High Ability and Dreams of Innovation and Prosperity in the Emerging Global Knowledge Economy: A Critical Analysis of Changing Orientations in Research and Practice

Are the gifted and talented destined for greatness in a neoliberally oriented knowledge economy? This is undoubtedly an important question for scholars, teachers, and parents advocating the value of gifted education to policy makers and employers worldwide. This review of literature from a multitude of relevant disciplines attempts to answer this question in drawing from political ideology, economic history, human universal behaviour, and principles of social evolution to the extent that we currently understand them. The analysis showed that while high ability is well underway to take centre stage globally in terms of stakeholder interest, the analysis also suggested that hopes projected onto the highly able are often illusory. The social dynamics characterizing the knowledge economy appears unlikely to accept potential contributions of the highly able, since it is not in the nature of a neoliberal economy to offer the necessary conditions needed for creative and innovative efforts. Given that these conclusions are reasonably correct, clearly much of gifted education, its research and raison d'?tre, will need to be reconsidered and new objectives and fields of research be explored.