Introduction to the Special Section: Counseling the Gifted Individual

Regardless of setting or venue, all counselors at some point in their careers will encounter a gifted student or gifted adult. There has been and continues to be a need in gifted education for trained counselors. However, when issues of counseling related to gifted individuals appear in the literature, they are mostly in gifted education journals, which do not circulate to the very counselors who will be providing services. There have been some exceptions. In 1986, the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD) produced a special issue on addressing the needs of the gifted and talented. Guest editors Barbara A. Kerr and Juliet Miller called this population "one of our most neglected populations" (p. 547). So what has happened since 1986? Only 11 articles have appeared in JCD since then that have focused on gifted and talented, high-ability, or creative individuals--approximately one article every 2.5 years. These articles did not present a coherent picture of how counseling the gifted was evolving. Since the initial special issue in JCD, there has been considerable research done around gifted students and gifted adults on a variety of different dimensions. From these studies, there have been numerous practical applications developed to work with gifted individuals, including counseling applications. However, little of this research or the applications have reached professional counselors or counselor educators. Our purpose in this special section, 29 years later, is threefold: (a) to inform counselors about the unique needs and development of gifted individuals based on current research; (b) to provide suggestions for best practices in counseling this population in a wide range of settings (schools, agencies, etc.); and (c) to raise awareness about the lack of training in counselor education programs, which results in a lack of trained counseling practitioners and researchers in the field of counselor education. There are seven questions that provide the structure to this special section: 1. Can we identify individuals as gifted? 2. Do gifted individuals have unique characteristics, traits, or developmental needs that require differentiated approaches to counseling? 3. If so, do we have the evidence for programming and intervention for their intellectual and creative needs, including counseling? 4. What are the roles of gender, culture, disability, and poverty in the counseling needs of gifted individuals? 5. Do counselors need specific knowledge or skills to be more effective in counseling gifted individuals in their specific settings or in their area of expertise? 6. If so, how can counselors practicing in a variety of settings gain this specific knowledge and skill set through their preparation program or professional development? 7. Does it matter whether counselors meet the needs of gifted clients? This special section addresses how historically counseling has played a vital role in the education and service of gifted individuals and provides an updated overview of current conceptualizations of giftedness and talent development. Contributing authors focus on different aspects of gifted individuals' unique traits and experience, and in so doing answer one or more of the above-mentioned questions. First, the guest editors present an overview of the history of counseling the gifted, emphasizing how both fields can collaborate in service, research, and training to better understand and meet the counseling needs of the gifted population. Then, Olszewski-Kubilius, Subotnik, and Worrell provide a comprehensive overview of the conceptualizations, definitions, and terminology throughout the evolution of the profession of gifted education and discuss how those conceptualizations influence how talent development is perceived today. Peterson identifies how school counselors can best work with gifted students by taking into account the students' social and emotional development in addition to their academic needs. …