A Toolkit for Talent Development

Abstract

The field of gifted education is evolving, as a growing number of studies propose new ways to support identifying the strengths of all students in the current educational context of schools. The talent development view is a perspective shift from the long-standing belief in the importance of high cognitive abilities to a domain-oriented approach. Talents in a domain are different and require different paths to reach full potential than talents in another domain. This paradigm shift calls for changes and challenges in ingrained applications in gifted education. Talent Development as a Framework for Gifted Education, edited by Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Rena F. Subotnik, and Frank C. Worrell, aims to explain the philosophy of talent development. I deliberately stated the philosophy of talent development because Stambaugh, the author of Chapter 5, considers talent development a philosophy rather than a program or a service. The book is a more practical manual than a theoretical one for practitioners who want to apply talent development to their teaching and learning practices. The book is also useful for anyone interested in keeping pace with contemporary views in the field of gifted education. The book has already attracted scholarly interest. For instance, it received a well-deserved award from The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) in 2019 in recognition of scholarly excellence in books published in gifted and talented education and was also a nominee for the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented 2019 Legacy Book Award. The aim of the book, as stated by the authors in the introduction, is to translate study results on talent development into effective practices for students and educators. After reading the book, you can see that the editors reached their goals. Moreover, it provides a theoretical base of talent development starting from the first chapter. The book comprehensively describes the talent development program and its components. There are 13 chapters shedding light on the basic components and topics of the talent development model. The formatting of each chapter, which includes a theoretical base, research, and best applications in real life, gives strength to the book. Four of the chapters (Chapter 1, 11, 12, 13) are actually written by the book’s editors to provide a deeper understanding of the talent development philosophy. The first chapter highlights seven fundamental principles of this model: