Looking Through the Glass of John F. Feldhusen: Beyond General Giftedness: New Ways to Identify and Educate Gifted, Talented, and Precocious Youth.

John Feldhusen is one of the top researchers in gifted children and their education. In this paper, he points out how we can refresh our perception of giftedness beyond the term itself. I will summarize the paper in simple yet compact writing. I hope this writing finds you well, dear readers. 

Gifted Children are born with gifts in a specific domain. However, that gift is not growing independently; it must be watered to flourish fully. This is a common misconception among teachers and parents that gifted children do not need any help to develop. In fact, with the help, they may develop their talent, which is the next step in nurturing gifts in gifted children. John Feldhusen added different theories from researchers on how giftedness can turn into talent. 

The New Direction

There is a wide range of domains when we talk about talent. Here are the four major areas of human talent: cognitive-academic, Artistic, Personal-Social, and Vocational Technical. It is important that parents and educators understand this wide range of talent and do not create any gaps in between. 

Assessment of Talents

When identifying a gifted person, we have to combine scores from tests and rating scales into a general index of giftedness and offer programs and services of a general nature that are appropriate for the gifted. 

De Haan&Kough (1956) developed a checklist and procedures for these talents and included specific and differentiated education activities and curricula for each talent;

• Intellectual

• Scientific

• Leadership

• Creative

• Artistic

• Literary

• Dramatic

• Musical

• Mechanical

• Physical

Tannenbaum (1983) proposed a new framework to approach the giftedness area differently;

• Scarcity Talents. (World-class inventors, discoverers, writers, philosophers).

• Surplus Talents. (Those proposed by writers, artists, and dramatists to improve our lives aesthetically or give new meanings to human experience).

• Quota Talents: (Experts and specialists who provide goods and services for our daily lives, such as teachers, physicians, surgeons, managers, and CEOs).

• Anomalous Talents. (Gourmet cooking, trapeze artistry, game show winners).

To highlight this section, Feldhusen stated that the most important recent influences suggest that we move away from the general conception of giftedness toward the realization of specific human talent. 

Curriculum and Instruction for Talented Youth

As a gifted child grows into youth, their gift is hoped to grow into talent that needs more effort from parents and teachers to deliver or give the program and curriculum that will work. This is not easy, as Clark, Zimmerman, and Haroutounian addressed the difficulty of the artistically talented student assessment form. They wrote that there was a need to add an assessment of performance, long-term and cumulative Judgment in the identification process, and art specialists as evaluators in the process. 

Teachers & Parents as the main aspects of Gifted Child’s Growth

It is important to remember that teachers and parents hold a crucial role in every child’s development. In this matter, teachers of all classes for gifted students, regular classrooms, special education, and counselors need specific training in identifying and nurturing youth talents. Teachers need to be trained so that they will be able to identify and assess using the proper assessment and select and use appropriate curricula and instructional methods. 

On the other hand, parents and siblings are the first community that a child could have. They are the formative social interactions in early childhood when intellectual abilities and social-emotional processes are developing in the child. Besides stimulating a higher verbal competency, family is an interactive emotional system that mimics the real-life social system. The impact of child-parent interactions leads to children’s achievements in their areas of special talent, their self-perception and self-esteem, and long-range career achievements. 

Summary

Every child has one or more very general areas of strengths that are majorly influenced by school, neighborhood, and home. These catalysts help children find their specific talent strengths and emerge as they grow as human beings. Schools should devote more time and attention to identifying and nurturing talent and ensure that the gifted program touches all or nearly all youths in a school, benefiting each other through same-level peer interactions. 

Source: John F. Feldhusen in Rethinking Gifted Education, James Borland, 2003.