Conceptualizations of Giftedness and the Development of Talent: Implications for Counselors

Definitions of important concepts and constructs associated with fields of inquiry change over time, primarily because of the impact of new research from both inside and outside a field. Gifted education is no exception. In an applied field such as gifted education, practitioners operationalize their beliefs and understandings about giftedness--their definitions--into identification practices, service delivery models, and approaches to classroom instruction. New knowledge about giftedness (e.g., the previously unappreciated and now substantiated malleability of intelligence) and what affects its development can influence decisions about how students are identified; how programs are designed; and, ultimately, the goals and outcomes of gifted education. Most important to counselors are the implications of changing views on giftedness and talent development for understanding gifted students' psychological and social needs. Gifted students face unique stressors in the course of fulfilling their potential, which can be manifested in underachievement in school or other social and psychological problems. In addition, recent research on high performance points to the increasing role of psychosocial strength in achieving one's goals in talent domains (Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011). As a result, important strategies for counselors who work with gifted children include cultivating psychosocial skills thought to be important to sustaining commitment to high achievement, facilitating an identity that integrates the talent area, and mitigating vulnerabilities or risk factors. In this article, we present a brief historical perspective on conceptions of giftedness, highlighting the transformative impact of several key research studies on beliefs about giftedness and gifted individuals. We review and contrast several current conceptual models to show the progression and evolution of thinking about giftedness, specifically from viewing it as an attribute that is solely cognitive in nature and resides within an individual to seeing giftedness as a complex constellation of both cognitive and noncognitive factors that change in importance over time and are situated within and affected by environment and opportunity. We propose a comprehensive model that builds upon and integrates previous models and educational and psychological research to account for talent development in both academic and performance domains. Finally, we present implications of our model for the work of counselors and their training, specifically which psychosocial issues and skills should be the focus of counseling at each stage of the talent development process. A Brief Historical Perspective on Conceptions of Giftedness Gifted education is founded on theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, but like all fields, significant shifts in thinking about giftedness have occurred as a result of key research findings (see Passow & Frasier, 1996, for a more complete history of gifted education). Although there was scholarship on gifted individuals even before Lewis Terman's (1925) Genetic Studies of Genius, Terman is often credited with inaugurating a conception of giftedness defined by high IQ. Terman and his colleagues (Terman, 1925; Terman & Oden, 1947, 1959) followed a group of individuals identified as having IQs above 140 (top 1%) well into their adulthood. Among the notable findings of their longitudinal study is the validation of a link between high IQ and high achievement in adulthood, but not necessarily to the level of eminence. Another major contribution of Terman's (1925; Terman & Oden, 1947, 1959) studies was to normalize giftedness, dispelling myths that gifted children are psychologically or physically weak or vulnerable. The conceptualization of giftedness as consonant with high general intelligence continued with the subsequent research of Catharine Cox, whose retrospective studies showed that behavioral manifestations of high IQ were observable in childhood (Cox, 1926), and Leta Hollingworth, who conducted the first in-depth study of children with very high IQ scores (i. …