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We administered both maximum-performance and typical-performance assessments of cultural intelligence to 114 undergraduates in a selective university in the Northeast of the United States. We found that cultural intelligence could be measured by both maximum-performance and typical-performance tests of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence as assessed by a maximum-performance measure is largely distinct from the construct as assessed by a typical-performance measure. The maximum-performance test, the Sternberg Test of Cultural Intelligence (SCIT), showed high internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Sections with problems from two content domains--Business (SCIT-B) and Leisure (SCIT-L) activities--were highly intercorrelated, suggesting they measured largely the same construct. The SCIT showed substantial correlations with another maximum-performance measure of cultural intelligence, Views-on-Culture. It also was correlated, at more modest levels, with fluid intelligence and personal intelligence tests. Factorially, the (a) maximum-performance cultural intelligence tests, (b) typical-performance cultural intelligence test and a test of openness to experience, and (c) fluid intelligence tests formed three separate factors.

Criterion-referenced testing is usually applied to the assessment of achievement. In this article, we suggest how it can also be applied to the assessment of adaptive intelligence, that is, intelligence as adaptation to the environment. In the era of the Anthropocene, we argue that adaptive intelligence is what is most important not only for individual success, but also for success in terms of preservation of the world as we know it. We define criterion-referenced testing and compare it to norm-referenced testing. We then discuss two kinds of scoring of criterion-referenced testing, namely, with respect to external criteria and with respect to internal (theory-based) criteria. We then discuss past research on intelligence that could be viewed as criterion-referenced. Finally, we suggest how criterion-referencing could be applied to the assessment of adaptive intelligence.

We review the musical conservatory as a model for educators to learn how to enhance admissions, instruction, and assessment in liberal arts collegiate settings. Although conservatories serve primarily students wishing to enter musical careers of various kinds, the model on which they are based can, in many ways, serve any student and any school. We review some of the history of conservatories and describe how they work. Next, we explore how they develop a wide range of technical, cognitive, affective, and conative skills. Finally, we show how the skills they develop are important not just for music students but also for all students who will enter the world of work and face difficult and unexpected adaptive challenges.

This article discusses the issues of the basic processes underlying intelligence, considering both historical and contemporary perspectives. The attempt to elucidate basic processes has had, at best, mixed success. There are some problems with pinpointing the underlying basic processes of intelligence, both in theory and as tested, such as what constitutes a basic process, what constitutes intelligence, and whether the processes, basic or not, are the same across time and space (cultural contexts). Nevertheless, the search for basic processes has elucidated phenomena of intelligence that the field would have been hard-pressed to elucidate in any other way. Intelligence cannot be fully understood through any one conceptual or methodological approach. A comprehensive understanding of intelligence requires the converging operations of a variety of approaches to it.

Gifted students should be taught not only for knowledge and for intelligence-enhancing techniques, but also for wisdom. What the world needs most, but also most lacks, is wisdom in the gifted individuals who become leaders. Teaching for wisdom means helping students to look toward a common good; by balancing their own with others', and with larger interests; over the long-as well as the short-term; through the infusion of positive ethical values; in order to adapt to, shape, and select environments. This essay deals with how wisdom might be entered into the curriculum for gifted students.

The field of giftedness--including educators, theorists, and researchers--needs to show more cognizance of a phenomenon that is rearing its ugly head in more and more visible ways, namely, dark giftedness. Dark giftedness is giftedness used for bad and even toxic ends. Being gifted provides little, if any protection against the dark deployment of the abilities, talents, and skills that lead one to be viewed as gifted. The field of giftedness needs to take responsibility for identifying dark giftedness and mitigating its effects, to the extent possible. It needs also to teach gifted young people to use their gifts for positive rather than negative ends. The field of giftedness cannot assume that this will happen automatically, or that by ignoring the world-pervasive problem of dark giftedness, the problem will somehow not, nevertheless, be part of its responsibility to understand and assuage.

This article introduces the concept of adaptive intelligence--the intelligence one needs to adapt to current problems and anticipate future problems of real-world environments--and discusses its implications for education. Adaptive intelligence involves not only promoting one's own ability to survive and thrive, but also that of others in one's own generation and in future generations. The article opens with a discussion of some of the strengths but also the limitations of the concept of general intelligence. It then discusses the concept of adaptive intelligence. Then, it breaks down adaptive intelligence into its constituent parts--creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills and attitudes. Finally, it discusses how the concept of adaptive intelligence can be operationalized in schools.

This article explores the advantages of viewing intelligence not as a fixed trait residing within an individual, but rather as a person × task × situation interaction. The emphasis in the article is on the role of persons solving tasks embedded in situations involving learning, intellectual abilities, and competencies. The article opens with a consideration of the role of situations in intelligent behavior. The article then discusses how intelligence is more similar to creativity and wisdom, in terms of the role of situations, than many psychologists have realized. Then the article reviews the role of situations in identity-based and irrational thinking and in conspiratorial thinking and cults. Next the article discusses the demonstrated importance of situations in assessment, but also notes the difficulties in sampling situations. Finally, the article draws conclusions, in particular, that, given our lack of situation-based tests, we need to be more modest in our interpretations results from conventional tests of intelligence.

Positive creativity is creativity that makes the world a better place--that makes a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. Positive creativity can be a bit of a slippery concept in that, what is positive to one person or one group may be neutral or even negative to another group. Much of teaching young people for positive creativity, therefore, involves providing the tools to decide what positive creativity means to them, and teaching them how to defend their decision. This essay focuses especially on alternative conceptions of what positive creativity means. It considers a variety of approaches, such as definitional models--objective and subjective betterment; ratings, including from layperson and experts; philosophical models--utilitarian and categorical-imperative models; decision-theory models--minimax, maximin, and maximax models; psychologically based models--a Four-C model and a model based on wise creativity. The essay also discusses steps toward teaching explicitly for positive creativity.

This article discusses kinds of transformational giftedness, or giftedness that makes a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference to the world. We extend previous work by suggesting that there are two kinds of transformation that matter: self-transformation and other-transformation. Combining these two kinds of transformation yields a 2 × 2 grid of four kinds of giftedness: non-transformational giftedness (no transformation), transformational giftedness (self- and other-transformation combined), self-realized giftedness (whereby one transforms oneself but not others), and other-realized giftedness (whereby one transforms others but not oneself). We open with a discussion of some of the history of conceptions of giftedness. Then we discuss transformational giftedness as it has been defined in the recent past. We then introduce our concepts of self- and other-transformation. We also describe two other kinds of giftedness--inert giftedness, which is giftedness in personal attributes that has not been realized in interactions with others and the world; and transactional giftedness, which is a give-and-take form of giftedness whereby one meets certain societal expectations in exchange for being identified as gifted. We finally conclude that the gifted movement needs to focus much more on developing transformational giftedness, or at least the potential for it, in our young people.

The late James Flynn, to whom this Special Issue is dedicated, suggested that what will matter most to the future of the world is not levels of intelligence but rather how intelligence is deployed. In this article, I argue that we can distinguish between transactional and transformational deployments of intelligence. Loosely following Flynn, I suggest that we need to pay much more attention to the latter rather than the former.

A deeper understanding of the processes leading to problem framing and behind finding solutions to problems should help explain variability in the quality of the solutions to those problems. Using Sternberg's WICS model as the conceptual basis of problem solving, this article discusses the relations between creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based approaches as bases for solutions to problems. We use a construct of "meta-intelligence" to encompass understanding, control, and coordination between these constructs. We propose that constraints can act at each of three levels--individual, contextual, and interactive. Individual constraints include the metacomponents (executive processes) that underpin each of the four kinds of solutions. Contextual constraints direct which of the four approaches are preferred under what circumstances. Finally, interactive constraints involve individual and contextual constraints directly impacting each other's actions. The model of meta-intelligence and its functioning helps to explain the variability in the ways that individuals frame problems and, as a consequence, in the solutions that are found. The model of meta-intelligence also helps explain why some solutions to problems are so much more comprehensive, and often better, than others.