Reconciling Contemporary Gifted Education with Its Foundations

Abstract

Gifted education in the 21st century is in a state of tension regarding its past. Many early pioneers of the field held scientific and social views that are out of step with modern theory in gifted education. Yet, many of these people's work is foundational to gifted education practice in the 21st century schools. Viewpoints of how to navigate this past while maintaining allegiance to modern theory include disowning that past, ignoring it, and building upon it. In this paper, we explore (a) the emergence of gifted education as a field, (b) the early history of gifted education and how it impacts the field today, and (c) suggestions for navigating the tension between the past and the present in gifted education. Though gifted education is over one hundred years old, its early history is still relevant and provides theoretical and practical insights in the form of groundbreaking research, theoretical insights, and cautionary tales.Many areas of applied psychology are the result of scientific attempts to solve a social problem. Drawing on the successes of the applied physical and biological sciences in addressing the concerns of society, applied psychology has the goal of using scientific methods and knowledge about human psychology to better manage social problems, reduce the frequency of unfavorable social outcomes for people, and improve the functioning of individuals. Some areas of applied psychology have seen great success in achieving practitioners' social goals, such as the use of applied behavior analysis, which is an outgrowth of behaviorist psychology. Other fields have been less successful, such as social psychology, which has experienced numerous failed replication attempts in recent years (e.g., Camerer et al., 2018; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), which calls into question whether subtle changes to people's environment can effectively alter human behavior.Gifted education is a field of applied psychology that-like other applied areas-is the product of applying scientific theories, knowledge, and methods to real-world problems. Unlike many areas of psychology, though, education is, by definition, a social enterprise that happens at the individual and group levels. As such, gifted education is bound up within societal contexts and concerns in a way that some other applied psychology fields are not. Consequently, the research, findings, and advances in theory of gifted education cannot be divorced from the social context that they are in some other fields of applied psychology. As society moves away from context in which the original research was conducted, the value of research rooted in past ideals and concerns may come under scrutiny. Yet, science is a cumulative enterprise, and it is not always feasible to distance, in this case, the applied psychology practice of gifted education from RECONCILING GIFTED EDUCATION 4 earlier ideas because current practices will have some grounding in past knowledge-and therefore past contexts. This creates a tension when later generations have ethical and moral st...

Toward an Intersectional Psychological Science of Reproductive Norms: Generating Research Across the Natalism Spectrum

“…However, it is incomplete and inaccurate to paint Hollingworth’s contributions as supportive of reproductive autonomy. Hollingworth also endorsed support for the eugenics movement (Jolly & Warne, 2019; Warne, 2020), arguing that “the prevention of mental deficiency in the population can be accomplished only by preventing defective persons from procreating” (L. D. Hollingworth, 1920, p. 236). Thus, Hollingworth was critical of the oppressive pronatalist norms she was experiencing as a highly educated, privileged White woman and simultaneously endorsed an extreme form of antinatalism in her support for practices that would limit procreation to prevent “mental deficiency,” which was one term among others (e.g., feeble-mindedness, intellectual disability) used by eugenicists to promote deeply racist, classist, and anti-immigrant agendas (Baynton, 2016; Ilyes, 2020).…”

Lewis Terman in Context: An Analysis of Citations of Genetic Studies of Genius Inside and Outside the Field of Gifted Education

“…A common theme across these citations was the historical significance of Terman’s work within the field. This is not surprising, as Terman’s work is consistently seen as foundational work within the field of gifted education (Jolly & Warne, 2019).…”

“…They have questioned his overemphasis on IQ as an indicator of giftedness despite potential instability of IQ (Ziegler et al, 2012), claims about the ability of IQ to predict future achievement that may have been exaggerated (Dai, 2018), and support for a “meritocracy that undervalued non-Whites, women, and low-income individuals” (Warne, 2019, p. 4). His work is further shadowed by his early involvement with and promotion of the eugenics movement (Fallace, 2016; Jolly & Warne, 2019; Warne, 2019), although as he became older and Terman’s support for eugenics lessened (Warne, 2019). On the contrary, various scholars have provided evidence for the empirical robustness of intelligence research in the heritability of IQ or general intelligence (Plomin et al, 2016; Polderman et al, 2015); its ability to predict various positive life outcomes, including occupational, academic, health, and socioeconomic (Brown et al, 2020; Lubinski & Benbow, 2021; Strenze, 2007); and its long-term stability (Deary, 2014; Deary et al, 2013) even from infancy (Yu et al, 2018).…”

“…Despite 95 years since the publication of Terman’s initial volume, his work continues to be cited by contemporary scholars in gifted education (T. L. Cross & Cross, 2021; Dai, 2020; Jolly & Warne, 2019; Warne, 2019; Warne et al, 2019; Warne & Liu, 2017; Zeidner, 2020).…”