The Cultivation of Psychosocial Skills For High Performance Within Educational Programs

Gifted specialists recognize the importance of psychosocial skills to high achievement but rarely deliberately focus on them in their programming. We present case studies of systematic efforts to cultivate these skills in three different contexts: a K-12 gifted school, selective STEM high school, and community-based program. Participants learn effective ways to incorporate psychosocial skill training into their program models

Specialized Science High Schools: Exploring Contributions of the Model to Adolescent Talent Development Specialized Science

As the field of gifted education shifts much of its focus to domain-specific talent development, specialized science high schools are taking their place on the stage. Back in 1981,Bloom and Sosniak argued persuasively that talent development cannot take place exclusively in schools. They stressed that schools were not prepared to offer the required levels of expert teaching, time, and effort. Yet, specialized science high schools, by design, are staffed with teachers with advanced degrees, offer relatively flexible schedules, interested peers,reasonable access to appropriate technology, and connections with research institutions to provide apprenticeships for the most motivated and interested students

Theoretical Approaches, Societal Issues, and Practical Implications for School-Based and Extracurricular Talent Development: Outcomes of the Inaugural European–North American Summit on Talent Development (Part I)

Gifted Child Quarterly and High Ability Studies collaborated on this pair of special issues resulting from the Inaugural European–North American Summit on Talent Development. The summit, held in Washington, D.C., in April 2016, had two main goals. The summit aimed, first, to increase researchers’ awareness of work on talent development being carried out in different countries by bringing together scholars working in Europe and the United States. The summit’s second aim was to initiate a new format for small, collaborative conferences at which participants present ideas they are working on—in medias res, so to speak—to all the other participants in order to receive feedback before they have completed their research. The event was made possible through the generous financial support of the American Psychological Association, the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, the Center for Talent Development of Northwestern University, and the Academic Talent Development Program at the University of California, Berkeley. The 2-day event consisted of clusters of presentations on eight topics. In each cluster, three researchers (two from American institutions and one from a European institution) presented their work and discussed future directions and possible implementations. Thanks to editors Betsy McCoach, Del Siegle, and Albert Ziegler, all participants were invited to submit articles for publication based on their presentation. The resulting articles on work presented in the first four talent development clusters (theoretical perspectives, societal participation, the context of school, and outside of school) make up the special issue of Gifted Child Quarterly. Articles arising from presentations in the final four talent development clusters (outcomes, psychosocial factors, adaptive and maladaptive learning, and high achievement and performance) comprise the special issue of High Ability Studies

Talent Development in Achievement Domains: A Psychological Framework for Within- and Cross-Domain Research

Achievement in different domains, such as academics, music, or visual arts, plays a central role in all modern societies. Different psychological models aim to describe and explain achievement and its development in different domains. However, there remains a need for a framework that guides empirical research within and across different domains. With the talent-development-in-achievement-domains (TAD) framework, we provide a general talent-development framework applicable to a wide range of achievement domains. The overarching aim of this framework is to support empirical research by focusing on measurable psychological constructs and their meaning at different levels of talent development. Furthermore, the TAD framework can be used for constructing domain-specific talent-development models. With examples for the application of the TAD framework to the domains of mathematics, music, and visual arts, the review provided supports the suitability of the TAD framework for domain-specific model construction and indicates numerous research gaps and open questions that should be addressed in future research

Talent Development Research, Policy, and Practice in Europe and the United States: Outcomes From a Summit of International Researchers

The goal of this article is to convey a summary of research and conversation on talent development on the part of a small group of European and American researchers who participated in the Inaugural American European Research Summit in Washington. In the final hours of the summit, participants discussed the state of research on talent development and giftedness and a way forward that would benefit the field and, most important, children and educators. Collectively we identified four broad themes: (1) expanding our conceptual horizons through increased exposure to international scholars, (2) shifting the paradigm of gifted education toward talent development, (3) promoting key elements of talent development in research and practice, and (4) finding the most effective policy and advocacy strategies to promote talent development

Environmental Factors and Personal Characteristics Interact to Yield High Performance in Domains.

Outstanding human performance continues to intrigue experts and the public; however, the focus is often on the individual performer or producer with scant attention given to the additive part played by circumstances and contexts. Using general theories of development (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1977, 1986, 2005;Sameroff, 2010) and talent development paradigms (e.g., Ziegler, 2005;Dai, 2010;Subotnik et al., 2011), we examined the interaction of environmental and individual factors on trajectories of high performance within and across varied domains. Public and scholarly awareness of the role played by environments places greater responsibility on education and other societal systems to support talents in varied domains, and to promote evidence of talents' malleability and potential for development

Revista de educación

Resumen basado en el de la publicaciónMonográfico con el título: "Alta capacidad y desarrollo del talento : aspectos críticos"Título, resumen y palabras clave en español e inglésSe presenta una definición de altas capacidades y un modelo del proceso de desarrollo del talento basado en la investigación psicológica que pretende ser exhaustivo y aplicable a todos los dominios de la consecución de objetivos. Los principios fundamentales del modelo son que las capacidades específicas de cada dominio son relevantes: los dominios del talento cuentan con trayectorias de desarrollo únicas, las variables psicosociales son factores críticos en el desarrollo exitoso del talento, y la preparación para la eminencia es el resultado al que aspira la educación de personas con altas capacidades. Se delinea y discute sobre cuáles son las principales habilidades psicosociales que los sujetos necesitan adquirir cuando pasan de potencial a competencia, a la pericia y la eminencia, enfatizando que esas habilidades son maleables y pueden ser desarrolladas activa y deliberadamente por profesores, formadores, mentores y padres.ES