Three Paradigms of Gifted Education

Abstract

This chapter discusses the history of gifted education in terms of underlying logic, in an attempt to make explicit the paradigmatic quality of three main approaches to gifted education: the Gifted Child Paradigm, the Talent Development Paradigm, and the Differentiation Paradigm. Prescribed goals for gifted education vary within the Gifted Child Paradigm, ranging from a focus purely on individuals to a focus on both personal ends and social contributions. The Terman tradition, with its assumption of giftedness as high potential, makes gifted education an integral part of the social efficiency model of education, whereby those identified as gifted are offered services in the form of various pull-out or self-contained programs aimed at enhancing creativity, leadership, and higher order thinking. In comparison, the Differentiation Paradigm has a more circumscribed goal for gifted education: matching curriculum and instruction with students' capabilities and characteristics in a given classroom situation, which is made possible by ongoing assessment and flexible adaptation in curriculum and instruction.

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