Marie Loe
Identification of Potential and Interventions for Talent Development

Definition of Giftedness

According to Baldwin (2005), giftedness can be found in all cultures and is expressed through a variety of behaviours. Parents and teachers should then be equipped with knowledge in giftedness and skills in identification so as to uncover the untapped hidden ability that children may possess. The first step in this process is to adopt a broad view of the concepts of intelligence and giftedness that go beyond high academic performance and encompass a wide range of human abilities.

One definition of giftedness, recognized as the first federal definition, was offered by then Commissioner of Education, Sidney Marland (1972) and he stated that:

“Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons, who by virtue of outstanding abilities are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society.”

Children who are capable of high performance would include those who have demonstrated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas:

  1. General Intellectual Ability;
  2. Specific Academic Aptitude;
  3. Creative or Productive Thinking;
  4. Leadership Ability;
  5. Visual and Performing Arts; and
  6. Psychomotor Ability

Another definition by the United States Department of Education (USDOE, 1993) states that:

“Children and youth with outstanding talent perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. These children and youth exhibit high performance capacity in intellectual, creative, and/or artistic areas, and unusual leadership capacity, or excel in specific academic fields. They require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school. Outstanding talents are present in children and youth from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor.”

Definition of giftedness in Mathematics

When interviewed, experienced teachers of Mathematics shared that giftedness in Mathematics can be defined as “having the ability to grasp abstract mathematical concepts more easily than their peers” and “displaying a sharp acumen of higher level concepts which are not taught in class and expressing them in his own way”. Some common traits often exhibited by students who are mathematically talented would include being engrossed in explanations and discussions; being engaged in questioning to find out more about a particular area of interest; able to translate or associate new knowledge with/to prior knowledge; and able to create non-routine answers to questions posed that reflect an in-depth understanding or analytical thinking.


Mathematical ability

Mathematical ability takes many forms as it depends on both the nature of the mathematical tasks and the branches of mathematics such as arithmetic, algebra, geometry, numbers, or statistics, and also on the cognitive processes such as induction, deduction, or computation.

According to Sternberg (1997), the theory of intelligence has three aspects that underlie intellectual performance in academic domains, including mathematics - they are creative ability, analytical ability, and practical ability. Analytical ability involves comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and judging relatively familiar problems. Creative ability involves applying factors of intelligence to relatively novel problems or situations to create, design, imagine, explore, invent, or discover. Practical ability involves the solving real-life problems and it is also related to tacit knowledge.



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