Giftedness
How do you start a Giftedness research paper? Our expert writers suggest like this:
The term gifted and talented is used to describe those students that display high levels of aptitude or achievement in terms of academic growth and development. Usually this is given a concrete statistic as a gauge, often identifying as those students that perform in the top ten percentile, though the group might be much more restricted depending on the circumstance. Students that are identified as gifted can earn this designation based on their performance in a number of areas, including their intellectual, creative, artistic, or other capabilities; it can also be more specific, such as their excellence in a specific academic area.
Giftedness and MENSA
The following are MENSA's main characteristics of what constitutes giftedness:
- Advanced vocabulary
- Quick recall of facts
- Curious about what makes individuals "tick"
- Gets more out of a story than others
- Reads independently and is literate early
- Likes to reason things out for himself/herself
It is clear that a concrete definition of what it means to be considered gifted and/or talented is lacking, and that the concept is relatively fluid in today's academic environment.
Giftedness and Teachers
The concept of giftedness is a relatively new one. In the late 1800s, a Superintendent of Schools in Saint Louis used the term "gifted" in an educational sense to describe those students that needed accelerated learning; without such a fast-paced track, he argued, the students would become bored and their academic potential would be lost. More extensive research into the concept of gifted and talented students would emerge in the early part of the 20th century, but the underlying principle remained the same. Students that display traits of giftedness learn and perform at a faster pace than their peers; while their teachers might provide them with unique problems to challenge them, they naturally progress through content at a faster pace, and need constant academic or intellectual stimulation to stave off boredom in the classroom environment.