Gifted Education International

Career counselling theories have traditionally been concerned with optimizing the fit between an individual and his or her environment — e.g. the trait and factor theory and the matching of environmental and personality characteristics — as the relational aspect of career theory. However, it is equally important to recognize the environment that any person knows and with which he or she interacts as he or she continually makes and remakes (shapes) his or her career and or world.

Executing job analysis is a problem-solving way of furthering career counselling. In this way, clients are encouraged to take a more active role in the counselling process. When students utilize job analysis concerning specific careers, they become aware of the specific requirements of a certain career and they are also able to compare their own personal profile to the profile of the career. By means of these mentioned factors, career counselling is conducted and presented in a more scientific way; in this way pupils are also integrated into the work situation according to the personal as well as the work requirements. Utilisation of this strategy in career counselling may potentially contribute significantly towards optimising the ‘fit’ or ‘match’ between youths' personal potential and their prospective careers. It is rather deplorable that more career counsellors do not take the trouble to guide youths towards the construction of meaning and getting motivated to excel. This paper is concluded with a case study, exemplifying the potential meaning of job analysis in administering career counselling to gifted students.

Perfectionism is the least appreciated facet of giftedness. It is usally perceived as a sign of emotional disturbance that needs to be cured. Yet it is an inevitable part of the experience of being gifted for several reasons; (1) it is an abstract concept accessible to those who are high in abstract reasoning; (2) it is a function of asynchronous development — gifted children set standards according to their mental rather than physical age; (3) they also set standards appropriate for their older friends; (4) with greater capacity for forethought, gifted children are more often successful and come to expect success; (5) when school work is easy, the only challenge is to accomplish it perfectly; and (6) it is a distortion of the desire for self-perfection, a positive evolutionary drive. Perfectionism needs to be appreciated as a two-edged sword that has the potential for propelling an individual toward unparalleled greatness or plummeting one into despair. The secret to harnessing its energy is learning how to set priorities. Hints for coping with perfectionism in oneself and in gifted children are provided.

This essay offers an overview of research that recently changed the concepts of intelligence and giftedness. First, it considers the importance of the brain, its organization and functions. Second, it examines different theories about intelligence and the possibility of boosting it. Third, it considers the changes that occur in the human brain structure as a consequence of the interaction between the genetic traits of individuals and the challenges which they experience as they are raised. My objective is to point out that there is a scientific basis for educators to trigger decisive changes both in the behavior of students and in their biological structure by offering opportunities that are likely to increase their potential.

This article reports part of a piece of research carried out with teachers during professional development days. It looks at four of the commonest approaches to differentiation. It suggests that teachers have too little guidance from official sources about differentiation for more able, and other students, and that advice is often lacking in context. We suggest that, in practice, teachers contribute professional wisdom to illuminate their application of differentiation to classroom tasks, and that they are more subtle in their approach to methods of differentiation than is suggested in the literature.

The literature in gifted education emphasises the importance of early identification and nurturance of children's gifts. However, the means for ready identification of children in early childhood, other than formal testing, have not always been as clearly developed. The problem of identification is exacerbated when the children are from culturally diverse groups and their first language is not that of the school's. Such groups include children from non-English-speaking backgrounds, Aboriginal children and economically disadvantaged children. This paper suggests the ways in which teachers can structure their classrooms, provide a range of challenging activities and develop their observational skills in order to identify the intellectual strengths of their students, particularly through the use of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory as a framework for recognising children's intellectual strengths.

This article describes the development of an undergraduate training course in gifted education at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. The course objectives were to acquaint students with the needs of gifted children; to help students to analyze critically the current practices in the education of the gifted in Brazil; and to train psychologists to plan and implement a creative training program for gifted students in public elementary and middle schools. An evaluation of this training course is provided. The importance of establishing a partnership between public schools and the university is discussed as well.

Creativity can be distinguished either as “creativity from special talent” or as “self-fulfilment.”

Inspiration is that short-span of thinking that flits through one's mind when one is at the peak of scientific or artistic creation.

Creativity and inspiration are mutually dependent, both based on extensive knowledge and skills which are conducive to linking of knowledge, forming new points of view, resulting in a leap in knowledge.

The role of inspiration lies in the fact that it serves as an invisible bridge between logical thinking and thinking in terms of images, by way of the process from (he image to the abstract, and then again from the abstract to the image instantaneously forming the creative thinking that brings out creativity.

Radford House, in Johannesburg, South Africa, was established in January 1996. Starting the first primary school for gifted children (ages 5–12) in the country has been a process of learning for everybody concerned: the children, teachers, parents and administrators. This article briefly outlines the rationale for founding a school in & country that labels giftedness as “elitist” and discusses the following discoveries:

confusion regarding definitions and identification

Analysis of these aspects reveals that the definitions of giftedness remain problematic in terms of identifying potential ability versus manifested high, ability. A further issue is the development of unique teaching strategies and skills which stretch conventionally trained teachers to their creative limits. The first year is indeed a year of discovery with problems and joys cropping up in unexpected quarters.