HECHOS POSTERIORES

From a dictionary of psychology, giftedness could be defined as ‘possessing one or more specific talents or abilities of a high order’ (Corsini, 1999, p. 415). Such a literal definition could be seen as emphasising two aspects. First, it emphasises the possession of an individual of one or more extraordinary ability(s). Second, it highlights the hierarchy of abilities that a gifted individual might possesses in which giftedness might be perceived as the highest level in the ability hierarchy. The second notion might be adapted by individuals and/or organisations such as Mensa in defining its membership.

In other words, organisations such as British Mensa or Malaysian Mensa ascribe to this hierarchical principle in selecting their membership. As an example, from British Mens a17 or Malaysian Mensa18 official websites, it is stated that the requirement for its membership is based on an IQ score in the top 2% of the population. In this instance, a population normative IQ score is taken into consideration by Mensa because it is acknowledged that each society might have different distribution of its population IQ scores.

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As an active advocator of gifted education specifically in European countries, ECHA organises an international conference biennially and also offers a diploma in gifted education. For more details, see ECHA official website http://www.echa.info

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British Mensa official website, http://www.mensa.org.uk/

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14 In addition, a hierarchical notion of ability serves as a cut-off point to determine an individual as having extraordinary ability(s). For example, in terms of intellectual ability, assessments such as IQ tests are used to measure one’s intellectual ability because it is assumed that it is a better predictor than other measures such as behavioural checklist or portfolios in identifying gifted and talented individuals (Speirs and Finch 2006). In this instance, intellectual ability (one of the characteristics of giftedness) is emphasised in the process of identifying giftedness. However, giftedness can be thought of as a psychosocial construct as proposed by various researchers (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson 1986; Sternberg and Zhang, 1995; Freeman, 2005) and thus, to rely on certain kinds of assessments as the means of identification of gifted might be inappropriate.

In this regards, with the proposition among researchers that giftedness is a psycho-social construct it is difficult to justify which model or theory might provide the best conceptions of giftedness and talent. Thus, despite my attempt to explore relevant literature about conceptions of giftedness and talent resulted in voluminous books and articles, yet I still could not find standardised conceptions of giftedness and talent. This is due to several possible reasons. One of the best explanations is provided by Ziegler and Heller (2000).

In this article by Ziegler and Heller (2000), they extrapolate three dimensions of difficulties in finding standardised conceptions of giftedness and talent. The three dimensions are: a) empirical, b) ontological and c) meta-theoretical. In their first empirical proposition, it is proposed that it is difficult to find conceptions of giftedness and talent because empirical evidence from one study about gifted individuals may not be generalised to another gifted individual who has different level of giftedness. Also, in terms of identifying gifted individuals, there is an inadequacy of identification methods. It is not to say that there is no psychometric assessment could be used for identification purpose such as IQ tests, but rather giftedness is a multifaceted psychological construct. Therefore, to rely heavily on certain psychometric assessments such as IQ tests19 could lead to misidentification of equally

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In general, one of the common practices of identifying gifted individuals is through looking at their rare gifts. In a study by McGuffog et al. (1987) on extreme case of giftedness, they suggested some characteristics of giftedness that could serve as indicators of giftedness are: receptive language, extraordinary memory, ahead of peers and special knowledge (domain specific of ability).

15 gifted individuals who did not get high scores in an IQ test (Sternberg, 1986; Pfeiffer and Blei, 2000; Borland, 2009).

In their ontological explanation, Ziegler and Heller (2000) claim that in clarifying conceptions of giftedness and talent, to limit explanation of giftedness based on a particular construct would lead to difficulty in determining the causal relation between gifts and natural predispositions. Even with the advancement of scientific methods and technology, it is difficult to determine the causal relationship of the multifaceted aspects of giftedness. In this vein, it is hypothesised that to determine various components of giftedness based on empirical evidence solely would not be an easy task. This brings to the third dimensions that they proposed namely the meta-theoretical dimension that explains the difficulty of finding conceptions of giftedness and talent.

Zeigler and Heller (2000) also postulate that reliance for empirical evidence on giftedness might lead to endless debates. For instance, if a gifted individual is perceived based on his or her academic achievement, therefore an academically high achiever is perce ived as gifted. Following this as a principle in explaining giftedness, then for someone who is not a high achiever might be easily disregarded as not being gifted, even though he or she is could be highly gifted in music, for instance. In this instance, a conception of giftedness and talent could never be simplified by following such proposition.

Also, there is a danger in finding conceptions of giftedness and talent based on a meta - theoretical perspective in which it might make a concept related to giftedness hard to refute, such as intelligence. For instance, it is commonly regarded that intelligence to some extent influences learning, understanding and performing a task, yet when it comes to explain excellent performance, intelligence may not be pe rceived as the sole explanation for an excellent performance. For instance, according to Treffert (2006) in a case of individuals with Savant syndrome, IQ scores which indicate certain level of general intelligence could not explain excellent performance by those individuals.

In addition, Ziegler and Heller (2000) also claim that scientific research about gifted individuals is not always methodologically appropriate to find evidence of giftedness. In their article, they exemplified this through investigation of research undertaken on

16 giftedness which has been published in peer-reviewed journals. They argue that in a substantial number of cases, the number and nature of participants was not mentioned and thus, it would be difficult to generalise or compare findings with other research.