Gifted Identification with Aurora: Widening the Spotlight

The current need to think globally over the long term has necessarily altered perspectives in education. Expectations for educational outcomes have increased over the last century for all students and, in many societies, diverse educational programs are available for those who are deemed to be particularly gifted. However, many children are likely to have intellectual gifts that are not easily revealed by the narrow range of cognitive and academic assessments typically employed by schools and, as a result, their abilities and potentials may remain unrealized. Who are these children and how can we best identify them? Assessment procedures designed for the identification of gifted students have become more refined in many cases, but there is an ever-present danger of having too narrow a perspective. This study demonstrates how an assessment approach based on a theory of intelligence encompassing multiple abilities may be useful in broadening the scope of conceptions and measures of giftedness. (Contains 4 figures, 4 tables and 6 notes.)