Who+are+the+gifted?

=** Who are the gifted? ** =

Gifted and talented students are a very diverse group and who qualifies as gifted will vary from school to school. As such teachers and school administrators need to agree upon a definition of giftedness that suits their school.

The last century has seen a significant shift in how theorists view giftedness in children and subsequently how practitioners should identify it. Read about why traditional models fail below, then learn about modern approaches on the following pages.

==** Traditional models - why they are insufficient ** ==

For much of the 20th century gifted children were solely identified by academic achievement i.e. those who scored within the top 1% on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. But the last 30-40 years of research into gifted education has shown that performance based definitions of giftedness are insufficient. Traditional approaches fail to identify three main groups of gifted children:
 * 1) Students who have not managed to translate their above average ability into above average achievement for a variety of possible @reasons
 * 2) Students whose above average ability is masked by a learning or physical disability, known collectively as Twice Exceptional Students.
 * 3) Traditional approaches only value academic intelligience and generalise performance, masking peaks and troughs due to specific abilities. View alternative intelligences here.

The weaknesses outlined above show why practitioners need to work to a multi – categorical model that allows identification of a range of special abilities and potential abilities