Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average and can also be called as high intellectual potential. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. These consequences sometimes include stigmatizing and social exclusion. 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 or around the 130 mark. Definitions of giftedness also vary across cultures. The various definitions of intellectual giftedness include either general high ability or specific abilities. For example, by some definitions, an intellectually gifted person may have a striking talent for mathematics without equally strong language skills. In particular, the relationship between artistic ability or musical ability and the high academic ability usually associated with high IQ scores is still being explored, with some authors referring to all of those forms of high ability as "giftedness", while other authors distinguish "giftedness" from "talent". There is still much controversy and much research on the topic of how adult performance unfolds from trait differences in childhood, and what educational and other supports best help the development of adult giftedness.
Identification
Overview The identification of giftedness first emerged after the development of IQ tests for school placement. It has since become an important issue for schools, as the instruction of gifted students often presents special challenges. During the twentieth century, gifted children were often classified via IQ tests; other identification procedures have been proposed but are only used in a minority of cases in most public schools in the English-speaking world. Developing useful identification procedures for students who could benefit from a more challenging school curriculum is an ongoing problem in school administration. Because of the key role that gifted education programs in schools play in the identification of gifted individuals, both children and adults, it is worthwhile to examine how schools define the term "gifted".
Definitions Since Lewis Terman in 1916, psychometricians and psychologists have sometimes equated giftedness with high IQ. Later researchers (e.g., Raymond Cattell, J. P. Guilford, and Louis Leon Thurstone) have argued that intellect cannot be expressed in such a unitary manner, and have suggested more multifaceted approaches to intelligence. Research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s has provided data that supports notions of multiple components to intelligence. This is particularly evident in the reexamination of "giftedness" by Sternberg and Davidson in their collection of articles Conceptions of Giftedness (1986; second edition 2005). The many different conceptions of giftedness presented, although distinct, are interrelated in several ways. Most of the investigators define giftedness in terms of multiple qualities, not all of which are intellectual. IQ scores are often viewed as inadequate measures of giftedness. Motivation, high self-concept, and creativity are key qualities in many of these broadened conceptions of giftedness. Joseph Renzulli's (1978) "three ring" definition of giftedness is one frequently mentioned conceptualization of giftedness. Renzulli's definition, which defines gifted behaviors rather than gifted individuals, is composed of three components as follows: Gifted behavior consists of behaviors that reflect an interaction among three basic clusters of human traits—above average ability, high levels of task commitment, and high levels of creativity. Individuals capable of developing gifted behavior are those possessing or capable of developing this composite set of traits and applying them to any potentially valuable area of human performance. Persons who manifest or are capable of developing an interaction among the three clusters require a wide variety of educational opportunities and services that are not ordinarily provided through regular instructional programs. In Identifying Gifted Children: A Practical Guide, Susan K. Johnsen explains that gifted children all exhibit the potential for high performance in the areas included in the United States' federal definition of gifted and talented students: There is a federal government statutory definition of gifted and talented students in the United States.
The term "gifted and talented" when used in respect to students, children, or youth means students, children, or youth who give evidence of high-performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities." (The Improving America's Schools Act of 1994, P.L. 103–382, Title XIV, p. 388) This definition has been adopted partially or completely by the majority of the individual states in the United States (which have the main responsibility for education policy as compared to the federal government). Most states have a definition similar to that used in the State of Texas:
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