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Interdisciplinary Exploration Guiding Conceptions of Giftedness

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Conceptions of Giftedness and Talent

Abstract

Interdisciplinary work is gaining recognition for its importance in theory development and empirical research, especially in the natural sciences. Arguably, gifted education needs interdisciplinary contributions even more than most fields because it addresses the immensely complex dynamics of the human mind. This analysis describes the nature of interdisciplinary work, including its strengths and weaknesses, and the ways in which it can enrich scholarship and practice in our field. Here are a few of many examples of productive interdisciplinary borrowing and applications to conceptions of giftedness: constructs from ethical philosophy and recent, more enlightened work in economics can magnify the importance of ethics and dissuade us from portraying selfish rational actors and accomplished ethnocentric leaders as highly gifted; warnings about sterile certainty from a prominent mathematician and the flight from reality in the human sciences from a leading political scientist can inoculate us against excessively precise, mechanistic measurements of human ability; findings from cultural anthropology can make our conceptions of giftedness less Western-centric; and discoveries in social epidemiology can show how widespread, chronic stress in severely unequal societies hides giftedness in deprived populations while severely distorting it in the privileged. Finally, this chapter concludes with recommendations for strengthening interdisciplinary work in scholarship on giftedness and talent development.

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  1. Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA

    Don Ambrose

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  1. Don Ambrose
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Correspondence to Don Ambrose .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Robert J. Sternberg

  2. Department of Graduate Education, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA

    Don Ambrose

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Ambrose, D. (2021). Interdisciplinary Exploration Guiding Conceptions of Giftedness. In: Sternberg, R.J., Ambrose, D. (eds) Conceptions of Giftedness and Talent. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56869-6_1

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