves transformation of that system into a new and better one. Sage people are lifelong learners. They have enduring motivation and appreciation for learning throughout their lifespan. They engage in continuous lifelong self-transformation via reflection and the reinterpretation of various experiences. They have purposeful life goals and are intrinsically motivated to deepen their existing knowledge and skills in a significant way. Sage people learn from others’ experiences and the world around them, so much so that they view the world as their teacher. Although most wise and sage people might be adults, youth can become sage through education and experiences. Malala Yousafzai is an excellent example of a young person who achieved sagacity. Unfortunately, despite the importance of transformational giftedness in the Iranian culture, Iranian gifted schools’ admissions process actively ensures that transactionally gifted individuals will be favored over transformationally gifted ones. However, by identifying and developing young people who are not just gifted but gifted in a transformational way, Iran (and other countries) might be able to solve many of the problems the country is facing. The world needs many more gifted youths like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, an internationally recognized climate activist.

 alala Yousafzai: A Great Example of a Young M Sage Person Malala was born in 1997 in Pakistan. She became an advocate for girls’ education when she herself was still a child. In 2008, when she was 11, she gave a speech, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?”, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. Although she was frightened, Malala continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to education. In 2012, when she was 15 years old, a masked gunman boarded her school bus and shot her on the left side of her head. After months of surgeries, when she recovered, she gave a speech at the United Nations and said that “… nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear, and hopelessness died. Strength, power, and courage were born” (as cited in United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Release, 2013). Although the Taliban still consider Malala a target, she remains a strong advocate for the power of education. She founded the Malala Fund in 2013 to champion every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The Malala Fund works in regions where most girls miss out on secondary education. Malala received the

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Nobel Peace Prize in December 2014 and became the youngest-ever Nobel laureate. In 2017 she was appointed as a U.N. Messenger of Peace to promote girls’ education. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford in 2020. Malala is determined to continue her fight for education and women’s right until every girl could go to school.

Concluding Thoughts None of the abilities we discussed are abilities with which people are born. Rather, they are decision processes. Gifted education can move toward developing transformational giftedness by changing the goals of their gifted programs, changing their identification processes, and programming for gifted students. To solve the many global issues we are confronting today, the goal of education should involve developing individuals who are willing to make meaningful contributions that help to make the world a better place. It should involve assisting children in finding purpose and meaning in their lives—to motivate them to direct their abilities (see Dai & Sternberg, 2004). Unfortunately, despite the problematic nature of measured IQ scores, educators still widely use and trust the scores when they make decisions about students’ inclusion in, or exclusion from gifted programming (Francis et al., 2016; Gentry et al., 2021). We need better ways of identifying gifted children. Sternberg has suggested that we need to assess gifted children for analytical, creative, practical, wisdom-based, and ethical skills (Sternberg, 2017, 2021). We need to identify and develop gifted individuals who are willing to make transformational changes in the world at some level (Sternberg, 2020). In the end, what matters is what intelligent individuals do with their intelligence. We suggest that it is possible to predict transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2021; Sternberg et al., 2021). Under Sternberg’s supervision, we are currently working on a transformational-giftedness scale. The goal of the transformational-giftedness scale is not to measure intelligence, but rather to measure how young people hope to use their intelligence in the future. It is not yet a validated scale. But we present it as a suggested operationalized direction that transformational giftedness studies can take. All the measures that currently are used to identify gifted students measure transactional giftedness. Gifted education scholars can focus on studying and developing measures of transformational giftedness instead of the transactional giftedness.

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The transformational-giftedness scale is available for research purposes (see Sternberg, 2021; Sternberg et al., 2021). Gifted education needs to take giftedness forward in the twenty-first-­ century. Education should help gifted youths become autonomous lifelong learners, courageous, and resilient. To enable them to understand other people and their perspectives. Education should enable them to understand and balance diverse interests, seeing immediate and/or lasting consequences (Sternberg, 2001). Finally, it should empower them to make positive, meaningful changes through the sense of purpose they have developed. Giftededucation specialists and scholars can design programs to promote these skills and attitudes in gifted students to help them become more transformational.

References 21st Century Learning. (2015). P21 framework definitions. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from http://bit.ly/P21-­framework Ambrose, D. (2016). Twenty-first century contextual influences on the life trajectories of the gifted, talented, and creative. In D. Ambrose & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization (pp. 15–42). Sense. Archer, W.  G. (Ed.). (1964). The Gulistan, or, Rose Garden of Sa`di (E.  Rehatsek, Trans.). George Allen & Unwin. Ardelt, M. (2003). Empirical assessment of a three-dimensional wisdom scale. Research on Aging, 25(3), 275–324. Ardelt, M. (2004). Wisdom as expert knowledge system: A critical review of a contemporary operationalization of an ancient concept. Human Development, 47(5), 257–285. Ardelt, M. (2005). How wise people cope with crises and obstacles in life. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 28(1), 7–19. Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55(1), 122–136. Craft, A. (2005). Creativity in schools: Tensions and dilemmas. Routledge. Cropley, A.  J. (2010). The dark side of creativity. What is it? In A.  J. Cropley, J.  C. Kaufman, & M.  A. Runco (Eds.), The dark side of creativity (pp.  1–14). Cambridge University Press. Cropley, D. H., Kaufman, J. C., White, A. E., & Chiera, B. A. (2014). Layperson perceptions of malevolent creativity: The good, the bad, and the ambiguous. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(4), 400–412. Dai, D.  Y., & Sternberg, R.  J. (Eds.). (2004). Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development. Routledge.

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European Commission. (2019). Horizon 2020: Work program 2018–2020. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/ wp/2018-­2020/main/h2020-­wp1820-­swfs_en.pdf Francis, R., Hawes, D. J., & Abbott, M. (2016). Intellectual giftedness and psychopathology in children and adolescents: A systematic literature review. Exceptional Children, 82(3), 279–302. Fullan, M. (2009). Large-scale reform comes of age. Journal of Educational Change, 10(2), 101–113. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books. Gentry, M., Desmet, O. A., Karami, S., Lee, H., Green, C., Cress, A., Chowkase, A., & Gray, A. (2021). Gifted education’s legacy of high stakes ability testing: Using measures for identification that perpetuate inequity. Roeper Review, 43(4), 242–255. Hui, A. N., & Lau, S. (2010). Formulation of policy and strategy in developing creativity education in four Asian Chinese societies: A policy analysis. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 44(4), 215–235. Karami, S. (2013). Towards an Iranian conception of giftedness. [Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0074304 Karami, S., & Ghahremani, M. (2016). Toward an Iranian conception of giftedness. Gifted and Talented International, 31(1), 4–18. Karami, S., & Ghahremani, M. (2017). Elaboration on the culturally informed Iranian hierarchical wisdom model: Comparison with Sternberg’s ACCEL model. Roeper Review, 39(4), 234–238. Karami, S., Ghahremani, M., Parra-Martinez, F., & Gentry, M. (2020). A polyhedron model of wisdom: A systematic review of the wisdom studies in three different disciplines. Roeper Review, 42(4), 241–257. Kaztaevna, T. G., Omarovna, A. R., Askerkhanovna, T. K., Zhanarbekovna, B. A., & Erezhepovna, K. N. (2015). Education of tolerant personality of a future specialist as the social-pedagogical phenomenon. International Education Studies, 8(2), 169–175. Kia, M. (2014). Adab as ethics of literary form and social conduct: Reading the Gulistān in late Mughal India. In A. Korangy & D. J. Sheffield (Eds.), No tapping around philology: A festschrift in honor of wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th birthday (pp. 281–308). Harrassowitz Verlag. Kuratko, D. F. (2012). Corporate entrepreneurship. In D. Hjorth (Ed.), Handbook on organizational entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar Publishing. Lewis, F. (2012). Golestān-e Sa’di. Retrieved from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/golestan-­e-­sadi Lufkin, B. (2017, March 31). 50 grand challenges for the 21st century. BBC Future. https:// www.bbc.com/future/article/20170331-­50-­grand-­challenges-­for-­the-­21st-­century Maslow, A.  H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.

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McWilliam, E., & Haukka, S. (2008). Educating the creative workforce: New directions for twenty-first century schooling. British Educational Research Journal, 34(5), 651–666. Ministry of Education (MoE). (2003). White paper on creative education—Establishing a republic of creativity (R. O. C) for Taiwan. Taipei Ministry of Education. NACCCE (National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education). (1999). All our futures: Creativity, culture and education. DfEE. Nordstrom, J. (2020). Teaching in the periphery: Teacher identity in community language schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 96, 103192. OECD. (2011). LEED forum on partnerships and local governance. Handbook no. 5. Partnering for success in fostering graduate. OECD LEED. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/47436168.pdf Palmer, C., Kraus, S., & Ribeiro-Soriano, D. (2020). Exploring dark creativity: The role of power in an unethical marketing task. Economic research-Ekonomska istraživanja, 33(1), 145–159. Pang, W., & Plucker, J.  A. (2012). Recent transformations in China’s economic, social, and education policies for promoting innovation and creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 46(4), 247–273. Rypka, J. (2013). History of Iranian literature. Springer. Santos, H., Huynh, A., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Wisdom in a complex world: A situated account of wise reasoning and its development. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(10), 1–13. Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triarchic theory of intellectual giftedness. In R. J. Sternberg & J.  E. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (pp.  223–243). Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2(4), 347–365. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Why schools should teach for wisdom: The balance theory of wisdom in educational settings. Educational Psychologist, 36(4), 227–245. Sternberg, R.  J. (2016). Has the term “gifted” become gifting (poisonous) to the nurturance of gifted potential? In D. Ambrose & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization (pp. 281–291). Sense. Sternberg, R.  J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39(3), 152–169. Sternberg, R.  J. (2018). A triangular theory of creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 12(1), 50. Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. Sternberg, R.  J. (2021). Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9(1), 15.

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Sternberg, R. J., Forsyth, G. B., Hedlund, J., Horvath, J. A., Wagner, R. K., Williams, W. M., Snook, S. A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2000). Practical intelligence in everyday life. Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J., Kaufman, J. C., & Pretz, J. E. (2004). A propulsion model of creative leadership. Creativity and innovation management, 13(3), 145–153. Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness. Education Sciences, 11(5), 192. United Nations. (2013, July 12). Malala, at youth takeover event, says ‘weakness, fear, hopelessness died’ after assassination attempt, giving rise to strength, power, courage. United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Release. https://www.un.org/press/ en/2013/dev3009.doc.htm World Economic Forum. (2020). The future of jobs report 2020. World Economic Forum.

14 Transformational Education as a Work in Process: Insights from Transformationally Gifted Adults Lori Lutz

Following graduation from The Roeper School located in metropolitan Detroit in 2008, Ali Rose matriculated into the Parsons School of Design with the intention to begin a career in fashion design. During her final year at Roeper, Ali had the opportunity to delve into her passion by way of completing a Senior Project, an intensive year-long, self-directed research or experiential process leading to a capstone product. For her Senior Project, Ali created a “Summer 2008 Collection,” designing and sewing fun and functional clothing inspired by her travels. After graduating from Parsons, Ali entered the corporate fashion design and marketing world. Back home in Michigan for the holidays in 2015, she became aware of the Flint Water Crisis, the public health crisis that began in 2014 in Flint, Michigan when the unelected emergency manager appointed by the State to handle the City’s fiscal crisis decided to switch the source of water for Flint from treated water sourced from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the river water, resulting in lead leaching from aging pipes and contaminating the water supply, and poisoning the citizens of Flint. Nearly 30,000 schoolchildren were exposed to lead, a neurotoxin known to produce permanent, detrimental effects on children’s developing brains and nervous systems. Ali decided to volunteer with the Red Cross to deliver cases of water door-­ to-­door to Flint residents. Having recently spent time in India, helping train

L. Lutz (*) The Roeper Institute, Bloomfield Hills, MI, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_14

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domestically abused women to learn sewing skills, Ali was shocked by the public health crisis impacting communities “in her own backyard” that were already similarly impoverished. Ali was also keenly aware of the potential damaging impact on the environment of so many surplus water bottles. This confluence of crises (including listening to Flint residents say what they most needed was “jobs”) led Ali to conceive of and launch Genusee eyewear, a company that recycles post-consumer recycled plastic water bottles into sustainable eyewear. Genusee is located in Flint (in Genesee County), employs Flint residents, invests profits back into the local community, and upcycles environmental waste into a designer product for consumers. Along the way, Ali and Genusee educated more people about the Flint Water Crisis. The name of Genusee’s first eyewear line? The Roeper.

Brief History of The Roeper School The Roeper School was founded by George and Annemarie Roeper in 1941. Educated at Schule Marienau, the progressive boarding school founded by Annemarie’s parents, Max and Gertrud Bondy, George and Annemarie found themselves faced with the conundrum of how a people of such intellectual and cultural attainments as the Germans could have embraced the Nazi agenda so quickly and completely. As explained by School Historian Marcia Ruff, The family felt compelled to commit their lives to educating children so they would not grow up to become Nazis or acquiesce to fascism. They believed that an education that fails to teach children to think and speak for themselves, to recognize the humanity of those about them, to be able to analyze and interpret events and policies clearly and compassionately leaves them vulnerable to demagogues. (Ruff, 2016)

While “a number of elements were critical to Max and Gertrud’s educational philosophy”, “…the most important was the belief that a school must nurture the social and emotional development of its students.” (Ruff, 2016, p.  1) Gertrud, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst who had trained with Sigmund Freud, was particularly attuned to the integration of intellect and emotion in child development and the nurturing of an educational environment that would support healthy psychological and moral growth. Max was shaped by his experiences with the Twentieth Century German Youth Movement that focused on the freedom and autonomy of German youth to

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shape their own lives in community with each other. “Gertrud’s passion for the individual and Max’s passion for community made an ideal pairing. Together they founded a school where students could pursue the fundamental task of being human: to come to understand themselves and how they fit into the world.” (Ruff, 2016, p. 2) The Bondy philosophy formed the foundation for what would become The Roeper Philosophy which, since its founding in 1941, has been the foundation for The Roeper School. Best stated by George and Annemarie in 1969: This philosophy is a universal one. It is a way of life. It is not limited to the school or the children in it. It is based on a concept of human rights, not in theory only, but in daily living. It embraces a principle of responsibility and support for each other, a principle of helping those who are in need, because they are entitled to it, not because of charity. It includes the notion, that even a little bit more love and mercy would make this world a better place to live in. It is a goal, which although it can never be quite realized, is only as good and as real as its honest attempts at implementation. It does not exist for the school only, but the school exists because of it. (Roeper & Roeper, 1969)

With their understanding of the critical role of child development against the searing trauma of the experience of Nazi Germany, the Roepers unequivocally affirmed: In order to believe in justice, the child must be raised with justice. In order to trust others, he must be trusted. He must be expected to understand, not only to obey. As he develops controls from within, outer controls must recede. In order to shape his own destiny, the child must learn the process of interaction with other people – a process based on justice, not power, and he must learn the process of decision-making along with all academic skills and concepts. (Roeper & Roeper, 1970)

This humanistic philosophy preceded the school’s decision to focus on gifted children. In the 1950s, a national interest in giftedness began to develop, motivated in no small part by the space race between the United States and Russia. George and Annemarie’s interest also began to grow as a consequence of a confluence of factors: (1) that their school seemed to attract gifted children; (2) their realization that gifted children had unique abilities to contribute to the challenge of creating a better world; and (3) their realization that giftedness, without conscious ethical development, could be exploited and used to produce something as horrific as a Holocaust. Thus, in 1956, at the Roepers’ invitation, Dr. A. Harry Passow of Columbia University and other

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noted experts in gifted education came to Michigan to write a curriculum for educating gifted children based on their academic research and evidence. (Ruff, 2017). As Passow described in a 1993 interview, “The curriculum was essentially what George and Annemarie believed in. We just put a little patina on it.” (Banks-Sims, 1993). Recognizing that traditional gifted education and tuition-dependent independent school education were often spaces limited to those with social-economic privilege, the Roepers consciously sought to make a Roeper education available to gifted and creative children regardless of ability to pay. This commitment to economic diversity has never wavered; today, 45% of students receive financial aid with nearly 19% of the operating budget allocated to financial aid.

 ow Does the Roeper Philosophy Live H in the Educational Program? In 1981, Annemarie Roeper wrote what many consider to be the seminal articulation of the philosophy at the heart of the school she and George founded. After discussing the foundation, definition, and purpose of the Philosophy, Annemarie concludes with an explanation of how the Philosophy is reflected in the program: A. By the creation of the opportunities for the child to participate in his destiny to the extent he is developmentally able. B.  Seeing the child as a valid member of the community and respecting his rights and responsibilities, perceptions and thoughts. C. Emphasizing all aspects of learning and growing, by not lifting out certain areas as more important and thus making others less important. If, for example, evaluation is indicated, all areas of growth should be evaluated, not only academic, because that immediately gives them priority, for they are being measured. D.  By creating a program rich in opportunities for all kinds of growth: academic, creative, physical, social, moral, and opportunities for joy. E.  By using an approach which stresses a global point of view and mutual responsibilities. F. By building into all subject matters an emphasis on complexities of life and the fact that every experience, every action, every perception has many causes and many effects; that in truth life is not a linear progression but an allencompassing development in all directions. G. By including in all subject matter confrontations with moral decisions which grow out of increased technical knowledge and our commitment to humanism. H. By emphasizing that the future is theirs to create.

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I.  By emphasizing all areas of communication: openness, mutual understanding, verbal (language, literature, writing), non-verbal (dance, art, music), first-hand experience (travel, contact with people from different walks of life, off-campus jobs and instruction for older students, etc.). By involvement in the events of the moment: political, social, and cultural. J. By looking at the school as the world in microcosm where all of the conflicts, problems, solutions, interdependence, and chain reactions exist in a small way that one finds in the world at large. To use these opportunities to create learning experiences for the children and to enhance the scope of the community by letting students make an impact through student government structures and other channels. (Roeper, 1981)

Today, this philosophy is succinctly represented in the following graphic:

THE CORE TENETS OF THE ROEPER PHILOSOPHY THE ROEPER SCHOOL to view the needs of each child independently

EDUCATING AND INSPIRING GIFTED STUDENTS TO THINK AS INDIVIDUALS AND TO ENGAGE AS A COMMUNITY

to prepare this future generation to deal with the unknown

WITH COMPASSION FOR EACH OTHER AND THIS WORLD

to commit to justice rather than power

to be willing to allow children to participate in the shaping of their own destiny and to consciously prepare them for it

to make equal human rights for all people a priority

The Transformational Character of the Roeper Philosophy George and Annemarie did not employ the term “transformational” in describing their philosophy or educational purpose. But in grounding their school in a humanistic focus on education as a vehicle to come to understand

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one’s self and one’s place in the world – “to think as an individual” and “to engage as a community with compassion for each other and this world” – the notion of developing giftedness as transformational (as opposed to transactional) – is inherent in The Roeper Philosophy. This theme is further amplified in the contemporary words of the School’s current Head of School, David Feldman: I know it can be easy for families to view a tuition based independent school like Roeper as something in their lives that is transactional. The family writes a tuition check, the school provides a product. It is a consumer driven model similar to some of the online classes or certificate programs we have become familiar with over the last few years. Except, schools like Roeper aren’t producing products – children are not products. Education is not a mechanical process churning out things. Teaching and learning is organic; it is transformational. Roeper is not about consumerism and consumption; it is about community building, relationships, and trust building. Our programs are about people and centered on raising good humans, not merely providing the certificate of completion to move on to the next step… …Our families know that excellence at Roeper is not measured merely by grades, test scores, college admissions, and advanced level classes – although, in truth, Roeper is successful in each of these areas. No, our families know that excellence at Roeper is measured by the difference that each of our graduates makes. Alums who leave our doors with a philosophy that guides their life’s journey with compassion, empathy, and an embrace of social justice. (Feldman, 2021)

 ransformational Giftedness Through the Lens T of Roeper School Alumni What George and Annemarie Roeper fundamentally understood was that transformational education was required to nurture transformationally gifted adults. We invited Roeper alumni to share their perspective on whether and how their Roeper education informed their evolution as transformational individuals. We developed an on-line survey (see Table 14.1) and received 54 responses. The author of this chapter1 is not a professional researcher or academic; the research methodology and data analysis are best viewed as preliminary and can be followed up with qualitative and/or quantitative research studies. With that caveat, however, strong themes emerged from the responses and the alumni stories shared that provide evidence that the combination of  Roeper alumna ’11, Eleanor Gamalski, assisted the author with the preliminary data analysis.

1

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Table 14.1  On-line alumni survey questions 2021 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

What is your name? What years did you attend The Roeper School? Did you graduate from The Roeper School? Please list all colleges and universities you attended, and for each college or university, year of graduation, and degree obtained? Please give a brief description of your professional career, including fields pursued and positions held How do you think being gifted has impacted you in your adult life? Does the concept of transformational v. transactional giftedness (as described by Robert Sternberg below) resonate with you and if so, how? Please provide examples from your own experience Sternberg’s description of “transformational giftedness”: “Transformationally gifted people seek to make the world a better and more just place. They try to make a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring contribution to changing things in the world that are not working. They may do this in a smaller context, such as a local one, or in a larger context, even a global one. But they do not view “giftedness” merely as a transaction whereby, in exchange for being labeled as ‘gifted’, they accrue benefits to themselves, such as a more prestigious education, more income, or residence in a more exclusive community.” As you reflect on your Roeper education, do you believe it informed your identity of yourself as a gifted person and if so, how? Are there Roeper alumni who you would recommend we interview as part of this project and why?

Roeper mission, philosophy, and pedagogy powerfully nurtures gifted children to grow into transformational adults. Roeper alumni are highly and consciously self-reflective with an intense, almost constant lens of critical inquiry and purpose-driven life. After obtaining a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering, Claire began her career working for Los Alamos National Laboratory, hoping to use her skills to help keep the world safe from nuclear terrorism. Followed by a stint with the intelligence community and several years in higher education, engaged in research and design into novel methods to detect and identify terrorist nuclear weapons, Claire found herself increasingly caring about mainstream definitions of success. I have always known that it is time to leave a job when I start caring about how much money I am making or what level I am at…I do not need to be (nor do I want to be!) a manager to feel successful. I want to do good things that get used by people. I have been asked several times in my career thus far to go into management because people seem to think I would be good at it or that it would somehow make me feel more accomplished. In fact, I view it as a punishment. My greatest reward in life is to be given good, meaningful work that can get applied somewhere.

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Fearful of the effects of prolonged work in an environment mired in transactional values, Claire decided to leave the field entirely and begin a new career in data science. Rebecca obtained a B.S. in Engineering from a highly selective prestigious university. She then began work in Sourcing, Manufacturing, & Procurement for a publicly traded multinational corporation. While graduating from Roeper nearly 20  years after Claire, Rebecca’s reflection on her career and capacity to sustain her values is remarkably similar. In my ‘next steps’ after graduating from Roeper and attending ****, then entering the corporate world, I’ve had many interactions with gifted minds leveraging opportunities for their own benefit. While I think this is well-deserved by those who work hard and expect a lot of themselves, I don’t think this is the answer to a truly meaningful life. I think we with gifted talents have the potential to represent and live out so much more than that, using our abilities to benefit others as much as ourselves. In the first 5 years of my career, I’ve quickly learned that the majority of my colleagues seek long-term hierarchical and financial success in their professional life, driven by high performance in each role in which they work overtime. However, through my experiences at Roeper, I believe I’m blessed more with a mindset that success of teams I’m a part of will inherently translate to my own personal success over time. Showing up every day as a kind person, a person who believes the strength of the team is more than the strength of the individual, has the ability to transform success from a 1 to a many mentality.

Patty graduated from Roeper in 1980. Enjoying writing and feeling a need for a practical path, Patty pursued an undergraduate and master’s degree in Journalism and worked in the field for 8 years. She then decided to return to college to study creative writing, eventually earning a Ph.D. and becoming a respected writer and admired university professor. I enjoyed my journalism education, but honestly, never had the ‘nose for news’ that some of my friends had. Journalism taught me how to observe, but poetry taught me what to observe. I can’t help but think that has something to do with giftedness. Also, and I can’t think of another way to put this – I enjoy people’s eccentricities. Maybe because I want my own to be tolerated or even embraced.

One of Patty’s former Roeper classmates, Kristin, a psychiatrist who has worked with refugees in Iraq and Rwanda and trains psychiatry residents, while following a very different career field, shares a personal journey that reads like a mirror image of Patty’s:

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I picture my career as starting out with a number of curves and jogs that then went off in an arc that turned back to complete a circle. I started off wanting to be a cultural anthropologist, but realized I was much more interested in practical, how-to questions so became a doctor. I am a psychiatrist who has had one foot in the world of private practice and one foot in the world of public medicine. In my private practice, I have focused on general adult psychiatry with a particular interest in psychotherapy. In the other side of my career, I have been a hospital administrator at a state psychiatric hospital, psychiatrist at a mental health program for refugees, and psychiatrist at a program treating torture survivors.2

Victoria graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from a specialized STEM-field university. She leads the Demand Response Operations Team at a major public utility. The program is an integral part of the company’s plan to become coal free and rely on clean generation options. While young, Black, and female in a field dominated by older white men, Victoria’s sense of herself is undaunted and powerful: Being gifted has always made me stand out. I have never had ambitions to climb the corporate ladder or make the most money. Any team or room I am in, all I want to do is what is best for others and my team. I always have a unique point of view compared to other adults around me. I feel I have been able to live a more fulfilling adulthood compared to my peers and predecessors. Primarily because as a gifted individual, I have never felt obligated to be the status quo. I always believe I can follow my own path and be the change I want to see.

While some are reluctant to identify with the “gifted” label, many Roeper alumni recognize a heightened capacity to connect seemingly unconnected things, to value cognitive diversity, and to apply creative analysis that takes into account multiple perspectives. When asked how being gifted has impacted their adult life, 54% of alumni survey respondents responded with an answer that was positive, 4% with an answer that was negative, 22% with a “mixed impact,” and the balance with answers that were ambivalent or inconclusive, including 9% who outright dismissed an identification with being gifted. Regardless of a sense of being gifted as positive, negative, or mixed, 74% of respondents stated that their giftedness aids them in solving problems and/or enables their career success. When explaining why, the most notable and specific trend reported was an ability 2  In response to a survey question asking for a recommendation of alumni to contact for this chapter, Kristin suggested Patty as a supreme example of “transactionally gifted”: “She has used poetry as a force to change the world,” said Kristin.

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for fluency in and ability to make connections between different disciplines and/or issues and a knack for seeing patterns/underlying systems and knowledge integration. These traits were NOT referenced in the survey question, but came up organically in response to the very open-ended question of “How do you think being gifted has impacted you in your adult life?” Claire, the nuclear engineer who recently transitioned from the field of national security to data science, reflected: “I feel that I am able to come up with highly creative solutions by fusing what I have learned across a very broad range of disciplines. I do not limit my knowledge of a subject to simply what I have learned in that subject.” Carla, a Psychology major who received a master’s of Divinity degree and now works for the Lutheran United Justice Ministries, addressing issues of poverty, racial justice and sexual orientation and gender identity justice, similarly noted: “I categorize and decode information using more of a web than a linear pattern. I see and create connections others may not.” Michele pursued a career in social work, specializing in psychiatric inpatient and residential treatment with children and adolescents who had experienced abuse, neglect, and who were struggling with mental health issues, often related to complex trauma. Her career path led to positions focused on quality assurance and improvement and healthcare compliance. Perhaps [being gifted] has allowed me to process information from multiple sources to see various potential strategies to solve complex problems – everything from helping a young child process their trauma to reduce acting-out behaviors and achieve better outcomes in school, to setting up mental health documentation and communication systems to support identification of individuals at risk for suicide.

Alumna Lisa similarly reflects, “I look for connections across fields (music and visual art, poetry and science, education and gardening) and even if I don’t understand each field to its depth, I am driven to bring these different realms of knowledge together, engaging the help of other people who do.” Lisa has literally created a life of connection-making by simultaneously working in Museum and Arts Administration, writing and publishing poetry (having recently been named her city’s first poet laureate), and participating in 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a worldwide initiative with the goal of supporting “peace, justice, and sustainability” by bringing people together through the power of poetry. Stephanie’s career in Marketing, Research, and Analytics includes roles for major communications companies as well as developing and selling her own very successful line of jewelry.

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[Being gifted] helps me understand, coach/develop and collaborate effectively with people who approach projects, processes and approaches very differently as a result of different world views and ways of learning. I also think it helps me problem solve and think through various angles and positioning by examining multiple perspectives and stress testing multiple outcomes.

Nina’s professional career includes stints in international development for an NGO and the US government and currently is the Head of UK and Europe region for a telecom and technology government affairs consulting firm. In principle, in the professional realm, being gifted has helped me have insight into  – and seek understanding of  – the perspective and motivations of the “opposite side”. Helpful in any human endeavor, this is valuable in influencing parties, negotiating, and reaching consensus, so that a win is achieved when both sides walk away with an outcome. I have hired and managed people from different countries, built trust with foreign governments, and succeeded in changing treaties because I am curious about the drivers that matter to others – in addition to wanting to succeed at my own.3

Business strategist and consultant, Justin, succinctly reflects, “I think laterally and learn horizontally, always looking for linkages, patterns, connections between subjects, across sectors and industries.” What is the relationship between this noted characteristic and transformational giftedness? Dr. Katherine W. Phillips of Columbia Business School has researched the power of diversity in creating better decision outcomes. The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think. This is not just wishful thinking: it is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from o­ rganizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers. (Phillips, 2014)

3  Reflecting an ambivalence about assuming the gifted label, Nina adds, “Having said that, however, I think there is some conceit that giftedness can imbue – I am not sure that ‘normal’ people could not do the same.”

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Dr. Phillips goes on to argue (and evidence with her research) that these same benefits of deeper, smarter thinking accrue from racial diversity as well as in skill set and fields: Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another’s perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.

This enhanced ability and proclivity to form cross-connections among seemingly unconnected ideas, while perhaps not a prerequisite for ethical decision-making, suggests that with its presence, the complexity often required by transformational thinking would be much more likely recognized and transformational activity much more likely realized. Nearly all alumni survey respondents opined that their education at Roeper is a major factor in their sense of identity as ethical, compassionate individuals who value transformation over transaction, although a sizeable minority do not further connect that identification to “giftedness”. In all, 81.5% of respondents to our alumni survey described a strong resonance with both the concept of transformational giftedness and having observed that their education at Roeper was informed by a perspective that nurtured meaningful growth. Within respondents’ examples, however, there was a wide range in their interpretations of the concept and real world application. Some have chosen a life path more obviously oriented toward social change such as non-profit work, while others shared examples of how they try to make their chosen industry or workplace more positive. Others see themselves as having a positive impact in their work as educators, inventors, creators, or artists. Some cited examples outside of the workplace regarding speaking up in their communities about injustice, or volunteering, or simply trying to be ethical and compassionate in their relationships. Patty, the journalist-turned-poet, reflects: I have never known a “gifted” individual (we always had trouble calling ourselves that) who thought that being gifted would “get” them anything in terms of worldly success. That does not mean, of course, that gifted individuals are

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somehow selfless; in fact, some can be utterly self-absorbed. But I think many have the sense that you should do something good for the world. Thoreau said, “Be not simply good – be good for something.” This doesn’t mean you have to be Gandhi, but that some aspects of your life, make a contribution. I teach poetry at a state university. It is a wonderfully diverse community, and many of my students are first-generation college students. Many have not had the luxury of expressing themselves creatively, and I have had the privilege of nurturing a multitude of talented young writers. For me, this is meaningful.

Rand, a Roeper alumnus from the 1970s who graduated from Harvard with a bachelor of arts cum laude in Physics and has spent a lifetime in the always evolving computer engineering field, states: [T]ransformational giftedness sounds to me to be closely related to what Martin Luther King, Jr. called ‘creative maladjustment’  – an unwillingness to accept that things have to be the way they are. It’s led me to engage in various kinds of political and social activism throughout my life, always with a view toward getting to grips with root causes. It has also caused me considerable unease with my career path: for quite a few years I have felt that the work I do for money is not the most important work I could be doing, in a world beset by giga-problems like climate change, systemic racism, the gulf between rich and poor, the decay of democracy, etc.

Josh set out on a career path in Finance but feeling like it didn’t fit with who he was, transitioned to religious studies and now works as a Kosher Supervisor for an Orthodox rabbinical organization. Transformational giftedness definitely resonates with me. I feel like it is the driving force behind many of my decisions in life, such as primarily working for non-profit organizations, whereas earlier in my life I felt as though I had to use my giftedness to ‘succeed’ according to an American dream view of reality. In addition, it has impacted the way I spent my time, trying to spend more time with people and activities that make a difference without concern for financial gain or prestige.

Amelia, a renowned, highly accomplished professional artist, moved to Roeper for high school at a very difficult time in her life, and believes that without the “nurturing and ethical environment of Roeper,” she might not have survived her teenage years. She says:

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Transformational giftedness is the keystone of the Roeper ethos- that we must be ethical in our every act, large or small. In my own life my consciousness is tuned to my community; by attempting to understand behavior that is anathema to me and keeping my heart open, I try to embrace the Roeper ideals.

Deirdre, who works in higher ed. administration, puts it: Beyond informing my identity as a gifted person, [Roeper] informed my identity as a human being profoundly. My values are those instilled in me by George, Annemarie, and the entire Roeper community. When people want to know who I am, I tell them to read the Roeper Philosophy as a starting point.

Dane graduated from Roeper in 1976. A practicing and teaching architect, Dane reflects on the life-long impact of a Roeper education: I once read a statement from Annemarie Roeper suggesting that even as young people, gifted children have a strongly developed sense of justice. This helped me understand myself very well; and helped me to understand the aspect of conflict in my childhood and beyond. As an architect, I have been drawn to preservation rather than new construction, because it is more environmentally and culturally responsible. As an educator, I challenge my students to contextualize information; to understand it as part of the larger patterns of human life; and to always explore the ‘why’ rather than just the ‘what’ in the work they do. Forty years after graduating from Roeper, in my master’s thesis I explored the work of Paolo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inspired by the principles of George and Annemarie Roeper. I have served on local commissions to help strengthen the communities in which I live. I believe much of this is related to the premise of transformational giftedness.

For those alumni who do not wholly embrace the concept of “transformationally gifted people,” they do not object to the concept of the value of transformational over transactional, but rather they are not convinced of a notable connection between “giftedness” and commitment to bettering the world and hesitate to see that obligation as either one solely belonging to gifted individuals or that gifted individuals have some special capacity to fulfill. Fiona attended Roeper from pre-K through 12th grade. After graduating from college, she worked in the nonprofit sector, advancing healthy food access in an urban community. After returning to school to obtain a dual master’s degree in City Planning and Public Health, Fiona has pursued a career in the area of affordable housing.

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As an adult, I rarely think about being gifted. However, I think about all of the opportunity and privilege I hold based on my education…I understand that much of the privilege that I hold is unearned (I am a white passing woman), and think that it is important to leverage that privilege in the name of justice as much as possible…I see this concept of transformational giftedness as a way to differentiate the Roeper experience from other ‘gifted’ programs which seem to be significantly more concerned with personal gain…There is also something extremely special about the founding story of Roeper that helps me understand why Roeper is particularly suited for advancing ‘transformational giftedness.’ I hold George and Annemarie’s sacrifices in leaving Germany and witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust very close. I do not want their vision to be in vain and try to work every day to advance more justice in the world.

Andrew has held a variety of positions in the field of video television production (in addition to taking a three-year “break” to attend law school). Similar to Fiona, he states: “My education at Roeper informed my identity as a person, not just as a gifted person. In fact, I rarely think of myself as ‘gifted’. To be honest, I’m not really sure what ‘gifted’ really means. But Roeper certainly taught me about dignity, critical thinking, community, and so much more.” From small to large ways, their experience at Roeper provided alumni both with a sense that their voice matters AND that they are called upon to use it for transformational purposes. Amber, who works in the field of macro social work, while reluctant to assume the label of “gifted”, nonetheless acknowledges the big role Roeper played in shaping her personal values, moral compass, and heightened sensitivity to justice that alumnus Dane recalled Annemarie Roeper observing: I like [the concept of transformational giftedness] very much. Here’s the most recent way that it’s played out in my life. The decision to start a consulting business was somewhat unplanned, but deemed necessary, when I was fired last year after speaking out against racism and sexism. On a Zoom call, my white male supervisor told a Black female co-worker that she looked like a ‘gangster’. I emailed him to tell him that what he said was racially insensitive, to which he offered an apology. However, one month later he halted all of the grant funding that supported my position (effectively firing me). I subsequently hired a lawyer to take legal action and did receive a settlement payment for discrimination and retaliation. During the legal proceedings, I researched the EEOC and tried to learn the stories of other people who pursued such claims. … The experiences of women broadly and Black women specifically were not being highlighted in the way that they needed, so I developed and undertook a research project. This month, I start sharing (via social media, podcasts, conference presentation, and

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my network’s resources) interview content that I collected from Black women who work/ed in predominantly white institutions as a way to spotlight an unspoken acceptance of racism and sexism in the workplace, its traumatic impact, and to create a ‘toolkit’ for other Black women who work. One hope is that other generations don’t have to endure the way that myself and every generation before me has. I would love for this to blossom into something national but have much more ideating to do.

Patrick, a videogame developer/engineer for a major IT company, sees the creative problem solving that gifted education fosters as essential to his success in the industry, but also attributes the emotional IQ component of his giftedness to his success in constructively confronting his personal experience with Tourette Syndrome and with others’ differing abilities. As a game developer, I work often with user interfaces, the layer where technology and humanity meet, and I strive to make that connection as pain and stress-­ free as possible. One deeply meaningful way that I apply transformational instead of transactional giftedness in this line of work is by ensuring these interfaces do not create barriers to access for disabled people. This is not, on its surface, work that people with more of a fixed transactional mindset see as beneficial, and is often rebutted with the notion that this is a lot of work to benefit very few. But it’s often the case that features created to solve specific problems, such as subtitles for spoken dialog, are often found useful for people who don’t absolutely require them. For instance, [a named very popular] series now has subtitles on by default, and over 95% of players keep them on.

Carolyn’s career was as a professional nanny and then a homemaker who has spent hours volunteering in her local community. I took all of my Roeper education into every aspect of my life. I became a nanny so that I could be with my own children while allowing other women to pursue their chosen careers. It was important to me to provide quality care and loving kindness to children…Many of the skills I acquired at Roeper were helpful to me. The ‘Community Duty’ work that I did as an assistant for the preschool students at Roeper gave me several creative ideas, including writing down the stories narrated to me by preschool children. These often hilarious stories were priceless gifts to the families who employed me…As a performing artist who views art as a healing force, I’ve often chosen to work on plays which have profound healing messages. While I appreciate theater that is pure entertainment, I prefer plays with more of a purpose…During the current pandemic, I have become an active participant in a Facebook group called ‘Pandemic Partners, Bend, Oregon’ which was created by one of the pastors at our local Presbyterian

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Church. Her aim was for us to reach out to each other in order to assist those who might fall through the cracks during the pandemic. It has been an amazing experience. People are invited to request whatever help or assistance they need and the members of the group strive to provide that help. For example, if someone needs help providing food for their family, someone else in the group might volunteer to bring them some groceries or cook a meal. It’s simple human kindness. If you see a need you can fulfill, you do so. I have been able to give people food, furniture, clothing etc. There is absolutely no room for any sort of judgment in this group. The focus is always on being kind and helpful and the moderators of the group are very firm about that. It feels very Roeperian to me. It’s such a simple, creative, effective solution to a very large and looming problem.

 ow Does a Roeper Education Develop H Transformational Giftedness? “Transformational giftedness” is inherent in the mission of Roeper: Educating and inspiring gifted students to think as individuals and to engage as a community with compassion for each other and this world. However, even with the intentionality of centralizing the concept of transformation, and whether one does or does not ascribe to the connection to gifted potential, that potential still requires nurturing. While our survey did not ask respondents specifically about HOW Roeper contributed to their identities as transformational beings, many alumni organically talked about the “HOW”. Their responses echo many of the tenets that are articulated in the seminal 1981 Statement on how the Roeper Philosophy lives in the day-to-day program of the School. [Roeper] gave me a lot of opportunities to explore exactly what I was gifted in and didn’t try to pigeonhole me into one thing or another. When I arrived at Roeper, I was really interested in science and grasped math pretty quickly, but over time I kind of lost my interest in both of those things and was able to selfselect into English classes when I was in middle and high school, as well as affiliate extracurricular activities like forensics, debate and Model UN. I had so many chances to try different things – I literally went from not being able to kick a soccer ball to playing club in four years because of the [Roeper program]. I never really felt like a failure or like I didn’t live up to the label of gifted. I come across posts on social media rather often written by people who felt like being in the gifted class was a crushing weight; that being told ‘you can be anything you want to be’ was a millstone around their neck. My classmates at Roeper all had high expectations for themselves, but rarely did the institution ask for much more than ‘try hard’ and ‘be nice’. It really was a place where I felt like I could be anything  – a soccer star, an actor, a lawyer  – on any day. (Nathan, High School English Teacher)

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[Roeper] showed me that my view of the world mattered at 9 just as much as it does at 30. Roeper gave me my voice that society made me think I didn’t have and no one wanted to listen to. (Victoria, Electrical Engineer) [M]y time at Roeper gave me the sorts of diverse interactions, relationships, and thought experiments to prepare me for life in this vibrant, dynamic, yet challenging world significantly more than other settings in my life. From my incredible teachers who pushed me to think outside of textbooks to my peers who came from all backgrounds and experiences, to the underlying values and expectations by which we could all unify and live by, I apply principles of my Roeper education every day. (Rebecca, Engineer) Roeper allowed me to exist in my own brain, in my own body, without feeling like something was inherently wrong with me. Instead of questioning why I was so sensitive, Roeper questioned what it was I could observe and accomplish BECAUSE of my sensitivity. Roeper taught me to value those differences in others as well. (Anna, Director Food Programs for a large, local nonprofit organization) I felt both empowered and humbled as a student at Roeper. Being surrounded for years by kids that all had outstanding and unique abilities inspired me to search for my own identity beyond simply being smart. Everyone was very smart so, at an early age (elementary school), I began looking for specific things that truly engaged and excited me. At Roeper, I think most children understood that being gifted meant we should never feel limited by our intellectual ability to understand complex challenges but that our “giftedness” was not really what made us each special. Our unique interests, passions, and empathy were the characteristics that truly defined us. (Thomas, Conservation Scientist and Educator) At Roeper, I regularly had to consider how my actions affected others and how my education could be put toward larger and at times more abstract goals beyond traditional rewards such as wealth and recognition. (David, High School Social Studies Teacher) Roeper teachers and students value and encourage curiosity, rather than stamping it out in favor of rote memorization. (Brendon, Researcher in Soft Condensed Matter Physics) Roeper instilled a deep sense of human decency, service and stewardship, while providing a safe place to explore one’s talents and develop a strong individual identity. Within the constraints of good behavior (skipping classes aside!), many

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options were open at Roeper. You could participate in student government, sports, theatre, and jazz band all at the same time (as I did), and since the school was quite small, you didn’t have to worry about making the cut. Roeper was also way ahead of the curve in encouraging diversity and accepting explorations of sexuality and gender identity. Respect for others went beyond ‘tolerance’, we were expected to take care of each other and our community. Roeper enabled me to develop a strong sense of my purpose in the world and nourished my self-­ confidence and resiliency. (Shannon, Sustainable Fisheries Director and Scientist) I often hear that gifted people who didn’t receive the sort of education Roeper provides see their application of giftedness as a failure due to its inability to be successfully transactional in modern society. My Roeper education has given me comfort in knowing my giftedness inherently will not fit smoothly into a transactional society. (Patrick, Video Game Developer)

As an independent school not subject to either the politics of state and local financing or (most) regulation, Roeper’s independence certainly affords it a certain privilege to be less transactional in approach than public gifted programs. On the other hand, the tuition-driven model of most independent schools, including Roeper, renders them vulnerable to a transactional model as their very existence depends on enrollment from families who increasingly view education as a consumer product. Its humanistic, relationship-based philosophical model, overlaid with a personalized, whole child-centered progressive pedagogy which encourages a student to take both ownership and risk (Johnson, 2018), while rare, is not unique. Roeper’s strength also comes from its founders’ story and how that story created a purpose-driven institution. Yet, even in the absence of a 100-year old history, gifted schools and programs can evolve into transformational centers of learning. Sadly, in twenty-first century America, public education, once believed to create an informed citizenry, has largely devolved into a machine that treats children as business products with the goal of producing workers to sustain and grow a capitalist, free-market economy. Transactional gifted education compounds this distorted purpose by instilling in those with gifts and talents an expectation of a reward (often monetary or prestige) for appropriate demonstration of those gifts, inducing them to become unwitting co-conspirators in the maintenance of a dehumanizing and unjust system; through its emphasis on market output and consumer product, transactionality discourages those with high-potential from critical self-reflection and risk-taking for personal growth, from radical assessment of root causes of systemic injustice and from working to change the narrative. Transformational gifted education does

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not assign a role to a child or even ask a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Rather, it helps a child to discover who they are and how they want to be in relationship to their world. Or as Lawrence, an alumnus who briefly attended community college following graduation from Roeper and without pursuing or possessing a college degree, has had a career in IT Management for the same company for over 30 years, reflects: I believe Roeper provided essential building blocks in the construction of my world view. I learned to be tolerant and accepting. I gained an appreciation for cultures other than my own, I learned empathy and the meaning of respect. I was able to follow my muse. I was allowed to become me.

References Banks-Sims, D. (1993). Interview with Annemarie Roeper and A. Harry Passow. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Feldman, D. (2021). Transformational, not transactional: State of the school. Keeping in Touch: The Roeper School Community Magazine, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Johnson, K. (2018). The architecture of a Roeper education. Keeping in Touch: The Roeper School Community Magazine, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Phillips, K. W. (2014). How diversity makes us smarter. Scientific American. https:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-­diversity-­makes-­us-­smarter Roeper, A. (1981). The philosophy of Roeper City and Country School developed by George and Annemarie Roeper formulated by Annemarie Roeper. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Roeper, A., & Roeper, G. (1969). A restatement of the philosophy of the school. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Roeper, A., & Roeper, G. (1970). Philosophy of the school. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Ruff, M. (2016). The origins of The Roeper School. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Ruff, M. (2017). The beginning of a new educational system: How Roeper came to be a school for the gifted. The Roeper School Archives, Bloomfield Hills, MI.

15 The Rainbow Revolution: Empowering Gifted LGBTQ+ Learners for Transformative Action Andres Parra-Martinez and Alena R. Treat

Introduction Although the past decade has shown considerable progress in the acceptance towards sexual and gender minorities, the prevalence of a heteronormative society continues to undermine the development of LGBTQ+ populations (Russell & Fish, 2019). Gifted lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning/“queer” plus others, including gender non-conforming (G/ LGBTQ+), are not foreign to the risk of being undervalued because of their identities. According to the most recent National Survey of School Climate (GLSEN, 2020), about two thirds of all public school LGBTQ+ students feel unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation (physical, romantic and/ or emotional attraction to members of the same and/or other gender), gender expression (outward presentation of gender, through behavior, clothing, voice or other perceived characteristics), or their gender identity (internal sense of self and gender; not outwardly visible to others) (Iowa Public Radio, 2021). This translates to persistent implicit biases, neglect of students’ needs, harassment, bullying, and even physical violence. Sexual and gender minorities victimization can be traced as early as elementary education and is exacerbated A. Parra-Martinez (*) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. R. Treat Upper Iowa University, Fayette, IA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_15

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during middle and high school (Martin-Storey & Fish, 2019). As a consequence, LGBTQ+ are more likely to feel disengaged from learning, miss classes, avoid extracurriculars, and even drop out (Burton et  al., 2013). Students disconnect from the educational experience because their identities are not validated and often because their identity is seen from a deficit point of view (Myers et al., 2020). This daunting reality permeates gifted education. Lack of support for the unique learning and socioemotional needs of G/LGBTQ+ adds to struggles created by their already stigmatized identity (Kerr & Multon, 2015; Peterson, 2000; Treat, 2017). The intersection of giftedness and gender identity is a crossroads of double difference and elevated challenges. For G/LGBTQ+ students, these challenges are likely to impair the development of transformational giftedness. In this chapter, we present the lived experiences and voices of G/LGBTQ+ learners and gifted educators. In part one, we portray the challenges and potential of G/LGBTQ+ learners that prevent them from thriving and becoming self-actualized (Maslow, 2014). In part two, we present how inclusive gifted education can empower these youth to develop their personal talents and help them engage in transformative action. We highlight stories of Kyle, Jay, Vezzy, Cat, and Emily, highly talented, G/LGBTQ+ individuals, along with perspectives of Jenna, Alena, and Bella, experienced teachers of G/ LGBTQ+ learners. We use pseudonyms for all students and teachers, with the exception of one teacher, Alena. According to a small body of research (Friedrichs & Etheridge, 1993; Treat, 2008), the G/LGBTQ+ student population may be much larger than previously imagined. Gifted programs should emphasize respecting and valuing diversity – in all its various forms, which could help G/LGBTQ+ students shift toward being transformational as opposed to transactional. Educators can nurture transformational giftedness in their students while understanding and embracing the role of students’ identity. This is The Rainbow Revolution, supporting the development of these able and diverse learners, while enhancing their unique talents to bring so-needed social change.

Meet the Gifted Students Kyle, 26, self-identifies as a gay man of Hispanic origin. He attended a middle and high school for high ability students. He came out at age 20 and is open to his friends, his mother and sister, and coworkers and boss. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in engineering.

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Jay, 30, was in a gifted program in elementary school but moved to honors and advanced placement during middle and high school. Jay came out to his family and friends as a child and has received support from them since then. He has a technical degree in graphic design and is pursuing a fine arts program. Vezzi is a 28-year old, “queer,” graygender (ambivalent about gender identity/gender expression), mostly masculine-presenting graduate student. He participated in gifted programs in elementary, middle, and high school. He declares “acting straight” since 2nd grade when he got “called out” for his effeminate way of speaking. Vezzi realized he was “queer” in 7th grade, but since 8th grade, nobody gave him “guff” for hanging out with girls or being the really effeminate boy. Cat, 22, a “straight” (heterosexual) female who just graduated from college, was in gifted programs in elementary and middle school, but only AP and Honors classes were offered in high school. She is currently growing her business, making animatronics for theme parks and other clients, and volunteers with a nonprofit group run by a former Disney Imagineer, writing software to help 7th graders program animatronics. She also designs animation for a roller coaster that changes results based on decisions riders make and actions they take, similar to how Quest Atlantis (an interactive software program utilized in Alena’s middle school gifted program) changed results based on decisions individual students made. That gifted program, combined with her hobby, constructing animated home yard Halloween displays, fueled her career as well as her desire to help youth learn animatronics. Emily, 22, was also in gifted programs with her twin, Cat, and is now a medical student specializing in podiatry. She was “closeted” in high school because she didn’t feel it was safe to let others know she was lesbian. Some of these gifted students demonstrated a desire to transform themselves and to make a positive impact on others. However, lack of support in gifted programs for gender and sexual orientation diversity interferes with this process. What can gifted educators do to move towards acceptance and nurturing transformational giftedness in G/LGBTQ+ students? Read on to see what advice these students and gifted teachers have to offer.

Meet the Gifted Teachers Jenna, who identifies as a straight woman, has been a language arts and foreign language teacher since 2015. She has training in gifted education and has taught K-16 learners over the past 9 years. Currently, she teaches English

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Language Arts in a gifted and talented program at an elementary Montessori School, and English as a Foreign Language for honors major college students. Alena, who identifies as lesbian, has been in gifted education since 1989 as a K-12 gifted teacher, specialist, assistant coordinator, director, university instructor, and assistant professor. She has a Master’s degree in Gifted Education and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction. Memories of G/ LGBTQ+ students she could have helped haunt her. Research on G/LGBTQ+ was lacking; few seemed interested in pursuing it. Alena obtained a PhD in order to conduct that research. She has been a high school Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) sponsor and is now teaching online gifted education university courses. Bella, a 44-year old bisexual female, K-12 endorsed in gifted education, has been teaching gifted students for 10 years. She initially went into social studies education but switched to a GT endorsement because four of her five own children were gifted, so she had been strongly advocating for their needs.

Twice Different Giftedness can be both an asset and a burden for learners (Peterson, 2012). This paradox has its foundation on the contradictions between the individual’s experience of giftedness and their interaction with the environment (Coleman et al., 2015; Peterson, 2012). Giftedness as an asset relates to elevated intellectual abilities, creativity, and motivation crucial to one’s performance and success (Renzulli, 2016). The burden emerges from environmental perceptions and dynamics. Other people’s unrealistic expectations about performance, rejection and bullying, and misunderstood characteristics such as intensities and overexcitabilities can result in hindrances to the socioemotional adjustment of gifted students (Peterson, 2012). These circumstances also promote transactional giftedness instead of transformational giftedness. When gifted learners are pressured to achieve, little room is left for self- and-­ other transformation. Jay, Kyle, Vezzy, and Emily experienced these contradictions and felt different from gifted classmates. Vezzy described how being G/LGBTQ+ affected his school experience: I think being identified as gifted afforded me to engage in more opportunities to find what makes me happy outside of traditional roles boys are placed into and discover what makes me happy. The gifted program gave me the opportunities to have a different set of achievements with less heteronormative pressure and to invest myself in topics of interest based on what I valued. I think this

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helped me in understanding and eventually accepting my sexuality and, currently, gender identity. I didn’t have many friends until 8th grade until I got along swimmingly with the girls in the gifted program, as well as their obviously gay friend who I originally clashed with thanks to internalized homophobia. I think opportunities afforded in gifted education not only helped me find out who I was comfortable around … it also helped me approach my own identity with curiosity and learn more about the gray area within the black and white.

Perceptions of Gifted Programs Similar to all too many other gifted students, Jay and Kyle felt their gifted programs were not a completely good fit. Kyle was aware of his abilities and potential, but felt school was not meeting his needs and interests, “Being gifted, I felt special. I always felt that I was both performing and understanding concepts my peers didn’t get when they were explained.” This persisted throughout school. Lack of challenge made him “frustrated” and concerned that the school was not helping him find direction about his abilities. He remarked “When you feel that way, you start feeling very unmotivated, because the rate at which my academic program was moving felt much slower than what I could do”. His program was tailored to high profiled career orientation in subjects like science and engineering. Jay remembered teachers not being responsive to his interests and abilities, “I was clearly into design, there was a lot of writing and reading, and math, not much to explore my artistic interests.” Environments like Kyle’s and Jay’s programs overemphasize transactional giftedness and hinder students’ motivation for self-and-other transformational giftedness. Kyle was hungry for exploration and possessed a desire to find some purpose and meaning that also benefited others: I wish my academic experience had been more holistic and more diverse. I wanted to develop skills that were not only oriented to science and very specific hard subjects, but were also nurturing in culture, into appreciation of art and recognition of social issues, like service and volunteering.

Vezzy, Emily and Cat found much value in their gifted programs. Vezzy explained: We picked classes in advanced subjects from a gifted curriculum each semester… four classes per semester. There was also a homeroom class where we got computer access and could let our curiosity run free. I think this program fostered my curiosity for the rest of my life.

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Emily and Cat’s middle school gifted teacher, Alena, avoided gender norms and responded to their interests and abilities. Cat was into animation and animatronics, while Emily was interested in science and programming. Emily stated: Elementary school gifted programs were a lot of fact-based activities. Here are some new ways to solve math problems; some interesting ways of thinking about things. We played riddles, brain-teasers, and games. In middle school, there were a bunch of decisions; here’s how to think about and solve problems. I learned a lot about coding in Quest Atlantis. We also learned how to give and receive constructive feedback. The coding was a little hard, but that’s a difficult subject.

Cat described the same middle school gifted program: It was fun learning using Quest Atlantis, but it was also challenging and enjoyable. It made me think in different ways than most of my other classes. It pulled from other disciplines. I wanted to go to that class, and even worked nights, weekends, and when home sick. It made you make hard decisions; there wasn’t a right answer. No other gifted program made you think that way.

Deviation from Heterosexual Norms G/LGBTQ+ learners face discrimination against their gender/sexual diversity (Kerr & Multon, 2015). LGBTQ+ individuals are seen as deviant and lacking qualities of heterosexuals (Craig et  al., 2015), leading to great anxiety and isolation during late childhood and adolescence (Johnson & Amella, 2014). Kyle, Jay, and Emily felt there was something wrong with them and could not fit in with their peers. Cat, being heterosexual, did not have those feelings. In exploring his identity, Kyle realized there were activities that were not typical for boys, but he was interested in: “There’s a very specific idea of what a man has to do and when you do not pursue those activities, you’re not treated like a man.” Jay shared a similar experience: “I was interested in interior design, not because I was gay. I just liked it. My teacher had a hard time understanding that.” Gender role expectations set limits to students’ explorations and create distress because their identities, behaviors, and even intellectual interests were not what was expected. The hostility of such educational environments can take a toll on students’ ability to use their gifts in transformational ways. For example, as self-transformational giftedness is the base for transformational giftedness (Sternberg et  al., 2021), learners who can not “make a

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positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference within themselves cannot become transformational.” (p. 3). Emily, however, was not expected to stick to gender roles in her middle school gifted program: I didn’t really label at the time; I didn’t really know. I definitely had a lot of issues with a lot of … feminine stuff. I don’t have to like a man. I didn’t understand those girls; I didn’t know why they were into guys. I felt really confused. I liked how Quest Atlantis let you have your space. We were building dragons and knights. No gender roles were attached. You could do what you wanted.

Threatened by isolation and a suffocating atmosphere, coming out can be a difficult and life-changing experience. Although giftedness can be a protective factor against social threats and psychological unrest, not all G/ LGBTQ+ learners come out during their school years (Peterson, 2000). Some teens prefer to keep their identities secret and wait to get out of a negative environment. Coming out jeopardizes their source of socioemotional support. G/ LGBTQ+ learners intentionally hide or mask their sexual identities (Hutcheson & Tieso, 2014). Kyle chose not to come out during high school. He disengaged from his peers, “dropping the whole idea of having close friendships with other people.” While isolated and undermined, he could not focus on helping others, which thwarted his transformational development. As a student in a gifted Catholic school, he believed being gay “posed a threat to his opportunities” and “staying inside the closet” would help him remain in a good quality school and avoid bullying and rejection from his classmates, teachers, and family. Kyle’s coping strategy was transactional in nature as his compliance to school norms was a way to benefit his intellectual development but limited his opportunities for self-acceptance and concern for others. Kyle also struggled accepting his sexual orientation, “I always thought of being gay as a weakness. I could not allow myself to be considered weak.” Emily revealed a similar experience: I labeled myself and came out to myself in high school, but came out to my parents in college. They weren’t really accepting in HS, so I didn’t come out to other students. I kept silent. There was a girl who came out in my band a couple of grades lower than me. People were saying she was a lesbian and had a crush on the drum major. They were really mean, so I decided to not say anything. I felt I didn’t want all the attention that girl got. They were talking about how weird and gross it was, so I concentrated on school.

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Emily also described how being a gifted lesbian affected her academic achievement and how her awareness of justice and injustice helped her push against gender norms and accept herself: It made me extremely competitive. Why did the boys get all those things? I got very competitive with men. Girls can be in science, too, especially loved the STEM stuff. When I was a kid, I distanced myself from anything feminine, anything “pinky.” I didn’t want to live in a man’s world. Once I came out, I LIKED pink things. I could wear dresses and feel good about it. I could just be ME – feminine or masculine. I still don’t have to be what society expects me to be.

Vezzy described what happened when he moved to a new school that didn’t have a gifted program: [In the new school] I had a chance to project a new image because people had never met me. I was well in the closet by this point. The only other gay person I knew of in the school was, too (We’re still good friends. His mom was the Spanish teacher or he probably would have been bullied fiercely). I did not come out until I was a senior, and that was only because a boy had a crush on me. I found other ways to stand out, like poorly cutting my own hair, jamming out to metal on the bus, saying weird things, excelling in band, and joining academic bowl. I also found my tribe with some straight dudes from my neighborhood, two of whom I was in a band with up until the pandemic, and the folks from the academic bowl team, most of whom were formerly in the gifted program and multiple of whom turned out to hold queer identities.

G/LGBTQ+ students struggling with their identity sometimes use academics to compensate for their vulnerability (Kerr & Multon, 2015), thus leveraging transactional giftedness. Seeing his sexual orientation as a setback, Kyle focused on his academic strengths and pursued his talents while “suffering in silence and doing his best to get out of that environment.” Vezzy remained closeted and joined the academic bowl team. Conversely, Jay came out and faced the mixed reactions his sexual orientation provoked in others. He trusted his ability and creativity would be more important than his sexual orientation. The strategies were not fail-proof; Kyle and Jay continued to face lack of academic and social support. Non-supportive school environments contribute to lower academic engagement and poor social-emotional development (Wexelbaum & Hoover, 2014). LGBTQ+ adolescents are at risk of suffering mental health challenges (Villines, 2021). Jay experienced multiple moments of anxiety and stress. Kyle conformed to what his teachers offered him to avoid “dragging attention to himself.”

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In middle and high school, LGBTQ+ adolescents are more likely to become the target of bullying, accompanied by loss of social connections and friendships (Ken, 2017). Jay was “sad and angry” because other boys made fun of him and his “mannerisms.” He was excluded from ‘boys activities’, so he “had to hangout with girls” to not feel alone. Kyle elaborated “I wasn’t bullied, but that’s a very low bar when it comes to the support you expect from your school.” Negativity is not just overt actions, but as he described, “passive hostility”: When you’re gay, you realize you are in an environment that is hostile to you. Hostility doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re beating you up or bullying you; it means this space is not welcoming of you, and you are not part of the community.

Vezzy described how his academic achievement was affected by being G/LGBTQ+: My friends in the neighborhood knew I was weird. Even though I had friends at school, I did not hang out with many people outside of school … People knew I was bright, even if I didn’t really buy it back then, and so being overly studious for my level of academic talent seemed like a good cover for people not finding out I was queer. I said to myself out loud, “You can’t be gay ugly, mean, and stupid!”

Emily described obstacles that prevent schools and gifted education teachers from providing adequate support for G/LGBTQ learners, which parallels the current attacks on critical race theory: I feel we have made a lot of progress, especially since Trump and everything. However, a lot of parents are jumping on schools trying to introduce more inclusive stuff. A big barrier is parents complaining to schools and politicians becoming involved. Students don’t feel safe about coming out. That’s a big issue. The reason some G/LGBTQ students may underperform is because they are so depressed and may have issues with their families that aren’t cool with it. My girlfriend’s family isn’t cool with it. She struggled in school because of the family’s religious background. She was depressed because of this big thing laying down on you, being LGBTQ. G/LGBTQ+kids might suddenly stop and not focus on school because of issues that heterosexual students might not necessarily have.

Vezzy listed barriers that prevent gifted teachers from providing adequate support to G/LGBTQ+ learners:

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Homophobia at large, transphobia at large, transphobia in specific laws, little to no training on working with queer students for many educators, responsibility of the student to be in the teaching role, power dynamics between all levels of school and admin.

These barriers also prevent educators and society from fostering transformational giftedness in LGBTQ+ youth. Demoralized by the deficit views and discrimination, LGBTQ+ individuals will seek ways out of their oppressive contexts rather than seeking change (Higa et al., 2014). In severe cases, G/ LGBTQ+ adolescents manifest the emergence of suicidal ideation in response to the hostility (Kuper et al., 2018; Sedillo, 2015). How can individuals be transformational when their existence is pushed against the wall? Jay did not attempt suicide, but he did reflect on the “liberating possibility of not existing.” Kyle wanted to escape and focus on finding a “golden ticket out of the school scenario.” That desire to escape from high school experiences emerged during transition to college. Pursuing a college degree has a positive impact in the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals (Ken, 2017). Colleges have groups where LGBTQ+ identities are more accepted, where many learners start a journey of healing and resilience (Alessi et  al., 2017). Kyle and Jay felt college was “a chance to do things right” and “change.” Pursuing a profession related to their talents meant an opportunity to develop their identities as emerging independent adults. Only during this stage, learners may begin their journey toward self- (direction of one’s giftedness toward making a transformative difference with respect to oneself; making a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference within oneself ) and other-transformational giftedness (direction of one’s giftedness toward making a transformative difference with respect to others; making a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference to the world) (Sternberg et al., 2021). During their undergraduate experiences, Kyle and Jay were relieved from tumultuous high school memories and dealt with new battles. Post-secondary education enabled opportunities for growth and self-exploration. Both encountered peers and supportive spaces where they could be their own selves. Kyle came out to his mother and sister during his sophomore year. Emily also came out to her family during college. Jay continued his artistic pursuits and has immense confidence in himself. Many LGBTQ+ learners pursue a path of self-advocacy and activism, contemplating their past experiences and their professional lives they seek to make life better for other LGBTQ+ learners (Ken, 2017). With renewed academic and professional passions, Kyle, Jay, Vezzy, and Emily used self-transformational giftedness to grow and find their purpose in life (Sternberg et  al., 2021), understanding the intersections of

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their gender identity, sexual expression, and talented selves. They are openly LGBTQ+ and immersed professionals who dream of changes essential to making gifted education inclusive and better for others like them. Although the past cannot be changed, their visions of gifted education and continued pursuit of transformational giftedness help make one step forward in the creation of social change.

Visions of the Future Learner Perspectives Self-transformational giftedness indicates that people can use their intellectual and creative abilities to flourish at a personal level (Sternberg et al., 2021). Characteristics of giftedness such as deep interests, high intellectual sensitivity, maturity, and resilience can help combat depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Sedillo, 2015). G/LGBTQ+ learners can also use their superior reading skills to consume informative materials that help them understand their identities (Kerr & Multon, 2015). Jay, Kyle, Cat, and Emily revealed that their talents were useful to cope and endure difficult school trajectories (self-transformational). However, if they had not been forced to face discrimination, they would have been in better shape to engage in other-­ transformational giftedness. Gifted learners cannot be left alone to deal on their own with the damaging effects of an unfair and discriminating reality. What would the future of gifted education look like if we support G/LGBTQ+ students’ transformational giftedness? This is what they propose:

 nderstand and Embrace Diversity to Unlock U Transformational Giftedness In order for G/LGBTQ students to be able to transform society, gifted teachers need to listen to and understand their needs and teach them in ways that will allow them to make the difference they could make. For Jay and Kyle, none of their teachers had a true understanding of their diversity. They felt teachers only approached “certain types” of diversity, as they focused on “traditional racial and income minorities” – if they paid attention to diversity at all. However, diversity is a “universal concept” that permeates every aspect of a person’s life. Jay argued, “People try to address diversity without

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understanding it, it is not only about what you look like or where you come from.” Diversity encompases understanding the myriad differences among learners, including but not limited to their developmental stage, identity, talents, interests, feelings, and their own personal struggles. More importantly, it means embracing and respecting those differences while “creating bridges” to engage and support the learners to transform themselves and society. As a learner, Kyle expressed, “I was a gay Latino brown boy who could not accept myself; nothing in school had to do with me.” Kyle and Jay want others who are like them to be validated and allowed to explore their passions and talents through personally relevant learning opportunities. Vezzy also offered this advice to gifted LGBTQ+ students to move into self-transformational giftedness: Once you transgress by nature of your very identity, you feel more comfortable transgressing in other domains of your life, which can facilitate tolerance of ambiguity, openness to experience, actions based on your personal values, and innovation in a domain.

But how can teachers support students if they do not know them? Teachers who understand and embrace diversity use curriculum and teaching strategies that nurture transformational giftedness in their multidimensional students. Kyle indicated a dire need for positive role models. Jay suggested, “Bring parents and specialists from many fields, origins, skin colors, gender identities and sexual orientations.” Seeing such diversity is encouraging to students and reminds them their diverse selves can exert a positive impact in the world. Kyle added “Imagine meeting a transgender surgeon or engineer, speaking about the things that matter to them and seeing how they thrive doing that.” Emily, when asked about whether her gifted teacher(s) were inclusive and/ or supportive, said: Dr. Treat was absolutely inclusive and supportive. I feel like generally the program was inclusive. The whole point was to get middle schoolers to think differently than black and white perspectives. There are multiple perspectives. It’s ok to have a different perspective on things.

However, she added, “We never talked about queer stuff in school.” She explained that no one in any of her classes talked about LGBTQ+ issues. Cat agreed, “There really wasn’t exposure in middle and elementary school to LGBTQ+ topics. I wasn’t realizing that I wasn’t seeing it because if you don’t know, how do you know you’re missing something?” Emily explained how

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developing the ability to understand various perspectives in her middle school gifted program helped her find her purpose: I feel like being able to see things from different perspectives; not one clear answer; helps me make decisions for myself. I felt like I had more skills. I could look at both sides; read about different identities and figure out what was me. I felt it opened doors to help me express my identity and make those decisions.

Emily also spoke about how inclusive education can help G/LGBTQ learners walk toward self-transformation by helping learners understand and develop empathy: Being more directly inclusive with identities in problems, stories, anywhere… somewhere in the program, would have made me feel more accepted, that my teacher is an open-minded person and I might be able to talk about it with that teacher or even openly in the class. Learning about other diverse people helps you learn about yourself. Introduce students to it. You may not know anyone like this. It’s OK to talk about it. I feel like if you’re cisgender, bisexual, or transgender, it helps you bridge, helps you sympathize and learn what other people are talking about. It’s OK for Joe to be like this. It’s OK for Cindy to be like this. We can learn to be more accepting and open.

Vezzy suggested changes to make gifted curricula more appropriate by relating content to students’ experiences and giving students a chance to propose solutions to real life issues. He added, “Figure out how students relate or do not to material and explain how this could be practical to them. When using examples, don’t always use white, heteronormative examples. Learn the students’ language.” Cat described how the gifted curriculum could be more fitting for G/LGBTQ+ students: “I guess a program that talks about the LGBTQ+ community and issues so that everyone can learn about it and be accepted; make sure they feel welcomed there. Silence implies something is wrong.”

 urture Transformational Giftedness Based N on Student Autonomy and Identity Autonomy plays a crucial role in talent development and intrinsic motivation. Transformational giftedness must be nurtured according to students’ interests and choices. Kyle and Jay believed their teachers encouraged talents only

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based on assumptions about student superficial characteristics. Jay mentioned how his teachers wanted him to develop his potential in science and math to eventually join a STEM program, “They believe that if you are a man with talent, you should go into a STEM field, they don’t tell you about other possibilities.” There was a clear disconnect between his interests in arts and design with the content in the gifted program, even though there is mounting evidence that interests and talents in the arts contribute to innovative work in STEM fields (Daugherty, 2013). Stereotypical career expectations based on gender and sexual orientation only adds to the negative self-perceptions LGBTQ+ teens have about themselves (Kerr et al., 2012). Stereotypes cripple self-transformational giftedness. Kyle elaborated on the performance expectations towards gifted learners. Teachers are concerned with filling the stereotypical occupations and deter students from certain professions like “blue collar jobs, hair cutting, and cooking” or worse, teachers may think “You’re gay; you’re supposed to be a designer or hairdresser.” Kyle questioned why those options were singled out and not used to studying the science of multiple occupations: “There is science in everything, even in stigmatized jobs. For instance, what is the science of hair and why is it important to know what you are putting on your hair?” G/LGBTQ+ learners can benefit from autonomy support and vocational guidance because they do have interdisciplinary interests and can become successful in any career of their choice. More importantly, they can contribute to the common good from multiple disciplines and occupations. This is also a call for teachers to remove stigma and stereotypes based on gender roles or sexual diversity attached to certain jobs, and focus on the contributions that students can make to society.

 ombat Injustice Through C Transformational Giftedness The education system places attention to the development of cisgender (gender identity conforms with birth gender) and heterosexual populations. The development of learners with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations is excluded and invisibilized. G/LGBTQ+ students must find ways to thrive on their own or with little support in a society that normalizes injustice. G/ LGBTQ+ learners have rights to be supported in developing their self-and-­ other transformational giftedness. Jay was frustrated with bullying throughout school. Coming out increased harassment from classmates and “sometimes teachers.” Kyle demanded real support from his school environment: “I didn’t

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want to be defended by teachers; I wanted to be respected by everyone.” Teachers often “ignored other gay boys” and drew attention to “school rules and behavior” rather than discussing the rights of LGBTQ+ students and their potential. Literature in counseling brings attention to positive coping mechanisms in G/LGBTQ+ youth (Kerr & Huffman, 2018). Students’ academic strengths in music, arts, writing, leadership, and athletic skills serve as vehicles to understand and express gender identity/sexual orientation. Emphasizing these strengths and their role in bringing about change can increase acceptance of the identities of G/LGBTQ+ and their potential contributions to the common good.

Prepare for Life Beyond School Programs are essential for the development of G/LGBTQ+ learners. Gifted programs maximize support for career choice, self transformational giftedness, and potential social contributions (Renzulli, 2012; Sternberg et  al., 2021). Without these scaffolds for growth, learners like Kyle and Jay could have been left with few tools to discover their passions in life. Kyle indicated, “My family didn’t have money to send me to college; the gifted program allowed me to obtain a scholarship in a top university.” Jay concurs, adding that “some classes” helped him develop “thinking skills” besides improving his “SAT scores.” These students wished their programs had prepared them for other aspects of life beyond the K-12 system. Education should be comprehensive and facilitate students’ adjustment to the real world, which for G/ LGBTQ+ learners is often a hostile one. Jay reflected on how gifted learners are more than “only talents and achievement,” calling attention to socioemotional deep concerns: “Schools should support your body image, self-esteem, mental health,” helping students realize their value beyond fears of not fitting in. Kyle was concerned about learners who do not want to go to college, “What can schools do for people who don’t see themselves in academia? They still need an income. How can they explore their talents outside the university options?” G/LGBTQ+ students perceive school as a platform for continuity of their talent discovery journey and professionalization, but they can also aspire to become trailblazers for future generations. How can schools enhance their desire to make a change? Kyle’s first demonstration of transformational giftedness showed in college. He became a mentor for high school juniors and seniors with STEM interests: “I want them to be eclectic and explore by themselves what they want to do with their lives, they don’t have to fit a mold.” Jay was unsure of how to support others like him. His school

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experience did not support transformational giftedness and he thought he did not have skills and courage to become a change maker. He explained, “I want to be someone who helps others and inspires people. That is something I’m still learning because I was too afraid to fight back and I also didn’t know where to go or how to do it.” If programs aim at making change via student productive creativity (Renzulli, 2012) and transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2021), schools must prepare students to undertake advocacy and activism. The following voices of gifted teachers can enlighten us on how this can be accomplished.

Teacher Perspectives Gifted LGBTQ+ youth assess their developmental ecosystems and use strategies to battle the threats they face. Frequently, masking or hiding their sexual identity is one way to navigate the hostile school years in heteronormative educational settings (Ken, 2017). This undesirable choice delays interaction with a reality of stigmatization that soon or late must be faced. There is a whole spectrum of opportunities for the development of this population via inclusion and transformational giftedness. This is something that Jenna, Alena, and Bella have honed within their inclusive teaching practices.

 ransformational Giftedness Flourishes When T Students Are Accepted Promoting transformational giftedness requires inclusion via open communication, encouragement of talent exploration, supportive relationships, and healthy classroom dynamics. Jenna goes beyond binary thinking and binary language to open safe spaces in gifted education for all children. Jenna models the use of preferred pronouns and welcomes questions of students who are resistant to implement them. In her classroom, students are free to discuss any topics they like “within the boundaries of respect and privacy.” In these activities, students experience belonging when they observe the teacher’s respect for their identity and enthusiasm toward “the things they care the most”. Jenna uses classroom dynamics to model empathy and concern for those that are marginalized. Alena offered choices in all assignments and rigorous interdisciplinary activities that not only tied in with Common Core Standards, but also simulated real-world experiences in which transformational gifts can be used.

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There were no gender-norm expectations, which made gifted students like Cat and Emily excited about pursuing their passions in STEM fields. Teachers also have transformational giftedness, but can be halted by regressive policies. Alena, unlike Jenna, was not able to address sexual orientation and gender identity issues in her North Carolina middle school gifted program. Later in an Iowa high school, where she was a GSA sponsor, she could. Students who were both in the GSA and the Gifted/Honors program felt accepted and acknowledged and could pursue areas of passion regardless of whether or not they met typical gender expectations. However, LGBTQ+ topics could not be discussed in the gifted/Honors classes unless students brought them up. Later, when she was director of gifted programs in her previous NC school district, she ran into strong political pressure from the superintendent when she wrote “Gifted LGBTQ Social-Emotional Issues” for the Teaching for High Potential magazine (Treat, 2017). This political pressure had become more severe due to the resurgence of extremism. Alena was pressured to not publish, as board members would feel they had to defend her, and therefore would put their efforts to be re-elected at risk. She agreed to a compromise – to not list her work affiliation and only publish the research portion under her personal name, listing her personal rather than work email. The recommendations for teachers would be published by another person but would be paired with her article. She said, “It was an ethical dilemma. I chose to give authorship to someone else for what was mostly my work because the alternative was to not publish it and not be able to help others meet the needs of G/LGBTQ+ students. I felt it was the right thing to do even though it felt like my soul was being torn apart.” Bella described how her own sexual identity affected her gifted teaching practices. She helped students start the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) in her school: That was something that I had wanted to do but those types of clubs needed to be started by students. So, I was always just very open with my students about how accepting I was as well as the things that were important to me like human rights and the ability to be yourself.

Her students felt welcomed and comfortable with her and eventually asked her to be the facilitator for their GSA. This allowed her to share that with more students. Her classroom and the GSA became a safe haven for LGBTQ+ learners. She added:

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In my gifted class, students have an assignment to choose a topic that they’re interested in, share this topic with the class, and facilitate a discussion. … Almost every semester, I have somebody that chooses something to do with the LGBTQ community. It might be LGBTQ-adjacent, but it allows those conversations to start happening in the GT classroom.

Bella has used this opportunity to nurture her students’ transformational giftedness by highlighting how important it is to support all people who are marginalized – other races, other religions, other ethnicities, as well as other genders and sexualities and how important it is for those groups to support each other. Alena, Bella, and Jenna proactively address students’ needs. Their commitment for education enhances transformational giftedness by helping students advocate for themselves and others who suffer discrimination.

 ifted Programs Where G/LGBTQ+ Learners Are G at Potential, Not Deficit Researchers propose the use of talent-development models to reassure the students of their capabilities and potential for successful integration into society (Peterson, 2000; Hutcheson & Tieso, 2014; Kerr & Multon, 2015). Educators teaching G/LGBTQ+ learners need to see students’ potential, gifts, talents, and creativity and address them towards the common good. As part of the socialization experience, strengths-based pedagogy helps teachers to see students’ identity as an asset, establishing a positive perception of their abilities and the role of ability in transforming the world. Observing and displaying the positive characteristics of G/LGBTQ+ children and adolescents serves as a “cure” against society’s prejudice. Jenna intentionally uses diverse examples in her classes. In the ELA classroom she presents “writers, actors, artists, scientists who are LGBTQ+ and have made remarkable contributions to the world.” She adds, “This is one of the wall-breakers. If LGBTQ+ students see I’m talking about a lesbian or a transgender person who has done amazing things, then they believe they can be amazing, too.” More importantly, she highlights the transformational giftedness of her own students “I have taught gay and lesbian kids who are always at the top of my class. They are role models for other students.”

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 ifted Programs Where Educators Advocate G for G/LGBTQ+ Learners Complementing this powerful strength-based perspective about G/LGBTQ+ youth in school, Goodrich et al. (2013) proposed infusing relevant LGBTQ+ training for teachers, counselors, and stakeholders. Educators must be trained with foundational knowledge about this population. This is critical so professionals grasp the full range of academic, social, and emotional challenges that may imperil G/LGBTQ+ learners. Sexual diversity laden training equips teachers with tools to support the transformational giftedness of LGBTQ+ learners. Relying on “teachers’ openness and good heart” is not enough, Jenna explains, wishing she had had “more training in all the nooks and crannies of diversity… we need training in emotional education.” Some students experience isolation because they do not feel accepted in other classrooms or their homes. They need advocates. Alena described one incident that illustrated what can happen when neither the gifted teacher nor the gifted students feel free to openly express their orientation: One under-achieving former gifted gay male student approached me at a gay prom put on by GLSEN (Gay Straight Education Network) where my wife and I were chaperoning and said, ‘Ms. Treat! If I’d only known! I would have done more work for you!’ It haunts me to this day. What damage did I do to his academic achievement because of my own fears?!

Bella expressed that professional development doesn’t address needs of G/ LGBTQ+ students and that only teachers who truly care for their diverse students walk the extra mile to properly serve them. She argues that training on LGBTQ+ issues should be mandated: I think that we have a large population of gifted students that are LGBTQ or will eventually identify that way, even if they don’t now … I have a lot of gender non-binary or “out” LGBTQ youth. I think part of that is because they know that my classroom is a safe space to express that identity. A lot of teachers don’t have any training on how to support LGBTQ youth. There is still a huge thought amongst gen ed teachers that the gifted students already “get it,” and they don’t need extra support … It takes an immense amount of social and emotional support to help gifted students and LGBTQ students get through school and be successful after school.

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Bella had sought extensive training through Iowa Safe Schools before starting the GSA. Therefore, she had the skills to develop and implement LGBTQ curriculum. She added: A lot of the support I gave the students came directly from me being a member of the LGBTQ community, and being able to give them my personal support, so being able to help them understand the difference between gender and sexuality, and help them to kind of work through their thoughts and feelings.

Bella understands that giftedness cannot be separated from students’ identity. So she used her understanding of both dimensions to encourage transformational giftedness: I had a student who was very, very gifted and had an older brother who was “trans.” One of her gifts was public speaking and really just helping to support her in giving her opportunities to increase those skills in public speaking, with other students who felt comfortable in telling me that they were members of the LGBTQ community.

Alena supported transformational giftedness by including LGBTQ+ along with other equity topics. She sought to motivate her students to make positive change by learning about other oppressed communities. For instance, if studying the Holocaust, include all populations affected, such as Jehovah’s witnesses, political prisoners, handicapped persons, Roma/Sinti (gypsies), multi-racial, lesbians, and gay males. “That is less risky for teachers in a “conservative” environment.” She also said, When studying Black History, there’s nothing wrong with mentioning that Bayard Ruskin was a primary human rights movement leader involved in teaching Martin Luther King about nonviolence, organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and due to criticism over him being gay, usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders. (Morgan, 2018)

Bella recommends these ways to better gifted education and promote transformational giftedness in G/LGBTQ+ learners: I think the biggest way is to really make the gifted curriculum in the gifted education programs be very choice-based. Offering students the opportunity to explore the things that they are interested in and are passionate about is going to give them more opportunities to explore their particular gifts and talents and is also going to give them more opportunity to explore their specific identity.

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Teachers who nurture transformational giftedness effectively must engage themselves in justice-making efforts. Educators as advocates are powerful allies who show acts of individual and institutional resistance when they support their LGBTQ+ learners (Meyer et al., 2019, p. 14). Jenna added “I was afraid of losing my job because of the topics my students talked about, but if it’s not here, where else?…Some do not have the emotional support from their families, and if they come to our institution, this is their second home, imagine if they don’t find it here either.” Alena echoed: During most of my gifted teaching years, I did not speak up due to fear of getting fired and because both laws and policies (printed and unspoken) forbade discussion of LGBTQ topics. This needs to change! These students need that support – and teachers don’t need to lose their jobs if they provide that support!

 ifted Programs That Promote SelfG and Other-Transformational Giftedness Gifted programs can become the cornerstone of self-transformational giftedness and personal success for G/LGBTQ+ learners by offering essential support in the face of social and historical inequity and stigma. Educators and counselors’ support builds resilience and efficacy needed to face real life challenges. Gifted programs build the confidence for students to trust their abilities and embark in successful career pursuits (Ken, 2017). Jenna encourages students to visualize themselves as successful professionals who can effect positive change in the world: “I know their capabilities; I want them to see themselves like the role models studied in class” Both she and Alena also help their students write application materials so they are ready to apply for jobs or universities. Bella encourages her students to be autonomous in advocating for themselves, advocating for their needs “modeling what that looks like, giving them examples of how other people have done it, how I have done it.” Furthermore, the impact of a gifted program is fully revealed when gifted individuals influence society at large. Jenna shares the involvement of one of her gay students during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: “Nick is interested in nursing. He took on the role of public health support giving presentations about the virus and how to stay safe.” Transformational giftedness in G/LGBTQ+ youth becomes activism in which talented learners combat the injustices produced by heteronormativity and patriarchy. G/LGBTQ+ learners are willing to participate in their community and aid problem-solving their own issues. Jenna encourages involvement during pride month

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“LGBTQ+ students organize campaigns to raise awareness of HIV prevention and invite their classmates to donate to the LGBTQ shelter in the local area.” These forms of activism visibilize their cause and lead to forging partnerships with allies. In the absence of family and social support, allies listen, advise, fight for, and cooperate for LGBTQ+ rights. Jenna adds “There’s an LGBTQ+ group in our college, I reached out to them for materials and also for connections for my older students, I want my students to know there are places ready to help out there.” This knowledge is crucial as many LGBTQ+ individuals must battle the threats of economic insecurity, limited needs-based healthcare, especially transgender youth, homelessness, violence, and substance abuse (Slater et al., 2017). Transformationally gifted students know their strengths and can use them to make change wherever they go. Teachers promote authentic learning experiences in the pursuit of activism by encouraging self-empowered and self-­ directed learners to make change in their own communities (Beason-Manes, 2018). Some examples of social involvement include gathering and spreading information about pressing issues, critically reflecting and problem-solving community-based problems, building advocacy and leadership skills, designing and executing action plans (Wagaman, 2016).

 onclusion: Transformational Giftedness C for G/LGBTQ+ Learners The development of transformational giftedness cannot be comprehensive nor transformative without including the perspectives of G/LGBTQ+ learners. Nurturing transformational giftedness in G/LGBTQ+ students must focus on respect and inclusion, make visible the invisible, and recognize that G/LGBTQ+ learners can be transformative in essence. Although G/LGBTQ+ learners face increased risks and challenges in educational settings, many are also willing to self-advocate and utilize their gifts and talents to undertake activism in order to improve the lives of themselves and others (McBride, 2021). G/LGBTQ+ individuals are often leaders who fight for social acceptance, inclusion, and recognition of their rights and the rights of others. They fight to make a space in this world for them and others. Therefore, we believe true gifted education for minoritized G/LGBTQ+ learners is one step toward transformation. Providing them with choices that do not adhere to societal gender norms, are not strictly heteronormative, and are infused with

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appropriate support is hence encouragement for needed equity of all gender expressions and sexual orientations.

 ppendix: Resources to Embark on Your A Transformational Journey Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. (2019). Inclusive Curriculum. GLSEN. https://www.glsen.org/inclusive-­curriculum Human Rights Campaign. (2021). Lesson Plans  – Gender and LGBTQ Inclusive. Diverse Lesson Plans for a Welcoming and Safe School. https:// www.welcomingschools.org/resources/lesson-­plans/ National Association for Gifted Children. (n.d.). Diversity Toolbox | National Association for Gifted Children. Diversity Toolbox: Gifted LGBTQ Students. Retrieved June 6, 2021, from https://www.nagc.org/resources-­ publications/resources/timely-­t opics/including-­d iverse-­l earners­gifted-­education-­program-­1 Southern Poverty Law Center. (2013). Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students. Learning for Justice. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/best-­practices-­for-­serving-­lgbtq-­students

References Alessi, E. J., Sapiro, B., Kahn, S., & Craig, S. L. (2017). The first-year university experience for sexual minority students: A grounded theory exploration. Journal of LGBT Youth, 14(1), 71–92. Beason-Manes, A.  D. (2018). Community activism as curriculum: How to meet gifted students’ needs while creating change. Gifted Child Today, 41(1), 19–27. Burton, C.  M., Marshal, M.  P., Chisolm, D.  J., Sucato, G.  S., & Friedman, M. S. (2013). Sexual minority-related victimization as a mediator of mental health disparities in sexual minority youth: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(3), 394–402. Coleman, L. J., Micko, K. J., & Cross, T. L. (2015). Twenty-five years of research on the lived experience of being gifted in school: Capturing the students’ voices. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 38(4), 358–376. Craig, S. L., Dentato, M. P., & Iacovino, G. E. (2015). Patching holes and integrating community: A strengths-based continuum of care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 27(1), 100–115.

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Daugherty, M. K. (2013). The prospect of an “A” in STEM education. Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 14(2), 10–15. Friedrichs, T. P., & Etheridge, R. L. (1993). Needs and helpful teaching approaches for today’s gifted gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents. In Presentation to the NAGC National Convention, Atlanta, GA. GLSEN. (2019). The 2019 national school climate survey. https://www.glsen.org/ research/2019-­national-­school-­climate-­survey GLSEN. (2020). Ready, set, respect! Elementary toolkit. https://www.glsen.org/activity/ready-­set-­respect-­elementary-­toolkit Goodrich, K. M., Harper, A. J., Luke, M., & Singh, A. A. (2013). Best practices for professional school counselors working with LGBTQ youth. Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, 7(4), 307–322. Higa, D., Hoppe, M. J., Lindhorst, T., Mincer, S., Beadnell, B., Morrison, D. M., … Mountz, S. (2014). Negative and positive factors associated with the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Youth & Society, 46(5), 663–687. Hutcheson, V. H., & Tieso, C. L. (2014). Social coping of gifted and LGBTQ adolescents. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 37(4), 355–377. Iowa Public Radio. (2021, June 2). A guide to understanding gender identity terms. NPR. https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr. org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-­i dentity-­p ronouns-­e xpression-­g uide­lgbtq#genderidentity Johnson, M. J., & Amella, E. J. (2014). Isolation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth: A dimensional concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 70(3), 523–532. Ken, J. (2017). Supporting LGBTQ students in high school for the college transition: The role of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 20(1a), 1096–2409. Kerr, B.  A., & Huffman, J.  M. (2018). Gender and talent development of gifted students. In S. Pfeiffer (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (2nd ed., pp. 115–128). Springer. Kerr, B. A., & Multon, K. D. (2015). The development of gender identity, gender roles, and gender relations in gifted students. Journal of Counseling & Development, 93(2), 183–191. Kerr, B. A., Multon, K. D., Syme, M. L., Fry, N. M., Owens, R., Hammond, M., & Robinson-Kurpius, S. (2012). Development of the distance from privilege measures: A tool for understanding the persistence of talented women in STEM. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 30(1), 88–102. Kuper, L. E., Adams, N., & Mustanski, B. S. (2018). Exploring cross-sectional predictors of suicide ideation, attempt, and risk in a large online sample of transgender and gender nonconforming youth and young adults. LGBT Health, 5(7), 391–400.

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Martin-Storey, A., & Fish, J. (2019). Victimization disparities between heterosexual and sexual minority youth from ages 9 to 15. Child Development, 90(1), 71–81. Maslow, A. H. (2014). Toward a psychology of being (3rd ed.). Lushena Books. McBride, R.  S. (2021). A literature review of the secondary school experiences of trans youth. Journal of LGBT Youth, 18(2), 103–134. Meyer, E. J., Quantz, M., Taylor, C., & Peter, T. (2019). Elementary teachers’ experiences with LGBTQ-inclusive education: Addressing fears with knowledge to improve confidence and practices. Theory Into Practice, 58(1), 6–17. Morgan, T. (2018, September 6). Why MLK’s gay right-hand man was nearly written out of history. Thad Morgan. http://thaddeusmorgan.com/history/ bayard-­rustin-­march-­on-­washington-­openly-­gay-­mlk/ Myers, W., Turanovic, J. J., Lloyd, K. M., & Pratt, T. C. (2020). The victimization of LGBTQ students at school: A meta-analysis. Journal of School Violence, 19(4), 421–432. Peterson, J. S. (2000). Gifted and gay: A study of the adolescent experience. Gifted Child Quarterly, 44(4), 231–246. Peterson, J. S. (2012). The asset–burden paradox of giftedness: A 15-year phenomenological, longitudinal case study. Roeper Review, 34(4), 244–260. Renzulli, J. S. (2012). Reexamining the role of gifted education and talent development for the 21st century: A four-part theoretical approach. Gifted Child Quarterly, 56(3), 150–159. Renzulli, J. S. (2016). The role of blended knowledge in the development of creative productive giftedness. International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, 4(1), 13–24. Russell, S. T., & Fish, J. N. (2019). Sexual minority youth, social change, and health: A developmental collision. Research in Human Development, 16(1), 5–20. Sedillo, P. J. (2015). Gay gifted adolescent suicide and suicidal ideation literature: Research barriers and limitations. Gifted Child Today, 38(2), 114–120. Slater, M. E., Godette, D., Huang, B., Ruan, W. J., & Kerridge, B. T. (2017). Sexual orientation-based discrimination, excessive alcohol use, and substance use disorders among sexual minority adults. LGBT Health, 4(5), 337–344. Sternberg, R. J. (2021). Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9(15), https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence 9010015 Sternberg, R. J., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond transformational giftedness. Education Sciences, 11(5), 192. Treat, A. R. (2008). Beyond analysis by gender: Overexcitability dimensions of sexually diverse populations and implications for gifted education. Indiana University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 3344606. Treat, A. R. (2017). Gifted LGBTQ social-emotional issues. In J. Danielian et al. (Eds.), Teaching gifted children: Success strategies for teaching high-ability learners (pp. 525–527). National Association for Gifted Children.

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Villines, Z. (2021, March 23). What to know about sexual orientation and mental health in youth. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/lgbt-­youth-­and­mental-­health Wagaman, M. A. (2016). Promoting empowerment among LGBTQ youth: A social justice youth development approach. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 33(5), 395–405. Wexelbaum, R., & Hoover, J. (2014). Gifted and LGBTIQ: A comprehensive research review. International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, 2(1), 73–86.

16 Transformational Giftedness: Using SEM Pedagogy to Create Future Leaders and Change Agents Dedicated to Service, Social Responsibility, and Using Their Talents to Improve the Planet Sally M. Reis and Joseph S. Renzulli

The state of mind which enables a person to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart. (Albert Einstein)

People known for their world-changing accomplishments are often recognized for their creativity, personal courage, belief in self, and perseverance. In this chapter, we explore how co-cognitive traits such as courage, optimism, vision, and a belief in one’s power to make change should be developed in programs that serve gifted and high potential students. A brief review of the theory underlying these traits will be followed by case studies that describe the work of young people who have used their talents to promote social capital. Our focus will be on the opportunities, resources, and encouragement provided by educators who use the strength-based teaching strategies embedded in Schoolwide Enrichment Model Programs to help students develop a socially constructive product or service to others that brings about positive change locally and in larger audiences. The chapter concludes with a series of guidelines for teachers that are designed to help young people internalize the attitudes, values, and behaviors that promote the use of one’s talents to make the world a better place. S. M. Reis (*) • J. S. Renzulli University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_16

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Introduction How do we create opportunities, provide resources, and encourage the development of transformational giftedness in students? How do we define and develop giftedness in ways that develop the power to change lives and create a positive moral ethic in young people? And how can we encourage high potential young people to use their creative and investigative skills for the production of social capital? Our work has focused on this question for over four decades, making this chapter a pleasure to write. We believe that the theory of transformational giftedness as outlined by Sternberg (2020) and our other colleagues in this volume applies to the development of gifts and talents as described in our Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness (Renzulli, 1978; Renzulli & Reis, 2021). In this approach, students apply their above-average abilities, task commitment, and creativity to an area of interest or a problem that they want to solve. Our pedagogical approach for dealing with curriculum and instruction is The Enrichment Triad Model (Renzulli, 1977), which is the curricular core of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) (Renzulli & Reis, 1985, 1997, 2014). In this chapter, we describe the SEM, the Enrichment Triad Model and summarize decades of work in this approach leading to an important reflection on outcomes of our work. That is, an important predictor of subsequent creative productivity are the creation and enhancement of students interests, the development of their task commitment, and the opportunity to learn how to use their talents to improve their world while they are young. These enjoyable learning experiences contribute to students choice of career and work, and their commitment to do good and important creative work throughout their lifetimes. We believe that the highly engaging creative-productive, and talent-development experiences that children and young adults have in school and in life can and will increase the likelihood that they will seek to find and create these opportunities in their subsequent work and personal lives. And so, our SEM talent development approach underlies our belief that the major purpose of talent development programs should be to increase the world’s reservoir of creative and productive young people.

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model The SEM is designed to infuse various types of enrichment and planned talent development practices into all aspects of the school curriculum and to ensure that certain types of enrichment activities are available to the larger school

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population. The explanatory information about SEM that follows is organized around the three major service delivery components listed on the face of the cube in Fig.  16.1 below. The three major service delivery components should be viewed as brought to bear on the three school organizational structures listed on the top of the cube. An overarching theme of our work in the SEM is the never-ending need to be responsive to a rapidly changing world, educations systems and policies that influence what takes place in day-to-day classrooms, and the impact that technology has had on teaching and learning. Researchers and education pundits are fond of telling teachers what they should be doing, but it has been opportunities to learn about the actual experiences taking place in schools and programs using our model that has provided our best direction for the insights and new additions that we have added over the years. Who would have thought three of four decades ago that most of the world’s knowledge would

Fig. 16.1  The Schoolwide Enrichment Model

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easily be assessable to students at the keyboards of their own personal computer? Any yet, most schools continue to follow a prescribed and textbook driven curriculum and a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. If we want education leaders to create a transformational environment for students, we ourselves also must be transformational in both the ways in which we pursue our work and how and to whom our work is marketed. And in a certain sense, this means that our work is never completed. As new resources in artificial intelligence, virtual learning, brain imaging, and yet-to-be discovered innovations take place, only those who are capable of adaptability will be able to make the changes that are necessary to adjust to changing times (Renzulli, 2020). The Enrichment Triad Model (Renzulli, 1977) is the curricular core of the SEM depicted in Fig. 16.1 under Enrichment Teaching and Learning. It was developed over four decades ago as a framework for teachers to help guide children develop their gifts and talents. Using the Triad Model, students, with the support, guidance and instruction of their teachers, learn to identify problems, areas of concern, or topics of intense interest. The Triad is explained in depth later in the chapter but its focus has always been to expose students to new ideas and directions for their talent development (Type I), train them in authentic methods and critical and creative thinking so that they can pursue work like junior professionals (Type II), and enable them to use their interests and methods to pursue independent or small group work in an area of interest (Type III). Whenever possible, that work leads them to satisfy their interests, solve a problem, produce a product or service, and hopefully, pursue an idea that will make things better for others. This is exactly why in many schools and classrooms where SEM is used, teachers start the process of Type III Enrichment by asking students to identify and help solve a problem that exists in their school, community, town, city, state, or region. Another question that is often the basis of students’ first Type III study is: What can you do to make your school, town, or community a better and happier place to live? How can you be instrumental to develop that process?

 he Background of Our Interpretation T of Transformational Giftedness Renzulli (2012) proposed a theoretical model for gifted education in the twenty-first century that includes the Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness, the Enrichment Triad Model and Operation Houndstooth, explained below. Together, these frame our approach to talent development within the Schoolwide Enrichment Model. Our goal is to help young people with high

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potential to become ethical creative producers who assume leadership roles as adults and make a positive difference in the world. The components that most influence our interpretation of transformational giftedness include the following: The Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness (Renzulli, 1978; Renzulli & Reis, 2021) theorizes that giftedness is a dynamic construct that arises in some individuals, some of the time, in the form of gifted behaviors. Gifted behaviors under this conception occur when individuals apply their above-average ability, creativity, and task commitment to accomplish a specific goal, such as creating a product, putting on a performance, or providing a service. Students who participate in advanced work, using this conception, are those who demonstrate or show the potential for demonstrating gifted behaviors, and who use these gifts to pursue areas of interest or solve problems that can make the world a better place. We call this definition creative-productive giftedness, as it is popular with educators who instinctively understand that scores on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive ability do not identify students who have the potential to develop original work and products that are designed to have an impact and make change. SEM learning environments are designed to promote creative-productive giftedness—they emphasize the use and application of content and thinking skills in an integrated, inductive, and real-problem-oriented manner. The role of the student is transformed from that of lesson learner to firsthand inquirer. Our SEM approach differs from other methods for developing academic gifts and talents as it focuses on an inductive, investigative, and inquiry mindset, rather than a preponderance of memory related information. Examples if these skills include the development of a broad range of thinking skills, the acquisition and retrieval of relevant information (including just-in-time information in addition to textbook information), the use of a broad range of executive function skills, and options for product formats, expression style preferences, and audience targeting. Emphasis is, of course, on the application of gathered information and skills to some tangible product, performance, presentation or social oriented service project In other words, our definition of creative-productive giftedness enables students to choose to work on problems and areas of study which is relevant to them in the hope that it will have an impact on one or more desired audiences. We often define this transformational role of students as one of thinking, feeling, and doing like the practicing professional, even if at a more junior level than adult scientists, writers, artists, or other professionals. Work in these areas can often be escalated to important and personally meaningful projects that have applications for solving problems and making a difference in society. For decades, we have argued

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that the creative and productive people of the world, the producers rather than consumers of knowledge, are those who have transformed our world. Operation Houndstooth describes several personality and environmental factors that interact with ability, creativity, and task commitment, and may lead to socially constructive gifted behaviors (Renzulli et al., 2006, 2011), It is named houndstooth for the original graphic in which the Three-Ring Conception was embedded in a houndstooth background because people frequently raised questions about the three rings. The black and white houndstooth graphic conveys the interaction between personality traits and environmental conditions that contribute to creative productivity. This approach describes organizational and personal executive functions that successful, altruistic leaders possess and that are desirable to develop in young people, with traits clustered into five factors: action orientation, realistic self-­ assessment, social interactions, awareness of the needs of others, and altruistic leadership. In addition to cognitive contributors to the development of high performance, a number of other factors referred to by Renzulli (2005) as “intelligences outside the normal curve” have been found to play a role in the accomplishments of highly effective young people and adults. New additions to our conception of giftedness focus on two clusters of co-cognitive traits that deal with characteristics related to using one’s talents to create social capital by doing good works and applying executive function skills to the development of action-oriented products. These traits are not as easily measured as cognitive abilities, but they are important contributors to creative productivity that we hope to develop in high potential young people. The goal of this work is to create strengths that foster socially constructive virtues. Financial and intellectual capital are the well-known forces that drive the economy and result in generating highly valued material assets, wealth production, and professional advancement—all important goals in a capitalistic economic system. Social capital, on the other hand, is a set of intangible assets that address the collective needs and problems of other individuals and our communities at large. Also important in pursuing this work were our own observations and teaching experiences with young people. Of course, it should be noted that capitalism can represent an opportunity for talented young people to make a difference in the world when coupled with the desire to do good and ethical work. And research about capitalism by talented young people can enhance our future understandings of its role in our society. One thing is clear to us after our decades of work in this field—and that is, if we want high potential young people to eventually assume leadership positions, we must encourage them early in life to use their talents to make the world a better place.

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Operation Houndstooth (Renzulli, 2002) resulted in the identification of the following six factors related to the production of positive social capital: • • • • • •

Optimism (Hope, Positive Feelings From Hard Work) Courage (Psychological and Intellectual Independence, Moral Courage) Romance With A Topic Or Discipline (Absorption, Passion) Sensitivity To Human Concerns (Insight, Empathy) Physical and Mental Energy (Charisma, Curiosity) Vision and Sense of Destiny (Sense of Power To Change Things, Sense of Direction and Pursuit of Goals)

Subsequent research found that research on Houndstooth-oriented activities led to the constructive development of gifted behaviors in young people, demonstrating that students can became creative producers for social change, as opposed to merely doing work for grades or other forms of external rewards (Renzulli et al., 2006; Sands & Heilbronner, 2014). This work helped us to better understand why some people mobilize their interpersonal, political, ethical, and moral realms of being in such ways that they place human concerns and the common good above materialism, ego enhancement, and self-indulgence. The work on executive functions emerged from earlier work on Operation Houndstooth and relates to the Task Commitment concept in our Three-­ Ring Conception of Giftedness. Executive functions are generally defined as a set of processes dealing with managing one’s mental control, self-regulation, and resources in order to achieve a goal (Kaufman, 2010). Our concern was to better understand and explain the motivation and skills that were observed in students’ work on high quality creative and investigative projects. A comprehensive review of both the psychological and business leadership literatures led our extended work on executive functions, resulting in the identification of the following five factors: • • • • •

Action Orientation (Decision Making, Goal Setting, Time Management) Social Interactions (Listening, Communication, Collaboration) Altruistic Leadership (Team Work, Positive Reinforcement, Delegation) Realistic Self-Awareness (Self-Confidence, Self-Efficacy, Humility) Awareness of The Needs of Others (e.g., Empathy, Tolerance, Kindness)

We believe that Type III Enrichment is the most effective current way to develop these traits. Although these factors are frequently considered “soft skills,” we believe that the mission of gifted education should be expanded to

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include these co-cognitive skills because they are becoming more important in the top-level employment market. A major assumption underlying our work in these co-cognitive areas is that personality and environment are subject to modification. Factors such as courage, optimism, and a sense of power to change things are the traits that we respect in leaders and innovators such as Rachel Carson, Marie Curie, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King (Renzulli, 2005). Our SEM approach was developed to promote these traits so that young people will be prepared to assume leadership roles in adulthood and realize transformational giftedness. The most important goal of our SEM program is for high-ability students to develop into effective, prosocial creative producers or leaders.

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) The Enrichment Triad Model serves as the curricular basis for an organizational plan known as the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) that is used as the basis for many gifted programs, enrichment programs, magnet and charter schools and theme schools. When SEM is used as a gifted program, a talent pool of 15–20% of above-average ability/high potential students is identified through a variety of measures, including: achievement tests, teacher nominations, assessment of potential for creativity and task commitment, as well as alternative pathways of entrance (self-nomination, parent nomination, etc.). Assessment of learning information derived from high achievement and IQ test scores and based on universal screening and local norms automatically include a student in the talent pool, enabling those students who are underachieving in their academic schoolwork to be included. We also, however, recommend that a broader category of co-cognitive information called Assessments For Learning (Renzulli, 2021) be gathered on all students. Instruments used in this category are designed to reveal student interests, preferred styles of learning and expressing ones-self, and various executive function skills. This information is based on instruments that students complete themselves and it provides material that teachers can use to form problem-­ based learning groups called Enrichment Clusters, a service in the SEM, described in this chapter. This formative assessment information is especially useful for personalizing the curriculum for any student whose uniqueness as a learner can best be discovered through a combination of both cognitive and co-cognitive information. Through the use of artificial intelligence, we can now more easily gather and analyze most of this information.

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Services for students include both informal and formal methods used to create or identify students’ interests and to encourage students to further develop and pursue these interests in various ways. Learning mode preferences include: projects, independent study, teaching games, simulations, peer teaching, computer assisted instruction, lecture, drill and recitation, and discussion. Second, curriculum compacting is provided to all eligible students for whom the regular curriculum is modified by eliminating portions of previously mastered content. This elimination or streamlining of curriculum enables above average students to avoid repetition of previously mastered work and guarantees mastery while simultaneously finding time for more appropriately challenging activities (Reis et al., 2016).

 he Enrichment Triad Model, the Curricular Core T of the SEM The Enrichment Triad Model (Renzulli, 1977) was designed to encourage creative productivity on the part of young people by exposing them to various topics, areas of interest, and fields of study; it was also conceived to further train students to apply advanced content, process-training skills, and methodology training to self-selected areas of interest and problems that they want to investigate and solve. Accordingly, three types of enrichment are included in the Enrichment Triad Model (See Fig. 16.1). As briefly mentioned earlier, Type I Enrichment is designed to expose students to a wide variety of disciplines, topics, occupations, hobbies, persons, places, and events that would not ordinarily be covered in the regular curriculum. In schools that use this enrichment approach to learning, an enrichment team of parents, teachers, and students often organizes and plans Type I experiences by contacting speakers, arranging minicourses, demonstrations, or performances, or by ordering and distributing films, slides, videotapes, or other print or non-print media. As noted above, some Type I opportunities expose students to problems in their communities, locally and globally. Type II Enrichment includes materials and methods designed to promote the development of thinking and feeling processes. Some Type II Enrichment is general, consisting of training in areas such as creative thinking and problem solving, learning how to learn skills such as classifying and analyzing data, and advanced reference and communication skills. Type II training includes the development of various skills such as:

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• creative thinking and problem solving, critical thinking, and creative productivity training; • specific learning-how-to-learn skills; • appropriate use of advanced-level reference materials; • written, oral, and visual communication skills; • evaluation and use of technology tools; • affective skills such as leadership or character development skills. Other Type II Enrichment is specific, as it cannot be planned in advance and usually involves advanced instruction in an interest or problem area selected by the student. For example, students who became interested in botany after a Type I Enrichment experience can pursue additional training in this area by doing advanced-level reading in botany; compiling, planning and carrying out plant experiments. For those interested students who wanted to go further, their enrichment teacher arranged for additional training in this area. Type III Enrichment, most often linked to the development of transformational giftedness, involves students who become interested in pursuing a self-­ selected area and are willing to commit the time necessary for advanced content acquisition and process training in which they assume the role of a first-hand inquirer. The goals of Type III Enrichment include: • providing opportunities for applying interests, knowledge, creative ideas and task commitment to a self-selected problem or area of study; • acquiring advanced level understanding of the knowledge (content) and methodology (process) that are used within particular disciplines, artistic areas of expression and interdisciplinary studies; • developing authentic products that are primarily directed toward bringing about a desired impact upon a specified audience (such as improving or changing something for the better and solving problems; • developing self-directed learning skills in the areas of planning, organization, resource utilization, time management, decision making and self-evaluation; • developing task commitment, self-confidence, and feelings of creative accomplishment, and pride in helping others and fixing problems. We have seen thousands of Type III projects over the last four decades that demonstrate the capacity for developing transformational giftedness. As

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described by Sternberg elsewhere (2020) and in this volume, this is the kind of giftedness that seeks to positively, meaningfully, and enduringly change the world at some level—to make the world a better place. Indeed, this description details the gifts that are developed as many students create meaningful projects that make their communities a better place. One such project involved the creation of a bike path in a city in the northwestern United States. The local high school students who completed the Type III Enrichment project included a group of avid cyclists, and all students who simply believed that automobiles should not own the road. The creative process of having the town council agree to the expenditure took this group of young people through a labyrinth of politics, legal issues, financial machinations, and finally, a tough vote. The bike path was built, and the creative process of political and civil action was a peak experience for these young people. Other examples of ways in which the SEM creates transformational giftedness are illustrated by the following Type III studies: Jacob from Burlington, CT, created “Computers for Communities, Inc.” in order to help close the digital divide. Four years ago, he observed that well-off families had computers but those with lesser means did not. He and other friends were able to rebuild and give away over 1000 computers to families in need. He started the company when he was 9 years old. Xóchitl, an 8-year-old girl from Mexico (Chiapas), found that in her low-­ income rural community, the only source for hot water is burning firewood from cut logs. The process would release fumes into the environment and contribute to deforestation and the cost of firewood was prohibitive. Thus, few low-income residents were able to take hot showers. This young Mexican girl developed a solar water heater in her small, high poverty village to enable residents to take hot baths or showers. Her device worked, but she refused to patent it so that she could give the idea away to others to enable them to make hot water inexpensively. William, an 8-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, set up a community food drive to collect food for BackPack Buddies, an Inter-faith Food Shuttle program providing low-income students healthy meals on the weekend. Inter-­ Faith Food Shuttle is an innovative hunger-relief organization serving seven counties (Wake, Durham, Orange, Chatham, Johnston, Nash, and Edgecombe) in North Carolina. William collected more than a thousand pounds of food to feed the hungry. The eight-year-old boy hopes to raise five times that amount this year and start a state-wide food drive next year. When third grader Naudia learned that her friend was facing cancer, she had many questions. What kind of medicine would he take? Was it possible

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to get rid of the cancer? Would her friend still be the same goofy, fun-loving kid after treatment? So, she decided to write a book about his journey called, My Friend Linkin, which describes a typical day of chemotherapy treatment from a kid’s perspective. Students who complete Type III Enrichment products write short stories and poetry, design science studies and build telescopes, conduct research about local history and act as junior historians, and pursue their interests in the arts, mathematics, leadership, and community action. The opportunity to conduct a Type III study enables students to use their talents to pursue good work and to make a positive difference in their communities, as these independent or small group studies also create opportunities to solve local problems. For example, students have created campaigns about toy safety, created community food banks, and started small businesses to raise money for those who need assistance in their urban neighborhoods. They have also engaged in social action related to personal events in their lives. The example in Box A illustrates one Type III project in which an elementary student created change in his community in response to a drunk driving fatality in his family. Many examples of these types of student-directed enrichment clusters and Type III projects have been implemented as part of SEM programs. These opportunities encourage students to participate in planned volunteer activities, assume a leadership role, and use their creativity to design and implement a solution to real, personally identified community problems. Prior research supports this approach, finding that participating in these types of activity can improve executive functions, including an increased interest in doing good in the world (Sands & Heilbronner, 2014). Type III projects also enable students to develop various executive functioning skills (Brigandi et al., 2016; Hébert, 1993, 2010; Terry, 2003; Westberg & Leppien, 2017; Renzulli, 2021) and pursue degrees and careers in their areas of interest. In Table 16.1 below, we list a sample of recent Type III studies completed in one CT school district designed to help society, research an important cause, or research important topics such as hunger, cleaning up the environment, loneliness, bullying, or helping others, such as elderly citizens. Students involved in these Type III studies learn powerful lessons about creating change, dealing with local authorities and organizations, and making a positive impact. They also learn to apply problem solving strategies and skills to real-world concerns.

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Box A: Example—One Case Study of Transformational Giftedness Type III in an SEM Program Jeremy was in fifth grade when his beloved uncle was killed in a tragic automobile accident that was caused by a drunk driver. Jeremy’s uncle was driving home from his late night shift at a local factory when the driver, who had been drinking well into the evening, plowed into the car. Jeremy’s uncle died instantly. Jeremy and the rest of his family were both saddened and shocked at the tragic waste of such a senseless death. While the rest of the family grieved, Jeremy went into action! He organized a chapter of Students against Driving Drunk at his elementary school and made contacts at the local middle school for another chapter to be started. As time passed, Jeremy wanted to make a difference in other ways. He talked often with his parents about chance factors and why his uncle had died. He was, explained his mother, in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Jeremy was not sure about that. Jeremy found himself asking some questions about the accident and the whereabouts of the driver who hit his uncle’s car immediately preceding the accident. His parents tried to answer his questions about how many drinks the driver had been served, leading to other questions about why and how drunk drivers could continue to be served after they were obviously intoxicated. Jeremy wondered, in his own words, what would happen or should happen at bars where bartenders were routinely over-serving before closing time. His parents listened sympathetically and were proud of their son’s interest in such an important topic. They also believed that the conversations they were having with him and the questions he was raising were helpful in dealing with their grief. They suggested that Jeremy consider discussing his questions with his enrichment teacher in his school SEM program. He followed up the next day, as his teacher already knew about the accident and had helped Jeremy with the organization of the SADD chapter in the school. Jeremy asked his teacher about ramifications for bar owners and bar tenders who were obviously overserving at closing time, and his teacher shook his head, admitting he had no idea if there were laws in place or even fines that could be levied against those who helped drivers become drunk drivers. Jeremy, who was an above average student with talents in technology and math, continued to discuss this with his teacher and a few days later, asked his teacher about the possibility of writing a computer program that might analyze data that the police may have collected about the intersection of location and frequency of arrest or accident related to drunk diving. He asked his teacher to help him make an appointment with the chief of police so that Jeremy could ask about whether the records might be made available to him. Jeremy’s idea had emerged into a plan to use his technology and math skills to write a computer program that would plot the intersection of time of arrest and accident with frequency of arrest and/or accident. With his creative idea in mind, Jeremy and his teacher called the police station and made an appointment to discuss the idea with him. The police chief was less than enthusiastic about the idea, dismissing Jeremy fairly quickly as a 12  year old kid. Kindly, but firmly, he told Jeremy that he should leave this to the professionals and also explained that the records were confidential and could not be released to anyone. (continued)

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Box A:  (continued) Jeremy explained that he did not need the names and asked, instead, if there was a possibility that the data could be provided to him as just the number, time, and location of incidents. The police chief again shook his head and stood up, indicating that the appointment was over. Politely, but firmly, Jeremy stood up and reached out to shake the policeman’s hand. “Thank you for your time, sir,” he said, “I have just one more question for you! Who do you work for?” The police chief drew his hand back and said, “I serve the mayor of our town and the Board of Safety, young man.” Jeremy thanked him and his teacher and he left the office. Later that day, Jeremy called the mayor’s office and politely asked for an appointment. The mayor agreed to see him the next week. At that meeting, which was brief, the mayor told Jeremy she had heard about his idea from the police chief and reiterated the concerns raised about confidentiality. Jeremy explained that he wanted to help and make a difference and told her about his uncle. He also asked if she could find out if the data could be run without names. She told him that she would consider his request and also told him that he should consider writing a brief proposal for the Board of Safety. Within a few days, Jeremy had finished the proposal and submitted it to the Board of Safety. In addition, he asked for a short amount of time at their next meeting to explain his idea. Jeremy made the presentation, and to everyone’s surprise, the Board of Safety voted to make the data available to him without names. He worked for the next several months on his computer program and painstakingly entered the data and ran several analyses to plot the intersections of these arrests and accidents. He was able to identify about 8 bars and taverns that appeared to have personnel who were overserving at closing time due to the cluster and the time of arrests and accidents in the vicinity. The police chief (who subsequently took credit for giving Jeremy the go ahead on the plan) diverted some of his officers to patrol the areas of the city identified in Jeremy’s research and the drunk driving arrest record increased significantly in those areas. Jeremy had the satisfaction of knowing that in one small way, he had made a difference and also honored his uncle’s memory.

Enrichment Clusters Enrichment clusters are another component of the SEM that provides excellent ways for transformational giftedness to develop. In clusters, non-graded groups of students who share common interests come together during specially designated time blocks to pursue these interests. Like extracurricular activities and programs such as 4-H and Junior Achievement, the main rationale for participation in one or more clusters is that students and teachers share a common interest and want to be there. All teachers (including music, art, physical education, etc.) are involved in teaching the clusters, as are community members and parents who volunteer—in fact, their involvement in any

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Table 16.1  Type III projects designed to help others, solve problems, and make a difference in one CT school district during a recent academic year The brain and the damage caused by drugs Safety and social networking Guide dogs and helping those with disabilities Revolutions and the damage from them The US Vietnam War and what we learned The impact of national parks Curing diabetes Music therapy: Who it helps and why What fast food does to your body The destruction of the rain forests: Why you should care How anesthesia revolutionizes surgery Creating food pantries in your neighborhood City farms and sustainable foods Beach erosion and how to prevent it Guide dogs and how we can help those with sight impairments Saving wild horses Dance therapy for kids with cancer Chernobyl: Lessons learned Animal testing for cosmetics—It must stop A cure for cancer How better architecture creates better schools How videogaming can affect kids Parasites and children’s health Chimps; suffering in silence No place to call home: Helping the homeless How schools deal with threats Renewable energy What is bullying and how can we prevent it Humanitarian aid: Where do we start The solar power revolution Child soldiers: Suffering and death Women in the workplace: The differences they make

particular cluster should be based on the same type of interest assessment that is used for students in selecting clusters of choice. The model for learning used with enrichment clusters is based on an inductive approach to the pursuit of real-world problems rather than traditional, didactic modes of teaching, making these a perfect complement to the development of transformational giftedness, as enrichment clusters promote cooperativeness within the context of real-world problem solving, and provide superlative opportunities for solving problems and creating services that help one’s community. Implementing enrichment clusters creates opportunities to make every child feel as if they have a talent or a potential talent and can make a difference in a positive way. In essence, enrichment clusters can help to create opportunities for transformational gifts to develop.

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Table 16.2  Enrichment cluster titles focusing on solving problems and helping others The save the dolphin society Mansfield environmental protection agency The girls mathematics support league Computer whizzes to the rescue The helping hands organizers Senior supporters Young social entrepreneurs Community action Preventing hunger in our community Inventions that make a difference Beautification of our community Gardening for food production

Enrichment clusters are modeled after the ways in which knowledge utilization, thinking skills, problem solving, creativity, and interpersonal relations take place in the real world. Thus, all work is directed toward the production of a product or service, many of them focused on making a positive difference in students’ communities. Many clusters focus on service projects that students pursue to make their school and community a better place to live, as demonstrated by recent titles of SEM enrichment clusters in Table 16.2.

Discussion and Summary Longitudinal research on the use of the Triad Model has shown that students who completed Type III projects, both in and out of school, maintain interests and career aspirations in college and in graduate school (Delcourt, 1993; Reis & Peters, 2020; Renzulli & De Wet, 2010; Westberg, 2010). Research on the use of the Triad Model in college has also been conducted, with positive findings related to student creative productivity and engagement (Brandon et al., 2021). What is the longitudinal impact of this brand of Type III project? Students who engage in Type III Enrichment have a positive relationship between their early and subsequent interests (Westberg, 2010), postsecondary school plans (Hébert, 1993), career choices (Delcourt, 1993), goal valuation (Brigandi et  al., 2016), environmental perceptions (Brigandi et  al., 2018), and self-regulation (Brigandi et al., 2018; Hébert, 1993, 2010). Baum et al. (1995) reported that Type III Enrichment was an effective approach to reverse underachievement. Brigandi et  al. (2016) also found a positive connection between participation in enrichment and goal valuation. Students who engaged in Type III Enrichment perceived their projects to be interesting and beneficial and believed they would contribute to their continued interest and perceptions of enjoyment in the future.

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Enrichment programs based on the SEM provide specific benefits to academically talented and high potential students, enabling students to increase aspirations for college and careers and to select interest-based and challenging postsecondary and career plans (Delcourt, 1993; Hébert, 1993); it also helped them develop creativity and motivation that was applied to later work (Delcourt, 1993; Hébert, 1993, 2010). Hébert (2010) and Delcourt (1993) found that gifted programs using the SEM approach (Renzulli, 1977; Renzulli & Reis, 1985, 1997, 2014) helped focus students’ academic development and productivity in their areas of interest, had a positive effect on students’ subsequent interests, and positively affected postsecondary career plans. Enrichment experiences in SEM programs contributed to students’ social and emotional growth, especially their belief in self, empathy for others, and connections with intellectual and affective soulmates. Westberg (2010) investigated longitudinal effects on students who participated in the same type of program and found that students-maintained interests and were still involved with both their interests and creative productive work after they finished college and graduate school. In summary, both qualitative and quantitative longitudinal studies of SEM gifted programs demonstrate positive outcomes in cognitive, affective, and social development of participating students (Reis & Peters, 2020). The SEM includes many research-based recommendations for developing transformational gifted behaviors and talents in young people. In addition, the SEM identification system is and has always been more flexible than most traditional identification systems. We have consistently advocated providing some general enrichment (Type I and II Enrichment), as well as enrichment clusters for all students. Focused, planned efforts on talent development have emerged from our consistent attempts to change the culture of schools by creating a planned, systematic set of opportunities, resources, and encouragement for talent development. Many SEM schools have stated goals related to talent development and offer a special haven for creative and talented students who want to make a difference in their schools and communities, learn in an active and engaging way, pursue their interests, and complete work that is personally meaningful. We believe that recent, important focus on social and emotional learning and affective development is compatible with the work on the co-cognitive characteristics discussed in this chapter. Blending co-cognitive learning activities into the SEM and blending them with cognitive and traditional achievement goals enables students to understand and develop positive emotions, set and achieve important—even noble—goals, feel and show empathy for others, solve problems, promote positive relationships, and make good and

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ethical decisions. We also believe that all children deserve the chance to make a difference in their community, the opportunity to solve problems for the common good, and the time to develop and use their talents to make our world a better place to live. Indeed, this is what our SEM has been designed to do—create the type of transformational giftedness that our friend and colleague Bob Sternberg has described elsewhere (Sternberg, 2020) and in this volume. We hope that more schools and districts will continue to implement talent development programs or use our SEM talent development pedagogy in the future, whether as part of gifted or enrichment programs, magnet or theme schools, or as a part of a general education program. We believe that students’ enjoyable, creative productive experiences can and will increase the likelihood that they will seek future creative opportunities to make a positive difference in their subsequent careers and personal lives. And when they do, the world will benefit from their creative and personally meaningful contributions to make their worlds a better place. Indeed, that is the intended legacy of our decades of work in the SEM. One of the goals of the SEM is to enable students to replicate pleasurable, creative early learning experiences with high levels of creative productivity later in life (Reis & Renzulli, 2010). Recent research on the SEM has found the importance of these types of projects in helping creative young people pursue important work and develop into leaders who can make a difference, supporting Renzulli and D’Sousa’s (2014) and Renzulli and colleagues’ earlier work on Houndstooth Intervention Theory (Renzulli et  al., 2006). That research reported executive function skills improvements in students who completed Type III projects, as well as affective benefits (Brigandi et al., 2016; Hébert, 1993; Terry, 2003; Westberg & Leppien, 2017). It also supports previous reports that mentors are important for successfully completing Type III projects (Brigandi et  al., 2016; Hébert, 1993; Westberg & Leppien, 2017) and that Type III projects can help students to clarify and affirm their career goals (Brigandi et al., 2016). Enrichment programs such as the SEM support students’ talents and promote their creative productivity, as well as create opportunities for mentoring that connects students to adults with shared interests. This simple step enables academically talented students to successfully complete challenging research, service, and creative projects that they often feel compelled to do. We believe that these experiences will provide the training that will encourage them to continue their creative work in the future; and emerge as leaders who possess sensitivity to human concerns and the courage and creativity that will help to make a positive difference in their areas of interest and passion.

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References Baum, S. M., Renzulli, J. S., & Hébert, T. (1995). The prism metaphor: A new paradigm for reversing underachievement (CRS 95310). University of Connecticut, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. https://nrcgt.uconn.edu/ research-­based_resources/baumrenz/ Brandon, L., Reis, S. M., & McGuire, C. (2021). Perceptions of talented university students related to opportunities and autonomy for creative productivity. Gifted Education International. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429421994335 Brigandi, C. B., Siegle, D., Weiner, J. M., Gubbins, E. J., & Little, C. A. (2016). Gifted secondary school students: The perceived relationship between enrichment and goal valuation. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 39(4), 263–287. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0162353216671837 Brigandi, C. B., Weiner, J. M., Siegle, D., Gubbins, E. J., & Little, C. A. (2018). Environmental perceptions of gifted secondary school students engaged in an evidence-based enrichment practice. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62(3), 289–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986218758441 Delcourt, M. A. B. (1993). Creative productivity among secondary school students: Combining energy, interest, and imagination. Gifted Child Quarterly, 37(1), 23–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698629303700104 Hébert, T. P. (1993). Reflections at graduation: The long-term impact of elementary school experiences in creative productivity. Roeper Review, 16(1), 22–29. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02783199309553529 Hébert, T. P. (2010). Lessons learned from my students: The impact of SEM teaching and learning on affective development. Gifted Education International, 26(2–3), 271–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/026142941002600313 Kaufman, C. (2010). Executive function in the classroom: Practical strategies for improving performance and enhancing skills for all students. Brooks Publishing Company. Reis, S. M., & Peters, P. (2020). Research on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model: Four decades of insights, innovation, and evolution. Gifted Education International. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429420963987 Reis, S. M., & Renzulli, J. S. (2010). The Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A focus on student strengths and interests. Gifted Education International, 26(2–3), 140–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/026142941002600303 Reis, S. M., Renzulli, J. S., & Burns, D. E. (2016). Curriculum compacting: A guide to differentiating curriculum and instruction through enrichment and acceleration (2nd ed.). Prufrock Press. Renzulli, J. S. (1977). The enrichment triad model: A guide for developing defensible programs for the gifted and talented. Creative Learning Press. Renzulli, J. S. (1978). What makes giftedness? Reexamining a definition. Phi Delta Kappan, 60(3), 180–184, 261. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171109200821

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Renzulli, J. S. (2002). Expanding the conception of giftedness to include co-­cognitive traits and to promote social capital. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(1), 33–40, 57–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208400109 Renzulli, J.  S. (2005). The three-ring conception of giftedness: A developmental model for promoting creative productivity. In R.  J. Sternberg & J.  Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (2nd ed., pp. 217–245). Cambridge University Press. Renzulli, J. S. (2012). Reexamining the role of gifted education and talent development for the 21st century: A four-part theoretical approach. Gifted Child Quarterly, 56(3), 150–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986212444901 Renzulli, J. S. (2020). The Catch-A-Wave Theory of adaptability: Core competencies for developing gifted behaviors in the second machine age of technology. International Journal For Talent Development and Creativity, 8(1), 79–93. Renzulli, J. S. (2021). Assessment for learning: The missing element for identifying high potential in low income and minority groups. Gifted Education International. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429421998304 Renzulli, J.  S., & D’Sousa, S.  L. (2014). Intelligences outside the normal curve: Co-cognitive factors that contribute to the creation of social capital and leadership skills in young people. In J. A. Plucker & C. M. Callahan (Eds.), Critical issues and practices in gifted education: What the research says (2nd ed., pp.  343–362). Prufrock Press. Renzulli, J. S., & De Wet, C. F. (2010). Developing creative productivity in young people through the pursuit if ideal acts of learning. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Nurturing creativity in the classroom (pp. 24–72). Cambridge University Press. Renzulli, J. S., & Reis, S. M. (1985). The Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A comprehensive plan for educational excellence. Creative Learning Press. Renzulli, J. S., & Reis, S. M. (1997). The Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A how-to guide for educational excellence (2nd ed.). Creative Learning Press. Renzulli, J. S., & Reis, S. M. (2014). The Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A how-to guide for educational excellence (3rd ed.). Prufrock Press. Renzulli, J.  S., & Reis, S.  M. (2021). The three ring conception of giftedness: A change in direction from being gifted to the development of gifted behaviors. In R.  J. Sternberg & D.  Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent (pp. 335–356). Palgrave Macmillan. Renzulli, J.  S., Koehler, J.  L., & Fogarty, E.  A. (2006). Operation Houndstooth intervention theory: Social capital in today’s schools. Gifted Child Today, 29(1), 14–24. https://doi.org/10.4219/gct-­2006-­189 Renzulli, J. S., Sands, M. M., & Heilbronner, N. N. (2011). Operation Houndstooth: A positive perspective on developing social intelligence. In A. Ziegler & C. Perleth (Eds.), Essays in honour of Kurt Heller (pp. 217–244). LIT Verlag. Sands, M. M., & Heilbronner, N. N. (2014). The impact of Direct Involvement I and Direct Involvement II experiences on secondary school students’ social capital, as measured by co-cognitive factors of the Operation Houndstooth Intervention Theory. Gifted Child Quarterly, 58(4), 297–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0016986214547633

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Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Terry, A. W. (2003). Effects of service learning on young, gifted adolescents and their community. Gifted Child Quarterly, 47(4), 295–308. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 001698620304700406 Westberg, K. L. (2010). Young creative producers: Twenty-five years later. Gifted Education International, 26(2–3), 261–270. https://doi.org/10.1177/026142941002600312 Westberg, K. L., & Leppien, J. H. (2017). Student independent investigations for authentic learning. Gifted Child Today, 41(1), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1076217517735354

17 Equity, Social Justice and Transformational Giftedness: A Gifted Academy in a Vulnerable Community Renu Singh and Bharath Sriraman

Transformational Versus Transactional Giftedness The global educational system is more or less transactional as is evident in its history. Schools and curricula have always held an exchange value, which is upward social mobility (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016a, 2016b; Sriraman & Lee, 2016). For instance, in many countries when a student is asked, “Why are you studying computer science or engineering?”, the answer is not “because I like it or am interested in it.” The reason is that it will yield a high paying job and bestow “success” as measured by the mores of that particular society. This is by and large also true of Western societies set up on the backbone of consumerism. A long time ago, when computing devices like the computer and calculators were not yet invented, one purpose of education was to make humans into calculators and computers (Sriraman & Törner, 2008). The German word “rechnung” translates into both “reckoner” and “calculator”from which one gets “rechner” for a computer. A human being in this system could be viewed as the product of the educational system- and as a mobile knowledge vessel. The factory-model of the educational system resulted in

R. Singh Phoenix Union High School District, Phoenix, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. Sriraman (*) University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_17

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generations of students who learned how to “follow instruction,” making them suitable for assembly-line jobs that required following instructions (Spring, 2006). This form of education has been criticized by theorists like Paolo Freire (1998), who wrote that the purpose of education is the just transformation of society by educating students though a pedagogy of emancipation that frees them from the bonds of mental servitude. Freire’s banking concept holds that students are knowledgeable beings with the intrinsic capacity of creating knowledge with the teacher, as opposed to being empty buckets of ignorance or simply “files” or automatons dependent on the teacher’s absolute authority to learn and construct new knowledge. Freire (1998) also addressed the power dynamics between the oppressed and the oppressors (including the dynamic between teacher and student), and that the way toward liberation is through political movements and political struggle, of which literacy is but one part. Thus, his emphasis on writing the world, is beyond literacy. Clearly, literacy (i.e., reading the world) is also an integral and necessary part of this process. The criticisms of educators like Joel Spring and Paolo Freire stem from factory-model existing educational systems that standardize student expectations and subsequently standardize humans as machines. Such an educational system was and still is transactional in nature. In the post WWII era, the general educational system was tailored for a student to take required courses in order to get a degree or diploma that ensured a job in the future. In the twenty-first century, the so-called digital age, where information and technology pervade human existence, there is little or no need for “human-­ automatons”. The transactional model of education is simply obsolete. With a planetary population approaching 8 billion and rising, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic presenting existential threats; with mass manipulation of decision making among populations through artificial intelligence embedded in social media, the students of today face scenarios and challenges that were unimaginable even a generation ago. We are living in a world of “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973) which offer opportunities for gifted individuals to tackle them (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016a, 2016b). Not only are the systems complex, but also the issues arising from natural or human-made systems are complex. It is time for the educational system to change from transactional to transformational for the greater good of the planet and human existence (Sternberg, 2020b, 2021a). Historically speaking, education was for the higher strata of society (Sriraman & Lee, 2016). Thus, the gifts and talents of already affluent students could be honed by parents and existing society-at-large because the educational system was tailored for them. In return, the existing system rewarded

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the very same students’ gifts and talents at the end of their education by providing them opportunities to serve society as leaders, who very often perpetuated the existing status quo. The factory-model system of education more or less replicated the ancient systems by replicating socio-economic class and preserving the status quo. In such a scenario, gifted students in particular could break through the status quo – the trait of “giftedness” was valued and handled as transactional. Scoring high in achievement tests or being talented in sport led to opportunities that were hitherto unavailable for students from the lower socio-economic strata of society. American professional and college sports have come under increasing scrutiny for misusing the talents of athletes for financial gain while compromising health and education. Thus, transactional models of education and talent development still do not serve any purpose other than making institutions into a profitable business or a pipeline into institutions where talents become an exploitable commodity. In the U.S, for students from lower socioeconomic strata, free education was viewed as being sufficient to provide avenues for upward social mobility. If they happened to be academically gifted but from a lower SES, college scholarships, which led to degrees, were touted as a route to success. In this scenario, the transactional nature of “giftedness” continued to preserve the existing educational system’s “factory model”. This set-up did not hone the potential/gift of a student from a low SES to its fullest as compared to the student from affluent communities. In affluent communities, student “gifts” are better honed and shaped by parents and often personalized in their choice of private/charter schools that can further cultivate these gifts. In such cases, there is a choice of either transformation or transactional giftedness. However, the same thought processes are often absent when it comes to gifted students from lower SES because of the misconception that low SES students need an education to do “better” (socioeconomically) than their parents with no thought given to the fact that they too have the potential to transform their society through their gifts. This misperception of students from low SES was echoed by Brantlinger (2003) in her seminal study on the inherent politics of an American school district and her finding that the invisible influence of the so called “middle class values” actually undercuts educational opportunities for low-SES students. If we continue to promote the age-old educational system as being normal, the status quo prevails and we continue to cater mostly to transactional giftedness. In the U.S. context, the student population labeled as being gifted in the school system is between 8% and 15% of the student population. These are the students who have the potential to create, innovate, and problem-solve for the betterment of humanity. Yet, as argued before, when transactional

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giftedness is promoted over transformational giftedness, society by and large does not benefit from the gifted population. As Robert Stenberg and the co-­ editors of this volume explain in their discussion of the motivation for this book, transactional or transformational giftedness has more to do with the culture of a school, home, and country. Western societies are to a large extent market economy driven with a strong capitalist influence which has resulted in divided society that can be attributed to inequality (Stiglitz, 2012). Thus, promotion of transactional giftedness is prevalent in the education system. As a result, starting a gifted academy based on transformational giftedness in a low-SES community with vulnerable populations presents numerous challenges. In such a community, there is pressure for an academy to promote transactional giftedness that leads to financial success (argued in the name of equity) as opposed to promoting transformational giftedness that can lead to the betterment of the community (which can be argued for in the name of social justice). Again, there is the tacit influence of “middle class values” (Brantlinger, 2003) that puts pressure on the academy to tout transactional giftedness as opposed to transformational giftedness. After all, touting the starting salary of a graduate in a hedge-fund company in Silicon Valley has more “status” than a graduate initiating a much needed social program for the community for its betterment. The definition of giftedness brings our attention to the fact that there exists a huge spectrum of giftedness. In the last few decades, our understanding and definition of giftedness has evolved. As numerous educators have argued, the present educational system is enabling the exploitation of gifted individuals while maintaining societal hierarchy and inequality. This is evident in scientists working behind the scenes for gains reaped by politicians and venture capitalists. Though it is easy to enhance the altruistic tendencies of a gifted individual in a classroom, those individuals very soon question the importance of altruism in a society driven by materialism. Since success is measured largely in terms of financial gains, the transactional nature of giftedness often overshadows its transformational potential. The stranglehold of transactional giftedness over American society can be traced back to the era after the Great Depression. During this time-period, a group of industrialists decided that the spread of consumerism and the emotion of “feeling good” through consuming goods could act as a panacea for a stable society (Stiglitz, 2019). Little did they realize that the unchecked consumption of fossil fuels in tandem with the degradation of forests and ocean life needed to sustain the consumer lifestyle of Americans and the capitalistic “West” would lead to the existential threat of climate change. Despite this existential threat, even in the twenty-first century, this consumer-driven

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attitude prevails. Society and education exist in tandem with an outdated notion of well-being driven by financial success and consumerism and rooted in a reactionary model. COVID-19 resulted in society and education having to confront and reflect on what is important for physical and emotional well-being and human life. Many were slowly grasping the importance of simple living and human connection especially when the complex threat of life hangs in limbo. Renzulli (1978) distinguished between schoolhouse giftedness and creative-­ productive giftedness. Most educators are happy once they identify one of two traits of giftedness in a child, with schools and districts spending large sums of money on the identification of gifted learners. This is rationalized as schools “doing their part” for the gifted population. However, identification can only do so much if we do not know what we are to do with the gifted population. The common next step is to “shove” these students into honors and/or AP courses. It is perhaps a truism when we state that there is adequate literature which argue that honors and AP classes do not necessarily address the abilities of the gifted population- they simply promote academic achievement that will lead to success in college and beyond (Sriraman & Steinthorsdottir, 2007a, 2007b). Instead, bringing the focus on transformational giftedness brings a huge challenge for the gifted educator. Gifted education is still confronted with the challenge of fighting for meager resources to support the wide spectrum of gifted learners in any educational setting. Therefore, nurturing transformational giftedness becomes more challenging in the present scenario where resources for gifted learners is limited. Yet, the COVID-19 era brought our attention to all the transformationally gifted individuals who are serving and trying to save the world from itself during these challenging times. It brings to light our responsibility as a society to support gifted learners, and most of all nurture transformational giftedness that our world needs the most. According to Sternberg (2021b, this volume), transformational giftedness has four components: creativity, analytical thinking, practicality, and wisdom. Stenberg emphasized that transformational giftedness is more than successful intelligence. Successful intelligence defined by Stenberg is one’s ability to formulate, reformulate as necessary, and, within environmental constraints, achieve one’s prosocial goals in life (Sternberg, 2020a). While transformational giftedness is one’s ability to shape the environment they are in for the betterment of themselves and others. Transformational giftedness has the potential to raise the collective consciousness of humankind. Sternberg (2021b) suggested a few ways by which an educational institution can promote transformational giftedness. Existing school cultures and the American way of life that seeks immediate

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gratification go against the grain of nurturing transformational giftedness. Therefore, any effort to enhance transformational giftedness is not only hindered by a lack of resources, but also by the opposition of the present education system. As one of the editors commented in their reading of this chapter, “the education system itself has been damaged by self-appointed reformers who impose narrow-minded, superficial accountability systems through standardized testing. This pushes the system away from transformational giftedness, making it more transactional.” Also, there are many educators who, in the name of equity, oppose any effort towards educating for transformational giftedness. In the remainder of this chapter, we describe and discuss a gifted academy that exists within a vulnerable population, and which promotes transformational giftedness with the long-term goal of well-being for the student and the community.

Case Study of the Academy The Phoenix Union Gifted & Talented Academy started in 2017 with the goal of providing holistic education to each gifted learner that was unlike the traditional set-up of dishing out all honors or AP courses irrespective of their strength/gifts. Thus, traditionally, the expectation from the gifted student was solely to increase student achievement through the school system. Of course, the carrot for the gifted learners was admission into a good college for a bright future. The setup was more of transactional learning. On the other hand, the foundation of the academy was established on the solid ground of transformational giftedness. The Academy encourages students with the following profile to apply for admission: • A score of the 97th Percentile or above on any gifted test approved by the State of Arizona • A self-motivated, creative & critical thinker • A willingness to learn and grow • An ability to connect with care to themselves and others • Motivation to be an agent of change to make the world a better place

Discussion of the Criteria It is clear that several of the criteria in the list above are qualitative in nature – the criteria of being self-motivated, a willingness to learn and grow, and an

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ability to connect with care to themselves and others, as well as the motivation to be an agent of change in the world – are difficult to “measure” in a traditional sense. Thus, a three component interview process has been devised to know students better. The three components of the interview are: Conversation, drawing, and writing. Also, students are asked to bring supporting documents such as transcripts and results from state testing to further understand each child’s potential/gifts. However, the examples shown below from different admission letters reveal that students in the academy have these traits and are seeking an education that will nurture the full potential development of these traits. During the application interview process, students participate in one written exercise, one drawing component, and one conversation component. This three-pronged approach helps us to understand student readiness for the program as students learn about an academy high school experience that is different from the regular high school experience. Most of the students in the academy are from a low-SES background and most have learned English as a second language. Here is one excerpt from a student written response. I have a huge desire to graduate and go on to a college or university! Now knowing this is one very excellent and advanced school, I know this is a school dedicated to helping their students go off to college and see them succeed. So, this plays a major role in why I am so hopeful I get able to be a part of this school! I know this school will push their students into becoming a better version of themselves. There will be kids just like me, people who are gifted, creative, and maybe even make a whole lot of new friends! I am hoping this school will play a major role in my life and what I hope to become!… I am hoping this school will help me not only better my academics but also me as a person…I really want to be able to express myself in this school. I expect this school to help me get to where I need to be in order to be successful.

The incoming freshman in her written response expressed her desire to learn and grow. She also cares about wanting to become a better version of herself. She believes in her ability to be who she wants to become and recognizes the role of the academy in supporting her to unfold her potential in a holistic manner. Next we present the drawing components of two of the incoming freshmen: Figure 17.1 is a response for the drawing component of the interview process. This task is given to understand how a student sees themselves in the world. The prompt is, “Draw a world with you in it.” One of the reasons for such a task is to allow non-verbally gifted students to express themselves. The student drawing above expresses a symbiotic relationship with others in a

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Fig. 17.1  Drawing component of interview

diverse world. It not only shows their creativity but also shows how they see themselves impacting the world. The drawing shows their belief in a peaceful world and the belief that the change starts with them. Even though there is a cat persona in the picture, there is peaceful coexistence with its prey in the world along with the flora and ecosystem. It also shows the student’s facility with the use of graphic technology. During the conversation part of the interview students explain their drawing. Many a time we hear that students have a desire to do good for themselves, their family and community but they are not sure how. Many are also not aware of their own potential at the time admission but slowly grow with us over the course of the 4 years and discover their own potential. In Fig. 17.2, another student has hand-drawn herself with other students from different countries. She is creative in making the clothing a representation of flags from different countries- in this case, we see the American, Mexican, Chinese, Canadian, and Indian flags from left to right. It reveals her conception of the inclusive nature of the community around her- one that cares and is inquisitive about other cultures and herself.

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Fig. 17.2  Student expression in drawing component of interview

Co-existence of the Affective and Cognitive The curriculum of the gifted academy is unique in enhancing the potential of its gifted learners. As stated earlier, the goal of the academy is to both cultivate self-awareness to nurture the connection to the society around the student. Ideally the curriculum should transform the self in ways that promote both the cognitive and affective components in a student. This is accomplished by intertwining these two components in a sequence of learning that culminates in a capstone seminar for each year that can capture this growth. To wit, the components of the curriculum that align with the transformational vision of the academy are as follows: 1. Acceleration 2. Project-Based Learning – content & transdisciplinary projects 3. Social-Emotional Learning – Theme based (a) Capstone Seminar I – Who am I? (b) Capstone Seminar II – Local and global impact/connection (c) Capstone Seminar III – Exploring your college & career passion

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(d) Capstone Seminar IV  – Independent project with community/ internship 4 . College & Career Exploration 5. Enrichment 6. Experiential Learning 7. Strength – based Course Work 8. Community Connection In classrooms of the academy, the integrated approach is implemented as shown in the following wheel of instructional modalities for holistic education. The gifted advisory is for grade- level-appropriate socio-emotional support on certain topics such as (Fig. 17.3): 1 . Giftedness- Mindfulness-Self-Compassion – Growth mindset 2. Neuroscience-Food & Health – Social Justice – Organization 3. Relationship- Hidden bias – Ethics- Life Philosophy 4. Mindsight – Meditation – Communication- Prioritizing

• Assessment for Learning focus • Standards and learning targets • Evidence chosen by students and mutually agreed by teacher

• Skill +Technology • Impact • Autonomy/portfolio • Transdisciplanry

• MicrosoftTeam Platform • Organization & Collaboration • Instruction modalities • Product choice • Student voice

Assessment

Digital Platform

PBL/Topic study

Gifted Advisory • Life skills • Charater • Balance • Productivity • Exploration

Fig. 17.3  Wheel of instructional modalities for holistic education

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The three components of the lesson plan as shown in Fig. 17.4 are woven in seamlessly in the curriculum through lessons that integrate SEL (social-­ emotional learning), PBL (project-based learning), and Content. An example of this follows: Example 1: Growth Mindset Goals and Objectives The purpose of this lesson is to inform students about what is Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset, as well as the characteristics of each of these two mindsets. Specific Objectives Students will be able to distinguish both mentalities and characteristics of a Growth Mindset personality and a Fixed Mindset personality. Students will actively point out what mentality is beneficial for them in their day to day life. Students will reflect on their own mindset and brainstorm some ideas as to how to acquire a growth mindset. Activity Students will watch a 2-minute video that shows a scenario of Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset. Students will then answer the following questions. • Which student demonstrates characteristics of someone with a fixed mindset? Kim or Sabrina? • How can you relate? Write an experience about a time where your internal monologue was similar to Kim or Sabrina. Exit Ticket • What are the two types of mindset? • Do we have physical limits to learning?

SEL PBL Content

Fig. 17.4  Three components in a lesson plan

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• Write down one question you have about today’s lesson. Reflection Homework Write a free response reflection on what you learned today. • What did you learn today? • How can you apply what you learned today in your daily life? • What could you modify in your daily routine to develop creative thinking? One could play the devil’s advocate and ask why the academy puts such an emphasis on SEL. Traditionally, gifted labeling comes with an inherent expectation of academic success. But if one looks intently at the definition of gifted learners, one realizes that these students do need support for their social-­ emotional well-being. This affective component, although the subject of much research in gifted education, hitherto has remained elusive in the context of transformational giftedness. This is almost paradoxical since gifted students often have a heightened socio-emotional capability and an awareness of “problems” confronting society which, when nurtured through apt social support (Ogurlu et al., 2018), are bound to lead to the development of transformational giftedness. However, as Ogurlu et al. (2018) argued, gifted programs are focused on academic (educational) needs and tend to disregard their students’ socio-emotional needs and their need for social support. Most of all, these students need be recognized for their contributions without negative labeling such as “book worm,” “nerd,” etc. The development of their transformational giftedness is not a linear process like educational attainment through coursework. A definition of giftedness that captures the essence of this uneven development was developed by the Columbus Group in 19911: Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.

 This definition is attributed to an unpublished transcript of the meeting of the Columbus Group in July 1991. It is found at https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/social-emotional-­ issues/asynchronous-development 1

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The best thing that happened to me in the GTA: I met most of my current friends in the GTA. I won't forget the amazing moments we've spent together. Cracking jokes in class and bantering with the teachers.

The road to your college dream/ plans after graduation: I'm going to ASU Tempe, majoring in Computer Science/Data Analytics. The challenge I overcame: I learned to be happy with myself and not worrying about others opinions as much. Final parting words to the audience: Thank you to all my teachers and friends in the GTA. I love all of you. One life lesson I learned: Life is hard and you won't get anywhere without putting the adequate effort in.

Fig. 17.5  Senior reflection on the academy experience

Thus, the modification needed is not for their learning capacity but to tackle their vulnerabilities in the world. The Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified five areas in which children exhibit intense behaviors, also known as “overexcitabilities” or “supersensitivities.” They are psychomotor, sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational. We continue to see “overexcitabilities” in classrooms and make sure that each teacher handles it with conversation rather than writing referrals. Thus, gifted learners need more support to understand and accept who they are. Most gifted learners feel they do not fit in with the norms of society with their giftedness, sensitivity, and their emotional intensity. That’s why many make friends within the academy and one can see them sticking together while on campus with other students. Many gifted learners are not teacher pleasers but they tend to show their competencies well in the content areas. Sternberg (1981) argues that highly gifted learners are independent learners. We also observe, when any student feels that they are being graded for their behavior rather than understanding the concept, they get upset. Below is one example from senior night, when all graduating seniors had one common theme to share with the audience. And, it was the relationships/friendship that they made in the academy (Fig. 17.5).

 Journey Through the Academy A with an Emphasis on Transformation For the incoming freshmen, the Gifted & Talented Academy team spend time orienting students and parents about the curriculum and its components for college, career, and life readiness. Freshmen orientation helps students and

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families to understand that the expectation and the support of the academy is more than in regular high school setting.

Freshman Year The theme of the freshman year is “Who am I?” During the freshmen advisory and in their English class, students start building a technology based PBL platform and exploration. Freshmen advisory teachers immerse students in activities of self-exploration, giftedness, growth mindset, and self-compassion and mindfulness (introspective question- own your weirdness). These self-­ exploration activities help students to become comfortable with themselves and also to connect with their peers. The topic for PBL freshmen year is water. The topic has been intentionally chosen for our students because it is relevant to the desert environment in which the students live. Each freshman team has the freedom to choose a topic related to water that the team would like to explore, research, and finally present in the span of 1 year. Thus, self- exploration/introspection and the topical study of water as their final project story develops throughout the year in their advisory period. The final PBL presentation includes information about the student and the question they have explored under the topic of water. On the other hand, the social-emotional aspects are woven into instruction in the content areas and advisories. The PBL components are embedded in the language classes. In this manner, both social emotional learning (affective part) and problem-based learning (cognitive/scientific part) support the holistic growth of the gifted learners in the academy. An example follows: My name is Charlie Sheppard, and there is a big issue in the world that I want to spread the word on. This issue is about saving/conserving fresh water in the world. I want to help change this because fresh water is an extremely important resource to everyone’s life. This means that if it completely runs out, then the population would start to die. This is a very big issue that matters for many reasons, and I have evidence to support those reasons, along with solutions that we can all take to help change it. This water issue matters because fresh water is an important resource in many ways. One way is that it is very limited. In fact, only a tiny percent of the world’s water is fresh, so we need to conserve what we have. I know this because in an article it states “Currently, fresh water is already limited as it is. Out of the 70% of the water that is available, only 0.03% is made up of fresh water.” (H2OUSE) Another reason is that without fresh water, certain foods can’t grow, so the population would struggle to survive. I know this because in an article it states “Fruits and vegetables, as well as other produce  require

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water to grow. But if the area is suffering from a drought, how will the food grow?” (H2OUSE) One other reason is that water can be pricy, which means that if everyone started conserving water, it could people save money. I know this because in an article it states “The greater the demand for water, the greater the price you will be charged. By conserving water, you will save money both in terms of the quantity used and the price per unit.” (Sciencing) Overall, these quotes show that fresh water is an important resource that needs to be conserved. Even though this is a huge problem, I have a few solutions that we all can take at home to help fix this issue. One solution is to be smart about water usage. For example, turn off water faucets when brushing your teeth, take shorter showers, use low flow shower heads, and only use dishwashers, and washing machines when you have a full load. Another solution is to spread the word on saving water, and also report water problems such as leaks. One final solution is to take advantage of natural rain water by installing rainwater tanks. These solutions show that anyone can contribute to helpfixthiswaterproblem. Overall, fresh water is an extremely important resource. Without it, the population would start to die, and there is very little fresh water in the world. This is why we need to work together to fix this water problem. I have presented many solutions that everyone can take to help. Hopefully this letter will help get the message out, so that we can make a change.

Another group of freshmen assumed that the affluent area had better water than other parts of the city of Phoenix. They assumed that Scottsdale’s water quality was better than Maryvale’s water. Their exploration not only informed them about qualities of water, water purification systems, and state laws regarding water, but also the students became aware of their own biases.

Sophomore Year In the sophomore year, the theme is, “Who am I in the local and global community?” The SEL topics of exploration are Food and Health; Neuroscience; Equity & Social Justice. Every educator in the Gifted & Talented Academy is aware of the grade-level social-emotional themes and PBL topic. A group of sophomores chose to explore “How do we cut water pollution in the Maryvale community?” It came to their attention that each drain on the Maryvale campus was covered with solid pollutants. Their freshmen experience with water exploration and listening to others’ presentations on water along with a field visit to Audubon Center had informed them about the topic of water pollution. The freshmen year also informed them about the importance of water and myths about water. Once the group started working

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on ideas to cut pollution, they also started feeling empowered to inform their Maryvale High School community on the water-pollution problems and ways to check it.

Junior Year From the junior year, the projects become individualized. Each junior worked independently on a project grounded under the topic “Solution.” Some examples of student-initiated projects were: How many people from the 14 to 18-year age group from the community are willing to take part in BLM protests? Another question posed by a junior related to sustainable clothing. She said: By getting the word out, we can convince people to switch to sustainable fashion. A big argument that people tend to use when asked why they don’t shop sustainable fashion is that it can be too expensive or they simply don’t know where to shop at. Brands like Adidas, Gap, H&M, Target and Timberland are aiming to use more recycled clothing articles and fabrics such as polyester. If you want a cheaper option, you can always head to a local thrift shop, just be aware of what you are buying and how much of it because for some people, thrift stores are there only option when it comes to where to shop.

To foster independent research, service learning is another way of supporting empowerment of gifted learners and unfolding their potential. Social-­ emotional themes for the junior cohort were: Life skills; Ethics; Life philosophy, and also College & career preparation.

Senior Year Even though in the senior year, college application/admission becomes a priority, the students’ PBL focus stays the same. The PBL is our students’ commitment to themselves and their evolution. At this point, students are claiming themselves. They are comfortable with who they are and with easily sharing with others their uniqueness. Seniors also share their unique perspective through their project. For our first batch of graduating seniors, the PBL topics were synced to an extent with our new partnership with PBS. The topic for seniors’ PBL in the 2020–2021 year was: • Education during the pandemic

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Election of 2020 Race & Justice Student Project from last year Health & Precautions

Discussion and Concluding Points There is no test that can fully measure human potential. Human potential is not a concrete asset that can be judged accurately by psychometric batteries such as intelligence tests. Thus, in the Gifted & Talented Academy, while selecting students, we looked at ten different data points to gauge the students’ strengths/gifts and weaknesses. The purpose of the academy is not to use students for school data-point creation that touts academic success but rather to provide a platform for them to flourish. Historically, gifted students are put into all honors/AP courses, irrespective of their gift(s). It is not only detrimental for them but was also a deal breaker. Aligning with Sternberg’s (2020b; 2021a, b) idea of transformational giftedness, we want the academy students to be empowered to bring positive changes on their own through their gifts. Tirri’s (2017) idea of moral sensitivity also plays an important role in nurturing gifted learners at the academy. When the students learn how their actions affect other people coupled with ethical sensitivity- gifted learners can transform themselves and the world for better. The first step toward it is pre/in-service for gifted educators. In today’s era of video gaming, teachers of the gifted can support “hacker ethics” in their gifted learners. Preparing the teachers with the understanding of gifted learners and how to maximize their potential bring deep transformational change for both the students and the teacher themselves, thus changing student agency for the betterment of the world. PBL is another avenue where students are not only taught for creativity and critical thinking, but also for moral ethics. Such teaching can be done with fidelity rather than just with another project for students if teachers are well versed in understating of PBL and its importance and impact. In the academy, we start PBL from freshmen year and to date have done many professional-­ development courses and created documents on PBL. However, teachers still ask for more clarity, which reveals their desire to grow with the academy. It is also difficult for many students to understand PBL beyond a research project. But many students are quick to catch on and show their inner depth of understanding of life through their projects. List of some community-based projects

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Senior Junior

How can a 13–17-year-old make a community safer? How can the Maryvale HCC help people in its community that are in need of clothes and food? Sophomore Gender Stereotyping creates Sexism in Society Sophomore Substantial Gender & Racial Pay Gap Freshmen Easy Ways to Conserve Water Freshmen Water a Rare Resource in Arizona

In summary, the intent behind the creation of the Gifted & Talented Academy was to support teen gifted learners from low-SES backgrounds to unfold their potential in way that could impact the world for the better. The integrated curriculum supports them to be college and career ready while social-emotional learning/teaching helps them to balance their sensitivity and emotional intensity. It is through Project-Based Learning that they truly start understanding their potential within and understand that they can impact the world in their own way. Once they start owning their own power, the seed of transformation gets into the sprouting phase. In their four-year high school journey, content enhances their knowledge base whereas SEL and PBL shapes their personality. Thus, transformational giftedness is enhanced through the integrated curriculum, the Academy mission and vision, and all our conversations. Through a focus on transformational giftedness in the academy, we are able to individualize their counseling so that the whole team understands the strengths and weaknesses of a child. Thus, every child is supported in not only graduating high school but also to evolve into who they are and how they want to impact the world through their gifts and higher education.

References Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. (2016a). Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization. Sense Publishers. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. (2016b). Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems with huge opportunities. Sense Publishers. Brantlinger, E. (2003). Dividing classes: How the middle class negotiates and rationalizes school advantage. Routledge. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ogurlu, U., Sevgi-Yalin, H., & Yavuz-Birben, F. (2018). The relationship between social–emotional learning ability and perceived social support in gifted students. Gifted Education International, 34(1), 76–95.

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Renzulli, J. S. (1978). What makes giftedness? A re-examination of the definition of the gifted and talented (Bureau of educational research report series). University of Connecticut. Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. Spring, J. (2006). Pedagogies of globalization: The rise of the educational security state. Routledge. Sriraman, B., & Lee, K. (2016). The Hobbesian trap in contemporary India and Korea: Implications for education in the 21st century. In D.  Ambrose & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization (pp. 137–146). Sense Publishers. Sriraman, B., & Steinthorsdottir, O. (2007a). Research into practice: Implications of research on mathematics gifted education for the secondary curriculum. In C. Callahan & J. Plucker (Eds.), What the research says: Encyclopedia on research in gifted education (pp. 355–367). Prufrock Press. Sriraman, B., & Steinthorsdottir, O. (2007b). Emancipatory and social justice perspectives in mathematics education. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 38(2), 195–202. Sriraman, B., & Törner, G. (2008). Political union/mathematical education disunion: Building bridges in European didactic traditions. In L. English (Ed.), The handbook of international research in mathematics education (2nd ed., pp. 660–694). Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Sternberg, R.  J. (1981). A componential theory of intellectual giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 25(2), 86–93. Sternberg, R.  J. (2020a). The augmented theory of successful intelligence. In R.  J. Sternberg (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of intelligence (Vol. 2, 2nd ed., pp. 679–708). Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R. (2021a). Identification for utilization, not merely possession, of gifts: What matters is not gifts but rather deployment of gifts. Gifted Education International, 1–8. Sternberg, R. (2021b). Transformational giftedness: Who’s got it and who does not. In R. J. Sternberg, D. Ambrose, & S. Karami (this volume). Palgrave Macmillan. Stiglitz, J. (2012). The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. W. W. Norton & Company. Stiglitz, J. (2019). People, power, and profits: Progressive capitalism for an age of discontent. W.W. Norton & Company. Tirri, K. (2017). Teacher education is the key to changing the identification and teaching of the gifted. Roeper Review, 39, 210–212.

18 Transformational Giftedness: Who’s Got It and Who Does Not Robert J Sternberg

I recently decided that, after working in the field of giftedness for many years—my first publication was 40 years ago (Sternberg, 1981)—it was time for me to know what giftedness really is. Realizing that we are now well into the twenty-first century, I consulted the most authoritative and up-to-date source I could find, namely, Wikipedia.com. Their entry was for “intellectual giftedness.” I learned in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry that “There is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of individual lives have followed people with IQs in the top 2.5 percent of the population—that is, IQs above 130. Definitions of giftedness also vary across cultures” (“Intellectual Giftedness,” 2020). Wikipedia actually is at least slightly authoritative and up-to-date, but not with regard to expert views but rather with regard to common-cultural views on topics. And IQ has dominated popular conceptions of giftedness, at least since the days of the Terman Longitudinal Study of the Gifted (Terman, 1925) and through various incarnations of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (e.g., Roid, 2006; Terman, 1916; Terman & Merrill, 1960). Modern conceptions of giftedness have been much broader than the common-­cultural one (e.g., Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016; Heller et al., 2000;

R. J Sternberg (*) Department of Psychology, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_18

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Pfeiffer, 2008, 2017; Plucker et al., 2017; Reis & Sternberg, 2004; Renzulli et al., 2009; Sternberg & Ambrose, 2020; Sternberg et al., 2021, in press, Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, 2005), adding broad notions of abilities, talents, achievements, and motivation to the characteristics of giftedness. To be clear, I have been a contributor to this movement myself (e.g., Sternberg et al., 2011). But I believe that simply defining giftedness more broadly than through IQ no longer is sufficient for a model of giftedness. I think these models may have been a good fit for the end of the twentieth century. They no longer cut it, so to speak, in the twenty-first century. The twentieth-century model of giftedness lives on and dominates our funnel for sorting out students from elementary school, through colleges and universities, and then into jobs in our society. For example, at Yale, my alma mater, in 2015, the 25th and 75th percentiles of scores on the verbal SAT were 720 and 800 (meaning that at least 25% of the students received a perfect score) and on the math SAT were 710 and 800 (again meaning that at least 25% of the students received a perfect score) (https://oir.yale.edu/sites/ default/files/factsheet_2015-­16_0.pdf, retrieved 11/15/20). For the Class of 2019, the most popular career upon graduation was finance (15.6%) and the second most popular was consulting (14.4%). Almost one-third, then, quickly went into two of the most “establishment” jobs available to college graduates (https://ocs.yale.edu/outcomes/, retrieved 11/15/20). This is what we have meant by giftedness: test-bright students who go into cream-of-the-crop establishment occupations. Some of them may go on to change the world positively, but really, don’t hold your breath. Some may actually transform the world negatively.

Transformational Versus Transactional Giftedness In the twenty-first century, we need not only a new model, or a broader model, but an entirely new kind of model (Sternberg, 2017, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d). This model does not reject the previous, broad models, although it does question the narrow, largely IQ-based models such as those of Terman and his successors (e.g., Deary et al., 2009; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Sackett et al., 2020), who have largely emphasized IQ in conceiving of intellectual brilliance. This essay, as well as this book, is about transformational giftedness, a term I invented, based on the literature on transformational leadership (e.g., Bass, 1998, 2002), to distinguish a type of giftedness that is different from the type traditionally associated with giftedness (Sternberg, 2020c, 2020d), which has

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traditionally dominated admissions to private schools, colleges, and universities. It is a model that emphasizes transformative accomplishments, not just academic brilliance. I will define transformational giftedness as giftedness that is, literally, transformative. By its nature, it is a kind of giftedness that seeks positively, meaningfully, and enduringly to change the world at some level—to make the world a better place. The model derives from my ACCEL model of active, concerned citizenship and leadership (Sternberg, 2017), on which this work builds. Transformationally gifted people focus their gifts on positive, meaningful, and hopefully enduring change. Their goal is not merely “success,” in traditional senses of the term, but rather, transformation to a better world. I have contrasted transformational giftedness with transactional giftedness. This is giftedness that is exchange-based in nature. In transactional giftedness, the kind that pervades our common-cultural notions of giftedness, an individual is given something in exchange for giving something. They are identified as gifted and then rewarded for this identification—with high grades, test scores, excellent college or graduate school admissions, and so forth. But they are expected to give something back in return. In exchange for their identification and the rewards then bestowed upon them, they are expected to excel in academic coursework and in related endeavors. They either have to work hard or be so high in ability that they can pull off the test scores and grades without working hard. It doesn’t always matter much whether they work hard or not, so long as the extrinsic accomplishments are there—the grades, the test scores, and the curated extracurricular activities, some of which may have been guided by counselors in elite schools or who were privately hired to make the young people look like good prospects for elite colleges and universities. In the later years of youth, the transactionally gifted are expected to continue to show high educational achievement, such as by going to a prestigious university and doing well there, and then by getting a high-prestige job, which duly can be recorded as showing the success of the system for identifying the gifted. They may show their success by high income, prestigious jobs, awards for various accomplishments, living in zip codes demonstrating their accomplishments (or, just as likely, their parents’ accomplishments), or in other ways that indicate worldly success (see also Sen, 2000). In a nutshell, transformationally gifted individuals focus on making a positive and transformative difference; transactionally gifted individuals focus on systems of reward and punishment. The transactionally gifted may make a positive difference, but they do so because of the rewards that may accrue to them as a result of their actions. The transformationally gifted may receive

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rewards, but the transformative difference they make rather than the extrinsic rewards is what drives them.

Examples of Transformationally Gifted Young People If you want examples of transactionally gifted young people to hold up as role models for young people, you look to those in your school who have been admitted to, and hopefully graduated from, elite colleges and universities. Who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or other super-elite institutions of higher learning? It is no coincidence that these universities have super-rich endowments. Students who are transactionally gifted often have the skills to make a lot of money and, if schools have talented development officers, some chunk of that money can be returned to the colleges and universities that gave them the credentials that helped them get to wherever they went. But suppose one were to seek role models different from the students who merely went to top-name schools. Some of these others may indeed have gone to top-name schools, but whether they did is irrelevant. They did something more. Examples can be found all over the world. Here are seven (from Bergman, 2019): 1. Greta Thunberg. At age 16, she initiated what became a global youth movement to pressure adults to take seriously the threat of global climate change. 2. Sonita Alizadeh. She is a young Afghan rapper who has fought against forced marriages for young brides. 3. Jazz Jennings. At age 18, in 2007, she co-founded a foundation to help transgender children. In 2013, she launched an initiative to raise money to help transgender children. 4. Milly Bobby Brown. She is the youngest ever UNICEF ambassador, whose portfolio is to improve human rights for children. 5. Yara Shahidi. She launched an initiative to encourage young people to vote and has been active in promoting women’s leadership. 6. Amika George. She launched an initiative to combat “period poverty,” whereby women do not have access to safe sanitary products during the times when they need them. Following up on her work, the government in England announced that it would fund free sanitary products in all English schools and colleges.

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7. Emma Gonzalez. After Margery Stoneman Douglas High School was stormed by a gunman, she co-founded Never Again MSD, advocating for gun control. And perhaps the most well-known young activist, not included in that particular list, is: 8. Malala Yousafzai. She is a Pakistani advocate for women’s rights and especially women’s rights to be educated. She paid for her advocacy efforts by being shot. She recovered and has continued to be active on the international stage for her women’s rights advocacy work. Transformational giftedness does not require sky-high test scores or school grades. Does anyone know what the IQs of these adolescents are? Does anyone care? They may have high IQs; they may not. It just is not really relevant. The high-IQ business has been supported in part, ever since its origins, by a cadre of transactionally gifted individuals, and many more near-misses, who want to perpetuate the kinds of accomplishments they are good at—namely, promoting and bolstering a system that allowed them to succeed, despite the fact that only a small percentage of them would go on to change the world in a positive, meaningful, and enduring way. Some, at least in the intelligence business, would go on to spend their careers showing, over and over again, how IQ is predictive of just so many things. Just as is true with more and more money, one always can accumulate more and more demonstrations of the modest to moderate predictive value of IQ for something. It is nice that IQ predicts so many things, but how many of those things are transformational in a world that desperately needs change? So, transformationally gifted individuals are not merely those who succeed at the top levels of transactional giftedness. There is something else they are not—merely knock-offs of their parents. My son Seth, who lives and works in Silicon Valley, tells me of ultra-rich parents who buy African orphanages so that their children can gain an edge in college admissions by describing their munificent contributions to the development of the children in these orphanages, which likely then will be sold as soon as the children of these ultra-rich individuals gain admission to some college, hopefully the one of their choice. The teenagers described above created their own initiatives. They did not merely enter into ones their parents created for them to serve as bragging rights on a college application.

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Characteristics of Transformationally Gifted Individuals What are the characteristics of transformationally gifted individuals? I believe they all have six characteristics that look very different from the kinds of verbal, quantitative, spatial, and related abilities measured by conventional tests of intelligence. They also are not likely to be walking encyclopedias or people who can astonish others merely by their incredible founts of knowledge. They may or may not have a lot of academic knowledge, but they will not be distinguished by this inert knowledge, which may or may not have any practical use in the world. The characteristics delineated below derive from but go beyond those I have identified in my past work (e.g., Sternberg, 2003, 2017).

Transformative Passion Transformative passion is key to transformational giftedness. It is not some kind of inborn ability. It is, rather, an attitude toward life and what one needs to accomplish in one’s life. There are two kinds of transformative passions that are crucial to transformational giftedness.

To Witness the Need for Transformation Transformationally gifted individuals are passionate. Ellen Winner (1997) has spoken of a rage to master that is common in gifted children. Here, I am speaking of a rage, but a different kind of rage. It is a rage not of a transactionally child who wants to learn something, but rather of a transformationally gifted child who wants to change something. It is a rage against the current inadequate state of the world. It is the perception of a wrong and of the burning need of the world to change that thing. The transformationally gifted child, or adult, for that matter, wants to recognize and to be a witness to an inequity, injustice, or lack that few others may even recognize; or if they do recognize it, these others accept it as it is.

To Be an Agent of That Transformation The transformationally gifted child (or adult) does not wish merely to witness the need for transformation, but also to be an agent of that transformation— in a sense, to be that transformation. And they want to be that transformation

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not merely because some authority figure told them to, or provided the resources to make it possible, but rather because they feel deeply inside themselves that this is a transformation that needs to take place and that they need to help to make happen. They are not transformative, in essence, merely because of their college application or because their parents have had the resources to help them play the “college-entrance game.” Earlier, I gave a small sampling of transformationally gifted young people. Every one of them has created a positive, meaningful, significant, and hopefully enduring change to the world. Certainly, they got help. In the real world, one almost always needs a team to accomplish anything major. But they were the agents who assembled and energized the team. They made it happen.

Adaptive Intelligence The giftedness movement has made quite a show of the importance of general intelligence, starting with the work of Terman (1916) or even, one could argue, with the work of Galton (1825/2009). Galton may have gotten the nature of general intelligence wrong, but he tapped into its elitist and class-­ bound aspects. What is key for transformational giftedness, however, is not general intelligence but rather adaptive intelligence. Adaptive intelligence is the use of one’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes broadly to adapt to the environment so as to ensure the preservation and even enhancement of that environment (Sternberg, 2019a, 2021a). Some of the time, this means changing oneself to fit the environment. This is adaptation in its narrow sense. But transformationally gifted individuals are especially shapers: They shape the environment to be more like they want and even feel that they need it to be. And when they find themselves in an inhospitable environment, they may select a new environment that fits them better, or that they can transform better. They are not merely skilled—they have an attitude toward life whereby they want to craft the environment in a positive way to be what they believe it should be to achieve a greater common good. Adaptively intelligent individuals do not merely transactionally figure out what the status quo is and how to maximize their success within it. They are not, therefore, necessarily the individuals who are identified as (transactionally) gifted. On the contrary, their ways of being gifted may be orthogonal to, or in some cases, the reverse of what is expected for the kind of pats on the head that traditional giftedness sometimes may bring. Rather, transformationally gifted people use their adaptive intelligence to create a world that is worth adapting to. They recognize that the serious problems confronting the

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world today are not going to go away on their own. For example, unlike former US president Donald Trump and many of his followers watching the COVID-19 pandemic, they are not constantly seeing us “turn the corner” (https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/102620, retrieved 11/15/20). Rather, they realize that if we—society—are to turn the corner, they and their collaborators will have to make it so. They do not wait for things to happen— they make them happen. Adaptive intelligence is different in many ways from general intelligence (Sternberg, 2020b). General intelligence does not prepare individuals, even transactionally gifted individuals, for adaptive problems. Here is why traditionally gifted individuals actually may be poor at solving adaptive problems. • Type of answer required. Adaptive problems have better vs. worse answers rather than right vs. wrong answers. • Structure of problem. Adaptive problems are ill-structured, with multiple unclear paths to solution, rather than being well-structured, with a clear well-defined path to solution. • Emotional arousal. Adaptive problems are highly emotionally arousing to the point that clear thinking easily may be abandoned, rather than being emotionally neutral. • Life stakes. Adaptive problems are for high and possibly life-changing stakes, rather than for small stakes that make little or no difference to one’s future path in life. • Relevance and validity of information given. Adaptive problems come with large amounts of irrelevant and invalid information, rather than with small amounts of information, all of which is valid. • Role of collective problem solving. Adaptive problems usually require collective problem solving and a difficult task of achieving consensus among stakeholders with different interests, rather than requiring individual problem solving that needs only one individual to reach solution. • Motivation for achieving a solution. Adaptive problems are motivated by serious life needs, rather than by the desire for ultimately trivial short-term rewards, such as a high score on a test or a similarly high grade in a course. • Structural complexity. Adaptive problems are structurally complex and often involve many steps to completion, rather than being structurally simple and quickly solvable. • Intrinsic interest. Adaptive problems are intrinsically interesting, or at least, engaging, rather than extrinsically interesting for the attainment of some reward.

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• Knowledge needed. Adaptive problems require a great deal of tacit or informal knowledge learned from life experience for their solution, rather than merely explicit, formal knowledge of the type learned in school. These differences matter—a lot—because they point out that the means of assessment used to identify transactionally gifted individuals often will be of little or no use in identifying transformationally gifted individuals. Transformational giftedness relies on problem-recognition, problem-­ definition, and problem-solving strategies that are many ways the opposite of the ways that are relevant for transactional giftedness.

Positive Creativity Positive creativity consists of the generation of an idea that is both novel and useful or effective in some way, but that also serves a positive, constructive, meaningful, and possibly enduring function for society and possibly for the world (Sternberg, 2021c). It goes beyond merely having ideas that are novel and somehow useful (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988, 2013). In some way, the idea makes the world, at some level, no matter how small, a better place. In contrast, negative creativity results from the generation of an idea that is, on the one hand, both novel and useful or effective in some way, but that, on the other hand, also serves a negative, destructive function for society (Sternberg, 2021c). At some level, the idea diminishes and degrades the world—making it a less desirable and even possibly much worse place in which to live (see also Clark & James, 1999; Cropley et al., 2008, 2010, 2014; James et al., 1999; James & Taylor, 2010; Runco, 2017; Sternberg, 2010 for discussions of both positive and negative creativity as well as of the “dark side” of creativity). Neutral creativity is the generation of an idea that is both novel and useful or effective in some way, as per the usual definition of creativity, and that serves neither a positive nor a negative function for society. I have been advocating for teaching for creativity over a period of many years (Sternberg, 1995). In retrospect, I believe that my colleagues in the field and I who have advocated for teaching for creativity have not quite done the service we imagined we were doing. There just are too many examples of people using their gifts to turn creativity to negative purposes. For example, the art of Nazi and Soviet artists corrupted and made a mockery of any conception of what constitutes “good art.” The work of serious artists was removed in order to display junk art. Nazi doctors conducted experiments that were “creative” but gruesome and inhumane. The

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procedures probably were as negatively creative as any medical procedures could be. Today, there are scientists in secret laboratories who are devoting their careers to creating biological weapons. Then there are the creative purveyors of malware who have shown how easy it is to go negatively creative in technology. Then there is ex-US-president Donald Trump and his enablers who desperately tried in every negatively creative way he could conjure to illegally overturn the results of the US presidential election of 2020. Not everyone has to be a malignant narcissist or sociopath to be negatively creative. They have only not to care about how they use their gifts so long as they, themselves, benefit in some way. Positive creativity, like adaptive intelligence and like ordinary creativity, is largely an attitude toward life. The attitude is one of using one’s creative skills to make the world a better place. One might like to believe that gifted people naturally would gravitate toward such an attitude. But in individualistic societies such as the ones in which many of us live, such an attitude is not necessarily easy to come by. Rather, I would argue that students are socialized to utilize their gifts to enhance their own futures. Enhancing the futures of others is secondary and optional. The result is that tests used to assess transactional giftedness may appear to be valid, but largely because the criteria by which their success is measured are largely individualistic and oriented toward the glorification of the individual and their accomplishments.

Common Sense (Practical Intelligence) Listening on November 14, 2020 to screaming crowds in Washington, DC declare the US presidential election of 2020 to have been “stolen” could make one despair of whether the value of common sense has been utterly discarded in favor of the meeting of emotional needs for falsehoods to be true. In 2021, many of the screamers became louder, ignoring the data in favor of their own wishful thinking. Worse was the invasion of the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. When U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway introduced the concept of “alternative facts” on January 22, 2017, she probably could have had no idea how powerful her cynical and probably deliberately Orwellian allusion would prove to be. In much of his presidency, former US President Trump was averaging more than 50 false or misleading statements a day (Kessler et al., 2020). What is most concerning is that his followers either didn’t know, didn’t care, or both. Common sense and the critical thinking that accompanies it seems to have departed much of our population. A country cannot have a democracy if it has no anchoring in facts and

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truth—if what is “true” for people magically becomes what they want to be true rather than what is actually true. Transformationally gifted individuals need common sense, or practical intelligence, because academic intelligence is not enough to get serious things done in the world. At the end of 2021, purveyors of falsehoods are still selling, and people with little or no common sense are still buying, quack cures for COVID-19, even as people die in droves. One needs to develop the tacit or informal knowledge needed to recruit others to join one in making a positive difference, and to cut through the red tape that inevitably confronts anyone wishing to make positive changes in the world.

General Wisdom General wisdom is an ability to use one’s knowledge and skills toward a common good; by balancing one’s own, others’, and larger interests, over the longas well as the short-term; through the infusion of positive ethical values (Sternberg, 2019d). It is sad that there is nothing in our contemporary armamentarium for identifying gifted individuals that assesses wisdom, because it is wisdom more than anything that appears to be missing from the contemporary world and that more than anything is critical to transformational giftedness. It is easy to think of gifted people who are smart. It is much harder to think of gifted people who are wise. They exist, whether present or past—Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jacinda Ardern, Abraham Lincoln—but the usual lists are short and they are remarkably similar. We somehow are not developing wise people the way we are developing people who display outstanding achievements of other kinds. Transformationally gifted people have to be wise to ensure that they are or can become, with their ideas, transformational leaders (Bass, 1998, 2002; Bass et al., 1996; Bass & Avolio, 1994; Bass & Riggio, 2006). They are people who will not only work tirelessly themselves to make the world better, but also will recruit others in their cause. Wisdom is needed to ensure that they are not working only for the common good of people like themselves—of the same socially-defined race, or ethnicity, or social class, or religion, or tribe of some kind (Ambrose, 2012; Gewirth, 2009; Monroe, 2011). My data show that schools used to teach for wisdom, but these days, rarely do (Sternberg, 2019c). So, we are not developing in our schools the skills that children will need to become the transformational leaders of the future.

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The Ability to Recognize and Create Opportunities Finally, we come to the ability to recognize and create opportunities. Obviously, this ability, too, is largely attitudinally based. All of the transformationally gifted young people mentioned earlier in this chapter recognized and/or created opportunities to transform the world. Many of us sit and wait for opportunities to come to us. Many times, they never seem to come. They did not come for many of the greatest transformational leaders either. Sure, circumstances matter. Lincoln could not have united the states of the U.S. if the states were not disunited in the first place. Gandhi could not have developed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance if there were not a force (British occupation) to resist. But inequities and injustices exist everywhere, always. Some individuals recognize them and then find creative ways to combat them. Others wait for something to happen to give them an opportunity; and it never happens. They fail to create the opportunities that will enable them to change the world for the better, in whatever way they so choose.

Kinds of Transformational Giftedness There are different kinds of transformational giftedness. (Sternberg, 2021b, 2021d; Sternberg et al., 2021). In fully transformational giftedness, as described in this chapter, one devotes one’s gifts to make the world a better place. But two other kinds of transformational giftedness are self-­ transformational giftedness, where one transforms oneself (but not others) in a significant way for the better, and other-transformational giftedness, where one transforms others (but not oneself ) for the better. In pseudo-­ transformational giftedness, one can appear to transform oneself, others, or both for the better, when in fact one’s goal is only to appear to be transformational but to use this appearance for self-aggrandizement.

Conclusion Transformational giftedness will not be identified by conventional assessment instruments. Those instruments are largely orthogonal in what they measure to the skills and attitudes one needs to be transformationally gifted. By

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emphasizing these conventional instruments, we divert young people’s attention away from the things that matter. How do you identify the transformationally gifted? Encourage them to find gaps in society that need to be filled—serious problems that need to be solved. Then encourage them to look for and create opportunities to address these problems. Do we really want merely to find the gifted merely through their knowledge of challenging vocabulary, cosecants, and both geometric and life tangents? Or do we want the gifted also to find the problems in the world that need to be solved? If we want to develop transformational giftedness, we will choose the latter, not only the former. We still can. But problems like global climate change and pandemics don’t wait for us. We have to move forward to confront and to solve them. We can. Will we? How do you develop transformational giftedness? You provide opportunities for young people to grow their powers of transformation. You require them to do an independent project. You might ask them, in the project: 1. What important problem in the world would you like, someday, whether soon or in the distant future, to contribute toward solving? 2. Why do you think the problem is important? 3. What are the manifestations of the problem? How does it show itself in the world? 4. Why does the world have the problem—what led up to it? 5. What would you wish to do to help contribute toward its solution—what would your strategy be for solving the problem? 6. What kinds of material and human resources would you need to help solve the problem? 7. What kinds of obstacles would you expect to confront in your attempt to work toward solution of the problem? 8. How would you work to overcome these obstacles? 9. How would you know, as you work to solve the problem, whether your efforts are successful? 10. How would you know, after your efforts are done, whether you have successfully contributed toward solution of the problem? The young people might, in the long run, work on the problem or not. But they would have thought about what is required to address the problem and perhaps others like it. And who knows, someday their project might lead them to make the kind of contribution that justly could lead them to be identified as transformationally gifted.

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Sternberg, R. J. (1995). Investing in creativity: Many happy returns. Educational Leadership, 53(4), 80–84. Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2010). The dark side of creativity and how to combat it. In D. H. Cropley, A. J. Cropley, J. C. Kaufman, & M. A. Runco (Eds.), The dark side of creativity (pp. 316–328). Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2017). ACCEL: A new model for identifying the gifted. Roeper Review, 39(3), 139–152. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/kSvRMFf9R8tAJPDRfXrJ/full Sternberg, R. J. (2019a). A theory of adaptive intelligence and its relation to general intelligence. Journal of Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence7040023 Sternberg, R. J. (2019b). Is gifted education on the right path? The ACCEL model of giftedness. In D. Sisk, B. Wallace, & J. Senior (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (pp. 5–18). Sage. Sternberg, R. J. (2019c). Where have all the flowers of wisdom gone? An analysis of teaching of wisdom over the years. In R. J. Sternberg, H. Nusbaum, & J. Glueck (Eds.), Applying wisdom to contemporary world problems (pp. 1–20). Palgrave Macmillan. Sternberg, R. J. (2019d). Why people often prefer wise guys to guys who are wise: An augmented balance theory of the production and reception of wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Glueck (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of wisdom (pp. 162–181). Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020a). A new model of giftedness emphasizing active concerned citizenship and ethical leadership that can make a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. In R. J. Sternberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent. Palgrave Macmillan. Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Rethinking what we mean by intelligence. Kappan, 102(3), 36–41. https://kappanonline.org/rethinking-­what-­we-­mean-­by-­intelligence­sternberg/ Sternberg, R. J. (2020c). Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. Olszewski-­ Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 203–234). Prufrock Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020d). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Sternberg, R. J. (2021a). Adaptive intelligence: Surviving and thriving in times of uncertainty. Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2021b). Identification for utilization, not merely possession, of gifts: What matters is not gifts but rather deployment of gifts. Gifted Education International. https://doi.org/10.1177/02614294211013345 Sternberg, R. J. (2021c). Positive creativity. In A. Kostic & D. Chadee (Eds.), Current research in positive psychology. Palgrave Macmillan.

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19 Channeling Gifted Abilities into Transformative Creative Productivity Rena F. Subotnik , Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, and Frank C. Worrell

The talent development megamodel (TDMM; Subotnik et  al., 2011) was generated from a synthesis of the psychological science literature on giftedness, talent, creativity, eminence, and high performance. This synthesis was designed to guide educators, parents, and other professionals in helping young people become creatively productive in a domain of interest and ability. Promoting creative productivity is a worthy aim, but creativity productivity is not the end point of a talent development journey that begins with identification and continues with appropriate educational opportunities. As a gifted individual moves up to the level of expertise, their products or ideas have the potential to affect different audiences, environments, and events. Assessing the impact and consequences of creative ideas or products needs to be incorporated into the work of talent development, especially as individuals become R. F. Subotnik (*) Center for Psychology in Schools and Education, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] P. Olszewski-Kubilius Center for Talent Development, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] F. C. Worrell Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_19

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more skilled in their domain. Moreover, given that ideas and creative products can circle the world almost instantaneously, communicating that one goal of gifted education and talent development is creative productivity in service of the larger society is especially pressing in the current context when many young people are experiencing a loss of purpose and a less than positive view of the future (Abi-Jaoude et al., 2020). In this chapter, we begin with a review of the definition of giftedness advanced by the TDMM (Subotnik et al., 2011, 2018) and the major tenets of this model, highlighting differences from traditional gifted education as well as the notion of talent development as an instrument in service of societal change for the better. Next we discuss the difficulties that often arise in promulgating creative ideas, both in terms of effective communication and in terms of resistance to change, and we invoke the science of persuasion as one way in which to address these issues. We conclude with a discussion of insider knowledge as a means to not only develop gifted abilities but also to maximize the number of talented people who can make transformative contributions.

The Talent Development Mega Model (TDMM) The TDMM (Subotnik et al., 2011, p. 7) provides a comprehensive definition of giftedness from a talent development perspective: Giftedness is the manifestation of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to other high functioning individuals in that domain. Further, giftedness can be viewed as developmental in that in the beginning stages, potential is the key variable, in later stages, achievement is the measure of giftedness, and in fully developed talents, eminence is the basis on which this label is granted. Psychosocial variables play an essential role in the manifestation of giftedness at every developmental stage. Both cognitive and psychosocial variables are malleable and need to be deliberately cultivated.

The seven principles that emerged from the synthesis of literature underlying the TDMM include the following: • Abilities are malleable and need to be developed and expressed in domains. • Opportunities must be provided to those with potential abilities in order to generate movement from abilities to competencies to expertise, and beyond to transformational creativity.

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• Different domains have different trajectories. Some domains need to be identified early and others later, even into adulthood. Some domains are short in duration, especially those involving physical prowess. Others allow for lifelong productivity. • Approaches to creativity transform during the talent trajectory from focusing on the evolving creative person, through the creative process, and ultimately to the creative product. • Talent development must be afforded during inside, outside, and beyond the school years. A comprehensive program will ensure continuous growth and guidance over time building toward transformational creativity for those who wish to pursue this path. • Talented individuals must take opportunities offered to them and commit to their own development. • Beyond developed abilities, mental skills such as overcoming performance anxiety or screening out distractions; and social skills such as cultivating supporters, communicating ideas persuasively, and being a dependable colleague are important to successful pursuit of creative work. Figure 19.1 provides a visual conceptualization of the TDMM (Subotnik et al., 2011) to inform the rest of the chapter. The first three rows highlight the developmental nature of talent development. Although different domains have different starting points for identification and programming, the general trajectory of talent development is to transform potential into competence, competence into expertise, and expertise into eminence or creative productivity (Jarvin & Subotnik, 2010). The row of inputs describes the necessary ingredients of talent support: (a) provision of appropriate opportunities both within and outside of school that help to identify giftedness and interest in a domain, cultivate motivation, develop knowledge and skills, and a domain-­ focused identity; (b) practice in psychosocial skills that support development within the domain and transition to higher stages; and (c) opportunities to gain domain relevant insider knowledge regarding career paths and trajectories, important opportunities and activities, and social networking. These concepts are addressed further in this chapter. It then becomes incumbent on the talented individual to capitalize on given opportunities, even those that come by way of chance. Finally, the central goal of TDMM is to generate creative ideas or products in the domain or even across domains. The focus of this volume of chapters has helped us to refine the model further by focusing more on the goals of gifted education and talent development to promote the transformation of talent into improving the human condition.

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Dance

Adolescence

Potential

Competency

Social Science

I N P U T S O U T P U T S

Content Knowledge and Skills In school

Young Adulthood

Adulthood

Expertise Expertise

Competency

Potential

Eminence Eminence

Beyond School

Outside of School

Psychosocial Skills and Insider Knowledge

Capitalizing on Given and Chance Opportunities

Person

Products

Process

Creative Productivity

Mega Model of Talent Development Fig. 19.1  A visual conceptualization of the TDMM

The goal of gifted programming and talent development is to move individuals along talent development paths, developing the knowledge and psychosocial skills necessary to transition to higher stages of talent development that result in creative contributions in adulthood. Educators are not accountable for ensuring that gifted individuals achieve eminence or even become experts or creative producers in adulthood. They are, in our view, however, accountable for providing children and youth with understanding known requirements for successfully meeting the long-term path of talent development so young people can pursue these goals if they choose. We argue that in the course of promoting the transformational possibilities of talent in a domain to improve the human condition, the field of talent development is responsible for, emphasizing ethical considerations in creative decision making. Professionals working with talented individuals can greatly influence the expression, identification, and development of abilities by the instruction they provide; the messages they give students about their potential, abilities, and effort; the feedback and direction they give students on their work and progress; and the psychological and emotional support they give in the form of high expectations and direct mentoring (Farrington et al., 2012; Mofield & Peters, 2018; Neihart, 2008). Our perspective is that the pursuit and promotion of transformational creativity as the outcome of talent development comes with some additional responsibilities on the part of mentors, guides, parents, and teachers as well as the talented individuals themselves. We discuss

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several contributing factors, including recognizing consequences of creative ideas or performances beyond the most obvious stakeholders and beyond the timeframe at hand, using the science of persuasion, cultivating social skills, and acquiring insider knowledge. Talent development differs conceptually from traditional gifted education by focusing on abilities that research has shown to be both malleable and relevant to achievement within a particular domain, rather than assuming a fixed view of ability as a single global or general intelligence score. Several supporting ideas associated with the TDMM are particularly relevant to the discussion of transformational creative productivity. First, schools can certainly take the lead in supporting talent. However, even in academic domains, outside of school clubs, programs, competitions, and mentorships are important contributors to talent growth, as is tertiary education and training, particularly when it comes to exposing students to interested and supportive peers and real-world problems, authentic tools, and problem-solving approaches for the domain. Second, over time, what differentiates gifted participants from one another is how well they can manage their time, communications, thoughts, motivations, and emotions. As we are not born knowing how to do these, instruction, guidance, and deliberate psychosocial skill training is needed along with access to insider knowledge (Worrell et al., 2019). Moving from knowing a domain to creative productivity in a domain requires creative ideas or solutions that are unusual and appropriate to the problem (Jackson & Messick, 1965). Unusualness is the response property most often associated with creativity. This quality is measured against norms for that age or context, and according to Jackson and Messick (1965), we respond to originality with a sense of surprise. But just because an answer is unusual does not mean that it solves a problem, whether scientifically, philosophically, or aesthetically. The third response property in the Jackson and Messick model is transformation, which is also relevant to our discussion of transformational giftedness. Even if a creative solution is unusual and satisfactory, it may not change thinking around that topic, or prevent unintended consequences (Fig. 19.2). Transformational ideas or solutions stimulate changes in how others think about a problem. Some ideas are just so fresh and satisfying that they change the conversation about the problem or topic. Often, however, a creative idea is original enough and offers a solution, but no one responds positively to it. How do you go about getting important stakeholders to transform their thinking and get on board with the idea? For example, what if an educator argued for replacing a traditional gifted education program with separate tracks for talent development in individual

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Fig. 19.2  Conceptualization of Jackson and Messick’s (1965) criteria for creative products (Note: The fourth response property, condensation, is focused on the very highest level of creative productivity and is associated with solution elegance and is not directly relevant to this discussion)

school subjects? This proposed talent development program would identify more students by focusing on domains rather than general ability because it is likely that more children can demonstrate potential in one domain rather than across the board. An additional benefit for students in such a program is more targeted services as participants’ ability and interest profiles will be used to develop the program curriculum rather than providing services based on high g scores. However, what if currently there are no sufficiently good ways to identify talent in some domains, such as in history or creative writing? Although the shift to talent development opens the door for participation of students with gifts and talents in individual domains, only children with talents in areas where identification is well-developed—for example, mathematics—will be identified and served. If only students in some domains are identified, the number of students whose talents are being developed will be limited. Another result of identifying a larger proportion of students for services is the need for more resources and expert teachers. In other words, in order to come up with a solution to a problem, it is important to anticipate as many potential consequences as possible and address them explicitly, fairly, and conscientiously. Understanding this and engaging in the work of identifying and evaluating consequences needs to be a part of talent development training by teachers and mentors. One category of tools for implementing ideas effectively and transformationally involves social skills needed to promote creative ideas, gather important feedback from others, and consider the consequences of their acceptance or failure. These social skills include acquiring mentors and guides and trusted peers (Subotnik et al., 2021) who can serve the following functions: provide a sounding board for your ideas, introduce you to people who can assist, and help you avoid landmines.

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Although we are often told that great ideas or performances speak for themselves, ideas must also be noticed to have an impact (see e.g., Successful Intelligence, Sternberg, 1997). In fact, one of the more notable outcomes of Harriet Zuckerman’s study of American Nobel Laureates focuses on the importance of mentoring for cultivating taste in identifying elegant problems to work on in science (Zuckerman, 1977). Further, how does one promote ideas without arrogance or false notes? A mentor can be helpful here in guiding a protégé towards tasteful self-promotion. Finally, a lot of creative work is conducted in teams. Consider medical discoveries, space flight, or entrepreneurship. In expertise research, teams are not created artificially like in schools. Instead, most effective teams consist of individuals with different specialties, domains of expertise, or professional training who respect and can bring out the best in each other to work towards a shared vision (Reyes & Salas, 2019). Expert teams optimize resources that are available and adapt flexibly to changing conditions, create team norms with which to work, establish clear roles and responsibilities, and provide each other high psychological safety. These are teachable skills with practice and good modeling.

The Science of Persuasion We can also rely on the science of persuasion (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004) as another set of teachable tools. Although the profession that has embraced the science of persuasion most enthusiastically is marketing to influence individuals’ purchasing decisions, principles of persuasion are also used to encourage people to get vaccinations, to take medicine as prescribed, or to convince people to re-use shopping bags. Principles of persuasion are also employed to get people to vote or to pay their taxes. Unlike the rather wide implementation of the science of persuasion in health and conservation (Cinner, 2018), education has not been an active arena for work in this area. Many individuals find these principles fascinating but also view their use negatively. It’s important to remember why they function and how we can use them ethically to good effect in facilitating transformational creative productivity. Decisions are often made under difficult conditions (Persson et  al., 2019). Think of frontline health workers during COVID, or teachers with a class of children who have multiple needs and various levels of achievement as well as differential access to the internet. These challenging conditions do not allow for much time to weigh options, come up with creative ideas, and consider consequences of one’s actions beyond the immediate, making us more susceptible to persuasion or influence.

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Making decisions under difficult conditions leads to decision fatigue. The concept of decision fatigue has been demonstrated in many circumstances (Baumeister et  al., 1998). Let’s say you want to buy new knobs for your kitchen cabinets. When you look online or go to the hardware store you are confronted with hundreds of options. Only the most motivated will carefully sort through all of the options. Thus, the knobs that we buy may be more dependent on the way in which they are displayed rather than on the basis of what we actually need. And this represents an example of one small decision people face on a daily basis. Here are descriptions of two important principles of persuasion articulated by Cialdini and Goldstein (2004): • Reciprocity describes feeling obliged to repay favors. For example, you get a free sample of cookies in the store and feel obliged to buy a box of those cookies. The principle of reciprocity articulates a relationship whereby someone does something for you, leading you to want to respond in a like manner. If you rent a car and you have a good experience with it, you are more likely to consider that brand when you are seeking out another rental or buying one for yourself. Educators are familiar with picking up objects such as bookmarks, USBs, or pens at conferences or professional development gatherings promoting an organization or product. If you like the quality and you need to purchase supplies for your own meeting it is easier to decide to go to that supplier. (Mahmoodi et al., 2018). • Scarcity describes the idea that objects or services that are viewed as rare or to which access is limited are more valued than things that are common or to which all have access. We can see the principle of scarcity when we are told there is not enough of some commodity for everyone who might want it, operative in these two examples. First, when an airline ticket to visit a family destination is posted as “one left at this price,” people ascribe extra value to that item and may buy the ticket whether or not it suits their needs exactly, sometimes making counterproductive financial decisions to do so (Shah et al., 2012). In education, some families may want their child in a gifted program because it is not available to everyone, even when their child’s academic needs are being met well in the general education program. Some of these principles may be useful to know for mentors supporting talent development, especially when gifted individuals are discouraged after setbacks. Gifted individuals can apply these principles of persuasion thoughtfully to influence others to consider creative ideas under conditions that allow for stakeholders and other audiences to reflect on their decision making.

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Insider Knowledge One of the most frustrating feelings one can have is that you missed out on an opportunity that you worked hard for because you did not follow an implicit rule, that is, a rule that was not made visible to you. Familiarity with insider knowledge—that is, insights into how the “game” is played in each domain— is another useful tool in figuring out to whom and how to communicate your ideas most effectively, and this knowledge can make it easier for a wider array of talented people to have more chances to achieve their goals. Other names for insider knowledge include adaptive or practical intelligence or tacit knowledge (Sternberg, 2019). With this implicit knowledge made explicit, creative people can make better assessments of consequences and how solutions and ideas may affect others. Insider knowledge is usually not generic. Instead, it is domain and situation specific. Here are some examples of insider knowledge from several fields: 1. Some teachers, by virtue of their personalities and/or talents, play a significant role in influencing school policy and the success of initiatives (Atkins et al., 2008), even when they do not have an official role such as curriculum leader or school administrator. Do you know who they are at the school? 2. Sports prodigies are most successful in aesthetic sports like gymnastics or figure skating. However, recent data have shown that for many other sports, specialization should be delayed until adolescence. Maintaining and enhancing general conditioning is more effective in preventing burnout and predicting long term success (Fransen & Gullich, 2019; Portenga, 2019). 3. Although young children often dream of becoming a pediatrician, most families have no real sense of what the path toward becoming a physician entails and what is the best form of preparation for successful admission to medical school, the first hurdle in passing through a daunting set of gates. Medical schools not only look for good scores on the MCATs (which now include content from the psychological sciences), but also will ask for evidence of social responsibility, volunteering, and investment in helping others (McWilliams et al., 2019). 4. Art schools that used to rely on drawing skills are now looking for conceptual creativity that might be detached from high level skill in a particular medium (Jarvin, 2019).

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Psychosocial Skills In addition to many of the skills covered in this chapter, it takes courage to be creative. Challenging the status quo requires some fortitude, especially when stakeholders become upset and the compliments associated with being creative are not forthcoming. Learning to be mentally tough and socially adept can help immeasurably in these situations. Social skills focus on how we interact with others. Mental skills allow people to learn how to process their thoughts to maintain focus. Collectively, these are referred to as psychosocial skills, and they are important in every domain, particularly at higher levels of talent development when the impact of creative ideas and performances can be the greatest. Psychosocial skills can also be classified as preventative and performative (Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2019). Mastering preventative mental skills allow people to learn how to process their thoughts to facilitate well-being. Performative skills include those that are more unique to making creative ideas public (Worrell et al., 2019). These include dealing with expectations from parents, friends, and others to follow an expected path, addressing lost self-confidence after meeting others who appear more talented or well connected, and most commonly, dealing with the fear of failing. Educators can speak openly about these concerns with their students and their families because these anxieties are experienced widely, and there is no need for individuals to suffer alone. Elite athletes, musicians, and chess players learn to screen out distractions. Many techniques can help students to do so in school, for example, practice taking a test with a podcast being broadcast through headphones. Also, teachers and others engaged in talent development need to help students to focus not only on shoring up weaknesses but on enhancing what they are good at (Sternberg, 1997). If you are stronger in certain domains of mathematics like topology, you should consider doing your research paper to focus on some creative contribution you can make rather on something that would require more background learning. As individuals move through the stages of talent development, they interact with stronger and more talented people, and they have to learn how to deal with losing self-confidence in ways that do not affect their performance negatively. For example, there are established techniques such as deep breathing and visualization that can be practiced to reduce performance anxiety.

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Conclusion As we noted at the beginning of the chapter, talent development aims to help those with abilities in a domain enhance their skills to the point where they can make a creative contribution. However, creative contributions need to be assessed for their consequences beyond the immediate. We can help gifted students use social skills, persuasion, insider knowledge and mental skills to address consequences of creative ideas on a wider range of people and environments and across time. In sum, the final stage of talent development has moved beyond promoting transformative creative productivity into one where we teach and promote skills to generate ideas and products that leave the world a better or more beautiful place, and where creators can enjoy their accomplishments with peace of mind about their use.

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20 Educating Ethical Minds in Gifted Education Kirsi Tirri

Introduction In this chapter I will discuss the goals and nature of moral education that would suit for the education of gifted students for the twenty-first century (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016a, 2016b). In this discussion, I will use the new concept of “transformational giftedness” defined by Sternberg (2020a, 2020b) and explore the challenges and opportunities this definition provides for the education of ethical minds. Sternberg defines transformational giftedness as “exceptional ability or talent that can enable or has enabled an individual to make one or more extraordinary and meaningful contributions that help to make the world a better place” (Sternberg, 2020a, p. 205). The concept of transformational giftedness adheres very well to the German Didaktik tradition, on which education in Finland and in the Nordic countries is based. The German Didaktik is based on the idea that any given matter can represent many different meanings, and many different matters can open up any given meaning. But there is no matter without meaning, and no meaning without matter (Hopmann, 2007, p. 116). Meaning is what emerges when the content is enacted in a classroom based on the methodological decisions of a teacher. In this process the individual growth of a student is fostered. Hopmann (2007) describes this process in the following ways: “The purpose of teaching

K. Tirri (*) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_20

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and schooling is in this perspective neither to transport knowledge from society to a learner (curriculum), nor a transpositioning of knowledge from science or other domains to the classroom, but rather the use of knowledge as a transformative tool of unfolding the learner’s individuality and sociability, in short: the Bildung of the learners by teaching” (p. 115). This educational philosophy in Bildung aims at educating individuals to become competent citizens who actualize their individual talents and benefit society with their competencies. The emphasis is on individual and societal transformation through education (Tirri & Toom, 2020), the goals of which include both excellence and ethics. Academic achievement is not seen as the only aim of schooling and should be complemented with life-long learning to promote wisdom and a moral lifestyle. Another framework that shares similar ethics than transformational giftedness and Bildung is “purpose in life”. American educator William Damon describes the concept of purpose in life as follows: ‘Purpose is a stable intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and of consequence beyond the self over time’ (Damon, 2008; Damon et al., 2003, p. 212). The aspiration to contribute to matters larger than the self, a beyond-the-self orientation, is also similar in all these frameworks. The aim in Finland is to update teaching and learning in schools for the twenty-first century, which has set new expectations for the acquisition of competence in areas such as creativity and ethical sensitivity. Twenty-first-­ century competencies could be defined as the integrated knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that are required of young people to be able to cope with the new learning challenges. Students should be educated to face challenges and mistakes and to use them as opportunities to grow as ethical and flexible learners and human beings. The Finnish educational system can be best described as highly egalitarian. Today, students are educated in inclusive classrooms and teachers are expected to tailor their teaching practices in a way that considers students’ individual characteristics, needs, and interests. The development of the child as a whole is emphasized, and individually personalized student support is provided by multi-professional teams (Laine & Tirri, 2021). According to Finland’ s most recent national curricula, the individual student is entitled to teaching which corresponds to his or her personal abilities, special needs, and the development of the student’s abilities (FNAE, 2004, 2014). This implies that gifted students and their needs are also acknowledged. However, the Finnish national curriculum does not give any definition of giftedness. The curriculum uses expressions such as “skillful students” and “students who progress rapidly”. The curriculum also advises teachers to guide students in finding and utilizing their “strengths” (Laine & Tirri, 2021).

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In this chapter I will introduce one possible model that combines excellence and ethics, “the hacker work ethic,” (Himanen, 2001) with Linus Torvalds as a case exemplar of a benevolent white hat hacker and some examples from our studies with gifted science students. This new kind of ethic has similar components than Bildung and purpose in life. Moreover, it is a kind of ethic that would suit in education for transformational giftedness in the twenty-first century.

 oral Education for Gifted Students M in the Twenty-First Century Combining Excellence with Ethics Sternberg (2020a) argues that an important component in transformational giftedness is the emphasis on making the world a better place (p. 222). This means that, for example, in science, the new creative ideas and products should be judged with this criterion. Creativity should be combined with ethics that promotes not only selfish benefit but also the benefit of our society. The emphasis on the common good is an important element in moral education for gifted students (Ambrose & Cross, 2009). Our recent studies among Finnish secondary school students (N = 386) indicate that the majority of them (29%) are dreamers according to the purpose profiles based on Damon’s (2008) conceptualization, meaning that they have a life purpose and are interested in helping others, but also that they lack clear personal goals that could be actualized in their studies and in their lives to benefit others. Almost 25% of students are self-oriented, meaning that they have personal life goals that they want to actualize in their learning and in their lives, but they are not interested in contributing beyond themselves to help others. Only 25% of the Finnish students are purposeful, with a beyond-the-self orientation and an interest in helping others, whereas 13% are disengaged, without any interest in finding a life purpose. All these groups need the support of teachers to find or clarify long-term goals for their learning and lives that help them to realize their full potential as human beings and to transform society with their talents (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2021). Sternberg (2020a) makes a reference to Finland by pointing out our academic ranking in PISA results among the top 10 countries in the world (p. 219, OECD, 2016). I agree with him that academic achievement is not enough for the actualization of transformational giftedness and moral

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lifestyle. We are facing global ethical challenges and problems that call for interdisciplinary knowledge and teamwork among scientists (Nielsen, 2011). In the spring of 2020, the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters appointed a group of experts from different scientific disciplines to make recommendations on how to face global crisis, for example, the COVID pandemic by using scientific evidence (Mauranen et al., 2021). Another example of such problems is climate change that has huge implications for all humankind and ignoring it is unethical from all the ethical frameworks that combine excellence with ethics discussed in this chapter. We can identify a big challenge in the moral education for the gifted students to support them in developing a beyond-the-self orientation in their ethical minds that makes it possible to make the world a better place. Scientific findings and political negotiations are actualized in teamwork. Working in a team requires moral sensitivity (Tirri, 2019). We have witnessed situations in our research among gifted science students in which the disagreements in teamwork led to mean and unethical communication with an intention to hurt each other (Kuusisto & Tirri, 2015). Education for ethical sensitivity in science and in teamwork is a necessary component for moral education in the twenty-first century. According to Bebeau et al. (1999), moral sensitivity is about the awareness of how our actions affect other people. Thus, without possessing a moral sensitivity, it would be difficult to see the kind of moral issues that are involved in science. However, to respond to a situation in a moral way, a scientist must be able to perceive and interpret events in a way that leads to ethical action. A morally sensitive scientist notes various situational cues and is able to visualize several alternative actions in response to that situation. They draw on many aspects, skills, techniques, and components of interpersonal sensitivity. These include taking the perspective of others (role taking), cultivating empathy for others, and interpreting a situation based on imagining what might happen and who might be affected. Ethical sensitivity is a skill that can be taught and learned, and it is necessary in combining excellence with ethics (Tirri, 2011a, 2016).

Hacker Work Ethic In this chapter I present the hacker work ethic as one possible model for the moral education of the gifted. The word hacker can be understood in many ways and it is important to clarify what hacker means in this context. Originally the word hacker has referred to a person who has knowledge on information technology and who can use this knowledge creatively. Linus

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Torvalds, the creator of an open access operation system Linux, is a good exemplar of a hacker with transformational giftedness. He was honored, along with Shinya Yamanaka, with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland “in recognition of his creation of a new open-­ source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel”. He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award (https://peoplepill.com/people/linus-­torvalds) According to Stallman (http://stallman.org/articles/on-­hacking.html), the new media took notice of hackers around 1980 and fixed on one narrow aspect of real hacking: the security breaking which some hackers occasionally did. They ignored all the rest of hacking, and took the term to mean breaking security, no more and no less. The media have since spread that definition, disregarding the attempts among hackers to correct them. As a result, most people have a mistaken idea of what the hackers actually do and what they think. Stallman argues that the misunderstanding can be corrected simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking—by using the term “cracking” for security breaking. The people who do it are “crackers”. Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not. Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen (2001) has developed a theoretical approach to combine excellence with ethics in the academic context. In his work, he introduced a new kind of ethic, ‘the hacker work ethic’, that has replaced the dominance of the Protestant work ethic with a passionate attitude and relationship to one’s work. With the word ‘hackers’, he referred to people who did their work because of intrinsic interest, excitement, and joy, whereas the Protestant work ethic emphasized work as a duty and a calling. In the Hacker Work Ethics book authored by Himanen Linus Torvalds is used as an example of a benevolent hacker and the definition is expanded to people who don’t have anything to do with information technology. Hacker is a name for anybody who has a passionate attitude towards their work that is developing in our information age. According to his definition, the hacker attitude can be found among artists, media workers and designers, for example (Himanen, 2001). In our research with talented people in the academia the successful scientists resemble the hackers with their strong inner drive to excel (Koro-Ljungberg & Tirri, 2002; Tirri & Campbell, 2002). In my own writings I have emphasized ethical sensitivity as important aspect to be developed in hacker work ethics (Tirri, 2014). Hackers want to realize their passion together with others by exploring real-life problems, and they wanted to create something valuable for the community and be recognized for that by their peers. In a similar way, ethical

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sensitivity builds on caring and communication with the idea of finding new innovative solutions to ethical dilemmas in the community of ethically sensitive people (Tirri, 2014). Transformational giftedness can be actualized in a teamwork with shared goals and passion to make the world a better place. The wicked global problems call for gifted people who can peer-review and help each other in developing the best ideas and solutions that benefit everybody. In the hacker work ethic, the recognition from peers functions as peer-review to evaluate the global value of the new idea or product that should go beyond-­ the-­self-interests. In hacker work ethics, recognition within a community that shares the same passion is more important and more deeply satisfying than money. The Finnish educational system and teacher education was historically built on Protestant ethics, with the expectation of teachers to socialize pupils into adopting objective values set by God or society with the idea to serve God with their gifts (Saarinen, 2005). In the twenty-first century, this focus has changed to helping individuals to realize their own potential and to change society to accept individual diversity. This type of approach echoes ethical constructivism, which is based on intersubjectivity and shared agreement that call for dialogue and teamwork in the negotiation of shared values. Gifted students in mathematics and science have emphasized the importance of a community of learners for their needs. Important benefits of this community are like-minded friends with similar learning interests (Tirri et  al., 2012; Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014). We also know that gifted students in mathematics and science are bullied in public schools, both in the United States and in Finland. (Tirri, 2001) Those students who have been trained to take part in the international Olympics in science and mathematics have reported negative school experiences, with one-third of them reporting being bullied (Campbell, 1996; Tirri, 2001; Tirri & Campbell, 2002). Gifted Finnish students have also reported the lack of challenge and the emphasis on equality in the Finnish system as hindrances to learning during their school years. They have found social contacts and challenges among the other Olympians who shared their interests in mathematics and science (Tirri, 2001; Tirri & Campbell, 2002). These earlier findings call for special programs and enrichment opportunities in which gifted science students can interact and learn with like-minded peers. Thus, it is very important to pay attention to the learning environment and to the peers with whom gifted students are studying. According to previous studies on the ideal learning environment for the gifted, a holistic learning setting (Tirri, 2011b) that acknowledges the social and emotional needs of the gifted student is recommended (Tirri et  al., 2013). The learning

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environment should also provide opportunities to develop and actualize transformational giftedness in a team and learn hacker work ethics to support working with people who can evaluate your work. In this chapter, case examples of gifted students and their teamwork are presented to illustrate and discuss how transformational giftedness and the hacker ethic can be taught and learned in enrichment programs for gifted students in science.

 ducating Transformational Giftedness E and the Hacker Work Ethic with Teamwork The Millennium Youth Camp Our examples are from a special enrichment summer course for gifted science students, the Millennium Youth Camp, known as MY CAMP, held in Finland in the summers of 2010–2014. Each year the number of applicants was approximately 1000 or more. The top 30 international applicants are chosen, based on their academic achievements and motivation (Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014; Vartiainen & Aksela, 2012). The international students are between 16 and 19 years of age and are divided into theme groups based on their interests. During the one-week camp, the students continue working on their projects related to current problems in science. Two to four hours a day. All of these groups follow the camp’s general curriculum, work together on a group project, and participate in certain activities, which are both academic and social in nature. In addition to the formal program, students have free time to interact with their teachers and with one another. They also work on a project assigned to them two months before the camp begins (Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014, p. 8). In the application phase, almost 70% of the students mentioned their social expectations for the summer enrichment camp. They wanted to meet new people, make new friends, and share ideas with likeminded peers from around the world. More information on the interests and expectations of these student sis provided in our earlier publications (e.g., Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014). In order to meet these social expectations, teamwork was emphasized in MY Camp projects as a pedagogical approach. The projects were carried out in teams of five or six students. With the help of this pedagogical approach, the students got to know each other well during the camp and learned how to carry out scientific work in teams. The teachers also gave the students a great deal of freedom and responsibility in all their work. This approach forced

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them to rely on each other, building up the team and providing maximum opportunity for peer interaction. In addition to peer interactions, the students had opportunities to meet scientists in universities and companies, giving them the chance to see what scientists really do and allowing them to ask questions about scientific work (Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014). This helped students to understand the nature of transformational giftedness in the work of scientists.

Teamwork in the Information and Communications Technology Group The five students whom we have studied more in depth, belonged to the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) group and worked together as a team to determine how ICT can improve literacy in developing countries in cooperation with the children’s development organization called Plan International and with the mobile telephone company Nokia. Students worked on their project every day during the camp. During the one-week camp, the students worked on their projects two to four hours a day. At the end of the week, the participants presented their work at the Millennium Youth Camp Gala to an audience of experts from universities and ambassadors from the students’ home countries (Tolppanen & Tirri, 2014). We observed and interviewed the ICT group with five students (four males and one female) in the summer of 2012. The students came from Romania, Lithuania, China, Spain, and Bulgaria. All of the students were interested in mathematics and science and had already won national or international awards in competitions. They all had future plans to pursue a career in science (Tirri et al., 2013). The teams in My Camp were built on the ideas of cooperative and collaborative learning. According to Jonassen (1995), in cooperative and collaborative learning, learners work in learning and knowledge-building communities, exploiting each other’s skills while providing social support and modeling and observing each other’s contributions. Each theme group in the Camp had a mutual learning task that they had to collaboratively solve. All the students reported that the teamwork was one of the best experiences at the Camp and that they had learned a lot from each other. Alex (17-years old) from Romania reflected on his own role in this collaboration and praised cooperation in his team in the following ways:

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My role was being the tech guy who knew the practical stuff, the hardware stuff that we could choose the software part, the operating systems software are not the educational software. And working as a group was really nice because I think everybody brought his original contribution, which each other didn’t know before coming in this camp. We learned from each other, so we were completing each other.

Alex emphasized the importance of each team member with their specific skills. Together they learned from each other and even completed each other with their different interests and skills in science. Some of the members had to learn new roles they had never played before (Tirri et al., 2013). The co-­ operation was not always easy, and the team had disagreements (Kuusisto & Tirri, 2015). However, learning to take the perspective of others is an important part of ethical sensitivity and the teamwork was a pedagogical strategy to develop that skill while discussing authentic real-world science issues with ethical implications. We identified a need for a teacher or mentor to guide students in taking the perspective of each other. It was evident that they needed support in this area during the teamwork. According to Jonassen (1995), authentic learning takes place when the challenges in learning are situated in some meaningful real-world tasks or are simulated through some case-based or problem-based learning environment. The goal is to relate the ideas to real-world contexts. All the students in the ICT group emphasized the importance of working with real-world problems. The use of ICT in developing countries was a learning task that was challenging, ethical and concrete for these gifted students. New computer technology includes several ethical issues, for example, cracking that needs to be reflected in order to practice good kind of hacking with computers. In their prior personal projects at school and elsewhere, they had practiced this kind of authentic learning. However, Mike (16-years old) from China also expressed some criticism for the given learning task and the authenticity of it. In the following quote, he reflected on the nature of their leaning task in the framework of authentic learning: I don’t really expect, to be honest, to develop any new idea for ICT in education. Because it’s quite being explored, I think, a lot of difficulties in real world applications has been raised distances and costs, lot of things. It is actually a matter of to do or not to do in real world other than had to do, from my point of view. I think during this camp we sum up some of the point and probably discuss it further but eventually our presentation will still be based upon the already existing solutions that we just find on the Internet.

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Mike’s comment reflects his idea that the learning task was such that it didn’t provide any chances to invent something innovative for the real-world. Mike himself had spent many years in learning to know real-world databases and develop better security systems for them. The learning task in the Camp was properly not concrete enough for his innovative hacker mind. He missed more ambitions learning tasks that would lead to products that would gain recognition from his peers. His own idea for innovative products reflected the criteria of gaining respect from others in hacker work ethics. Moreover, he wanted to make a transformational contribution in improving literacy in developing countries with his skills in information and communication technology. Mike called for learning tasks that would make it possible to demonstrate and develop transformational giftedness in the use of information and communication technology. Valeria (16-year-old) from Bulgaria was the only girl in the information and communication technology group. Her biggest academic strength was in algorithms and she expected to use that strength in the team. However, in teamwork she faced new challenges and opportunities to develop her social skills. Valeria had to accommodate a new role in the teamwork that she was not prepared to take beforehand. She had expected to apply her prior knowledge on algorithms; however, she ended up doing other kinds of tasks like managing the project work. Evidently, she had to learn new skills in order to help the team to achieve the learning objectives. Valeria had to contribute beyond herself and help others in teamwork. She learned to focus on the purpose of the group instead of her own personal interests. The passion for informatics, with many unsolved problems, motivated her curious mind and helped her to be flexible and step out from her comfort zone. Evidently, she succeeded in her new role because her group members described her as a team builder (Tirri et al., 2013). We know from earlier research on gifted females that they need strong resilience and self-efficacy to be able to compete in male-dominated science environment (Reis, 1998; Tirri & Kuusisto, 2017). Moreover, they need female role-models and mentoring in order to actualize their full potential. Valeria attended many science camps earlier before MY Camp, for example, the RSI six-week camp at MIT in Boston. She had a female mentor in biology from Harvard University during that camp, which was a great role model for her. The scholarships she had managed to raise provided her the opportunity for these international experiences and mentorships. At the MY Camp, Valeria was very active and showed initiative with her male peers and learned to practice transformational giftedness in a team. The possibilities of taking new roles in a camp and working in a multicultural team with ethnic and gender

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diversity challenged her ethical sensitivity skills including caring and connecting with others.

Educating Ethical Minds for the Future In this chapter I have discussed education for ethical minds in gifted education with the help of theoretical frameworks that reflect both transformational giftedness and ethics. The German “Bildung” tradition, which empathizes transformation of individuals and society through education to achieve one’s full potential in talent development and the concept of “purpose in life” with the beyond-the-self orientation in life goals of individuals, share valuable components for moral education. I have also presented the “hacker work ethic” as a suitable model in moral education of gifted students. The hacker work ethic emphasizes the passionate attitude and inner drive to excel that are typical for gifted individuals. I have emphasized ethical sensitivity and purpose in life that goes beyond-yourself as important aspect in hacker work ethic and education for ethical minds. The goal to achieve the respect of the peer’s functions as a better motivator than money or prizes in hacker ethics. In all these frameworks, the goal is to create something new that would make a world a better place. I have argued that teamwork is necessary in negotiating and evaluating the goals and products that are needed in our attempts to work together to create a better world. The teams also need objective ethical evaluation from outside members to make sure their purposes, processes and products meet the scientific and ethical guidelines. Knowledge of ethical guidelines in research is an important part of education of ethical minds in science. I have referenced our earlier work with gifted science students and their teamwork in an enrichment program for the gifted. The examples of gifted individuals from the camp and their learning outcomes reflect the importance of creating learning environments with teamwork where gifted students can create shared values and goals for their learning and practice transformational giftedness with hacker work ethics. We can identify the following important components for the moral education of gifted students:

Authentic Real-World Dilemmas In order to support transformational giftedness and the hacker work ethic, gifted students need to work with authentic, real-world dilemmas and problems. Authentic learning can take place when the challenges in learning are

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situated in some meaningful real-world tasks with the goal to relate the ideas to real-world contexts. Current wicked problems require interdisciplinary knowledge, for example, climate change calls for scientists from different disciplines to work together to find the best possible solutions to save our world. In the examples of this chapter, the students represented different scientific fields, for example, mathematics and linguistics to solve the real-world problems with the help of information and communications technology. Both positive and negative experiences could be identified in this interdisciplinary group work and a recommendation to have a teacher or mentor to guide the teamwork is provided.

Taking the Perspective of Others in Teamwork Gifted students need to develop the skills in working as a team. Teamwork requires the skill to take the perspective of others as an important domain in ethical sensitivity to be able to understand the other members and their values. Disagreements are allowed, of course, but they need to be handled in constructive ways without team members hurting each other. Sometimes the team members need to adopt a new role in teamwork and step out from their comfort zone. This would support the social and emotional development of gifted students and provide opportunities to learn to tolerate differences. In this chapter I have provided some examples how gifted students experienced the teamwork as an added value or a new opportunity to take a different perspective to problem solving or to their own roles in a team.

Ambitious and Passionate Academic Goals for Learning The goals for learning should be ambitious enough. It is important that gifted students have a chance to create something new and find the learning tasks challenging with an opportunity to gain the respect of their peers. In this chapter this aspect has been identified as important from many points of views including transformational giftedness and the hacker work ethic. Also, the example from a student who criticized the learning task in the team emphasized ambitions and passionate learning goals.

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Integration of Moral Purposes for Learning Gifted students should be guided to reflect the purposes of their learning with the beyond-the -self orientation. The goals for learning should be meaningful to the students but at the same time contribute beyond the self in order to make the world a better place. The examples in this chapter don’t include any concrete examples of the purposes of the team. However, the learning goal itself with the purpose to help developing countries with information and technology applications was a moral goal.

Peer-Review of the Learning Results It is important to receive feedback from the learning results and products produced in the educational program. Gifted students need to learn how to provide their work for peer-review and how to peer-review others with constructive and ethical ways. The learning results should be assessed with the criteria of excellence and ethics. In the example of the camp in this chapter students received feedback from the other teams and teachers. Moreover, they had a chance to present their learning products in an event with scientific experts present. A good idea in the education of ethical minds would be inclusion of ethical review of all the learning results. In this process the students would learn ethical values and guidelines that need to be acknowledged in scientific work. Education of ethical minds is an important part of teaching and learning for the twenty-first century. Moral education is needed to actualize transformational giftedness in schools and in the society. In this chapter I have discussed with several ethical frameworks and some pedagogical examples how excellence and ethics can be combined, and transformational giftedness actualized in the moral education of the gifted.

References Ambrose, D., & Cross, T.  L. (Eds.). (2009). Morality, ethics, and gifted minds. Springer Science. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R.  J. (Eds.). (2016a). Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization. Sense. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016b). Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems and huge opportunities. Sense.

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Bebeau, M., Rest, J., & Narvaez, D. (1999). Beyond the promise: A perspective on research in moral education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 18–26. Campbell, J. (1996). Early identification of mathematics talent has long-term positive consequences for career contributions. International Journal of Educational Research, 26(6), 497–522. Damon, W. (2008). The path to purpose. Free Press. Damon, W., Menon, J., & Bronk, K. C. (2003). The development of purpose during adolescence. Applied Developmental Science, 7, 119–128. Finnish National Agency for Education [FNAE]. (2004). National core curriculum for basic education. Finnish National Agency for Education. Finnish National Agency for Education [FNAE]. (2014). National core curriculum for basic education. Finnish National Agency for Education. Available from: http:// www.oph.fi/ops2016 Himanen, P. (2001). The hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age. Vintage. Hopmann, S. (2007). Restrained teaching: The common core of Didaktik. European Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 109–124. Jonassen, D. (1995). Supporting communities of learners with technology: A vision for integrating technology with learning in schools. Educational Technology, 35(4), 60–63. Koro-Ljungberg, M., & Tirri, K. (2002). Beliefs and values of successful scientists. The Journal of Beliefs and Values, 23(2), 141–155. Kuusisto, E., & Tirri, K. (2015). Disagreements in working as a team: A case study of gifted science students = Desacuerdos al trabajar en equipo: Un estudio de caso con estudiantes de ciencias con altas capacidades. Revista de educacion, 2015(368), 279–303. https://doi.org/10.4438/1988-­592X-­RE-­2015-­368-­287 Laine, S., & Tirri, K. (2021). Finnish conceptions of giftedness and talent. In R. Stenberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent (pp. 235–249). Palgrave Macmillan. Mauranen, A., Aro, E.-M., Hari, R., Jalkanen, S., Kulmala, M., Mustajoki, A., Nieminen, R., Niiniluoto, I., Raivio, K., Sipilä, J., & Tirri, K. (2021). Taipuu vaan ei taitu  – koronapandemiasta Suomen kriisinkestävyyden vahvistamiseen. Picaset Oy. (in Finnish) Narvaez, D. (2001). Ethical sensitivity: Activity booklet 1. Retrieved March 2, 2007, from http://www.nd.edu/~dnarvaez/ Nielsen, M. (2011). Reinventing discovery: The new era of networked science. Princeton University Press. OECD. (2016). PISA 2015 results (volume I): Excellence and equity in education. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264266490-­en Reis, S. (1998). Work left undone. Creative Learning Press. Saarinen, R. (2005). God and the gift: An ecumenical theology of giving (Unitas books). Liturgical Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2020a). Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. Olszewski-­ Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 203–234). Prufrock Press.

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Sternberg, R. J. (2020b). Transformational giftedness: Rethinking our paradigm for gifted education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02783193.2020.1815266 Tirri, K. (2001). Finland Olympiad studies: What factors contribute to the development of academic talent in Finland? Educating Able Children, 5(2), 56–66. Tirri, K. (2011a). Combining excellence and ethics: Implications for moral education for the gifted. Roeper Review, 33(1), 59–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/0278319 3.2011.530207 Tirri, K. (2011b). Holistic school pedagogy and values: Finnish teachers’ and students’ perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(2011), 159–165. Tirri, K. (2014). The hacker ethic for gifted scientists. In S. Moran, D. Cropley, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The ethics of creativity (pp. 221–231). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333544 Tirri, K. (2016). Holistic perspectives on gifted education for the 21st century. In D.  Ambrose & R.  Sternberg (Eds.), Giftedness and talents in the 21st century (pp. 101–110). Sense Publishers. Tirri, K. (2019). Ethical sensitivity in teaching and teacher education. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of teacher education. Springer Nature/Springer Science Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­981-­13-­1179-­6 Tirri, K., & Campbell, J. R. (2002). Actualizing mathematical giftedness in adulthood. Educating Able Children, 6(1), 14–20. Tirri, K., & Kuusisto, E. (2017). What factors contribute to the development of gifted female scientists? Insights from two case studies. In K. S. Taber, M. Sumida, & L. McClure (Eds.), Teaching gifted learners in STEM subjects: Developing talent in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Routledge research in achievement and gifted education) (pp.  80–88). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.432 4/9781315697147-­6 Tirri, K., & Kuusisto, E. (2021). Purposeful learning and teaching in Finland. In D. H. W. Loong (Ed.), Moving beyond grades with purposeful learning. Springer. Tirri, K., & Toom, A. (2020). The moral role of pedagogy as the science and art of teaching. In K. Tirri & A. Toom (Eds.), Pedagogy in basic and higher education: Current developments and challenges (pp.  3–13). Intech Open. https://doi. org/10.5772/intechopen.90502 Tirri, K., Tolppanen, S., Aksela, M., & Kuusisto, E. (2012). A cross-cultural study of gifted students’ scientific, societal, and moral questions concerning science. Educational Research International, 2012, 673645. https://doi. org/10.1155/2012/673645 Tirri, K., Kuusisto, E., & Aksela, M. (2013). What kind of learning is interactive and meaningful to gifted science students? A case study from the Millennium Youth Camp. In K.  Tirri & E.  Kuusisto (Eds.), Interaction in educational domains (pp. 131–145). Sense Publishers.

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Tolppanen, S., & Tirri, K. (2014). How an enrichment summer program is meeting the expectations of gifted science students: A case study from Finland. International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, 2(1), 103–115. Vartiainen, J., & Aksela, M. (2012). The principles and practices of teaching and learning in Finnish schools. In H.  Niemi, A.  Toom, & A.  Kallioniemi (Eds.), Miracle of education (pp. 263–272). Sense Publishers.

21 Redefining Human Talents: Gifted Education in the Age of Smart Machines Yong Zhao, James Basham, and Jason Travers

The concepts of transformational giftedness and transactional giftedness (Sternberg, 2021a, 2021b; Sternberg et al., 2021) provide a new opportunity to rethink giftedness. Transformational giftedness has been defined by Sternberg as giftedness deployed to make a positive change in the world while transactional gifted individuals are gifted but expect something in return (Sternberg, 2020). If valuable giftedness is about making positive changes to the world and creating value for others, we have to redefine giftedness. Humans have traditionally accepted many individuals with a wide diversity of

Y. Zhao (*) School of Education and Human Sciences, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Basham School of Education and Human Sciences, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Travers College of Education and Human Development, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_21

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talents as gifted, for example, great actors and artists, excellent dancers and musicians, as well as outstanding inventors and entrepreneurs. But in schools only students who excel at certain tests are considered gifted and allowed into gifted education. In other words, the definition of giftedness in schools is by and large transactional, rewarding those who can score well on tests. More important, transformational giftedness enables everyone to be “gifted,” using their talents to create value for the world and others. Human beings have enough commonalities to distinguish them from other species. But within the human species, each individual member is unique. The uniqueness comes from both nature and nurture. Human beings are not born a blank slate or exactly the same and their experiences after birth vary considerably. The interactions between innate variations and experiential differences (i.e., nature via nurture) result in unique individuals who are drastically different from each other on many dimensions (Lewontin, 2001; Ridley, 2003). Human differences exist in a multitude of areas. A large body of theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence exist that show the vast differences in different domains among individuals (Gardner, 1993, 2006; Rose, 2016; Sternberg, 1985, 1996). Although there are plenty of controversies over many technical details and specific theories, there is consensus that human beings indeed vary in aptitude, personality, motivation, knowledge and skills, values and beliefs, attitudes, mindset, and other psychological aspects (Gardner, 1983, 1993, 2006; John et al., 2008; McCrae & Terracciano, 2005; Reiss, 2000, 2004, 2008; Rose, 2016; Sternberg, 1985, 1996). Furthermore, every human has a “jagged profile” (Rose, 2016) or a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses: stronger in some areas and weaker in others. Learning variability is the norm rather than the exception (Basham et al., 2016a).

Variability as a Liability Learner variability or the diversity among students has been treated as a problem, an inconvenience, and a liability in the traditional education paradigm (Zhao, 2012b, 2016b, 2018b). Education is charged with the responsibility for helping children become productive members in a society. To carry out this responsibility, education, as has been conceived and practiced in formal school systems, has the goal to equip all students with a uniform set of knowledge and ability deemed necessary for success in life after they leave school. But learner variability gets in the way of accomplishing this goal.

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Every education system has a predetermined set of knowledge and ability it is supposed to teach all children. This set is often codified into formal curriculum and assessment frameworks and standards that describe and prescribe what students should know and be able to do at certain times. It is hoped that when students complete their schooling they will have mastered the knowledge and skills needed to become productive members of a society. There are a number of ways to establish a prescription of knowledge and skills that productive citizens should be equipped with. The British philosopher Herbert Spencer, for example, used a priori reasoning in his 1859 essay What Knowledge is of Most Worth for the Industrial Age (Spencer, 1911). Harry Broudy (1982) followed the same tradition in an essay of the same title (Broudy, 1982) to redefine valuable knowledge in the modern era. Scholars, policymakers, and think tanks have relied on empirical evidence to identify worthy knowledge and skills (e.g., Brunello & Schlotter, 2010; Levin, 2012; Wagner, 2008; World Economic Forum, 2016a, 2016b). A more frequently used approach is a combination of empirical evidence and reasoning weighted by expert panels. The Common Core State Standards Initiative (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework for 21st Century learning (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007) are two examples. Irrespective of how they are arrived at, most prescriptions share some common characteristics. First, they are educated guesses of what might be needed for successful living in a society at a given time. The guess is often based on past evidence and reasonable forecast of future trends. The prescribed knowledge and skills may be based on very solid evidence and meticulous reasoning, but are attempts to predict the future nonetheless. Second, the prescribed knowledge is expected to apply to all children (i.e., the standards-based model). That is, all children are expected to be equipped with the same set of knowledge and skills, and have mastered them at the same points in time. Consequently, educators are responsible for teaching the skills and knowledge that will (allegedly) make children into productive members of society. Third, the prescribed set of knowledge and skills is necessarily narrow. While it is of course ideal for everyone to know and be able to do everything possible, it is not possible due to practical constraints such as school resources and time limitations. A school cannot possibly teach everything worth knowing nor can students spend all their life learning everything. Some individuals spend their entire lifetime focused on learning, but they cannot possibly learn everything there is to learn; neither can they learn to do everything worth doing. As a result, educational institutions must make choices. Thus, the prescribed set of knowledge and skills to be taught in schools typically is very

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narrow. Currently, the prized knowledge and skills are primarily cognitive abilities in math, language, science, and social studies. Finally, the prescription often expects all children to progress at a similar pace. When translated into practice, the prescribed knowledge and skills are put into a sequence that runs through the duration of schooling, with periodic checkpoints to ensure every child is making similar progress. The sequence is typically aligned with children’s biological age or grade-level. In other words, not only are all children expected to acquire the same total amount of the prescribed knowledge and skills at the end of schooling, they are also expected to do so at a similar speed along the way. This is clearly exemplified by uniform curriculum standards such as the Common Core State Standards (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011), which not only spells out what all students should learn, but also by what time in their life they should master the required content and skills. Furthermore, international assessment programs such as the globally influential Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, expects all 15-year-­ olds around the globe to be able to do the same in reading, math, and science. Those 15-year-olds who do not satisfactorily perform the tasks on these tests are deemed inadequately prepared for living in the 21st Century (OECD, 2010). The most effective way to ensure that every student is equipped with the prescribed skills and knowledge at the same pace would be having every aspect of education to be identical: identical curriculum, identical schools, identical teachers, identical textbooks, identical assessment, and most importantly, identical students. Over the years, educational institutions have worked very hard to make education identical by developing common standards, homogenizing curriculum and teaching, standardizing teacher preparation and evaluation, and requiring common assessment (Jennings & Bearak, 2014; McMurrer, 2007; Zhao & Gearin, 2016). The only inconvenience is the vast variations that exist among students. Their uniqueness is a stubborn obstacle to be removed. Students are not empty computer hard drives, all similarly formatted and ready to be programmed to perform any desirable function. To succeed in the modern era, education must try to minimize the influence of individual variations, which has been viewed as the singly most persistent liability that hinders the progress of equipping all students with the same knowledge and skills so they can be ready for life. To lighten the burden of human variations, education has developed a host of elaborate and sophisticated strategies in policy and practice.

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Selective Admissions  When possible, educational institutions often will use admissions requirements to increase the homogeneity of their student body. While requirements differ across institutions, students seeking to study in a particular school or college are often admitted based on their performance on a narrow set of indicators that align with the prescribed knowledge and skills. Typically, students strong with qualities that align with the school’s missions are more likely to be admitted, while individuals with strong qualities in areas less aligned are less likely to gain admission. As a result, the student body has much less variation than the general population. Ability Grouping and Tracking  Teachers and schools have long used practices to create homogenous student bodies within classes or within schools. Teachers use ability grouping to put students into different groups based on their academic performance and schools use tracking to put students into different classes or different tracks (Loveless, 2013). Moreover in some educational systems, students are put into different tracks of schools based on their academic performances (Bokhorst-Heng & Pereira, 2008; Young, 1958; Zhao, 2014). The decisions about how to group students are based on how well the students have mastered the prescribed skills and knowledge at a given point of their school career. This results in the creation of student bodies with more similarity than what naturally exist. Such practices have for decades been embroiled in controversies (Boaler et  al., 2000; Brunello & Checchi, 2007; Duflo et al., 2009; Gamoran, 1992; Hanushek, 2006; Ireson & Hallam, 2001, 2009; Slavin, 1990), yet they continue to be practiced widely. Grade Retention  Another common practice to create more homogeneous student groups is to require students who are lagging behind to repeat a grade (Jackson, 1975). Based on their performance in the previous year, students who are deemed to have not acquired the prescribed skills and knowledge repeat the grade to become more like their peers next year. The effectiveness and potential damage of grade retention has been as controversial as tracking and ability grouping (Jackson, 1975; Jimerson, 2001; Manacorda, 2012). Remedial Programs and Tutoring  Students at all levels of education who are deemed to have not made satisfactory progress in academics are also provided supplemental remedial programs and tutoring in school, outside school, or during the summer (Anderson & Pellicer, 1990; Ascher, 2006; Gamoran, 2007; Jacob & Lefgren, 2004; Zimmer et al., 2010). The purpose is to make sure that students catch up with their peers so they can be more like the students who are making the right amount of progress in mastering the prescribed skills and knowledge.

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Special Education and Gifted Education  Special education (Clark et  al., 2005; Harry & Klingner, 2014; Kauffman & Hallahan, 1995; Stainback & Stainback, 1992) and gifted education (Colangelo & Davis, 2002; Dai, 2010) are programs created to serve students who deviate significantly from the “normal” student. Although other factors are considered, student mastery of the prescribed knowledge and skills (i.e., academic achievement) as measured by standardized tests is a major factor in the deciding who is selected for gifted and talented programs and who requires extra support through special education. IQ scores also play a major role. Giftedness is often derived from IQ scores or scores on other similar tests. Both special education and gifted education systems rely on creating homogenous student bodies from naturally varying human beings. One difference between gifted and special education is that the latter often intends to help students to catch up with the “normal” students while the former intends to support further advancement of “gifted” students. A second difference relates to values. Gifted education is deemed valuable because the gifted and talented students possess the qualities believed to be necessary for productive members of a society despite that fact that the giftedness of the students can be transformational or transactional (Sternberg, 2021a, 2021b; Sternberg et al., 2021). Students with disabilities, on the other hand, may be viewed as lacking the qualities needed to be a productive member of society, which is why special education programs aim to help students catch up with the “normal” students. The effectiveness of these strategies in helping students to acquire the prescribed skills and knowledge remains contested as exemplified by the frustratingly persistent “achievement gaps” that exists among different groups of students (Harris & Herrington, 2006; Jimerson, 2001; Jones, 2013; Ladson-­ Billings, 2006; Reardon, 2011; Zhao, 2016b). It is even questionable whether all students can possibly be achieving the same level in the same domains at the same time (Zhao, 2016b). But it is certainly true that traditional education, intentionally and unintentionally, has aimed to reduce human diversity, viewing it as a liability. As a result, individual uniqueness has been subject to active suppression. Millions of children are subjected to remediation, corrective programs, and supplemental activities to be normalized and homogenized.

From Liability to Asset: Rethinking Diversity It may have been necessary to homogenize children in order to ensure they are all equipped with the same knowledge and skills, and to help them progress along the same path at the same pace in the past. After all, human societies for

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a long time can only make use of a narrow set of skills and knowledge in a limited range of domains (Zhao, 2012, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). It would have been irresponsible for education not to help them acquire the necessary skills and knowledge in order to succeed in life. In a society that rewards homogeneity over diversity, individual uniqueness is indeed a liability to be reduced. However, society has dramatically changed and we, therefore, must change our thinking. As discussed below, individual uniqueness has become the only asset that human beings have for surviving and thriving in the new age to be dominated by smart machines (Zhao, 2018a, 2018b). Education cannot and should not try to reduce diversity anymore. Instead it should aim to enhance individual diversity and amplify uniqueness. Education is always in a race with technology (Goldin & Katz, 2008). Gradual technological advances accumulate into a revolution and transform civilization. Such transformation often leads societies to reconsider the value of previously prescribed skills and knowledge. Different societies value different skills and knowledge. What is useful and desirable in one society may not be equally useful or desirable in another. Likewise, what is useful and desirable in the past may become obsolete in the future. Thus societies have often engaged in exercises to define and redefine human qualities worth cultivating in schools throughout history, especially when they go through significant changes (Broudy, 1982; Goldin & Katz, 2008).

The Arrival of the Second Machine Age We are in the midst of major societal change. Starting in the 1970s, waves of technological advancement have led to massive societal transformations that ushered in the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions (Schwab, 2015) or the Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). Unlike the first rounds of industrialization, the fourth industrial revolution features “smart” machines or artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-based automation, as well as global networks of things (Executive Office of the President, 2016; Schwab, 2015). These “smart” machines have already brought about disruptive changes and will continue to do so in the future. These changes have significant implications for the definition of useful and desirable human qualities, and consequently, what schools should be teaching.

The Fall of Rote Memorization and Simple Skills Some of the knowledge and skills cultivated by traditional education have become increasingly rendered less valuable or even obsolete by smart machines

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(Wagner, 2008, 2012; Zhao, 2012; Kelly, 2020). The goal of technological development is to enhance and extend human abilities, to make human beings more effective and more efficient, help human beings perform tasks that would otherwise be impossible, and to free people from mundane, harmful, or dangerous tasks. Over the past two centuries, technology has significantly increased human productivity, extended human capabilities, and freed more humans from mundane and dangerous tasks. A collateral effect is the disappearance of traditional production line jobs and displacement of some human workers (Zhao, 2018c). This occurs because machines have been increasingly equipped with the same knowledge, skills, and other human qualities to perform tasks previously performed by human beings. In fact, machines are superior to human beings for some tasks, and very often machines cost much less, are consistently obedient, and can work longer hours without complaint than human beings. Machines have gradually taken the jobs schools have traditionally prepared human beings to perform, rendering the prescribed qualities that have been valued less useful and desirable. As a result, schools must focus on developing human qualities that cannot be replaced by machines. Rote memorization, information processing, and repetitive procedure knowledge are among the first to be rendered less useful by recent information and communication technologies. For example, the best Jeopardy! and chess players in the world are computers, demonstrating the superiority of machines’ capacity for information storage and processing. Traditionally valued low-­ level cognitive skills are easily replaceable by machines, as are traditionally valued and machine-like qualities, such as following instructions and obeying orders without questioning (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011; European Communities, 2006; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007; World Economic Forum, 2016a). There is already evidence that suggests test scores, the primary measure of what has been valued in education, are not a strong predictor for life’s success. IQ, for example, has been used as the primary measure of the most important human quality for over a century, but longitudinal studies suggest that IQ alone accounts for little variation in one’s success in life (Firkowska-­ Mankiewicz, 2002; Goleman, 1995; Sternberg, 1987; Zhao, 2016b). SAT and ACT scores, the measures of supposedly most useful qualities for college success in the United States, have had a history of weak association with success in college (Zhao, 2016). Test scores or school performance measures have not been able to well predict success at work either (Brunello & Schlotter, 2010; Levin, 2012).

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The Rise of Undervalued Skills At the same time, the Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014) has created opportunities for traditionally undervalued talents to become valuable. For example, when jobs that require rote memorization disappear, the number of jobs requiring higher order thinking, such as creativity, increases. As a result, as the manufacturing class declines, the creativity class rises (Florida, 2012). When jobs that favor so-called “left-brain” skills such as linear and logical thinking are automated, the “right-brained” based talents become more useful and desirable (Pink, 2006). More importantly, increased productivity brings about more leisure time and disposable income, which allows human beings to expand their consumption beyond physical necessities (Zhao, 2012b). Whereas underdeveloped countries must focus on basic survival (e.g., food, clean water, shelter, basic medicine), humans in technologically developed economies are able to invest in the psychological, aesthetic, intellectual, and social needs of its populace. Thus, in developed economies, education, entertainment, healthcare, travel, fashion, beauty, and other industries that serve psychological, intellectual, aesthetic, and social needs have become as large as, if not larger than, industries that meet the basic needs for physical survival such as food and housing. These new industries provide unlimited potential for traditionally undervalued talents to become useful and desirable. For example, interpersonal and intrapersonal talents became very valuable as the industries in counseling, all sorts of therapy, personal coaching, and interpersonal communications expanded. Artistic talents have become more valuable as more people consume arts in various forms such as visual arts, video games, aesthetically appealing devices and furniture, artisan food, and films. Similarly, the ever-­ expanding television and video industry has created opportunities for individuals talented in storytelling, acting, and being funny. As a result, many new skills proposed as necessary for the new age (Zhao, 2016a, 2018c) have not been valued in schools. Under the big umbrella of 21st Century Skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007; Trilling & Fadel, 2009) are a host of skills and characteristics necessary for the 21st Century, but they have not been considered particularly important before: communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011; European Communities, 2006; Trilling & Fadel, 2009). Besides 21st Century Skills, there are numerous other skills, abilities, and characteristics proposed to be valuable in the new age but have not been valued in traditional education: dispositions (Costa & Kallick,

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2013), creativity and innovation (Florida, 2012; Wagner, 2008, 2012), right-­ brained skills (Pink, 2006), entrepreneurial skills and mindset (World Economic Forum, 2009, 2011; Zhao, 2012b), personal qualities (Duckworth & Yeager, 2015), global competencies (Reimers, 2009; Zhao, 2009a, 2009b), mindset (Dweck, 2008; Gardner, 2007) and non-cognitive or soft skills (Brunello & Schlotter, 2010; Levin, 2012; World Economic Forum, 2016a).

The Emerging Asset of Individual Uniqueness The newly proposed skills are inherently more human than mechanical. Human beings cannot and should not compete with machines in mechanical qualities such as precision, repetition, uniformity, and being obedient, non-­ social, or dispassionate. Instead, human beings must be more human and more different than machines. Being unique is human nature. Each individual has a jagged profile of strengths and weaknesses that makes him or her uniquely different from others (Rose, 2016). If fully developed, each individual human being cannot be mutually replaceable. But machines cannot be unique. No matter how complex a machine is, it can be replicated and produced in large quantity and identical quality. Unique individuals are needed in the new world when the economy becomes hyper-specialized (Malone et al., 2011). In the new economy, human beings are unlikely to engage in the mass production best suited for machines. Instead, they must become extremely creative and competent in a certain domain, occupying a small niche in a network of free agents or self-employed workers (Pink, 2002). More unique human beings are needed for the new world, where human psychological, aesthetic, social, and intellectual needs or desires can be better attended to due to rising productivity. Psychological, aesthetic, social, and intellectual needs are inherently much more personal and less uniform than physiological needs. To meet these needs require personalized approaches devised by human beings instead of machines. For example, the smartest computer today can beat the best human chess player and can use algorithms to deliver suggested news stories, Netflix shows, or even drug prescriptions. But no matter how smart the machine is, it cannot precisely predict a particular individual’s desires and needs in context because human needs vary with different contexts. Unique human beings are more likely to help other unique human beings.

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Being unique enables one to participate in a rapidly changing society (Zhao, 2018b). Traditional education tries to anticipate what future may need and prepares people for the predicted future, but the future is uncertain. Machines can be equipped with the skills and knowledge to perform existing tasks, but machines cannot be equipped to do jobs that do not yet exist. Thus we need human beings to be not just ready for jobs but also ready to create jobs in the future. In sum, human diversities and individual uniqueness, the qualities that distinguish humans from machines, should not be considered a liability in education and society. Instead, they are what human beings have to succeed in the age of smart machines. Coupled with the intention to use their uniqueness to create value for others, human beings can find and create jobs for themselves and others. Thus education thus needs to have a paradigm shift— from treating human diversity as deficiency to be overcome to considering it an asset to be developed.

Implications for Education The current education system places value on a standards-based normalized system that supports sameness in outcomes across learners. Conversely, a pluralistic global civilization, where humans interact with smart machines, requires an acceptance and focus on variability. To develop individual uniqueness as giftedness, education also needs to cultivate in students the spirit of transformation so that they are able to become unique and great as well as transformational. This new education paradigm requires the following changes: 1. Acceptance of learner variability as a norm, rather than attempting to fix “deficiency” with a focus on normalization. More important, accepting human diversity as an asset to be fully developed and further enhanced, rather than as a liability to be suppressed. 2. Thus, education should aim to cultivate unique individual human beings by capitalizing on the strengths, interests, and preferences of each learner rather than forcing all children to acquire a narrow set of knowledge and skills based on guesses of what society may need in the future. The role of education should be to create opportunities for individual learners to understand, hone, and authentically demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and talents across a variety of domains.

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3. In practice, every aspect of education should be personalizable by the learner (Zhao, 2018a, 2018b). Instead of having one uniform curriculum for all children, what each learner experiences in schools should be co-­ constructed with the learner. Instead of forcing all children to attend uniform classes, each learner should be given the autonomy to co-design their learning activities. Instead of judging all students with one uniform set of assessments, each learner’s growth should be assessed individually based on his or her own unique progression. Based on these values, education systems would address the needs of all learners and help each person become uniquely great, irrespective of the presence or absence of specific qualities. Every student is both gifted and has special needs. Every student can be in gifted education and special education.

Some Issues to Wrestle With Developing an education system focused on the unique strengths and talents of individual learners introduces a number of issues for the system to wrestle with in the adoption process. It is fairly clear that society requires some measure of success from both individual students and schools themselves, yet what is also clear is that current standards and standardized assessments devalue individual talent and support hypothetical notions of success. If there is a need to disrupt the current system with a greater acceptance of learner variability, realignment toward strengths, interests, and preferences, and a focus on developing master learners through personalized learning then there is a need to wrestle with issues of integration and implementation. Here are some of the foreseen issues in establishing the needed system.

Basic Skills An individualized or personalized approach that begins with a focus on the talents, interests, and preferences very likely cannot replace the need for some basic skills such as arithmetic and literacy. For instance, it is generally thought that some basic level of literacy is foundational for developing current and future knowledge and skills, but also for discovering new interests, talents, and preferences. This means basic skills must be identified. However, defining “basic skills” presents a problem to a personalized approach to teaching and learning because defining such skills institutes normative standards. For

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example, what level of literacy should be deemed “basic” or fundamental, and how will this be decided? Should students be expected to achieve the basic skill by a specific age? If so, who will decide the expected timeline and how will this standard be applied to individual learners? If not, at what point should instruction in the basic skills be abandoned for more beneficial instruction? After all, not every child will benefit equally or at all from literacy skills. Whatever the answers, it is clear that applying the basic standard to every learner remains a flawed goal; there will always be individuals for whom an expectation does not apply. This means a basic standard must be both general and specific. For example, civil laws must be sufficiently precise to allow for practical application, but also blunt enough to limit the number of (inevitable) exceptions. Broad standards for basic knowledge and skills will always encounter exceptions, and personalized instruction can account for this. Both gifted and special education might provide some points of reflection for some of the issues presented, although gifted education focuses on developing strengths but special education focuses on fixing weaknesses. For instance, federal law requires that students with disabilities be provided an individualized education precisely because the universal standards of education may be incongruous with desired outcomes. For example, an education team comprised of professionals and parents may decide that a learner with multiple disabilities (i.e., severe physical and intellectual disabilities) does not need to learn physics, algebra, or Shakespeare because (1) he does not appear to have any interest in learning these skills and (2) learning these skills will not confer benefit to his quality of life (Ayres et al., 2011). Instead, the education team may identify specific strengths, interests, and preferences, as well as what skills are needed to improve his quality of life, and invest resources into developing those skills. That is, we should treat everyone as gifted in their own way. When everyone is considered gifted, education should then focus on helping each student develop his or her giftedness so as to become unique and great. Students are also taught to become transformationally gifted so they intend to create value for others and the world using their unique greatness (Sternberg, 2021a, 2021b; Sternberg et  al., 2021; Zhao, 2018b). While the fields of special and gifted education provide foundational models for supporting individualized approaches, personalized learning environments that scale to all learners, rather than to a select few, would still require integrating new practices and tools. Being dynamic and learner centered, these environments would require supporting learners and educators in the use of data to make day-to-day decisions. In fact, practices and models have begun to emerge that integrate effective foundational frameworks, uses of

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data as well as technology, and most importantly support large roles for student self-agency in the decision making process. For instance, Basham et al. (2016a) found that an urban district that meaningfully adopted personalized learning had many students make over 1 year competency-based growth during a 1 year period. Specifically, the researchers found that a personalized system that was foundationally based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, and integrated the effective use of technology, data, and other environmental design principles supported better than expected individualized learning progress. The researchers found the personalized learning environments also heavily integrated student voice and learner self-regulation (Wehmeyer & Zhao, 2020). While the model discussed by Basham et al. was limited by the need to conform to some traditional normalizing aspects of the current standards-based education system, it can serve as a steppingstone toward a system that follows the suggestions in this article.

Costs and Benefits The current standards-based approach provides a simplistic but misguided model for evaluating cost-benefit. For instance, the current model complicates decisions about whether curriculum or instruction should be modified or delivered at a more rapid pace, enhanced, halted, or even abandoned. Many districts now adopt prepackaged vendor-based instructional materials and district pacing guides (Harrison & Killion, 2007) that encourage teachers to move all students through day-to-day lessons, materials, and scope-and-­ sequence that is directly tied to standards. Teachers are not asked to evaluate cost-benefit and they are led to believe the curriculum provider and associated vendor know best (Basham et al., 2016b; Smith et al., 2016). Moreover, many of these materials are not designed for student variability and make it difficult to modify or enhance to individualized student needs (Basham et al., 2016b). Based on the desire to have all students meet the standards, research projects have been conducted to figure out whether behavioral techniques can be used to train students with significant disabilities to perform in a standards-based curriculum. For instance, for students with some of the greatest needs, researchers have developed methods for teaching advanced academic skills, such as algebra, to students with intellectual disabilities (e.g., Browder et al., 2012). Such demonstrations are remarkable testaments to the advancements of the technology of teaching, especially given the history of maltreatment and low expectations associated with these learners. But, as Ayres et  al. (2011) pointed out, the

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costs associated with such achievements may not justify the benefits to learners with intellectual disabilities. Decisions about instruction must be and are rightly based on a cost-benefit analysis. Those skills that are deemed to confer the most benefit to the individual and society (e.g., literacy, arithmetic) are deemed worthy of investment. Unfortunately, as aforementioned this benefit is focused on weak understandings of the future, and misaligned focus on norming all students. The inability to design for individual learners, to question cost-benefit and value of needing to learn X, Y, Z, or to provide differentiation from the normative standards may make life simpler for the teacher but is negligent in advancing the needs of humans in age of smart machines.

Measurement, Accountability, and Outcomes A personalized approach to teaching and learning is complicated by collective ignorance about how to best measure instructional effectiveness for the individual (i.e., learner progress). Frequent, valid, and reliable assessment of student performance remains difficult and resource-intensive, but a behavior-analytic (i.e., natural science) approach that involves a priori operationalization of expected behaviors (e.g., demonstrations of knowledge and skills) and systematic manipulation of the environment to observe student responses may prove useful, especially given the crisis of confidence in the social sciences (see, for example, Travers et  al., 2016). More specifically, because special educators often teach skills that are not amenable to convenient, standardized assessment (e.g., communication skills, on-task behavior, social skills) they have experience in evaluating individualized outcomes to support decision-making and accountability. Often special educators define a priori conditions and responses that are targeted for improvement, then systematically measure student responsiveness to instruction (ideally student voice and authentic data are tied into this process). Such an approach may prove immensely useful for personalized approaches to education that are concerned with unique individuals with unique learning goals in dynamic environments. An additional challenge relates to recognizing and responding to the evolving nature of learner interests and talents. The discovery of information new to the learner can have profound effects on interests, lead to the development of new talents, and stimulate desire for deeper understanding. However, new information can also function as a barrier to these outcomes, especially if the new information conflicts with cherished beliefs or is difficult to acquire. A personalized approach to learning requires that teachers have the tools, skills,

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equipment, materials, and sufficient personal knowledge of the individual learner to make decisions about when to support exploration of new information, recognize budding interests, and when to shift instruction (Basham et al., 2016a). Without these, teachers may not make appropriate decisions about an individual learner and cannot be evaluated for teaching effectiveness. Decisions about what to teach an individual should be based on the actual (i.e., immediate) and anticipated benefits the knowledge and skills will have on long-term outcomes. Currently, the education system is organized by gates of accomplishment predicated on the belief that each gate represents acquisition of knowledge and skills that will benefit the learner throughout their lifetime. This often leads to rationalizing current instruction by appealing to future benefits that are (1) too distal to motivate immediate investment by the student to learn the content and (2) never actually realized for a large subset of students. Consequently, much instruction is perceived valuable exclusively because it is prerequisite to future knowledge that will (allegedly) confer benefit(s) to the learner. This means teachers often do not have good reasons for teaching content, but deliver instruction nonetheless with the promise that it will be useful for learning future content that, to the learner, is equally vacuous. Gifted education aims to support the growth and development of each learner’s talents and ability by appealing to individual strengths, interests, and preferences (Subotnik et al., 2011). Special education similarly attempts to design instruction based on the unique features of the learner. Gifted and special education prioritize the individual over the standards for the specific purpose of improving immediate and long term outcomes. However, “successful” outcomes are often arbitrary factors, such as university attendance, income, and property ownership. They are largely transactional instead of transformational. Although special education has attempted to develop instruments to better measure quality of life as a means of evaluating the effects of educational programming and supports (Schalock et  al., 2008), valid instruments that reliably measure short- and long-term outcomes of personalized learning are lacking.

Conclusion Vast resources and attention are bound up in ensuring all students meet academic standards and specific checkpoints. Consequently, investment in the talents of gifted children became second priority (Subotnik et al., 2011), and much attention was dedicated to getting lower performing students,

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including as many students with disabilities as possible, to pass high-stakes exams. In both circumstances, the value of individualization was discounted and academic achievement was prioritized over all other areas of child development. In the end, the costs of the No Child Left Behind Act did not appear to have conferred the promised benefit. As identified in the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), there is a greater push toward designing a system that is focused on capitalizing on the strengths of learners while leveraging the power of technology to design a personalized education system that meets the needs of all learners. To support success begins with redefining how educators identify, support, and hone human talent. A personalized education system cannot extend from a standards-based normalized model of success and sameness because it conflicts with the fundamental intent of personalization. A pluralistic and advanced global civilization, where humans utilize and work alongside smart machines, requires various pathways to develop master learners who thrive and refine their talents throughout their lifespan. This conceptualization of education is starkly different from existing models that prepare citizens for an unpredictable future using “knowledge stocks” (Hagil et al., 2009), where the focus is on banking information today for use in an increasingly unpredictable future. A modernized system of education must value a diverse group of master learners who can actively participate in the world of “knowledge flows” (Hagil et al., 2009) necessary to capitalize on the ever changing information base of the world. The development of a personalized education system requires thinking differently about teachers, learners, the purpose, and measures of learning. Through serving learners on the margins, both gifted education and special education, have an understanding of what it means to support the variability associated with learners. By investigating and reflecting on what has worked for the students on the margins, education can begin to advance a system of the future by understanding how to effectively support the uniqueness of all learners. By treating every student as gifted, we can help students develop transformational giftedness so that they can all aim to better our society.

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22 In Conclusion: Where We Currently Stand in the March Toward Transformational Giftedness Don Ambrose, Robert J Sternberg, and Sareh Karami

Will humanity survive and thrive throughout the remainder of the twenty-­ first-­century or will massive wildfires, powerful hurricanes, and toxic air and water tear down civilization? Will fair-minded democratic governance strengthen and spread around the globe or will a few opportunistic psychopaths commandeer excessive political and economic power for self-­ aggrandizement while the political systems they run become more unethical and totalitarian? The answers to these questions at least partially rest on the extent to which the future development of gifted individuals pushes them toward transactional or transformational inclinations. Those who are transactionally gifted develop their abilities for their own benefit while those who are transformationally gifted use their abilities not just for themselves, but to make the world a better place (Sternberg, 2020a, D. Ambrose (*) Department of Graduate Education, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. J Sternberg Department of Psychology, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Karami Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Foundations, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_22

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2020b). Pushing the field of gifted education away from the transactional model toward the transformational sounds like a very heavy load for scholars and practitioners in the field to take on and manage. But these questions might very well reflect the way things are at this point in human history. The development of gifted individuals always had important implications for the societies those gifted individuals would influence when they become adults, but the stakes are far higher in today’s world. Throughout this book, the authors have connected giftedness and talent development with twenty-first-century contextual pressures, such as the macroproblems that could tear down civilization and the macro-opportunities that could produce more affluence, security, and fulfillment than humanity has ever experienced in the past. The macroproblems seem to stand out more than the opportunities due to a number of pressing issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating effects of climate change, and the disintegration of democratic governments into totalitarian systems (see other chapters in this volume for details about these problems). One more intriguing possibility that magnifies the importance of changing from transactional to transformational gifted education is an argument by Bostrom (2006, 2016) that the twenty-first-century could bring forth an extreme form of global integration. His portrayal of the strong possibility that a “singleton” will come to prevail around the world raises the notion that a centralized world republic could replace the many independent nations that currently exist. The rulers of that government would control virtually all the levers of political power around the globe. Another possibility for the emergence of a singleton could arise through the ascendance of extremely powerful artificial intelligence that either controls humanity itself or enables a small number of people to exert such control. Bostrom points out that the rise of a singleton could be beneficial or harmful, depending on how it evolves. Obviously, transformational giftedness is magnified in importance considerably if there is the possibility of a singleton taking control of the globe. This challenge results because the brightest minds of today and tomorrow could initiate, or support, or decline to resist the singleton’s rise to power, or seek to modify it during its ascendance to ensure that its immense power is guided by ethical principles.

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Patterns Emerging from This Exploration Fortunately, the authors of the chapters in this volume are thinking in big-­ picture, ethical ways about how to nudge gifted education away from its current transactional emphasis and make it more transformational. In their analyses and arguments, they address a number of important topics and issues. They describe (a) the importance of understanding twenty-first-century trends and issues, (b) how gifted education is stuck in a mode of operation that emphasizes transactional giftedness, (c) the need to go beyond superficial, narrow measures for the identification of gifted individuals, (d) how curriculum and instruction might be modified to help facilitate a shift toward transformational giftedness, and (e) the importance of recognizing and benefiting from various forms of diversity. These topics and issues are addressed in the following sections.

 he Need to Recognize and Understand T Twenty-First-­Century Contextual Pressures Many of our authors feel the need to reinforce the importance of big-picture vision within and beyond gifted education. They recognize that highly intelligent, creative young people can do the right thing only if they understand the nature and dynamics of the situations in which they find themselves. That is especially the case when those situations are twenty-first-century macroproblems, which are so powerful and complex that they can be solved only through international, interdisciplinary collaboration (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016a, 2016b). Here are a few examples of these insights from this volume. Robert J Sternberg framed this book project by arguing that the complexities of the twenty-first-century context require the transition from transactional to transformational giftedness. Don Ambrose used interdisciplinary exploration to clarify the nature of twenty-first-century problems that have become barriers to the development of transformational giftedness. These barriers pressure most gifted individuals to become more transactional. Ron Beghetto and Vlad Glăveanu argued that gifted education has to focus more on teaching ethical visions of the future. David Yun Dai illustrated how gifted education needs a major paradigm shift to align itself with twenty-first-century demands. Susan Jackson said we are in unprecedented times that are enabling us to more clearly understand the nature of the mind and extraordinary human development in complex conditions. This is a promising opportunity for the field.

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Lori Lutz showed how the Roeper School in Michigan was designed to encourage the development of individual abilities along with the tendency to engage in morally positive actions. Consequently, the school can serve as an exemplar for professionals in gifted education who want to make their systems more transformational and less transactional. Renu Singh explored the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change and the effects these problems are having on the minds and motivations of the gifted. Kirsi Tirri argued that an emphasis on moral-ethical development in education always has been important but it’s even more so in today’s turbulent world. Yong Zhao, James Basham, and Jason Travers explained how and why education no longer fits the twenty-first-century context and must shift away from treating human diversity as a problem to be overcome. Instead, they argued that diversity is a societal strength that needs to be embraced so we have a better chance to adapt to twenty-first-century conditions. Aakash Chowkase and Sujala Watve emphasized the fact that those living in the twenty-first-century are finding their lives interconnected around the world, and this integration has both positive and negative effects. All other authors in the volume also addressed twenty-first-century pressures on the gifted, and on gifted education, in various ways. These varied insights from our contributors are important because they are building the panoramic-scanning capacities necessary for accurate, useful perception of the complex situation we find ourselves in during these difficult times. Panoramic scanning is the ability to think both long term and broad scope (Ambrose, 1996, 2009). This scanning ability should help professionals in the field perceive and address the problems and opportunities that are explored in the next sections of this chapter.

Current Gifted Education Is Stuck in Transactional Mud In order to make a substantial change, any organization, including a professional field, must recognize where it is so it can determine where it needs to go. Many of the authors in this volume describe how gifted education is mired in an old, historical framework that emphasizes and encourages transactional giftedness. As such, the field of giftedness has had difficulty extricating itself from transactional mud so it can shift into gear and head toward more promising, transformational conceptual territory. Here are some examples of insights our authors have drawn about this situation. Jennifer Riedl Cross and Tracy Cross argued that gifted education has been locked into a transactional mode based largely on elitist identification

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processes. The accountability systems that have been imposed on education force the system to be more transactional. Professionals need to emphasize intrinsic motivation and autonomy for both students and teachers so the system can break free from the dogmatism of measurement-driven processes. Sareh Karami and Mehdi Ghahremani explored the limitations of standardized testing and the narrow band of skills it emphasizes. They recommended more attention to cultural context in conceptions of giftedness while illustrating the structure and benefits of an Iranian model for gifted education that represents one of these contexts. Ophélie Desmet also discussed the problems that arise from narrowminded identification processes. Robert J Sternberg showed how the field can extract itself from the mud by clarifying the ways in which transformational giftedness differs from transactional giftedness. He explored the structure, dynamics, and limitations of current gifted education practices while specifying how they could change to make education more transformational. Joachim Funke described how the current conception of intelligence that is used for identification of the gifted is flawed because it lacks an ethical dimension. Marcia Gentry also focused on identification processes and the overemphasis on deciding who should be labeled gifted and who should not. She argued that identification processes of the future should facilitate the development of transformational giftedness for the improvement of the world. Andres Parra Martinez and Alena Treat showed that more recognition of the needs and abilities of gifted LGBTQ + individuals will enable them to be seen as leaders who can help the field become more effective in terms of producing inclusion and recognition of the rights of all. Aakash Chowkase and Sujala Watve described how the field has been too individualistic and needs to help gifted young people become more attentive to the needs of others. Renu Singh and Bharath Sriraman encouraged us to look beyond our field so we can perceive the ways in which our highly unequal society is driven by materialism, which pushes gifted individuals toward transactional processes and away from altruism. The factory model of schooling, which emerged from materialistic societies, needs to be revised. Dowon Choi and James Kaufman provided a summary of past and current conceptions of gifted education and the ways in which it has been transactional in nature. They also showed how transactional and transformational giftedness might work together to good effect. Overall, these insights should help leaders in the field think more about the need for a shift to transformational giftedness and how that shift might be accomplished. It will help build the awareness and motivation needed for modifying the perceptions of giftedness that have dominated the minds of educators, policymakers, and many students over the years.

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Emphasize the Whole Child If the field is going to accomplish a shift from transactional to transformational giftedness, we will need to go beyond the somewhat narrow intellectual capacities that are emphasized in most gifted programs and consider other dimensions of gifted individuals. Metaphorically speaking, we can think about human abilities as fitting on a spectrum of human capacities inspired by the electromagnetic spectrum, which places energy along an electromagnetic frequency continuum (Ambrose & Ambrose, 2013). Visible light is in the middle of the continuum and other forms of energy are on what we conceive of as the periphery. In this metaphorical model, easily measured abilities such as verbal-symbolic processes are in the middle because they are made “visible” by standardized testing processes. But very important abilities are less detectable through standardized measurement, and are not emphasized much in education, so they show up on the periphery of the model. These include a wide array of abilities, such as visual-metaphorical thought processes Albert Einstein used to develop the theories of relativity, the aesthetic appreciation that resides at the core of important discoveries in STEM fields, wisdom and empathy, and a host of other capacities that can expand our vision of what gifted individuals can become. Fortunately, there have been scholars in the field of gifted education who have been pushing our vision outward on this spectrum by emphasizing the whole child instead of just what’s measurable through standardized means. Some of our authors in this volume connect the whole child with transformational giftedness. For example, Amanda Harper discussed behaviors and characteristics of wise individuals and then connected them with Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. She showed how knowledge of self-­ regulation, altruism, openness and tolerance, sound judgment, and creative thinking connect to wisdom and will enable the field to navigate toward transformational giftedness. Susan Jackson showed how emerging knowledge about the nature and needs of the profoundly gifted can produce a deep and broad conception of ability that integrates the body, mind, spirit, and psyche of brilliant individuals. These elements taken together represent the abilities of the whole child, as opposed to a narrow band of skills.

Modify Curriculum and Instruction Making decisions about what to teach and how to teach it is where the rubber meets the road in gifted education. Most of our authors paid close attention

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to the changes needed in curriculum and instruction that will enable the field to become more transformational and less transactional. Lori Lutz analyzed interviews with alumni from the Roeper School in Michigan, revealing how the goal of individual self-actualization doesn’t have to be transactional. Instead, the self-actualization developed at the school creates well-informed, compassionate, ethical citizens. This is because the founders of the school, George and Annemarie Roeper, were thinking in transformational ways decades ago in recognition of the fact that giftedness could become a tool for a good or evil. Sally Reis and Joe Renzulli illustrated how the strength-based teaching strategies provided by their Schoolwide Enrichment Model generate service work that helps others. Their programs encourage the emergence of courage, optimism, passion, empathy, and a sense of capability necessary to make important changes in the world. Ron Beghetto and Vlad Glăveanu developed ways to help school systems shift from transactional to transformational processes by injecting more creativity into curriculum and instruction while saturating that creativity with ethics, nuanced judgment, and long-range vision. David Yun Dai showed how education can be driven by dynamic processes that produce person-environment interactions. Character building, encouraging a sense of moral responsibility, and tying ethics into the discovery and development of children’s interests are part of this transformational giftedness instructional puzzle. Rena Subotnik, Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, and Frank Worrell promoted an emphasis on talent development for two important purposes—turning potential into ability and expertise while guiding that expertise toward the discovery and solution of problems in the world. They also recommended that talent-development programs include the teaching of ethical implications of creative work. Kirsi Tirri recommended that purposeful collaborative problem solving and ethical sensitivity become important elements of a moral education for the twenty-first century. She showed how education in Finland already benefits from a blending of excellence and ethics, with a special emphasis on egalitarianism and the growth of the whole child. Aakash Chowkase and Sujala Watve advocated for the strengthening of concern for the needs and wants of others, and the motivation of students to make prosocial contributions. Ophélie Desmet recommended educational reform that leads to holistic talent development, which will include dynamic assessment to identify potential, affective support, and ethical service learning. Linda Elder invoked prominent philosophers in her argument that school systems need to emphasize fair-minded critical thinking that considers the wants, needs, and rights of others, along with the goal of creating ethical societies. Also emphasizing critical thinking, Joachim Funke pointed out that enabling bright young people to perceive and contribute to

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the solution of complex problems requires us to help them understand the structure and dynamics of those problems. Consequently, they need the ability to construct mental models of abstract systems for use in complex practical work. Contrary to assumptions in the general public that teaching isn’t a very complex profession, curriculum and instruction are immensely complex. Those who explore these aspects of education can do impressive creative work that can benefit students and the world. This is especially the case when creatively intelligent professionals guide their innovative work with the ethical awareness necessary for pushing education toward transformational giftedness.

 he Importance of Recognizing and Capitalizing T on Diversity Homogeneity in thought processes can cause damage in academia and in the world. For example, some academic disciplines are trapped in a unified, insular, firmly policed pattern that forces professionals to swear allegiance to a dominant theory and avoid contamination from ideas that cross their borders. This generates harmful dogmatism that can stall progress while causing harm to millions of lives, as in the case of neoclassical economics (see Ambrose, 2012a, 2012b; Bender & Schorske, 1997). Another form of harmful homogeneity comes from the ideological dogmatism that produces extremist populism and polarization in societies (Morson & Schapiro, 2021). For these reasons, recognizing the value of diversity is very important when it comes to the goal of creating a better world through transformational giftedness. Some of the authors in this volume illustrated ways that diversity aligns well with ethics. For example, Renu Singh and Bharath Siraman, Marica Gentry, and Don Ambrose showed how socioeconomic deprivation creates a form of diversity that hides impressive capacities under the assumption that those at the bottom of the economic ladder don’t have much ability. In reality, there are substantial numbers of gifted individuals in deprived populations who could reveal and strengthen their impressive abilities under the right circumstances. If gifted education would give them more of a chance, that would be an indicator that the field itself is becoming more transformationally gifted instead of transactional. The talent development for all recommended by Jennifer Riedl Cross and Tracy Cross is one way that the field can push in this direction. Other forms of diversity also are highlighted in the volume. Aakash Chowkase and Sujala Watve highlighted the indigenous Indian value of trusteeship. More attention to indigenous values would enable

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educators and students to incorporate indigenous ways of knowing, connecting, leading, and improving life through the development of character, compassion, courage, respectful humility, and generosity. Andres Parra-Martinez and Alena Treat showcased another form of diversity by illustrating how gifted LGBTQ + students face discrimination, bullying, and violence. They point out that these individuals could help with the movement toward transformational giftedness because they understand the need for more ethical awareness and societal transformation for the greater good. Yong Zhao, James Basham, and Jason Travers describe how learner diversity and the variability of talents within individuals often have been perceived as problems when it comes to teaching and learning but with the magnification of technological innovation in the twenty-first-century, those with diverse talents represent strong societal assets when it comes to ethical problem solving in the twenty-first-century. All of these various dimensions of diversity fit very well with discoveries about the importance of cognitive diversity in complex problem solving. This research is described elsewhere in the volume but a very brief summary can be helpful here. Economist and complexity theorist Scott Page (2007, 2010, 2017) reported on research into team problem solving in various organizations, which showed that diverse teams consistently outperform homogenous teams in complex problem-solving situations. When we connect this research pertaining to cognitive diversity with the diversity explored by the authors in this volume, the importance of attending to, and employing the benefits of, learner diversity becomes even more important in our quest to make gifted education less transactional and more transformational.

 he Obstacles to a Transition from Merely T Transactional to Transformational Giftedness Given all the advantages of an emphasis on the development of transformational giftedness, one might well ask why schools are not already doing it! What are the obstacles? What are the ways around these obstacles? We cannot list all of them but consider a few. • Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist, or worldview under which people operate, often is hardly known to them at all. It is at the level of presuppositions, things such as that children should go to college, if at all possible, to enhance their future possibilities, and those who should be admitted to the best colleges are the ones who have shown their abilities by doing well in school and on

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standardized tests. Although we who have questioned standardized testing have been hounding schools for years, it really was not until the advent of the COVID-19 that large numbers of colleges and universities began to question their almost automatic reliance on standardized tests. People cannot change what they simply accept as a given. The Zeitgeist in gifted education has been to use IQ proxy tests, school achievement, and sometimes some other measures, such as teacher recommendations, for admission to programs. A few more innovative programs have gone beyond these measures. But often they did not because it never even occurred to them to question what they were doing. • Entrenchment. In some instances, schools were aware of their presuppositions, but simply were entrenched. They did not want to make the effort to change. Lewis Terman (1916, 1925) set a precedent in terms of how the gifted would be identified and, to some extent, developed, which many educators adopted and since have had trouble moving beyond (Sternberg et al., 2021). Once educational systems are in place, it has proven to be very difficult to change them, even when educators are fully aware that they are suboptimal. • Preservation of the existing socioeconomic order. Despite widespread use of testing in the United States, at all levels of schooling, socioeconomic mobility is low. From 1940 to 1980, the chances of one’s out-earning one’s parents, adjusted for cost-of-living, have, in general, been declining (Lu, 2020). Put another way, upward social mobility is on the decline across generations (Connor & Storper, 2020). More generally, people are getting stuck in their economic circumstances (Milanovic, 2021). Those who are transactionally gifted in ways that match the reward system of the past are tending to do well in the present, at least in the United States. • Emphasis on Societally-Sanctioned Individualistic and Transactional Criteria of Success. The criteria of success for programs for the gifted tend to emphasize societally-sanctioned individualistic criteria that have been around for very long periods of time—grades in school, scores on tests, admission to prestigious colleges and universities, prestige of jobs, ratings of individual job performance, financial success. These criteria have in common that they are individualistic rather than collective and transactional rather than transformational. But many of the problems the world faces today require collective action and transformational ideas (Sternberg, 2021). Problems of air and water pollution, global climate change, pandemics, and income disparities are not going to be solved by individuals, and they are not going to be solved by doing the same things that have not been working for the past several decades. So, educators, more or less, rig

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their assessments of predictive validity to measure what it is that the tests measure, but not necessarily what society and humanity need at this point (Sternberg, in press). • Financial and Resource Investments. Schools already have invested money and training resources in whatever they do, if anything, for gifted education. Gifted-education instructors have invested in educating themselves in contemporary ways of doing things. Teachers hardly have time to do what they absolutely must do, much less, to learn entirely new ways of doing things. Schools, especially in the times of COVID-19, do not have resources to invest in what might seem to them like peripheral enterprises. So gifted education, always the first to go, either stays as it is or, perhaps as likely, disappears altogether. In sum, schools have often continued what they are doing because, in terms of what they were looking for, their identification and instructional procedures “worked.” They became entrenched and became what Sternberg (2000) referred to as “rusted iron schools.” They knew what they were doing was much less than a total success, but they were (a) not able to change, (b) not willing to change, (c) not willing even to appear to change, and (d) lacking self-efficacy for change, that is, lacking in belief in their modifiability. To move beyond these procedures, schools need to become learning organizations, or what Sternberg (2000) has referred to as “diamond-in-the-rough” schools. They have to be (a) able to change (e.g., not held back by school boards or possibly unions), (b) willing to change, (c) willing to appear to change, and (d) have the belief that they can change—a belief in their own self-efficacy. When schools want to be better and garner the resources and support to be better, they will be able to change from an emphasis on transaction to one on transformation. A lot of this ability to change will depend on school leadership. Often, those promoted to positions of authority are themselves transactional leaders (Bass, 1998, 2002; Bass & Avolio, 1994). These are leaders who are selected precisely because they will maintain the status quo. They are also exactly the leaders who will fail to bring about the transformational changes, and the emphasis on transformation, that education and indeed, the world, needs today.

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Concluding Thoughts The contributors to this volume have identified a large number of reasons for a transition from transactional giftedness to transformational giftedness. Their recommendations for ethical innovations in the field align well with arguments how about the need for more wisdom in gifted education, and in the world in general (see Sternberg, 2017, 2020a, 2020b; Sternberg & Karami, 2021). Transformational giftedness provides an explicit link between giftedness and wisdom that has been needed in the field of identification and development of the gifted. Several investigators have proposed theories of wisdom particularly as those theories pertain to the gifted (e.g., Ambrose, 2019; Karami et al., 2020, Karami & Parra-Martinez, 2021; Sternberg, 2017, 2019; Sternberg & Karami, 2021; Tirri, 2011). These theories are more relevant today than ever before. Intelligence is integral to both transactional and transformational giftedness. But wisdom seems—at least in current times—to play little role in transactional giftedness. Transactionally gifted individuals are identified, for the most part, for high levels of traditional cognitive abilities, as measured by IQ tests and their proxies. The problem is that we end up with leaders who are intelligent, in a traditional sense, but who are unwise and, regrettably often, foolish (Aczel, 2019; Sternberg, 2005). This is the problem with the transactional approach to giftedness—the pushing up of young people through the societal pyramid who will be spectacularly unqualified for the jobs for which they are allegedly but not truly prepared. They will be gifted, but not in the sense humanity needs to preserve itself and ultimately, to thrive. We find ourselves in a paradoxical situation in which identifying future leaders for their transactional abilities may produce worse, not better leaders—leaders who are smart in a traditional sense, but who use their intelligence for their own benefit and for the benefit of those whom they perceive as like themselves. They are unwise and lack a transformational orientation. The diffusion around the world of tribalism and narcissistic leaders may stem, in part, from an individualistic, transactional approach to identification and education of the gifted. This approach produces leaders who are excellent at providing benefits, but primarily to themselves. Worse, especially when times are trying, people look to leaders for “what’s in it for them”? What do they have to gain, at least in the short term, by following a particular leader? So, they choose and follow leaders who appeal to their transactional instincts. The result, often, is that often, people freely elect

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pandering populists who are future autocrats, only to find later that they cannot get rid of the leaders once they have elected them. Why would people purposely choose bad leaders? Jean Lipman-Blumen (2006) has considered precisely this issue in her work on toxic leaders. The leaders are alluring because they are paragons of transactionality. Really, is there a more transactional leader in US history than Donald Trump? Trump did not even try to hide his transactionality. He discovered that people often admire potential leaders who are “in it” for themselves, because that is how they also would like to be. They would like to gain the resources they believe the leaders have amassed for themselves. The problem is that the people then get what they voted for. Someone whose transactionality transfers into his leadership—someone who looks out first and always for “#1.” If schools keep emphasizing transactional giftedness, humanity will have a dim future because its leaders will be ones for whom positive transformation is an alien concept, ones for which they, in their transactionality, may disdain. We need to educate educators to identify and value transformationally gifted students, so that it becomes those students, and not just the transactionally gifted students, who will become the transformational leaders of tomorrow. Fortunately, the authors who worked on this project give us hope for the future because their intriguing insights have the potential to elevate the vision of scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students in the field of gifted education. The need for this elevated vision has never been more pressing.

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Ambrose, D. (2019). Giftedness and wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Glück (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of wisdom (pp. 465–482). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108568272.022 Ambrose, D., & Ambrose, V. K. (2013). Adult lost prizes missing aspirations, a 21st-­ century education, and self-fulfillment. International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, 1(1), 75–86. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016a). Creative intelligence in the 21st century: Grappling with enormous problems and huge opportunities. Sense Publishers. Ambrose, D., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2016b). Giftedness and talent in the 21st century: Adapting to the turbulence of globalization. Sense Publishers. Bass, B. M. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industrial, military, and educational impact. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bass, B. M. (2002). Cognitive, social, and emotional intelligence of transformational leaders. In R. E. Riggio, S. E. Murphy, & F. J. Pirozzolo (Eds.), Multiple intelligences and leadership (pp. 105–118). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (Eds.). (1994). Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership. Sage. Bender, T., & Schorske, C. E. (Eds.). (1997). American academic culture in transformation: Fifty years, four disciplines. Princeton University Press. Bostrom, N. (2006). What is a singleton? Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 5(2), 48–54. Bostrom, N. (2016). Superintelligence. Oxford University Press. Connor, D. S., & Storper, M. (2020). The changing geography of social mobility in the United States. PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30309 Karami, S., & Parra-Martinez, F. (2021). Foolishness of COVID-19: Applying the polyhedron model of wisdom to understand behaviors in a time of crisis. Roeper Review, 43(1), 42–52. Karami, S., Ghahremani, M., Parra-Martinez, F., & Gentry, M. (2020). A polyhedron model of wisdom: A systematic review of the wisdom studies in three different disciplines. Roeper Review, 42(4), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/0278319 3.2020.1815263 Lipman-Blumen, J. (2006). The allure of toxic leaders: Why we follow destructive bosses and corrupt politicians—And how we can survive them. Oxford University Press. Lu, M. (2020, September 2). Is the American dream over? Here’s what the data says. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/ social-­mobility-­upwards-­decline-­usa-­us-­america-­economics/ Milanovic, B. (2021, January 8). What happened to social mobility in America? A new aristocracy has a lock on capital and jobs. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2021-­0 1-­0 8/what-­h appened-­s ocial­mobility-­america Morson, G. S., & Schapiro, M. (2021). Minds wide shut: How the new fundamentalisms divide us. Princeton University Press.

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Index1

A

Adaptive intelligence, 135, 139, 361–364 Affective support, 132, 136–137, 433 American Indian, 182, 183, 188 Autonomy-supportive instruction, 98 B

Beautiful risks, 23–39 Belief in self, 313, 329 C

Classics, 148, 165–167, 165n7, 169 Cognitive diversity, 14, 15, 275, 435 Commitment, 30, 35, 36, 62, 64, 67–69, 71, 72, 94, 95, 98, 99, 108, 157, 158, 230–232, 258, 270, 280, 304, 314, 317, 318, 320, 322, 350

Competence, 62, 64, 67–69, 71, 72, 95, 99, 111, 171, 173, 178, 230, 375, 388 Complex problem solving, 116, 435 Concern for others, 62, 64, 67, 69–79, 293 Creative experiences, 27, 38 Creative learning, 25–27, 30, 35, 116 Creative productivity, 66, 107, 114, 115, 314, 318, 321, 322, 328, 330, 373–383 Creativity, 7, 23, 29–31, 47, 50, 54, 69, 99, 107, 114, 115, 122, 131, 135, 139, 187–189, 192–195, 226n1, 240, 242, 243, 253, 258, 277, 290, 294, 302, 304, 313, 314, 317, 318, 320, 324, 328–330, 339, 342, 351, 363–364, 373–377, 381, 388, 389, 411, 412, 433 Critical thinking, 11, 13, 114, 122, 138, 143–169, 239, 281, 322, 351, 364, 411, 433

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. J Sternberg et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3

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444 Index

Finnish education, 388, 389, 392

172, 181–197, 202, 221–222, 225–249, 251, 267–309, 313, 352, 357–366, 373–383, 387–399, 403–419, 427, 430–431 Gifted academy, 338, 340, 343, 352 Gifted and talented education, 65, 119 Gifted education, v–vii, 1, 16, 24, 38, 44, 46, 61–79, 87–93, 96, 100, 107–125, 131–136, 138–140, 143–169, 181–197, 202, 221, 229, 230, 251, 252, 261, 262, 270, 282, 285, 288–291, 295, 297, 302, 306, 308, 316, 319, 339, 346, 374, 375, 377, 387–399, 403–419, 428–432, 434–439 Gifted identification, 44, 125, 134, 139, 184, 186 Gifted LGBTQ+, 287–309, 431, 435 Giftedness, vi, 1–16, 43–54, 62–64, 66, 68–70, 88, 91–99, 108–118, 120, 121, 123–125, 131–140, 155–158, 172, 173, 177, 181–183, 186, 187, 189–194, 197, 201–222, 225–249, 251–262, 269, 272–286, 288–294, 296–309, 313–330, 352, 355–367, 373–375, 377, 387–389, 391–394, 396–399, 403, 404, 408, 413, 415, 419, 427–439 Greater good, 99, 143, 164, 181, 202, 232, 234, 336, 435

G

H

D

Dąbrowski, K., 47, 49, 201–222, 230, 248, 347, 432 Developing giftedness, 181, 272 Dynamic assessment, 132–135, 139, 433 E

Education, v, 1, 24, 37–39, 44, 61–79, 87, 107–125, 131, 132, 143–169, 171, 181–197, 202, 227, 251, 267–287, 315, 335, 374, 387–399, 403–419, 428 Educational design, 48, 139, 273, 418 Elements of reasoning, 151, 152n5, 153–155 Elite education, 120–121, 125 Equity, 120, 181–197, 306, 309, 335–352 Ethical awareness, 9, 13, 14, 434, 435 Ethical development, 149, 269 Ethical minds, 48, 387–399 Ethical sensitivity, 173, 178, 351, 388, 390–392, 395, 397, 398, 433 Ethics, 5, 33, 144, 147, 158, 160, 187, 193, 196, 204, 314, 351, 388–394, 396–399, 433, 434 Excellence and ethics, 388, 389, 399, 433 F

Gender identity, 276, 285, 287–289, 291, 297, 298, 300, 301, 303 General wisdom, 131, 135, 365 Gifted, v, 1, 24, 44, 61–79, 87, 107–125, 131, 132, 143–169,

Hacker work ethic, 389–393, 396–398 Holistic talent development, 137, 433 Humanism, 270 Human rights, 193, 269, 303, 306, 358

 Index  I

Inequality, 5–10, 15, 47, 63, 89, 100, 172, 338 Inequity, 63, 89, 99, 134, 182–188, 307, 360, 366 Information and communication technology, 396, 410 Insider knowledge, 374, 375, 377, 381, 383 Integral Practice for the Gifted™, 225–249 Intellectual standards, 153–156 Intellectual virtues, 144, 145, 149, 150, 155, 157, 158, 160 Interdisciplinary, 14–16, 48, 113, 115, 157, 196, 300, 302, 322, 390, 398, 429 Iranian Hierarchical Wisdom Model (IHWM), 254–261

445

Pedagogies of the possible, 23–39 Perseverance, 68, 76, 158, 313 Polyhedron Model of Wisdom(PMW), 203–206, 217, 222, 257 Positive creativity, 131, 135, 363–364 Positive disintegration, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212–215, 217, 432 Problem-based learning (PBL), 320, 345, 348–352, 395 Profound giftedness, 233, 235 Prosocial behavior, 69, 72, 75, 77–79, 96, 204 Psychopaths, 4–5, 427 Psychosocial, 44, 65, 95, 108, 110, 225, 231, 374 Psychosocial skills, 93–95, 375–377, 382 R

Learner diversity, 435 Learning potential, 132–135, 139 Low-SES, 337, 338, 341, 352

Roeper, Anne Marie, 229, 236, 244, 268–272, 280, 281, 433 Roeper, George, 269 Roeper School, 267–286, 430, 433

M

S

L

Mass deception, 10–11 Missingness, 181–197 Moral education, 150, 387, 389–393, 397, 399, 433 N

Native American, 52, 189 Nuanced judgment, 13, 433 P

Paradigms of gifted education, 62–63, 68, 437 Paul, Richard, 13, 144, 144n1, 145, 150n3, 151–154, 152n5, 156, 157n6, 159, 161, 162

Schoolwide enrichment, 313–317, 320–321, 433 Science of persuasion, 374, 377, 379–380 Self-actualization, 54, 256, 257, 259, 433 Service learning, 131–140, 350, 433 Sexual orientation, 276, 287, 289, 293, 294, 298, 300, 301, 303, 309 Social justice, 15, 139, 181, 187, 272, 352 Socio-emotional learning (SEL), 96, 345, 346, 349, 352 Special education, v, 62, 66, 88, 107, 408, 414, 415, 418, 419

446 Index T

Talent development, 1, 62, 63, 68, 69, 73, 87–100, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 122, 132, 188, 193–196, 299, 304, 314, 316, 329, 330, 337, 373–378, 380, 382, 383, 397, 428, 433, 434 Teacher perspectives, 302 Teamwork, 390, 392–398 3C conception of giftedness, 69 Transactional giftedness, 8, 9, 44–50, 54, 108, 113, 116, 120, 131, 181, 202, 232, 235, 254, 273, 282, 290, 291, 294, 335–340, 356–359, 363, 364, 403, 429–431, 438, 439 Transactional pedagogies, 23, 33 Transformational creativity, 374–376 Transformational giftedness, 1–16, 45–54, 64, 70, 91–99, 108, 109, 111–113, 115–118, 120, 121, 123, 125, 131–140, 172, 177, 178, 181–182, 186, 189, 191, 192, 197, 201–222, 225–249, 254–255, 260–262, 272–286, 288, 289, 291, 292, 296–309, 313–330, 352, 355–367, 377,

387–389, 391–394, 396–399, 403, 404, 419, 427–439 Transformative giftedness, 51 Trusteeship, 64–67, 434 21st-century challenges, 122, 182, 202 21st Century Skills, 122, 411 Type III Enrichment, 196, 316, 319, 322–324, 328 U

Underrepresentation, 183, 187, 193, 195 Universalist morality, 4 Utopia, 2–3, 32, 45, 51–54, 201 V

Vulnerable populations, 338, 340 W

Wisdom, 1, 2, 12, 47, 74, 107, 131, 135, 146, 147, 149, 173, 177, 181, 182, 187, 192, 193, 196, 201–222, 254, 255, 257–259, 339, 365, 388, 432, 438