Guidance and Counseling Needs of the Talented

• Historical Trends in Guidance and Counseling of the Academically Talented
• Psychosocial and Asynchronous Development
• Guidance Issues for Talented Youth
• Gender Difference Concerns for Guidance Intervention
• Counseling Issues Among Talented Youth
• An Individual and Group Educational Guidance Plan (IEP)
• Conclusion
  • Case Example: Judith Resnik
    Summary
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    Focusing Questions

    1. What would you do if a student with whom you had rapport in one setting
    defied you in public in another setting?
    2. What are the essential aspects of asynchronous development and what are the
    merits of this definition as a counseling understanding of high-IQ students?
    3. What aspects of what research have shown that the psychosocial development
    of academically talented students merits special counseling and
    guidance intervention? Why?
    4. Discuss two of the counseling issues that resonate with you. Tell a story.
    5. Discuss two of the guidance issues that resonate with you. Tell a story.
    6. What are the salient differences between students with high IQs and students
    with very high IQs?
    7. Discuss the counseling issue of self-concept as it relates to gifted youth.
    8. Compare and contrast self-concepts of mathematically and verbally precocious
    youth.
    9. What is resiliency and what does it have to do with the manifestation of
    talent potential?
    10. Does underachievement exist? Why or why not?
    11. What are the special duties of counselors in guiding talented students?
    12. Discuss gender differences in achievement, course selection, and test taking.
    13. Discuss the counseling needs of talented girls.
    14. Discuss the counseling needs of talented boys.
    15. Discuss the counseling needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual talented students.
    16. Do you think the causes of the gender differences are environmentally or
    genetically induced?
    17. Fill out the individual plan (short-term) for a student you kno

    • Figure 11.1. Graphic overview of Chapter 11

Social-Emotional, Guidance and Counseling Needs of the Talented

The graduate students studying the education of the talented and gifted were discussing problems that had arisen on their jobs as teachers of the talented.

Mary Brickman said,“I had an incident happen today that has me really upset. Toby, this sixth grader I am working with, and I really got into it. He had never seen me as a classroom teacher before, only as his resource teacher, pulling him out from study hall to work with him on advanced reading and creative writing. Well, I was scheduled to teach a 6-week cycle of reading to the regular class that he’s in. He was acting up and talking and drumming his fingers against the table and I asked him quietly to stop disturbing the other students. He just kept on doing it. I asked him again. He kept on. I finally said to him that I would like him to leave. He got up and flounced out, to the study hall. Then, when I
came to get him for his enrichment lesson in the study hall, he was there with his head in the desk.
“I went over to him and told him to come with
me. Now usually he’s looking at the door and just rises when I get there. When we got to the library, he just sat there with his arms crossed, and a defiant look on his face. I said, ‘Toby, we have to talk about what happened.’ I used all my teacher wiles, trying to get him to talk. I patted him on the wrist and he shook my hand off. Finally, I thought, I’m not going to take this anymore, and I pulled out my calendar and said, ‘Well, I guess you should go back to study hall. I’ll come and get you next Tuesday at this time.’   “But, I feel horrible. I went to his folder in the office and got his mother’s phone number and I’m going to call her and talk to her about this. What do you guys think?”

“His head in the desk? He actually had his head in his desk?” Ellen Bates said.

“Yes,” Mary replied. She went on. “The first week of school, his teacher came up to me and said she couldn’t take anymore of this. If it’s not drumming his fingers, it’s banging his head on the desk or on the wall. She said he does no work.”

“How are his test scores?” the professor said.

“He’s got an IQ of 165 on a Woodcock-Johnson. He’s got achievement test scores in the 95th percentile in everything. He’s a very good creative writer. Right now in our enrichment period he and another little guy—he’s in sixth grade but he has been accelerated a year—are reading fantasy novels and science fiction and writing their own. I have no trouble with Jason, the young one. Only with Toby. And, this is the first time.”

“165? On an individual test?” the professor said.

“He’s a highly academically talented boy.”

“Yes. Well, you wouldn’t know it from his grades. Something interesting about his family came up, though. When I was reading his file, I read his mother’s request for his kindergarten placement. She said that she wanted him to be in the morning kindergarten because he was so involved in his own projects in the afternoon. That’s a little unusual for a kindergartner, isn’t it?”

“He thinks you betrayed him when you reprimanded him,” another classmate said.

“I know. He’s never seen me teach a class before. It’s always been one-on- one,” Mary said. “But, his behavior was inappropriate and he was disturbing the other kids.”

“His subject matter teachers say that he doesn’t do his work?” the professor said.

“None. Zip. He hasn’t handed in one homework assignment, and when he’s called on, he makes sarcastic remarks. Today, before I asked him to leave, he was saying things in the discussion—we were discussing what makes an eminent writer—and one of the kids said that Stephen King was eminent. He said, ‘Stephen King? Come on. Who can stand that simplistic stuff?’”

“He has no tolerance for the other kids,” someone observed.

“Well, he’s been permitted to underachieve since kindergarten, I’ll bet,” Karen Brock said. “Has he ever done a project or handed in work?”

“Have you seen any of his work?” the professor said.

“Now that you mention it, no,” Mary said. “He’s just writing and writing on his fantasy story, but when I stand over his shoulder, he puts his arm up and blocks the screen.”

“Don’t you have a backup of his story?” Carol Warner said.

“No. He takes the disk with him when he leaves and stores it in his locker.”

“Then how do you know he’s even writing a fantasy story?” said Karen.

“Well, he discusses, he shares, he laughs, and he is funny when the three of us are together,” Mary said. “But, now he’s shut me out, too. He’s shut the whole school out and he trusted me and I reprimanded him and he’s shut me out, too.”

“Talk to him right away tomorrow morning,” Carol said. “Before you see him for the reading class. Get the story.”

“Call his mother and ask her what she thinks,” Sherry Parke said. “Is he in an intact home? What are his parents like?”

I think they’re kind of odd, too,” Mary said. “At least that’s what I’ve picked up from the teachers. His father works in computers, and his mother used to teach. She’s a librarian now. Someone said their house is full of books and newspapers, just a mess.”

“Do you know?” the professor said. “Rimm makes a good point when she says that no change happens in a student’s achievement without three parties—the school, the parents, and the child himself. You’ve got to see what’s up with the family. With that IQ and those achievement test scores in the 90s, he’s underachieving. He can get those scores without even trying.”

“That banging behavior sounds like Attention Deficit Disorder to me,”

Ellen said. “Maybe he needs Ritalin. I know a boy who was doing that and they put him on Ritalin and it just cleared right up. He was able to concentrate
and do his work.”

“But, he’s so far above grade level. What about accelerating him to eighth grade?” the professor said. “Test him and find him a level of challenge.”

“I don’t know. I’ll keep you tuned in,” Mary said.

The next week the class questioned Mary again. She said that the next day, he’d behaved just as if nothing had happened. She had requested permission to do a case study on him for her graduate class, and Toby seemed pleased. “Now you’ll find out how psycho I am,” he told Mary.

This description of a clash with a very high-IQ boy illustrates some of the difficulties academically talented children and their teachers encounter in the milieu of the school. Such difficulties often call for counseling and guidance interventions.

Historical Trends in Guidance and Counseling of the Academically Talented

Emotional and social characteristics of the gifted and talented have always been at the forefront. The Terman study (whose long-term results were discussed in other chapters), begun in the 1920s on talented adults, was formulated to “prove” that students with high IQs were not weird, strange, sickly, or odd. Leta Hollingworth (1926, 1942) has been widely credited as being among the first to recognize that the academically talented do have emotional and social needs that can be served by counseling (Klein, 2002).

The 1950s saw centers such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison Guidance Laboratory for Superior Students. The influence of John Curtis Gowan in the 1960s and 1970s was notable. In the late 1970s, Colangelo and Ziffert (1979) edited a book called New Voices in Counseling the Gifted, which heralded that academically talented students did, indeed, have special counseling needs because of their developmental differences. In the 1980s, Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG) was established at Wright State University in Ohio by James Webb. SENG sponsors conferences
for parents and educators.

In the early 1990s it moved to Kent State University, and in the early 2000s, to Scottsdale, AZ. In 1982, Guiding the Gifted Child, the most popular book about the affective needs of gifted children was published. This was written by James Webb, Elizabeth Meckstroth, and Stephanie Tolan, and it would go on to sell more than 80,000 copies. Galbraith’s Free Spirit Press began to feature books for teachers on counseling the gifted, among them Managing the Social and Emotional Needs of the Gifted: A Teacher’s Survival Guide (Schmitz & Galbraith, 1985). Also in the 1980s, Barbara Kerr established the Guidance Laboratory for Gifted and Talented at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln; in Denver, Psychologist Linda Silverman established the Gifted Child Development Center; and in Iowa City, the psychologist Nicholas Colangelo directed Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa. All these centers emphasized family involvement and offered counseling and guidance.

By 1993, both James Delisle and Linda Silverman had published substantial books on counseling issues. In addition, Goals 2000 focused on issues having to do with social and emotional development. In 1997, Colangelo applauded the increase in the number of qualitative case studies that has led to in-depth understanding of the counseling and guidance issues pertinent to talented people. In 1998, the National Association for Gifted Children published standards for meeting the socioemotional needs of gifted and talented children (see Table 11.1).

In 2001, the National Association for Gifted Children released a report called “Task Force on Social-Emotional Issues for Gifted Students” (Neihart & Robinson). In 2003, out of this task force, came the book, The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children: What Do We Know? (Neihart,Reis, Robinson, & Moon).

One can see that the social and emotional needs of gifted students are fully on the radar screen of the educators of the gifted and talented.

Psychosocial and Asynchronous Development

Many of the social and emotional difficulties, according to certain experts, are caused by the academically talented student’s asynchronous development. This means that the student is out of sync with his age peers emotionally and intellectually. As discussed in Chapter 5, Terrasier (1985) said that gifted students experienced dyssynchrony, or uneven development, which has both internal and external aspects. The concept of asynchronous development goes beyond Terrasier’s concept of dyssynchrony, according to Silverman (1993), in that asynchrony “incorporates the emotional dimension, emphasizing the interrelationship of cognitive complexity and emotional intensity” (p. 2). The emotional repercussions of having a high IQ have long been ignored, or, when recognized, have been thought to be a cause of emotional instability (Piirto, 1999b).

While the physical development of academically talented children is most often similar to that of their age peers, their cognitive and emotional development often far outstrip their age-mates. As a result, these students often experience great stress that can lead to phenomena such as disabling perfectionism, underachievement, acting out behavior, and depression. In a study of more than 500 Australian students ages 3 to 16 with a mean IQ of 126, Alsop (2003) found that the students manifested anxiety, were self-critical, overly sensitive, easily upset and easily frustrated, and that depression occurred in adolescence. She theorized that asynchrony was the cause of these disorders.

Psychosocial Characteristics of Academically Talented Youth

The American Psychological Association published a book in 1985, edited by Frances Horowitz and Marion O’Brien, especially devoted to the development of gifted children. As usual, gifted children were described as those with high IQs. Janos and Robinson (1985) summarized the research to that date and found these results:

 1. In social cognition, high-IQ (or intellectually gifted) children generally show more maturity than their age peers, but not as much maturity as their intellectual age-mates.

2. In moral development, high-IQ adolescents seem to be more advanced than typical high school and college adolescents.

3. In play interests, such as choice of books and aesthetic interests, high-IQ children had interests of older children. They also preferred to play with older children. That older children accepted them shows similar intellectual development.

4. In personality maturity, which has implications for whether or not to accelerate a gifted child, high-IQ children seemed to be more mature than agemates.

5. On psychosocial adjustment, researchers have been stymied by the confusion of socioeconomic background factors with intelligence factors, and by the relatively rigid standards for adjustment defined on many personality inventories. For example, a child who plays with older children is called maladjusted on some personality inventories. Nevertheless, there has been a repeated finding that high-IQ youth have average or superior psychosocial adjustment.

6. In locus of control, or the internalizing or externalizing of motivation to achieve, talented students, no matter the IQ, generally demonstrated inner drive and determination, especially in areas of talent such as music, mathematics, and any areas that require intense study. This inner locus of control generally describes people  who are self-sufficient, independent, autonomous, dominant and individualistic, self-directed, and nonconforming. Nonconformity, though, is tempered in high-IQ youth. Creative youth—artists, actors, writers—may demonstrate more nonconformity (Piirto, 1991a, 1992a, 1998e, 2004).

7. In mental energy, enthusiasm, and physical vigor, studies have confirmed that high-IQ students also excel, and these contribute to the wide range of interests found in the gifted. They are both more persistent and more aggressive, and have high aspirations, and this  holds true for both females and males. The high IQ, academically talented youth like to think and like to be intellectually challenged; this is often the cause of their complaints of boredom with the regular watered-down school curriculum.

8. In sociability, academically talented youth seem to be more introverted than the regular population. Myers and McCaulley (1985) stated, “The three preferences that appear to contribute most to scholastic success are I, N, and J” (p. 107).

However, Janos and Robinson (1985) cautioned that the developmental research was scattered. The ability to concentrate and to focus on intellectual problems seems apparent in academically talented people, although many high-IQ people do not make life achievements that would be called earthshaking or highly influential. Personality traits that differentiate achievers from nonachievers seem to be “sustained intent and concentrated effort,” in all fields and domains of effort (p. 165). Indeed, high-IQ people who do not achieve would seem to not achieve on the basis of personality characteristics rather than on the basis of high IQ. The reverse is true, also. Average IQ people who achieve have personality characteristics that encourage intent and effort. (See the Pyramid of Talent Development in Chapter 1.)

Need for Guidance and Counseling of Talented Youth

With these generally positive research findings, what need do academically talented and other talented youth have for guidance and counseling? Won’t they make it on their own? No, said Levy and Plucker (2003), who advocated treating the gifted as a subculture, much as handicapped people make up a subculture. The need for guidance is crucial; many academically talented youth, especially females and those in rural or lower socioeconomic situations, do not receive the guidance that they need in terms of
career planning, college planning, or definitions of options—mentoring, shadowing, and course taking.

In the parlance of the guidance and counseling profession, guidance has to do with specific options that can be planned, such as taking the PSAT in the junior year, and having a proper schedule for one’s abilities. Counseling has to do with affective aspects of the students’ development, often dealt with in group or individual sessions with counselors trained in process. Counseling often resembles therapy, while guidance resembles advising. Many of the people who cry wolf about the social and emotional needs of the gifted and talented have worked in the therapeutic setting, and they have seen extreme cases. For most gifted and talented students, the findings of Janos and Robinson (1985) still seem to hold true. As a person whose work experience has been in schools, as a teacher, administrator and guidance counselor, and not as a therapist, I believe that if the guidance is
there, the counseling is often not needed.

Colangelo (2003) said that there are two ways to look at school programs that seek to help gifted and talented students: (1) remedial and (2) developmental. The remedial approach focuses on putting out fires—intervening in crises and solving problems. The developmental approach seeks to establish that the school welcomes gifted and talented students, understandstheir needs, and knows both their emotional and their educational needs. Speaking for the developmental approach, Freeman (2001) asserted: “Gifts do not come with problems attached” (p. 26). The young people in her longitudinal study in Great Britain experienced problems that were “largely of other people’s making,” for example when their parents lived vicariously through their children, or when the talents were in one specific area but were expected to be in all areas, or when the “tall poppy syndrome” was operational; that is, when people tried to cut the gifted and talented youth down to size, felt resentful, or, alternatively, put them up on a pedestal.

Guidance Issues for Talented Youth

Talented students, like most students, do not tend to seek the help of counselors for personal issues. They do, though, talk with their counselors about guidance issues such as course selection and career advice. Implicit in these choices is often the fact that talented students, especially students from lower socioeconomic groups, may experience ambivalence about the choices available to them. Here are common guidance issues that should be addressed: academic planning, acceleration, career development, finding mentors, multipotentiality, learning styles, testing, program articulation, vocational guidance, volunteerism and service, and gender issues underlying all of the above. Table 11.2 lists these guidance issues and some sourcthat deal with them.

Depending on geographical region and size and type of school, the college planning help that talented students receive varies greatly. In college towns, suburban areas, and urban academic high schools, talented students are more likely to receive high-level college planning; that is, they are told that they should try to apply to the best college that will take them, and that the money will probably follow. However, in rural areas, especially in the south and in the Midwest, and in comprehensive urban high schools, counseling help may often be limited to colleges with which the counselor is familiar. The vast difference in levels of college planning for talented students often has to do with how well-exposed the counselors themselves have been to a wide spectrum of college options; they may be tempted to counsel students to attend their alma maters or schools similar. One counselor
from the Midwest who was in an elite overseas American school was asked to leave because he was counseling the high school students to attend Midwestern state universities and not the top tier, Ivy League, tier one universities that eastern suburban counselors routinely recommend. The superintendent of the school said that he would never again hire a counselor from the Midwest, for the reason that college planning skills advice was limited by geographical background.

The importance for career development, and graduate school admission, of attending a top level school if the student can get in can not be underestimated, and that is where aware counseling of talented youth in their home junior high and high schools must take place. There is an “Eastern Establishment.” For example, most presidential candidates in the past have graduated from Yale Law School. Power and influence resides in the graduates from the elite colleges. Counselors should be aware of this and aid their students in attending the best colleges, no matter what geographical area, to which they can be admitted. Recently, the colleges that admitted 100 or more National Merit Scholars were, in descending order, Harvard and Radcliffe, Rice, University of Texas at Austin, Stanford, Texas A&M, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, Ohio State, M.I.T., Duke, and Brigham Young.

Table 11.2
Guidance Issues for Talented Youth

Most intellectually talented students plan to go to college; however, some of them do not receive the course selection advice that they need to do well on precollege examinations such as the SAT or the ACT. This planning must start early. Course-taking is the most direct way that guidance counselors can influence talented students. Unfortunately, many adults report that their counselors influenced them in the wrong direction. For example, many talented women were not encouraged to take 4 years of mathematics and 4 years of science; when they got to college they found that they had to “catch up” and many of them never did. Others have found, for example, that Black youths who take geometry are the most likely ones to go to college. Making sure that geometry is on the course selection agenda should be a priority for school personnel. Guidance counselors who know these facts will be the major influence on course-taking behavior.

Acceleration

Acceleration has been discussed in Chapters 2 and 10. The counselor and teacher should be aware that there have been few studies that show acceleration to be a failed strategy for educating young talented learners (Benbow, 1992; Colangelo et al., 2004; Kulik, 2004; Southern & Jones, 1991, 2004; Stanley, 1979, 1989). The most well researched have been the longitudinal studies of SMPY, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth.

Research on Acceleration as a Guidance Option

The SMPY studies have shown that acceleration seems to have benefited these students. They conducted studies to elucidate whether accelerated students receive good grades, and found “students who enter college from two to five years early make good grades, win honors, and graduate on time” (Stanley & Benbow, 1983, p. 369; Stanley & McGill, 1986). Students who had been in fast-paced math classes early were also likely to continue in math/science later on. In fact, one gender difference they found was that girls who had not had challenging high school experiences and who had not
crystallized their ambitions by age 18 were likely to drop out of math/sciencetracks (Benbow, 1992). This loss has great implications for counselors counseling academically talented females.

However, the belief that acceleration will harm the social and emotional development of academically talented youth has also been a strong one. The SMPY researchers conducted several studies to see whether this was the case, and they found that “acceleration benefits students academically while not detracting from social and emotional development” (Benbow,
1992, p. 116; Brody & Benbow, 1987). Southern and Jones (1991) said that while the research evidence is clear that academically gifted students do not suffer by acceleration, “the evidence concerning social and emotional harm” is less clear cut (p. 134). Even the definitions of social and emotional maturity, adjustment, and development are not clear. Thus, it is more difficult to assess the potential impact of acceleration on the social and emotional
development of academically talented children.
A rule of thumb is to consider each case individually, with a group of people involved in any decisions, including the student himself. Using the Iowa Acceleration Scale (Assouline, Colangelo, Lupkowski-Shoplik, Lipscomb, & Forstadt, 2003) is a must. This scale considers many factors, including the social and emotional, and involves the student in all decisions.
Parents of academically talented youth have often used the strategy of accelerating their students by moving to a new school where they will be
perceived freshly, and the peer reactions to skipping grades will not be so noticeable.

Career Development
Most states now have detailed career development planning programs. Students should be plugged into them as a matter of course along the way. From kindergarten through grade 12, certain steps are necessary. For talented youth, the issues are that the student will focus too early on a certain career having to do with their “thorn” or their talents, and not develop in a general education, a “Renaissance” way. This is especially a danger for performers. For students who will be entering long courses of study such as those leading to a doctoral degree, there is the issue of coping with delayed gratification and the concomitant need to pay off school loans for a long period of time. It is not at all uncommon for school loans to remain a burden until a talented person is in her 40s. The issues of whether going into such debt is worth it is a personal decision. The necessity to make long-range plans is key to this issue, as well.

Decisions made in high school are important but not irrevocable. The presence of “late bloomers” in the ranks of the talented is underresearched. In the literature on talented adults, most thinkers give a timeline that is somewhat rigid. The lives of those who would go into science, mathematics, and technology are said to be so circumscribed that one cannot make a world-class contribution if one does not get a Ph.D. in his or her early 20s (Simonton, 1994). Women and rebels need not apply. So few people make world-class contributions that the phenomenon may not be really worth talking about, even in talent development education circles. Students should be made aware of their potential whether or not they are on the timeline needed for world-class contributions. Reentry into a career path after years of childcare, or after bumming around the world and having adventures, is possible. Making significant contributions to the chosen field is also possible, even after the age of 40, 50, and 60. Changing careers and trying something new is also possible. As Guindon and Hanna (2002) said, “Many counselors are aware that synchronicity—unpredictable instances of meaningful coincidence—can play a significant role in career opportunities,” (p. 195) but they continue to follow a rigid, trait-based model of career development, a lockstep kind of model. They noted that many people are stuck in careers and with decisions they made long ago, but now they have changed, and are seeking careers that speak to their authentic selves. They went on to say, “Traditional career counseling approaches alone may not be sufficient in assisting an individual to find meaningful life’s work” (p. 208). Many talented people have several careers, as do most people. There is no shame in changing direction.

Finding Mentors
The literature on mentoring is vast. Mentor programs are a vital part of the guidance scene in most high schools. In the field of talent development education, mentoring is a structured or unstructured relationship between an expert and a novice, where the expert teaches the novice the ins and outs of the domain. The mentor chooses the talented novice and  he novice must usually meet three conditions: (1) be available, in proximity to the mentor, (2) be willing to absorb the values of the mentor, and (3) be attractive to the mentor (Arnold & Subotnik, 1995). Usually the novice resembles the mentor in ethnicity, family background, and gender. The mentor provides the novice with judgment and evaluation according to the professional standards of the field: “Mentors model what students can become by showing the lifestyles, modes of thinking, professional practices, costs, and advantages associated with high-level achievement in a particular domain” (Arnold & Subotnik, 1995, p. 120). The mentor takes a risk to his or her reputation in sponsoring the novice for membership in the ranks of the domain, and so the novice is chosen carefully. The mentor communicates the tacit knowledge of the domain, the “unwritten, informal insider information about appropriate, adaptive, professional and career management behavior in a specific talent domain” (Arnold & Subotnik, p. 120).

There are three stages in the mentoring relationship: (1) initial stages, where the mentor encourages the novice to step into the river, to feel and experience the delights of the cool water, to smell the fresh air of the domain; (2) technical virtuosity, where the novice moves beyond the romance and begins the hard work of acquiring automaticity in the domain through intense self-discipline and practice—in this stage, the mentor models the end state for the novice; and (3) mastery, where the novice becomes an expert, a peer of the mentor—in this stage the mentor is in emotional danger, for the novice may surpass the mentor and move beyond his or her teachings and modeling. If the mentor doesn’t hold the novice with an open hand, the novice will not become a respected member of the profession, but a clone of his or her mentor. The difficulty with this process, say Arnold and Subotnik (1995) is that minorities and women may not be found attractive by the mentor, and so the process won’t begin.

Siegle and McCoach (2005) offered many suggestions and alternatives in the mentoring process, among them the Student Developed Courses (SDC) based on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (Renzulli & Reis, 1985) and on the Betts Autonomous Learner Model (1988). The two steps in this process are these: first, the student studies an area he or she would like to learn about, through independent study; and second, the student finds a mentor to guide the project. The mentors are people in the community and high school faculty members. Students receive one Carnegie credit for the yearlong course.

Multipotentiality
The guidance needs of talented students include the fact that many indicate a potential for achievement in more than one field or domain. This often causes confusion and stress. “What do I like?” “What am I good at?” It is not uncommon for high school and college students to vacillate, change majors, send for more brochures and pamphlets, all in a search for the one, true career. However, some research has shown that multipotentiality might not exist to the extent that it has been touted as existing (Gagné et al., 1996). They experienced difficulty when they tried to find people who were in the top 15% of two or more distinct domains of talents (as differentiated from aptitudes; see the Gagné model in Chapter 1)—for example, “high academic achievement coupled with athletic excellence or with artistic excellence” (p. 6). Gagné et al. concluded that the concept of multipotentiality, or polyvalence, as they called it, presents the same difficulties as most of the concepts in the field of the education of the gifted and talented: It is easy to find the most extreme cases, those who definitely are, or possess the trait, but it is very difficult to find those on the margins, who may or may not. The issue of multipotentiality as a guidance issue may thus be overblown, except in the few cases where a person is definitely extremely talented in several areas. Perhaps the person with multipotentialities has many interests, but in what lies the extreme talent? In this, it must be the heart, or the daimon, that wins; which itch must be scratched for well-being and peace of mind? The counselor can aid in guiding the student toward realization of that passion, or “thorn.” Another possibility for such students is to plan on having more than one career during a long lifetime.

Differences Between Highly Talented and Moderately Talented
The ongoing studies of highly mathematically and verbally talented youth also have application. In Benbow’s 1992 review of SMPY research, comparing highly academically talented youth with moderately academically talented youth, the researchers found that indeed, there is no threshold such as implied by Renzulli (1977) and Getzels and Jackson (1962). The
students who were in the top 25% of the top 1% achieved at a much higher academic level than those in the bottom 25% of the top 1%. That is, those who were moderately academically talented, or who did not score in the highest ranges of the SAT but who were still identified as academically talented, did not have as much potential for academic achievement as those who scored at the highest ranges. (Note: These findings were reiterated and confirmed by Lubinski et al., in the late 1990s and early 2000s). The students who had parents who had not attended college and female students were most at risk for not achieving their high mathematical potential, and these are the students to whom counselors should pay special attention. Counselors should note that family factors could be compensated for by the quality of course work in high school. Benbow (1992) said, “Achievers had experienced more challenging instruction” (p. 113).

Learning Styles of Talented Youth
The view that students who are high academic achievers have specific personality preferences types or learning styles has been explored by several researchers, among them Marlene Bireley (1991a). The mantra, “teach to the learning style” or “teach to the learning preference” is echoed by most writers on differentiation (cf. Renzulli, Tomlinson). Renzulli and Reis 2003) listed learning environment preferences, thinking styles preferences, and expression style preferences in their Total Talent Portfolio. The learning environments seem to be based on the Dunn, Dunn, and Price (1989) work: Inter/Intra Personal (self, peer, adult, combined oriented) and Physical (sound, heat, light, design, mobility, time of day, food intake, seating). The thinking styles seem to be based on Sternberg’s (1997b) work: Analytic (school smart), Synthetic/Creative, Practical/Contextual (street smart), Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. The expression styles were written, oral, manipulative, discussion, display, dramatization, artistic, graphic, commercial, and service (Renzulli & Reis, p. 192).

Many learning style instruments exist. Cassidy (2004) reviewed them, with comments on their reliability and validity. He noted that the vast proliferation of theories and instruments that purport to measure learning styles leaves the practitioner, as well as the researcher, in confusion: For example, the terms learning style, cognitive style, and learning strategy are often used interchangeably, adding to the confusion. More than 30 different labels have been given. Cassidy noted that there seem to be three different theories about the derivation of one’s learning style: cognitive-centered, activity-centered, and personality-centered. The following instruments are often used for assessment of learning styles:
1. The Learning Style Inventory (Dunn et al., 1989). This is a 100-item, self-scorable questionnaire that shows a person’s preferred learning environment (light, sound, temperature, design); emotional environment (structure, persistence, motivation, responsibility); sociological preference (pairs, peers, adults, self, group); perceptual preference (auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, mobility, intake, time of day); and psychological preference (global-analytic,
impulsive-reflective, and cerebral dominance). Forms exist for both elementary and secondary students. This is the most widely used instrument throughout educational settings, and it has good reliability
and validity.
2. The Learning Style Profile (Keefe & Monk, 1986). This is a 126-item instrument that was developed to combine features of other instruments into one comprehensive instrument. It assesses cognitive skills (information processing and memory), perceptual response (auditory and visual), and preferences for study and instruction.
3. The Learning Style Inventory (Renzulli, Rizza, & Smith, 2002) in the Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students (SRBCSS). This is perhaps the most popular learning style inventory in gifted education.
4. The Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 1976). This spoke of an Experiential Learning Model (ELM), which has four stages: concrete experience, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, and reflective observation. Widely used, this 12-item, self scorable questionnaire has been faulted for having reliability and validity problems, although it has shown that students with a convergent style get more correct answers on tests.
5. The Gregorc Style Delineator (Gregorc, 1982). This was popular in gifted education circles in the 1980s, as Gregorc toured the country speaking at state and regional gifted education conferences. The 40-item, self-scorable instrument, The Style Delineator, identifies four learning styles: concrete sequential, concrete random, abstract sequential, and abstract random.
6. The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (Herrmann, 1981). This was widely used in the 1980s when the rage for right brain/leftbrain differences was at its peak.
 7. The Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children (Meisgeier & Murphy, 1987). This is one of only two instruments that focus on personality attributes as indicating learning style.
8. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Briggs & Myers, 1977). This is the other instrument that focuses on personality attributes. See the description below.
9. Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI; Kirton, 1994). This is widely used in many research studies by the Creative Problem Solving Institute at the State College of Buffalo. Assuming that cognitive style has a relationship to one’s creativity, “adapters” want to “do things better,” and “innovators” want to “do things differently” (Cassidy, 2004, p. 430).
10. Sternberg-Wagner Self-Assessment Inventory (Sternberg, 1997b). This is used in many international studies, and is based on the Sternberg model of intelligence.
11. Keirsey Temperament Sorter, II (Keirsey & Bates, 1984). A new version is in development. It is designed to be used to sort out temperament, personality, and character.

Myers-Briggs Types and Learning Preferences
The most widely researched instrument among these is the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is a forced-choice instrument of 126 items. Based on the Jungian theory of personality type, the MBTI provides data on four sets of preferences: introversion-extraversion, sensing-intuition, feeling-thinking, and judging-perceiving. These preferences result in 16 learning styles, or types. A type is a combination of the four preferences. The MBTI has been widely used in education, in business, and in counseling. Literature also exists on the MBTI and gifted students. Mills and Parker (1998) described cross-cultural similarities and differences between gifted students studying with the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and with similar Irish students. These students scored in the top 1% on measures of cognitive ability. Myers and McCaulley (1985) described studies of National Merit Finalists (INFP), of gifted seventh- to ninth grade males (ENTP) and females (ENFP); of creative men (INTP) and creative women (INFP), and of schoolteachers (ESFJ). N’s received higher grades than S’s and J’s received higher grades
than P’s. It is notable that most Rhodes Scholars, chosen for their scholar/athlete qualities, prefer P.
The Manual (Myers & McCaulley, 1985) listed several hundred studies of various groups, using the MBTI. The predominant type preference for academically talented students was NF (intuition, feeling).

We have found the same thing in our studies of approximately 475 talented adolescents (Piirto & Johnson, 2004). Ninth and tenth graders, ages 14 to 16 (M = 158; F = 316) were administered the MBTI. Gifted and talented teenagers, like creative and high achieving adults, prefer intuition and perception (NP). In my research (1992a, 1998e, 1999a, 2004) on creativity in domains, I found that the preferred N and P is universal in the MBTI studies done on visual
artists, creative writers, scientists, mathematicians, inventors, entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, and musical composers.

What is the most commonly found MBTI type for educators? Betkouski and Hoffman (1981) studied 1,389 public school teachers ranging from Canada, to California and Florida. Their study found that the MBTI type, ESFJ, seemed to represent the majority of these educators; in the general population, ESFJ is also the preference of females. About two thirds of elementary and high school teachers prefer J, with about half of elementary teachers and 40% of high school teachers preferring SJ (sensing/judging). N (intuition) teachers are more prevalent in high school, with about half preferring N, while about a third of elementary school teachers prefer N. Only about a third of elementary teachers and high school teachers prefer P (perceiving). Thus the high preference for P (perceiving) in talented students outnumbers those of their teachers and of the society at large. Bireley (1991a) said that with the pragmatism and concrete disposition of the basic curriculum, and given that almost half of elementary and secondary teachersprefer sensing, it is not surprising that teachers complain that high-IQ students often “resist completing basic skills assignments” (p. 195).

While teachers of the gifted and talented also prefer judging, they do so not in the great proportions that regular classroom teachers do (Piirto, 1998a). Of the sensing-intuition preference dyad, the teachers of the talented preferred ENFJ. The intuition preferring types when coupled with the feeling preferring types show genuine concern about all aspects of the welfare of their students’ social, as well as intellectual development. These teachers also prefer to interact on an individual basis and often will individualize
instruction as needed. The presence of more intuition preference among teachers choosing to teach the gifted and talented might be an indication that they have gravitated toward teaching students who have similar preferences to theirs. Within the various realms of the education profession, the types seem to gravitate to certain areas based on their combination type. While NF’s are about one third of the teachers, few teachers prefer SP or NT. NT’s usually prefer to teach in college; only about 8% of K–12 teachers are NT’s.

Those who prefer NT are often gaining the experience to get into graduate programs in order to become college professors. ENFP student teachers are often very popular among the students, but few of them seem to continue in the teaching profession. Keirsey (1978) said, “SJ teachers . . . are not only the types most likely to choose teaching (56 percent of all teach ers), but they are also the types who are most likely to stay in teaching as a lifelong career” (p. 6). The SJ type teacher may be especially intimidating to
a sensitive artistic male, for 97% of the artistic males in the Piirto (1998a) study preferred P, and this confirms earlier studies, for in the creative males described in Myers and McCaulley (1985), 97% of the 112 creative men preferred N. Teachers of the talented, as well as regular classroom teachers need to be aware of this finding. If most educators tend to prefer sensing, how will they meet the needs of the Intuition-preferring artistically and academically talented students that exist in their classrooms, for most talented students are in the regular classroom most of the time during their elementary school years?

The answer lies in teachers having a full understanding of the attributes of the N and S types. Briefly, the S types rely on their senses for understanding and learning. They perceive reality as pieces funneled through their senses. If they cannot use their senses, learning will be minimized. On the other hand, the N types are quite the opposite. They rely on their hunches or inner sense. They perceive reality as a world of opportunity and possibilities. The big picture is clear to them, and they create ways to be an integral part of it. As teachers understand these differences between the insight-driven N students and their own preference for the concrete S activity, they can then begin to plan and implement the mode of instruction that will produce the
highest results for each type’s learning preference. Discovery teaching and project-based assignments are preferences for N’s. They do not often like a fill-in-the-blanks, only-one-right-answer style of teaching.

The NP’s may have a particularly difficult time being understood and challenged by their SJ teachers in elementary and high school, but as they grow older, more N preferring teachers will appear (however, these will most likely be NJ’s, although P preferring professors seem to gravitate toward the arts), and in fact, studies of college professors have shown that most of them prefer N (e.g., see Cooper & Miller, 1991). It could be said without much irony that those with the preference for P are poetic visionaries, and their visions are often undervalued in a prosaic work and school environment. McCaulley (1976) stated that each of the type combinations seems to have its greatest opportunity of success and satisfaction in fields that more closely match the characteristics of that type. According to Jones and Sherman (1979), NP’s require the most counseling. They often seem more nonconformist to rules and regulations, and are willing to lock horns with authority. These students can be procrastinators but are usually good at making the system work for them.

Studies of performing and practicing creators showed they are more often intuitive (N) than sensing (S; Myers & McCaulley, 1985). In fact, in a study of 85 creative and academically talented adolescents, 68% were found  to prefer the N dimension on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Piirto, Gantz, et al., 1997), while in the general population only 25% prefers N (Myers & McCaulley). This high proportion of the N preference among creative people—including scientists, mathematicians, artists, and writers— seems a prime characteristic. Geiger and Martin (1992) also used the Myers-Briggs with high scorers on the SAT and found that the most frequent MBTI types were INTP (introversion, intuition, thinking, and perceiving); ENFP (extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving); and INFP (introversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving).

Some research has been done on which types prefer which teaching/ learning environments. Eggins, in 1979, studied junior high students using three models of teaching: (1) The inductive approach, or Bruner’s model; (2) the didactic approach, or Ausubel’s model using advance organizers; and (3) the concrete to abstract model, or Gagné’s model. Students with high intelligence and the intuitive preference liked the Bruner model. High intelligence judging (J) preference students did also. Further matching otype preference with learning preference has shown that not surprisingly, extraverts like to learn in groups, while introverts “not only did not see experiential training as helpful; but were seen by peers as not participating” (Eggins, p. 131). This might explain the resistance of many academically talented youth to cooperative learning.

Probably those with preference for introversion (I) wouldn’t like the cooperative learning situation. Intuitive types (N) like self-paced learning and situations that let them learn on their own. They like essay questions and often feel academically superior to other students; at the same time, they have high expectations of themselves that they will achieve high grades. Faculty members find that intuitive types often make the most insightful remarks in class. Thinking types (T) like classes that are laid out for them; classes that have clear objectives and goals, classes with structure. They also like teachers to lecture and to demonstrate. Feeling types (F) have more preference for group activities in classes, and they often report that their social lives interfere with their studies. Judging types (J) work efficiently on their own and can manage their time well. They hand assignments in on time, and they are willing to take courses in improving their study skills or their SAT scores. Like thinking types (T), judging types like orderly classes with clear objectives, and don’t mind working in workbooks or listening to lectures.

Perceptive types (P) often report that they procrastinate and they start too late on their work. They like experiential learning, and they are often able to cut through and identify the real issues in problems. In summary, while bright students with high intuition (N), feeling (F), and perception (P) were receptive to teaching/learning situations that used an inductive approach, high-achieving students with the J and T preference prefer to learn the traditional way, and might possibly have to be coaxed to participate in such things as “human relations” activities and the like. Like students with S preferences (Sensing), J and T preferences like courses that are laid out clearly, where expectations are made clear, with teacher lectures, workbooks,
laboratory exercises, and point systems set out with no surprises. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, if one subscribes to the Jungian theory of personality preferences, is a widely used, well-validated instrument with many applications for understanding academically talented high school and college students.

Concerns About Learning Style Theorizing
Stereotyping is a major concern, especially when certain ethnic groups are thought to have certain learning styles. However, recent literature has disclaimed the importance of learning styles as pigeonholing certain groups for less rigorous education. Well-meaning research showed that American Indians prefer to learn by observation: “The American Indian and Inuit children were most successful at processing visual information and had the most difficulty performing well on tasks saturated with verbal content” (Deyhle & Swisher, 1997, p. 140). When such information is used to stereotype students, the cultural deficit model—that certain cultures are deficient—“has been used to stereotype students into specific group styles and to ignore both individual and tribal differences” (p. 151).

Likewise, Howard Gardner (1995b) evinced a worry about the use of his multiple intelligence theory (MI) in schools. He published an article on the “myths” that are being propounded about the multiple intelligences. One of the myths was that multiple intelligences were learning styles. An intelligence is a construct, not a domain, discipline, or learning style. MI theory is empirical and compatible with general intelligence theory. Evidence for this is that a person cannot learn mathematics at the higher levels through a strength in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Ultimately each intelligence has its own codified symbol system and a person who is learning a domain based on that intelligence must learn and be able to solve problems within that code.

Brain-Based Learning
The latest flavor of the month in education circles seems to be brain-based learning, where speakers come around and entreat teachers and administrators to place diagrams of the brain on their bulletin boards, and to spend a lot of money on materials that are supposed to teach to children’s left- or right-brain dominance. Without wanting to foil entrepreneurial efforts in education, I must point out that a search of the empirical literature and of research studies shows that concluding that certain
practices teach to certain areas of the brain is not research-based. If one searches scholarly articles on brain dominance, one finds a few dissertations using learning style inventories to pigeonhole certain occupations as one or another type. If one searches for research on the right brain or left brain, one finds research that is done on brain-damaged people. The research that certain educational approaches are best for certain brain preferences of people who are not brain-damaged just doesn’t seem to be there. Much of the brain-based curriculum seems to be based on learning theory that student teachers learn in their basic educational psychology courses. It’s not harmful and represents pedagogy derived from what some research has suggested, but it’s not yet prudent to say that certain brain research suggests curricular directions. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.

Testing
Most schools administer standardized achievement tests at all levels. Guidance counselors at all grade levels should “get their hands dirty” with these tests, and mine them for the information that they contain. Much can be gleaned from just looking at the cumulative records of students. One school I consulted with had its tests piled in unopened boxes in the counseling office. The stickers with the test scores were put on the students’ folders by the secretaries; the counselors had no clue as to who were their talented students or who were their high achievers. This is an extreme case, but many standardized achievement tests contain useful diagnostic information, especially about skills.

Value-Added Assessment
The value-added approach to assessment, which has become very popular in certain states, encourages a diagnostic look at standardized achievement tests. This way of looking at test data has implications for gifted and talented students who score at or near the ceiling on tests from year to year. Do these students make progress, or do they stay the same? Value-added assessment measures whether students grow, comparing the same students from year to year, instead of different groups of students in different years. Begun in Tennessee, the value-added way of looking at test data is gaining popularity. A backlash to No Child Left Behind ways of assessing minimal competencies, value-added assessment is diagnostic, and can tell in which areas a student needs work. Because most gifted and talented students already have minimal competency, a value-added way of looking at their test scores can be diagnostic. When I was a school principal of a school for gifted children, I charted, for each teacher, the skills in which each student had weaknesses. Though the overall averages were high, individual students needed work in individual skills. Test results can be used for diagnostic instead of merely descriptive purposes.

Talent Searches and Out-of-Level Testing
The talent searches conducted by the Center for Talented Youth (CTY), and regional talent search organizations (e.g., Northwestern University’s Midwest Talent Search and Duke University’s Talent Identification Program [TIP] rely on out-of-level testing.) At the higher levels standardized tests are inaccurate; the numbers of items in any category of skill is necessarily small so that the test can be comprehensive. If a child gets all the items right, the school has no idea what the child’s actual achievement level is. The tests give a projection of level, in a grade equivalent, but these are just projections, and projections at the upper levels are also inaccurate because of sampling and number of items in the skills. If a child in the third grade
receives a grade equivalent of 12.9 (12th grade, 9th month) on the standardized achievement test, this does not mean that the child could go to the senior high school class and sit there and achieve with the 12th graders. It means the child got all the items right on the third grade test.

Higher level tests should be administered to students who score in the top ranges, so that their achievement levels can be clearly assessed and accurate placement can be made (Lupkowski-Shoplik & Assouline, 1993; Olszewski-Kubilius & VanTassel Baska, 1990; Stanley et al., 1992). Schools that do out-of-level testing are quite rare. That is why opportunities for such children through the talent search programs are important. Usually it is the coordinator of programs for the talented who makes counselors aware of talent search programs, and some coordinators have been met with resistance.
The identification of such talent potential when the students are in junior high school is extremely important, so their course selections can be made with care. Students who attend special accelerated summer programs often complete a year of mathematics in an intensive 3 weeks. A related problem comes when the school system will not give the child credit for the summer work, operating on the assumption that a Carnegie unit takes so much time over so many months and to do the work in a shorter amount of time is not possible. Julian Stanley, who founded the SMPY (Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) program at Johns Hopkins, said this about the tyranny of the Carnegie unit: “The age-in-grade lockstep is somewhat like the practice of the innkeeper Procrustes in Greek mythology, who tied travelers to an iron bed and amputated or stretched their limbs until they fitted it” (Stanley, 1989, p. 194).

Proficiency Testing
Currently the schools are in a tizzy about proficiency testing. Whole curricula are being modified and teaching styles and methods are being changed, so that the schools can score within acceptable levels on proficiency tests. Some of the tests are high stakes; in some states students can not graduate from high school without passing a statewide examination for
proficiency. Proficiency tests have not been studied to any extent for how they relate to the most administered standardized achievement tests such as the California, the Iowa, and the Metropolitan. If studies have been done, they have been done comparing the tests at the lower ends and not at the high ends. What does proficiency mean for academically talented students and for those who help them with their education? Will the standards in the schools be lowered to the mean, the norm, of however proficient is defined, and will no one worry about how one can teach those who are above proficient?

Program Articulation
Another guidance issue that goes along with course taking is the fact that program articulation must take place from school to school within a school system. Planned program articulation guarantees that repetition does not occur, and that the whole system is operating together, not school by school, or even class by class. High schools often balk at giving junior high school students Carnegie unit credit for courses taken while they are in junior high school. Talented mathematics students are often the victims of this bureaucratic inflexibility, for the development of mathematical talent requires course taking in a sequential manner. The school bureaucracy relies on a schedule and if an anomaly, a talented student, comes along who needs a flexible schedule so he can go to the high school and take mathematics and get Carnegie unit credit for that mathematics and then come back to the middle school to take his social studies and English classes, the schedulers (often counselors) may not like it.

Vocational Guidance
The guidance counselor should have a battery of vocational interest tests that can be used with all students. Talented students especially need vocational counseling because they are often told, “you can do anything that you want to.” If a person can do anything she wants to, the burden is heavy, for what does she really want to do? Often, students know only about certain professional choices—doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer—but do not know about others—linguist, diplomat, historian, professor. Here are some suggestions to improve vocational selection for talented students:
1. Mentoring programs that start early will allow a student to shadow people in certain professions the student may be interested in.
2. Make a battery of vocational interest inventories available to students early. Many states have computerized career education programs that can be tapped into from the counseling office. The Self-Directed Search and other like instruments can be used fruitfully. The counselor should not wait for student initiation of the process, but should make sure that all talented students take advantage of already present career planning opportunities early.
3. An articulated career education plan beginning in the elementary grades and proceeding through middle school and high school is important. This should include role models, mentors, career awareness, field trips, internships, and special summer or extracurricular opportunities. Many people show snobbery about vocational programs. This is mistaken. The need for highly trained technical people keeps growing. These technical jobs are often high paying, and along with them goes a certain job security, often along union lines. But, even if there isn’t job security such as in old-time union days, the technically trained hospitality, health, business, industry, agriculture, retail, and family and consumer sciences graduate will soon find another job as his or her knowledge is desperately needed. On the other hand, the sadness of the recent Ph.D. graduate desperately seeking employment in the sciences or in literature is reflected in the hundreds of resumes that pile up in college offices when even a low-level academic position is offered. Something has gone wrong with our value system about what work is admirable and what is not.

Volunteerism and Service
A requirement for high school graduation in many districts has become the mandatory volunteerism and service requirement (an oxymoron to be sure). The results of such programs have been shown to be mixed, but generally positive. Students who tutor, who visit people in hospitals, who coordinate programs in the community almost invariably state that the experience was worth it. One academically talented high school girl in a case study done by one of my students credited her career in medicine to
her candy-stripe volunteerism while she was in high school. Again, the altruistic nature of many of the students is satisfied when they learn to give and not just to take. Middle school students have also volunteered in their communities as part of the curriculum for their studies (Gosfield, 1993).

Gender Difference Concerns for Guidance Intervention
Guidance counselors and educators of the talented should be aware that there are strong gender differences among talented youth. Some of the most profound gender differences have shown up in achievement, in testing, in underachievement, in course taking, and in parents’ attitudes and school personnel’s behaviors toward their girls. Even though girls get better grades in high school and college, boys receive better scores on the SAT and are therefore more likely to become National Merit Semifinalists. A group called the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (see http://www.fairtest.org) said that the National Merit group said that boys take harder courses, especially in mathematics and science, which gives them an edge. For now, suffice it to say that it is true that females are often guided into taking fewer and less rigorous high school courses, and that the more rigorous the junior high school and high school courses for academically talented youth, the more they will achieve in college and perhaps after college. However, in the early 2000s, the numbers of college students were majority female, and so were the number of college graduates. This led
people to wonder, what is happening to the boys? Kerr and Cohn (2001) noted that the school setting is not friendly to boisterous boys. Pollack (1998) cited the “boy code,” which prevents boys from showing their emotions and harnesses them into certain stereotypical behaviors.

Gender Differences in Testing
Counselors and educators of the talented should also be aware, in helping students to plan for courses and for tests, that there are great gender differences in test results. In 1992, Julian Stanley and his colleagues reported that of 84 commonly administered achievement tests, 83 showed statistical differences favoring males. This has implications for college and graduate school admissions. These tests included the Differential Aptitude Test, the American College Test, Advanced Placement Tests in all fields, the Graduate Records Examinations, and the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The results of these tests cannot be attributed to test bias or gender bias in test items, according to both Stanley and Benbow (1992). Stanley noted that most test makers throw out items that show gender differences, and that studies that have been showing that gender differences are declining are thus misleading. Benbow noted that “there may be many more exceptionally talented males than females in mathematics” basing her conclusion on data from more than a million subjects tested over 20 years, and concluding,“the gender difference in mathematical talent is not an artifact of test item bias” (pp. 99–100).

The debate rages on. In 2005, Larry Summers, the president of Harvard University, made a statement that genetic, innate differences might explain the reason why fewer women go into science and mathematics. A firestorm of protest ensued, whereby the feminists (who believe the sexes are equal both genetically and socially) and the “others” (those who are not feminist) weighed in. “How dare he say this?” was the cry. Again, the arguments for fairness in testing and for reconstruction of tests became news. Saletan (2005) said this in Slate Magazine: Let’s be clear about what this isn’t. It isn’t a claim about overall intelligence. Nor is it a justification for tolerating discrimination between two people of equal ability or accomplishment. Nor is it a concession that genetic handicaps can’t be overcome. Nor is it a statement that girls are inferior at math and science: It doesn’t dictate the limits of any individual, and it doesn’t entail that men are on average better than women at math or science. It’s a claim that the distribution of male scores is more spread out than the distribution of female scores—a greater percentage at both the bottom and the top. Nobody bats an eye at the overrepresentation of men in prison. But suggest that the excess might go both ways, and you’re a pig. (p. 9)

Counseling Issues Among Talented Youth

What are foci that counselors of the talented should have? There are several ways to go, but issues among gifted youth, as with the rest of young people, have age-related cycles. For younger academically talented students and others, issues of homework and who does it when; school and playground bullying and competition; and peer acceptance and friendship all
have importance. The high incidence of introversion among gifted youth may also lead to difficulties with their peers. Others state that academically talented youth have counseling needs in the areas of self concept, self-esteem, perfectionism, bullying, and underachievement. There are several counseling issues that have been particularly applicable
to academically talented students. Among them are anger, attention disorders and other medical conditions, boredom, bullying, creativity, delinquency, depression, dropping out of school, gender related issues, issues that come along with having a very high IQ, introversion, intuition, meeting the expectations of others, motivation, overexcitabilities or intensities, peer relations, perfectionism, overachievement, resilience, self-concept/self-esteem, stress, sexual identity, and underachievement (see Table 11.3).
Space does not permit a long discussion of each issue in Table 11.3, but following is an overview of how counseling is often helpful.

Anger
Anger in talented students happens the same way it does in everyone: The amygdala is hijacked, as Goleman (1995) says. Vail (1994) described the case of a talented boy who finally snapped, smashing glass: Ben’s class had thirty-two kids and one teacher—a far cry from the seventeen students, a teacher, and an assistant he had before; and because of a budget cut, there was no music teacher. Music had been Ben’s favorite subject at his other school. Because the classes were large, Ben’s teachers during those three years kept everyone moving in lock step through the curriculum, making it hard for a shy child to make friends. Thoughtful and imaginative, Ben found no outlet for his intellectual or imaginative energies in school, and the rigidity of the scheduling—mixed with the need for quiet in large group —meant there were few opportunities for the kind of spontaneous enjoyment which leads to friendship. (p. 96) An unpublished study mentioned in Webb et al. (2005) conducted by Olenchak and Hébert on the school shootings in the late 1990s and early 2000s estimated that 85% of the shooters “either had been identified as gifted children or could now in retrospect have been identified as gifted children” (p. 65).

Suggestions for counseling the angry student include counseling for recognition of what situation brings the anger out, when the instinct overwhelms the rationality. Anger often occurs during the same kinds of challenges. The student becomes aware of this and uses “emotional intelligence” to bring the anger past the prefrontal cortex so he can deal with it. The sensitivity and perceptiveness of the gifted and talented student makes him or her see the hypocrisy in being praised for achievement while also being considered, odd, freakish, or weird for winning a spelling bee or for coming in first in academics. This may lead to anger in some students. However, as one Presidential Scholar said in the Lamont, Kaufman, and Moody (2000) study, the need to be first is also present in some real and tangible way: We wanted to be at the top of the class, wanted to know our stuff . . . I guess there are a lot of issues that surround the whole, you know, “I’m Number One” thing. There’s personal satisfaction and there’s the reflection on your school and on your family and the respect that other people give you. I think now the reason that I work hard in college is partly motivated by my past desire to want to be at the top somewhere. But it’s also that I really want to know the material because it’s probably going to be relevant to what I want to do in the future. (p. 208)

Attention Disorders and Other Medical Conditions
The diagnosis of gifted and talented children as having ADHD and ADD has come to the attention of professionals in the field. In 2005, Webb and colleagues published a book called Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, where they addressed this problem and others having to do with ideational and anxiety disorders such as Asperger’s syndrome; Schizoid Personality Disorder; mood disorders, such as bipolar disorders; learning disabilities, such as dyslexia; sleep disorders, such as insomnia and hypersomnia; allergies, asthma, and reactive hypoglycemia; and relationship issues, such as power struggles between the child and authority figures. A diagnostic protocol was given for each of these. A rule of thumb regarding attention disorders is that often the attention disorder is selective; that is, it happens only in school, and not when the child is concentrating on an area of passion at home. Webb et al. (2005) stated, “most diagnosable behavioral disorders occur relatively independent of the situation, and only rarely will a situation cause the symptoms to predictably disappear. This is not the case with gifted children and adults. For them, problem behavior patterns typically are greatly reduced or vanish entirely when the person interacts with other gifted persons” (p. 205). For more on this topic, see Moon (2002) and Cramond (1995). Asperger’s syndrome (or disorder) is a form of autism that also affects gifted and talented students. Learning disabilities are of several different types. All these are discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 12, which concerns gifted and talented students with special needs.

Genuine Boredom
Boredom in a class is of three types: (1) boredom because one knows the material, (2) boredom because one doesn’t know the material, and (3) boredom because one is not interested in the material being talked about. Little in the literature on counseling suggests what the powerless student can do when subjected to Boredom (1)—repeated drill and practice in material he or she already knows. Excruciating boredom, when time passes so slowly it is as if a giant were dragging its feet down a long corridor, should be recognized. Alternative activities, testing out of a class, and acceleration to a higher level may be suggested as a possibility. Boredom (2) can be remedied by piercing a hole, shedding some light into the material so that the student can penetrate it and begin to understand (e.g., the subject of philosophy or of calculus is often impenetrable at first). Boredom (3) can be helped if the teacher is canny, wise, cunning, funny, and theatrical. Dahlen and colleagues (2004) noted that boredom leads to anger: “Boredom due to a lack of external stimulation predicted one’s propensity to experience anger, maladaptive anger expression, aggression, and deficitsin anger control” (p. 1615).

Bullying
Recent studies have shown that gifted and talented students are both
bullied and are bullies. Peterson and Ray (2006b) found that bullying is
prevalent in schools. In a study of eighth graders, they found that 67%
had been bullied. Sixth grade was the year when most bullying took
place. They listed 13 types of bullying: name-calling; teasing about appearance,
intelligence, grades, family, and social status; knocking books; taking
possessions; damaging possessions; threatening; intimidating; hitting
and punching; pushing and shoving; and beating up. Name-calling and
teasing about appearance were the most common kinds of bullying. The
most emotionally troubling kind of bullying was teasing about appearance.
572 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Those who were bullied in sixth grade sometimes became bullies in eighth
grade. Peterson and Ray interviewed gifted and talented students about
being bullied and stated, “being interested in learning and achievement can
contribute to vulnerability, at a time of tenuous identity” (p. 263). Bullying
by and to girls continued longer than with boys. Psychological androgyny
might also be a factor: “Gifted males who embrace their interest in the arts,
are highly motivated to achieve academically, and/or are small in stature,
and gifted females who are leaders, athletes, engineers, or tomboys all may
be targeted by bullies, probably especially in middle school” (p. 263).
Creativity
That being creative would lead to a need for counseling is sad but true.
The student striding down the halls with spiked hair, clothes from the thrift
shop, five earrings in one ear, her nose pierced, clutching her copy of Jack
Kerouac to her breast, and smelling faintly of incense or patchouli perfume,
is making a statement. “I’m different. I’m creative.” Her grades are all A’s in
her literature course where her favorite teacher reigns. In math, she barely
hands in the homework, coasting to graduation on C’s. She had a poem
published in a literary journal sponsored by a major university writing
program, but her counselor doesn’t know that such a publication is different
from the typical poetic publications of high school students, vanity
anthologies in which the students have to pay to have their work printed
and have to pay to get a copy. She needs to learn how not to be so cutting in
her withering verbal barbs; people stay away from her because of her sharp
tongue, and while she doesn’t mean to be unkind or seem superior, she is
taken as such by her teachers, as well as her peers.
The young rock musician languishing in the third period detention hall
in his black leather jacket and his engineer boots spends many a night in
the garage working out some new songs with the band for the gigs they
play on weekends. Diagnosed as dyslexic, he has not read one book for
the past 2 years. He is smart, though; he can talk his way out of anything,
his teachers say, but this time he went too far. He was late again and cut
school yesterday. His parents, themselves musicians, have a house full of
interesting friends who crash there when traveling through town. They had
backstage passes to a concert and didn’t get home until 5 a.m. He’s not old
enough to drive, and so he had to stay with them while they partied. He
needs flexibility in scheduling and intervention for his dyslexia, books on
tape, and counseling about the importance of high school graduation in the
long run.
Rimm (1995, 1996) has written on intervention for the creative underachiever,
called “Creative Chris,” one of the several personas in her group
of “dominant nonconformers” (Rimm, 2003, p. 431), and she suggests a
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 573
behavioral approach, which may create more opposition in certain children
(see Webb et al., 2005, for characteristics of oppositional disorders). Others
(Kessler, 2000; Reynolds & Piirto, 2005) suggested what is perhaps a more
loving approach, a recognition that the “soul” of the creative child may not
be being fed in the common elementary and high school. Reynolds and
Piirto said, “In our test-driven and socially constructed definitions of who
is or who is not gifted and talented, we lose sight of the mystery of exceptionality
in people” (p. 164). Klein (2005) said,
If a case is to be made for addressing the soul in education, teaching,
learning, and curriculum, the soul must be understood as
Energy, and that attention to the inner lives of students will not
engage them in religious or devotional practices in the classroom,
but rather in the development of intuitive, emotional, creative,
artistic, cognitive ENERGY.
Delinquency
While there is little literature about the incidence of delinquency
among high-IQ students, that is probably an artifact of the way that giftedness
is tested and not of the way that giftedness exists. The gang leader
who keeps all the accounts of the drug deals he oversees, is he not bright?
The confounding of giftedness with goodness is pervasive, as Margolin
(1994) pointed out. But, the 10 core attributes of giftedness—communication
skills, imagination/creativity, humor, inquiry, insight, interests, memory,
motivation, problem solving, and reasoning (Frasier, Hunsaker, et al.,
1995)—exist outside the law, as well as within it. Neihart (2003a) suggested
that while delinquency in identified students is rare, it still exists.
Depression
Depression is of several types. A person may experience bipolar disorder
(manic-depressiveness), and this seems to be more common among
artists, writers, musicians, and other creative people than among people
with talents in the sciences and mathematics. Clinical depression not of
the bipolar variety also is common among highly intelligent people. The
diagnosis of bipolar or monopolar depression is made by medical people
and licensed psychologists and not by school counselors, teachers, or parents.
Webb et al. (2005) listed the criteria for depression, and stated that the
misdiagnosis and dual diagnosis of depression may be confusing for people
who deal with gifted people.
Existential depression is depression when one considers the meaning
of life and how one fits into it and what one can do about it. Students
574 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
may go into depression as they become relativists; that is, when they
grow and develop into considering other points of view as having value,
and when their own family-based values are in question. The Dabrowski
theory of positive disintegration calls this type of depression “multilevel,”
and the emphasis is on positive, for one cannot grow without
questioning.
Although the tragic popularization of famous suicides of talented students
has hit the newspapers, Cross (1996a; 1996b) indicated that suicide
seems no more prevalent in the talented population than in other populations.
In a case study technique he called psychological autopsy, he found
three themes in the suicides of talented adolescents: depression, suicide
contagion, and overexcitability. Existential depression may become clinical
depression, as Elizabeth Wurtzel, a talented young Harvard graduate who
experienced chronic depression, described in her book, Prozac Nation
(1994):
Sylvia Plath killed herself in 1963, before there were slackers and
before there were even hippies. She killed herself because she
was depressed, the same as Ernest Hemingway, Vince Foster, and
so many anonymous others. No one shoots himself in the head
because he’s had a bad fishing season or because the Wall Street
Journal’s editorial page says mean things about him. Depression
strikes down deep. The fact that depression seems to be “in the
air” right now can be both the cause and result of a level of societal
malaise that so many feel. (p. 351)
Dropping Out of School
The incidence of dropping out of school affects academically talented
students. A study of Hispanic females in Texas showed that many who
had been in programs for the gifted and talented dropped out (Lashaway-
Bokina, 1997). A study of students in classes for young unwed mothers in
Ohio revealed that 10% of them had been in programs for the gifted and
talented (Salvo, 1992). A review study of American Indian students (Deyhle
& Swisher, 1997) indicated percentages of dropouts ranging from 35% to
69%.
Demographic factors that contribute to dropping out are
being two or more years behind grade level, being pregnant, coming
from a household where the mother or father was not in the home
when the youth was 14 years of age, having relatively little knowledge
of the labor market, low classroom grades, negative school
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 575
attitudes, and delinquent behavior in junior high school. (Deyhle &
Swisher, 1997, p. 126)
Students often felt that they had been “pushed out” of school. Were some
of these students talented? Undoubtedly.
Gender-Related Issues
Gender differences should be taken into account by counselors. The
adolescent passage is particularly risky for both boys and girls. Pipher
(1994), in her devastating collection of case studies of young teenage girls,
included many artistically and academically talented students in her warning
of the risks of eating disorders, self-mutilation, sexual abuse, date abuse,
violence, divorce, drugs and alcohol, problems with mothers, problems
with fathers, and the like. One of the problems that is pervasive among girls
is what Pipher called “lookism,” or the desire to look like the models in the
magazines and on television, and the resultant discontent with one’s own
body and its own look. Social isolation, while a problem in adolescence,
often strengthens girls. She called those who survive “strong girls.” Pipher
said:
Many strong girls have similar stories. They were socially isolated
and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most
rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished
for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don’t worry
about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing
because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are
isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self-sufficient
than girls who have been accepted by others. (p. 266)
The strategies that have been used by strong girls have been to find
“protected space.” Pipher (1994) reassured the girls, the schools, and their
parents that most girls come out of the terrible time in early adolescence
when these issues arise stronger, more independent, and more resilient.
This protected space can be created by the student’s interests, by books,
by families, by churches, and by intentional or unintentional physical or
social separation. This can be ameliorated by attendance at special summer
institutes where experience has shown that the students find an immense
relief that there are other people just like they are, and the joy of recognition
takes place.
Talented boys also have issues that counseling could help. Among these
are emotionality, bonding, mother-son relationships, father-son relationships,
perfectionism, sexuality, the success trap, images in advertising,
576 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
competition and ego, and others (Alvino, 1991; Hébert, 2006). Alvino
said, “The male ego, augmented by an excessive competition and striving
characteristic among the gifted, can become a terrible beast of insatiable
hunger” (p. 180). Kline and Short (1991) stated that talented high school
boys “decide to shut the door on the emotional insecurity of their junior
high experience and put a shield over their vulnerability, suppressing their
potential for experiencing feelings and having rewarding relationships” (p.
187). Hébert (1991) summarized six issues with which talented boys must
deal: (1) how to manage their images, (2) how to deal with the pressure they
put upon themselves, (3) how to meet the expectations of their culture for
how a “man” should act, (4) being different from other boys, (5) the need for
finding and keeping male friends, and (6) gender role conflict. Hébert said,
“Many talented young men cherish aspects of their personalities which may
be considered non-masculine” (p. 209). This applies to young men in the
arts, especially, who are often ridiculed for their interests.
Kerr and Cohn (2001), in their book Smart Boys, listed and described
many issues surrounding the passage of gifted boys, suggesting that gifted
boys be considered equally at risk as gifted girls, for many of the same reasons
having to do with their dispositions, interests, and personalities, which
may not be the same as those of all the rest of the boys.
Gender Differences in Socialization
Girls are often concerned with social goals more than power and
achievement goals (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Higham & Navarre, 1984;
Piirto, 1991b). They may be more concerned with social relationships than
individual achievement and status. Likewise, they are more interested in
people than in things. Gender differences in activity interests, personal
interests, and range of interests have surfaced among talented children and
youth. Role models are extremely important, especially in the home. For
example, who helps with math homework is crucial. Usually it is the father,
and this gives the message that men know more than women about math
(Navarre, 1979). Who interprets the child’s experience? Usually it is the
mother. Researchers (Eccles, 1985b; Higham & Navarre; Kerr, 1985, 1991)
also found that the reinforcers for boys and girls are different, and so were
the providers of experience; games and toys and special educational experiences
were more likely to be provided for boys.
Parents want their daughters to be “happy” and their boys to be achievers
in the professions. Mothers are often likely to tell their daughters, “I
wasn’t any good at mathematics either,” and their sons, “Well, you have the
math ability; you just didn’t work hard enough.” When a child hears these
messages, the messages have bearing on how difficult courses are perceived.
The child’s self-concept about ability to do work in hard courses is
affected by these messages. The boys think, “Oh, if I work harder, I’ll get an
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 577 A in calculus.” The girls think, “I worked so hard in trigonometry and I only
got a C. Why should I take calculus and ruin my grade point average?” As
a result, the course-taking behavior suffers, and thus the final achievement
in measures such as the National Merit Scholarship Program mentioned
previously also suffer.
Female Underachievement
There are also gender differences in underachievement. Colangelo
(1990) reported that a large-scale study of underachieving students who
had scored above 28 on the ACT and who had grade point averages below
2.0 showed that the majority were White, middle-class or upper middleclass
males. Of females who had scored 28 and who had grade point averages
that would indicate underachievement, the grade point averages were
between 2.0 and 3.0—that is, the females kept their GPA’s within respectable
limits while the boys seemed to be openly rebellious, didn’t hand in
papers, didn’t do homework, and didn’t study for tests while still retaining
the information required to score so high on the ACT.
Females underachieve in different ways than males. A 1990 follow-up
study by George and Caroline Vaillant of 40 Terman females (mean age
77 years) found that their underachievement came after high school when
they married and had children. The most creative and productive had the
least numbers of children: Of the 30 women who were occupationally the
most achieving, only 5 had become mothers, and the whole group had only
7 children. The Vaillants said, “For these women, successful career and childrearing
were negatively correlated” (p. 611). Studies like this led me to the
conclusion that academically talented girls are lost to underachievement
during and after college when their need for intimacy and connection overpowers
their need for achievement (Piirto, 1991a, 1992c). Their high school
achievement may be just fine, but when the instinct for love and connection
hits, often in college, underachievement may be the result.
Researchers (Benbow, 1992; Subotnik & Arnold, 1996) have begun
to research this perplexing problem. Why do females who have achieved
high grades in high school and who have entered college as math/science
majors (this is particularly the case with these females) drop out of math/
science majors, switch to other majors, and sometimes even drop out of
the achievement stream (e.g., not go to graduate school, not pursue the
Ph.D.)? Some tentative answers were forthcoming in Benbow’s 1992 paper.
The math/science females were often identified with their fathers: “Perhaps
most interesting was that the career choices of these exceptional females
often corresponded to their father’s career field” (Benbow, p. 115). Arnold
(1993) suggested that the young women do not absorb the tacit knowledge,
the practical knowledge that is necessary for building a career; they do not
understand or cannot break into the informal networks of connections and
578 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
acquaintances, of mentors and mentees, that are necessary in building any
career.
Still, most students who are targeted in school for special intervention
for underachievement are boys, just as most students who are in
special education programs are boys. Girls often achieve well enough not
to be noticed as underachievers; their underachievement comes in course
selection and in getting the gentlewoman’s low B instead of the rebellious
gentleman’s low C.
The Importance of Tacit Knowledge
How does a talented male or female student proceed in a career? Taking
the courses is not enough. Tacit knowledge is necessary (Sternberg, 1985).
What does one do besides take courses and get good grades, in order to
position oneself for success in a career? Tacit knowledge is cognizance of
what one must do in order to proceed. Based on Polanyi’s (1966) work, The
Tacit Dimension, Tschannen-Moran and Nestor-Baker (2004) said,
Personal knowledge [is] so thoroughly grounded in experience
that it cannot be fully expressed. Tacit knowledge is procedural in
nature, relevant to goal attainment, and frequently acquired with
minimal help from others. Tacit knowledge allows a person to
know when to adapt to the environment, when to shape the environment,
and when to select a new one. (p. 1485)
This knowledge is often imparted casually, if at all, during a student’s life.
Sometimes this knowledge is conveyed over what comes to be called “the
old boys’ network,” at the golf course or in the private men’s club or fraternity,
and the talented female might not know what she should do to attain
this knowledge. In her study of Illinois valedictorians, Arnold (1993) said,
A major reason many women find it difficult to develop the base of
untaught practical knowledge for envisioning, planning, and implementing
high level careers is a lack of support, mentorship, and
significant interaction with faculty. The most successful women in
the valedictorian study were unusual in receiving special opportunities
and attention from faculty. Most of the study women did not
become close to any faculty person. (p. 25)
Group and individual counseling, and the enlisting of faculty mentors for
talented young women is especially important in late high school and the
in late college years.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 579 Academically Talented Girls and Teen Pregnancy
While many think that academically talented or other talented teenage
and young adult girls are virginal and pure, studying hard and achieving,
the truth is more mundane. Academically talented young women are just
as interested in the opposite sex as are most other young women. This
leaves them as vulnerable as all young women to the gender issue of teen
pregnancy. Sex education is a vital component of any guidance program
for academically talented youth. Of course, the very title of this section is
sexist; that is, isn’t an unwanted pregnancy the responsibility of the father,
as well, whether or not he is gifted and talented?
Very High IQ
Not only is Stephanie Tolan a Newbery-Award-winning author for her
book about creative gifted adolescents, Surviving the Applewhites (2002),
she is also an expert on high-IQ students. Tolan (1992b) noted that parents
and theorists/researchers often have conflicting views. Parents of children
with high IQs notice more. They notice the pain and the emotion with
which the high-IQ child must cope when true intellectual peers are few and
understanding is far away. Hollingworth (1926, 1942) noted that students
with high IQs have more difficulty in social adjustment than students with
less extreme IQs. Tolan (1992b) said their extreme precociousness does
not smooth out. Parents “see the extremely negative effects of the failure to
meet their intense intellectual needs” (p. 14). Tolan said that these children
have been called statistically insignificant; that is, their occurrence is too
rare for schools and institutions to consider serving them. Tolan said, “Our
children are suffering intellectual malnourishment. It is not as obvious as
starvation but it is just as real” (p. 18). Gross (1993, 1998, 2002) agreed.
In her detailed descriptions of the characteristics of high-IQ students in
Australia, she asserted that even though they are few in number, they have
a great impact on our society.
In Tolan’s (1992b) view, this intellectual malnourishment causes the
social and emotional difficulties of many high-IQ students. For example,
many have been called hyperactive, needing little sleep when not academically
challenged during the day. Tolan said that when her own high-IQ son
was experiencing an appropriate and challenging education, he would be
very tired; the mental activity was necessary for sleep, and if he had not been
mentally challenged during the day, he would seek mental challenge all night
long, before being able to sleep. “Working the brain is just as, or more tiring
than, working the body,” she said (p. 14). In trying to provide for academically
talented students’ needs, counselors should not overlook the intellectual
needs of high-IQ students. These students, like handicapped students, didn’t
ask to be born this way. Morelock and Feldman (1991) said: “It may be, how580
Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
ever, that the higher the IQ, the more the benefits are counterbalanced by
social adjustment problems imposed by such capacity” (p. 350).
Introversion
Introversion is defined as the tendency to direct one’s thoughts and interests
inward. On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the opposite pole
of Introversion is Extraversion, or the tendency to direct and receive strength
from the outside world. Only 25% of all people prefer Introversion, but most
academically talented students prefer it (Myers & McCaulley, 1985; Piirto &
Johnson, 2004). Silverman (1993) pointed out that the introverts may not be
popular during their school years, but that they often “gain prestigious positions
at universities and research institutes, they are valued for their knowledge
and skills, and they have excellent opportunities to rise to positions of
leadership through scholarly efforts and creative contributions to their fields”
(p. 25). Silverman later (2003a) pointed out that they are higher achievers in
college, perhaps because they don’t focus so much on their social lives. In
midlife, those who prefer Introversion have an advantage in the “long, hard
journey to the Soul,” said Silverman (2003a, p. 216), because they are used to
introspection, retreat, and self-examination.
Being an introvert in an extraverted world is often painful. Introversion
is thought to be genetic, much like the temperaments of being Inhibited/
Uninhibited (Kagan, 1995). Sometimes painfully shy, other times willfully
arrogant, introverted and talented students may not respond well to counseling.
Long pauses may be a feature of counseling sessions. Myers and
McCaulley (1985) said, “Introverts are more likely to look to themselves
first for causes of difficulties. They are more intrapunitive than extrapunitive.
The counselor may need to focus their attention on the fact that some
problems have their source in the environment” (p. 68).
The counselor may also want to quote Simonton (1994):
The gregarious who fritter their time away at cocktail parties, social
outings, and family get-togethers are less likely to leave enduring
impressions on posterity. At death their mouths are silenced forever,
while the voices of deceased introverts speak on. (p. 269)
Intuition
Intuition is a way of knowing without using rational processes: “you just
know, man,” as one of my students said. Intuition involves insight, quick cognition,
and the ability to penetrate to the truth of a situation. Again, many, if
not most, academically and creatively talented students prefer intuition as a
way of seeing the world. Why is having a personality preference of intuition
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 581
a concern for counseling? Intuitive students may present the problem of not
relating to their sensing (S) teachers, as most teachers prefer Sensing (Piirto
1998a; Piirto, Gantz, et al., 1997; Piirto & Johnson, 2004). Most teachers
prefer Extraversion, Sensing, Feeling, Judging (ESFJ). Only about 8% of elementary
teachers are NT personality types, the personality types that many
academically talented students prefer. Counselors should not be afraid to use
metaphor and symbolic discourse with N students, as they respond to such
abstractions. As Intuitive students are often quite independent in thinking,
helping them to find their own solutions instead of dictating to them works
better (Piirto, 2004). Also, Intuitive students often need help in getting organized,
as they often underestimate the time it takes to get a task done (e.g.,
an assignment due, a college application in).
Meeting the Expectations of Others
Because academically talented students are often as “good” as they are
mythologized to be; that is, they perceive the expectations their teachers
and parents have, and they strive conscientiously to meet them, they are
often vulnerable to their empathy. Alice Miller’s book, The Drama of the
Gifted Child, about the narcissism of the middle-class parent who lives out
his or her own dreams and wishes through his or her child, has hit a worldwide
chord so much so that it has been reprinted eight times and in 21
languages since its appearance in 1982. The experience of having been victimized
by parental narcissism often calcifies the talented child. Counseling
may not be enough; therapy might be necessary.
Many family systems operate on what has been called a dysfunctional
level, and these interactions, too, have enhanced talent development. Alice
Miller (1990, 1997a) theorized that creative adults became creative from
family environments of trauma where warmth was present. The trauma
may include what Simonton (1984, 1988) called “the orphanhood effect,”
where a parent may die or be absent. Other traumas that tear apart the
traditionally intact family system are divorce; illness; frequent moving;
physical, verbal, and sexual abuse; and the like. Talented youth who become
scientists, mathematicians, and classical musicians seem to have come
from families that were more stable than the families of actors, writers,
popular musicians, visual artists, and dancers—people in the arts (Piirto,
1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1994a, 1994b, 2004). Perhaps the long schooling necessary
for functioning as an adult scientist, mathematician, or musician is
a result of a family striving together to develop the potential of a talented
child. The fact that many talented adults came from family situations that
were less than ideal illustrates that even the most laissez-faire parenting (or
absence thereof) has an impact on talent development.
582 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Two interesting phenomena are operant. One is the “stage mother” or
“Little League father” situation, in which the parent is obsessed, even to the
point of destructive narcissism, with the development of a child’s talent,
whether or not the child wants to have his or her talent developed. Tofler
and DiGeronimo (2001) called it the “Achievement-by-Proxy Distortion
Syndrome (APDS),” where parents exploit their children’s talent for personal
reasons. Is the parent an autocratic controller, needy, financially hungry, an
overly competitive superachiever, a frustrated coulda’-been champion, or
a rationalizer? The parent probably suffers from APDS (Piirto, 2001). The
other is the “I don’t care what you do just so long as you’re happy” situation,
where busy parents do what is necessary for safety and health, but little
beyond that. Both situations can produce talented adults. Judy Garland is
an example of the former; her mother was so obsessed with Judy’s career as
a child actress that she even permitted the use of amphetamines and tranquilizers
so that Judy could work longer hours in the studio. An example of
the latter is the mother of the actor and comedian Steve Allen, who permitted
him to move, alone, from Chicago to the southwest at the age of 16 in
order to take a job as a radio announcer.
Other parents move with their children to pursue the talent (Farrell,
1990; Feldman & Piirto 1995, 2002; Piirto, 2004; Vail, 1994). The mother
of the dancer Suzanne Farrell moved Suzanne and her two sisters from
Cincinnati to New York City at the offer of an audition with Balanchine,
and they lived in one room there while their mother was a private nurse.
The mother of Academy Award winner Hilary Swank moved from Oregon
to Los Angeles to support young Hilary in her acting dream.
Talented students may also be torn because of the pressure of certain
teachers. Often, music, theater, and athletic coaches develop strong
relationships with their talented students, and may be in danger of overwhelming
them in the desire to develop their talents. Perhaps the coaches
and teachers see their young selves in these students. Some teachers have
even physically and sexually abused their students. Tofler and DiGeronimo
(2001) described how Canadian hockey players were abused by a coach.
They commented on the autocratic style of gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi,
and the risks to talented youngsters of being placed with older players or
having coaches who use the Bobby Knight style of physical abuse, and the
flocking of parents to place their children with certain coaches known as
“star makers.” They quoted a physics student who said, “I remember going
to my tutor with my knees shaking. I was so afraid of his temper tantrums,
and I couldn’t stand being called ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’ every time I made a mistake”
(p. 96). The phenomenon of the teacher who overidentifies with the
students is explored artistically in the films Madame Sousatzka (1988) and
Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995).
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 583
Motivation
Problems of motivation are many. Too much, too little, too outer, too
inner are all motivational concerns. Can a student have too much motivation?
When health suffers, yes. When relationships with key people in
one’s life suffer, yes. Too little motivation also needs examining in terms
of underachievement. If a student is motivated by external forces only
(extrinsic motivation), motivation is said to die when the external forces are
removed, though behaviorist theory often advocates using external rewards
to motivate students to complete tasks. Internal motivation (intrinsic motivation)
is said to be the most useful for achievement; that is, if a student can
transfer the external to the internal, he or she is likely to stay on the task.
Motivation theory was simplistic once, but now it is complicated. We
also have to take into account the presence of learned helplessness, where
students may not produce without dependence on others, and the presence
of internal and external locus of control (see Chapter 12 for a discussion
of locus of control in talented minority children in San Diego). Many
of the personality attributes in the base of the Piirto Pyramid of Talent
Development have relationship to motivation: discipline, persistence, and
the like. One is said to go into a state of “flow” while creating and this state
is itself motivating; that is, one wants to come back to it again and again
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
Two Greek terms have surfaced in this discussion. Lovecky’s (1993) use
of the complicated word entelechy and Hillman’s (1996) use of the word
daimon also speak to the construct of motivation and the talented. Lovecky
contends that the talented individual possesses entelechy; that is, “a vital
force urging an individual toward engagement” (p. 33). Hillman offers that
the person is motivated by the daimon, which is the tiny acorn of talent
born in seed that has the potential to grow into a mighty oak of talent realized.
All these should be the focus of some understanding of motivation on
the parts of those who counsel the talented. Gottfried et al. (2005) have now
proposed that motivation is a form of giftedness.
Overexcitabilities: The Dabrowski Theory and Emotional Intensity
A particularly useful theory for understanding how gifted and talented
youth cope with what their lives bring along is the Dabrowski theory
of emotional development. Dabrowski (1964, 1967, 1972; Dabrowski &
Piechowski, 1977), according to his major translator, Michael Piechowski
(1975, 1979, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1997a, 2003, 2006), did not view the intellectually
and artistically gifted as maladjusted; rather he saw their intensities
in their areas of talent as a higher form of adjustment on a continuum of
584 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
levels of adjustment. “To varying degrees, these five dimensions give talent
its power,” said Piechowski (1997a, p. 366).
There are five types of primary intensities, or as they are called in the
Dabrowski theory, overexcitabilities. Piechowski (1991, p. 287) described
them this way:
• Psychomotor overexcitability. An augmented capacity for being active
and energetic—expressed as movement, restlessness, drivenness.
• Sensual overexcitability. An enhanced differentiation and aliveness
of sensual experience.
• Intellectual overexcitability. Avidity for knowledge and the search
for truth—expressed as discovery, questioning, and love of ideas
and theoretical analysis.
• Imaginational overexcitability. The power of thought creation—
expressed through vividness of imagery, richness of association,
liking for the unusual, and a facility for dreams, fantasies, and
inventions.
• Emotional overexcitability. The heart—recognized in the great
depth and intensity of emotional life expressed through a wide
range of feelings, attachments, compassion, heightened sense of
responsibility, and scrupulous self-examination.
These intensities, called overexcitabilities, provoke both relief and recognition
from gifted people and the parents of gifted children who learn about
the theory. “I’m not weird, after all” or “I’m not crazy after all” is a common
reaction. Piechowski (1991) said that the “stronger these overexcitabilities
are, the less welcome they are among peers and teachers (unless they, too,
are gifted)” (p. 287). Children who experience life with such intensity are
often made to feel weird, strange, different, and embarrassed. They often
learn to squelch their reactions before they are squelched by their peers,
their teachers, and sometimes even their parents. Their abilities for feeling
and for expression thus are quenched, as flames drowned by water or
snuffers.
Examples of overexcitabilities present in gifted people often surface
when people respond to life. An intellectually gifted teenage boy who wants
to be a writer, and who is an avid reader, often reads novels in taking breaks
from his homework. When he does his homework, which is often boring,
he will “zip back and forth” between the books he is reading for pleasure
and his homework. When he is writing a story, he will go out to the woods
and imagine that he is the character he is writing about (Piirto, 1990b).
Another boy, a precocious writer (Edmunds & Edmunds, 2005) demonstrated
his sensitivity early by being very upset at scary stories; leaving the
room when violence was on television; precognitively predicting the death
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 585
of his grandfather; delighting in nature walks, sports, and words; and being
overjoyed during holidays and depressed when the holidays are over. His
mother said, “tears are probably more frequent than in other kids, not tantrums
or manipulative tears but genuine sadness at things that probably do
not upset most other children. He frequently says that he just cannot help
it” (Edmunds & Edmunds, p. 75).
Such intense reactions to the world are often uncovered by the use of
the Overexcitability Questionnaire (Piechowski & Cunningham, 1985).
In one study of adolescents who attended a summer institute, examples
of the various types of overexcitabilities showed through the use of the
Overexcitability Questionnaire (OEQs; Piirto, 1992b). Questions such as
“Are you poetically inclined?”; “What kinds of things get your mind going?”;
“Do you ever think about your own thinking?”; and “Does tasting something
mean anything to you?” are examples. A qualitative analysis of 100
questionnaires written in 1989, 1991, and 1995 showed at least five themes
in the emotional life of these talented adolescents: hypersensitivity, God,
life in other forms, performing, and challenging self and others (Flint et
al., 1997). The hypersensitivity was described as “hyperness” by one of the
students: “My heartbeat increases, even if I am only intellectually excited. I
get very talkative and I gesture a lot.”
A response to and a belief in life in other forms is animistic thinking,
common to imaginational overexcitability. One student said, “I think everything
on the earth is made of energy, and energy is a living thing. Not only
nature but thoughts and feelings too.” In response to one of the questions
about whether or not other things have a life of their own, another student
said, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m always watching out for things. Sometimes
I talk to them so they know I care. I know what they’re like and how they
live.”
The love of performing came out in this population, as one of the
classes was musical theater. One student said:
When I am on stage I feel as if I’m soaring on a cloud with the
angels singing beside me. Performing is absolutely my first love.
The magic of the theater always seeps into my soul and grasps
control of it. When I am acting, I am as happy, or happier, as any
person can be.
One young athlete wrote of the joy of competition:
When the competition is high and I know I can take over the whole
scene I use the energy to excel and raise my play up a notch. It is a
feeling of freedom and an incredible high. It is a true freedom that
unfortunately not everyone can feel. It is to be a winner.
586 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
In another theme in this study, the students seemed to thrive on challenge.
One student wrote:
I love to argue. It is almost the only thing that keeps me going in
school, challenging my teachers or fellow students. I argue with
myself about moral issues, social issues, how I should handle situations,
etc. The only problem is that I can often find equally good
arguments for both sides. I mentally plan out arguments with other
people all the time. Usually the purpose of these arguments is not to
prove that I am right or the other person is wrong, but to effectively
present another side to think about. I become infuriated easily by
people who will not accept anything other than their own ideas or
who judge people by whether they have the “right” or the “wrong”
answer.
Piechowski’s concept of emotional giftedness is similar to what Gardner
calls interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, but Piechowski noted
that Gardner did not delineate the developmental process: “By what developmental
process is the mature self realized? What has to take place in
a person’s development to make gaining advanced self-knowledge and
wisdom possible?” (Piechowski, 1997a, p. 370). Few have even called emotional
intensity an aspect of giftedness, but such high psychosocial talent
is surely among the most valuable of talents. Piechowski (1998) posited the
existence of spiritual giftedness, “inner potentials for profound empathy,
spiritual awareness, transcendence of emotionally annihilating childhoods,
and experience of non-ordinary realities.” He is at work on a book explicating
emotional giftedness and spiritual intelligence. It contains many vivid
quotes from teenagers who took the Overexcitability Questionnaire such
as those above (Piechowski, 2005). Reynolds and Piirto (2005) cautioned
about the use of the Dabrowski theory with its hierarchy of levels as being
“reductive when used to explain instead of to understand” (p. 165).
Peer Relations
Students who are talented often have difficulty in peer relationships;
so do most other students. At a young age, the difficulty may be in finding
someone to talk with; students are often amazed at young ages that the other
students don’t know as much as they. That difficulty may continue through
adolescence and into adulthood, but again, it is not known whether this is
a function of intelligence or of human nature. Certainly the higher the IQ,
the more difficult it is to find intellectual peers. But, recent forays into the
world of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) have indicated that the
ability to relate to people often takes skills that can be acquired through
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 587 practice. Contention and difficulty in relationships is not only a function
of intelligence or creativity. Several different peer groups may be necessary
for such children, just as they are often necessary for adults. Swiatek (2001)
found that social coping among gifted youth leads girls to deny that they
are gifted and boys to use humor.
Perfectionism and the Talented
A related counseling issue for both the academically talented student
and the student with talent in music, dance, or other domains is their
perfectionism. Perfectionism as a psychological difficulty is the presence
of a compulsive need to achieve and to be the best in work. Byproducts of
perfectionism can be eating difficulties; paralysis that causes the academically
talented student to not even try, if not being assured of being rated the
best; and timidity. This is called disabling perfectionism. This is also called
clinical perfectionism, and is associated with mood disorder, panic disorder,
social phobia, loss of hope, and failure-avoidance.
However, a perfectionist spirit can guide true excellence, as well, as the
person pays attention to details and to quality in products. The writer will
revise his work over and over again, honing and shaping it until each word
and its placement is “perfect.” This is a seeking for excellence, enabling perfectionism.
The short story writer Raymond Carver (1983) said he gleefully
awaited each successive draft of his stories from his typist as he revised and
revised until the works were as finished as he could make them. Another
example is that of the musician who practices the same piece over and
over again, paying attention to all the effects, to the dynamics, to the relative
weights of eighth and sixteenth notes, in order to prepare a piece for
performance. Still another example of enabling perfectionism that leads to
excellence in quality is the theater director who rehearses the cast and the
play those extra times after the book is put away, shaping and polishing the
performance for innuendo of gesture and line.
Hewett and Flett (1991) spoke of socially prescribed perfectionism and
self-oriented perfectionism. Using this construct, Speirs Neumeister (2004)
interviewed college honors students about what their perfectionism looked
like. Socially prescribed perfectionism had roots in parental authoritarianism
and parental perfectionism. An emphasis on obedience, the presence
of physical punishment when household rules were broken, and “stringent
expectations” for high academic achievement (p. 254) were factors. Selforiented
perfectionism was internally caused. Students felt that they had to
challenge themselves, as the school often did not challenge them. Their parents
had authoritative parenting styles, were supportive, and did not expect
them to be perfect, but the parents themselves modeled perfectionism, and
the honors students imitated their parents.
588 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
But, perfectionism can also be disabling. A common example of this
is the “all but dissertation” (A.B.D.) Ph.D. candidate who spends years on
the dissertation, finding more and more references and resources, who is
ultimately unable to finish the work, to put it down on paper and complete
the degree. The sense of perfectionism that leads to paralysis, to fear, to not
even trying because one won’t meet one’s own standards is easy to fall into.
Academically talented students often set unrealistically high standards
for themselves and are unable to forgive themselves if they don’t meet
those standards. Their self-esteem, while it may seem high, is hooked on
accomplishments, the end results, and not on the process of doing the work
itself.
This has often been called external locus of control, or extrinsic motivation,
and when perfectionism is disabling, the person is often found to
depend on what others say about the work for the pleasure derived from
doing the work. How many 4.0 averages, how many gold stars, how many
all-A’s, how many monetary rewards, how many articles in the hometown
paper can the honor student accrue? This becomes the goal and not the
byproduct of achieving the goal—the finely honed short story, the wonderfully
played piece of music, the ensemble theater production that reaches
the sublime.
Miriam Adderholdt (1999; Adderholdt-Elliot, 1991) has written extensively
about perfectionism. In 1991, she wrote that talented adolescents are
often at risk for disabling perfectionism because of their strong self-monitoring.
She cited seven reasons for perfectionism that may turn out to have
negative consequences. These were as follows: (1) birth order (firstborn and
only children seem to become more perfectionistic because they learned
early to measure their accomplishments against the accomplishments of
adults); (2) perfectionistic parents; (3) media influence (watching perfect
people on television who solve their problems in less than 30 minutes); (4)
pressure from teachers and peers (when perfectionists are brought together,
being perfect becomes normal); (5) developmental dysplasia (having disparate
mental ages and chronological ages forces undue pressure on children
too socially and emotionally young to realize this pressure is unnecessary);
(6) “hothousing” or “hurrying” children (in Elkind’s [1981] terms), which
places children at risk for self-doubt and stress; and (7) dysfunctional families
(not having control over one’s home life leads to an attempt to control
one’s school and work life).
Adderholdt also described how perfectionists think. They often experience
mood swings; for example, if a child tries out for a play, and her selfesteem
is tied to attaining the lead but she “only” gets the second lead, she
will feel deflated and disappointed, instead of being happy that she got an
important part. One B+ on an all-A report card can also produce a black
moods, as can one negative work evaluation among many positive ones.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 589 Perfectionists often rely on quantity to achieve a feeling of accomplishment.
Ten awards is better than one award; Who’s Who Among High
School Students, National Merit Scholar, president of the student council,
president of the band, and president of the sorority is better than being just
one of these and doing the job well.
Because of this valuing of extrinsic reward, perfectionists are often
motivated by “all or nothing” thinking, which is that they believe that there
is either success or there is failure, and there is nothing in between. There
is no such thing as a little bit of success or a little bit of failure. A person is
either a complete success or a complete failure (Adderholdt & Goldberg,
1999). This mammoth gap often causes perfectionists to procrastinate.
Because they might fail, and there is no such thing as a little bit of failure,
perfectionists put off even trying. Then when they do the project at the last
minute, they excuse the quality of the project, saying that if they had had
more time, they would have done a better job. Nugent (2000) suggested
several strategies within the classroom that can help perfectionists not be
so hard on themselves. These were bibliotherapy, group therapeutic discussion,
and art activities.
What are the consequences of perfectionism, and how can an educator
or counselor help the perfectionist whose perfectionism has turned negative?
Delisle (1982) warned that perfectionism may be a cause of teenage
suicide. When a young academically talented person reaches the point of
despair of never being good enough, of never reaching his own standards
for himself, he may decide to end it all. Another consequence may be eating
disorders. These are common in talented youth who are interested in
fields where their looks matter, such as dance, entertainment, and athletics.
In order to attain the ideal of the “perfect” body, the youth may abuse
that body by refusing to eat, by bulimic behavior, or by using steroids.
Obsessive-compulsive behavior disorders may also be caused by perfectionism.
Constant hand washing, housecleaning, and mess straightening
are examples. Of course, underachievement, which will be discussed in
detail later in this chapter, is often related to perfectionism.
What can the educator or counselor do to help the child who is overly
concerned about perfection? Adderholdt-Elliott (1987; Adderholdt &
Goldberg, 1999) suggested relaxation therapy, reality therapy, group counseling,
self-talk, and the use of mental imagery. Rimm (1986) suggested that
placing students in situations where they can successfully fail—for example,
the second lead in the play, the second chair in the band, the second place
in the academic challenge contest—is good for them. When a child sees
that people still regard her as successful even though she hasn’t won everything,
and when she sees this over time, from very early on, the chances of
her being constantly so hard on herself will lessen. She will be able to see
590 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
that she’s better in some things than in others, and that what matters is the
process of doing the activity, and not being tops in everything.
Again, the confusion between perfectionism and excellence should be
pointed out; paying attention to the quality of one’s work and seeking to
produce the best quality is excellence. Letting go of the job, and putting it
into the hands of the audience, the judge, the teacher, or the critic is healthy.
Paying attention to the quality of one’s work and being paralyzed in doing
it because it just may not be good enough, and then putting it together at
the last minute so that one will have an excuse if the work is judged lacking
is not healthy.
Overachievement
The inclusion of this as a counseling issue is just to ask the question:
What is overachievement? How can a person achieve more than they can
achieve? I think the roots of this as a presented counseling issue in the
literature of talent development have to do with the anti-intellectualism
of our culture. The attention to mediocrity, to fitting in, to getting by, to
not rocking the boat—all feed into the concept of overachievement. The
talented student is called an overachiever. That means that he or she should
let up a little, should fit in a little, should not have such high standards for
him- or herself, should realize that others feel inferior when they see her
work and what she has accomplished. If a person can write 10 books and
his graduate student friend writes one, who is the overachiever? The high
achiever “raises the curve.” Of course, concomitant problems follow: ostracism,
jealousy, and shunning; becoming a “teacher’s pet”; and the like. This
appears to be a term with a relative meaning; what is overachievement to
one peer group may not be to another. And, this also seems to be a situation
that concerns athletic, minority, and rural poor children more than
others.
Resilience and Its Relationship to Achievement
Resiliency is being able to adapt and to bounce back with elasticity
when the world provides great threat. Resiliency has been studied at the
University of Minnesota in Project Competence since the early 1960s by
Garmezy and his colleagues (Garmezy & Tellegen, 1984). In the Minnesota
studies, they found that more resilient youth had higher IQs and their
parents were able to bounce back also (Masten et al., 1999). Those who
were resilient were able to communicate their wants and needs, they were
able to suppress their impulsivity, they were able to think and reflect about
the meaning of their experiences, and they believed they could have some
control over their surroundings. Jenkins-Friedman and Tollefson (1992)
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 591
constructed a model of resiliency that may explain why some students continue
to achieve and some do not. Among disadvantaged children, there
continue to be certain children who achieve despite having two strikes
against them (e.g., lack of support from home or lack of support in school).
These children often have remarkable self-esteem. No matter how far they
are down, they seem to have nonintellective characteristics that help them
rise to the challenge and to achieve. These are “a mastery orientation, a
strong sense of self-efficacy and of optimism, a sense of empowerment, and
an attribution orientation characterized by internal, unstable, controllable
and intentional explanations for outcomes” (Jenkins-Friedman & Tollefson,
p. 326). These resilient children often have strong maternal influence; their
mothers were more optimistic than pessimistic, and the children followed
suit. Their mothers also worked. These resilient children also had beliefs in
themselves that they could prevail, despite the social system or the school
environment. Bandura (1986) called this a sense of self-efficacy.
Resilient children also attributed their successes to ability rather than
luck, and thus they would try again and again, because they knew they had
the ability, and they did not attribute their failure to succeed to external
circumstances such as bad luck. Resilient children, in other words, did
not show learned helplessness, the “poor me” syndrome therapists make
people punch pillows about, the dependency fostered by many educational
practices. The remarkable triumphs in fields such as the arts and athletics
of poor children shows that resiliency is a major factor in the realization of
gifted potential when the rest of the world looks away. The counselor and
teacher can be major factors in the realization of this potential.
A study of childhood trauma by Terr (1990) of the children whose bus
was kidnapped in Chowchilla, CA, in 1976 showed that repeated exposure
to trauma, both real and vicarious, induces a “toughening process” in children
(p. 318). Corwin (2000) in his moving journalistic tour de force, And
Still We Rise, documented the lives of 12 gifted and talented Los Angeles
poor minority high schoolers in their Advanced Placement classes and in
their lives. I assign this book to all my classes, as it is a classic tale of resilience.
Reis, Colbert, and Hébert (2005) listed risk factors and protective
factors for resiliency and for underachievement. Among the risk factors
were family members who abused drugs or alcohol, few teachers who acted
as either role models or a support system, and nonparticipation in extracurricular
activities. Factors that helped resilience were the involvement
of parents, teachers, or counselors who helped, and attending summer
opportunities. Protective factors were a religious household, not dating,
participating in extracurricular activities, and peers who were academic
achievers.
Resilience in women was discussed by Noble (1996). She said that
women must not only cultivate the personality attributes necessary for
592 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
resiliency, they must form a community among themselves and nurture
each other as they have always nurtured men.
Resilience in minority youth was discussed by Ford (1996) and Hébert
(1996). Ford pointed out that the resilient Black student has “an inner locus
of control, a positive sense of self, and feelings of empowerment.” They
are often bicultural and may “don a facade of racelessness and believe in
the American dream” (p. 82). Hébert noted the positive personalities of
resilient youth in his study of three Latino teenagers. He also pointed to
the inner locus of control and the intrinsic motivation that seems key. The
self-image of these youth permits them to see themselves as winners and as
successes due to their own efforts and their own choices. The presence of a
family that encourages and supports, as well as the presence of mentors and
other community people who are encouraging, is also important. They are
often involved in extracurricular activities and in athletics. In these activities
they formed a group of peers who had the same goals with whom they
could bond.
Self-Concept/Self-Esteem
There are several common counseling issues that are addressed with
academically talented students; among them is the issue of self-concept.
Self-concept is often used interchangeably with other terms such as selfesteem,
efficacy, instrumentality, and competence. In fact, psychologists
have separated self-concept into several types: People have physical selfconcepts,
academic self-concepts, and social self-concepts. Researching
self-concept is very popular among scholars of gifted education. They give
various tests to people and derive self-concept data.
Academically talented students generally have high academic self-concepts
and lower social self-concepts and physical self-concepts (Brounstein,
Holahan, & Dreyden, 1991; McCoach & Siegle, 2003). Some gender differences
exist, though. Bright elementary-aged girls in the U.S. have lower
academic self-concepts in mathematics than do bright boys (Olszewski-
Kubilius & Turner, 2002), and New Zealand girls do also (Luscombe &
Riley, 2001). However, in China, academic self-concept did not differ
between genders among gifted adolescents in a special school (Dai, 2001).
Athletes generally have high physical self-concepts and lower academic
self-concepts. Student leaders generally have high social self-concepts and
lower academic and physical self-concepts. Janos, Fung, and Robinson
(1985) found that academically talented students who had problems in
adjustment often had lower social self-concepts. Cornell (1990) found that
academically talented students who were unpopular also had lower social
self-concepts.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 593
Janos et al. (1985) noted that while most academically talented youth
experience no self-concept difficulties, a minority of academically talented
youth do. This is particularly evident in those who have very high IQs,
within the third and fourth standard deviation above the mean. These children
constantly experience their difference from others, even from other
people called academically talented.
An interesting type of self-concept is moral self-concept. In a study of
the essays of 119 Presidential Scholars asking them about their ideal self,
Lamont et al. (2000) found that the ideal self included a view of themselves
as moral. These students, “the brightest of the bright,” as the authors titled
their essay, viewed morality from the American Dream point of view; that is,
they wanted individual morality, morality “on the basis of: (1) self-actualization,
hard work, and well-roundedness, (2) authenticity, and (3) interpersonal
morality” (p. 197). The moral person seeks to develop the self but to follow
the golden rule, “to strive constantly and diligently to make oneself better,
and to demonstrate a strong, efficient, active, and confident self” (p. 198).
Self-Esteem and the Academically Talented
The trendy programs for enhancing self-esteem that are rife in the
schools are pervasive reminders of the “me” 1980s and the “feel-good”
1970s, and students who have been identified as academically talented are
also subject to concerns about their self-esteem. Critics of such programs
argue that true self-esteem comes from accomplishing something difficult,
and point out research that shows that students in the United States have
the highest self-esteem and lowest actual achievement, that is, they feel
very good about their achievement even though they do not score very well
on comparative measures administered across cultures. U.S. students have
higher self-esteem than students in Japan, Taiwan, and China, even though
their actual performance was much lower.
An article (Jayson, 2005) quoted Deborah Stipek, the dean of education
at Stanford University. “I often get students in graduate school doing
doctorates who made straight A’s all their lives, and the first time they get
tough feedback, the kind you need to develop skills, they break down.”
Baumeister and colleagues (2003) reviewed 18,000 studies of self-esteem
and concluded that high self-esteem has two benefits: “enhanced initiative
and pleasant feelings” (p. 1). However, no evidence exists that high selfesteem
leads to better outcomes. Rather, the danger of excess narcissism
is real. “Indiscriminate praise might promote narcissism,” they said (p. 1).
Academically talented students are just as vulnerable as other students to
easy praise that accords false self-esteem for fake accomplishments. Egoinvolvement
seems to lower one’s self-esteem. For example, Australian
high school students whose self-esteem was tied to their task-involvement
retained higher academic self-esteem than students whose self-esteem was
594 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
related to their ego-involvement, according to a study conducted by Gross
(1998).
Elementary school experiences have great impact on self-esteem
(Hamachek, 1990). That is because elementary students’ self-esteem is
“incomplete and impressionable” (p. 313), and they are vulnerable, with
defenses that are not mature. Developmentally, elementary school children
are in Erikson’s industry versus inferiority stage, and students who do not
receive recognition and praise are often stymied in making later achievement
attempts. Thus elementary school children should not be made to
bear untoward criticism and scorn; this is as true for academically talented
students as for all students. Academically talented students may gain their
self-esteem, though, from all A’s and many smiley faces when the work is
not challenging enough for them. Then, in the middle grades and in high
school, their pictures of themselves are changed and many may succumb
to underachievement rather than try hard and receive “only” a B. Students
may rather hear that they have the ability and if they would only do the
work, they could succeed, than hear that they haven’t succeeded, even
though they worked very hard. Nevertheless, self-esteem is a part of selfconcept
that is essential.
Stress
Stress occurs when one feels pressure, strain, and tension in one’s life.
Special situations for the talented have to do with overcommitment; that
is, taking on too many activities, courses, and projects. Another reason is
trying to please too many people and seeking external praise. Perfectionism
causes stress as does meeting the expectations of others, discussed above.
Learning how to slow down, to manage stress, and to take care of one’s
body, as well as to eat well and to get rest are all ways to cope with stress.
Planning and decision making both cause stress and relieve stress. Stress
occurs in the interim before the plans and decisions are made, while the
student is mulling over the choices in her head. Stress can be “managed,”
say the experts. The counselor should help in goal setting, in teaching
relaxation and meditation, in reducing the number of commitments, and in
helping students cope with high internal standards and the reality of reaching
them. Students should be encouraged to think clearly about what their
own preferences are, and be able to separate them from the needs for them
that others have.
Sexual Identity
The counseling needs, or even presence, of young gays, lesbians, and
bisexuals (GLB) has little attention in the literature on talented youth.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 595
Finally, in 2002, Cohn include an article on this population’s counseling
needs in a edited book by Neihart et al. Peterson and Rischar (2000) pioneered
in this area, with case studies of adolescents who were gay. However,
that there are gay, lesbian, and bisexual talented people cannot be disputed.
Gay men were the leaders of the fashion industry until that industry was
decimated by AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The presence of GLB
people in intellectual society is the stuff of many biographies and memoirs.
A Web site (http://gayinfo.tripod.com) lists 500 famous gay and lesbian
people who have publicly acknowledged their sexual identity.
Friedrichs (1997) conducted a study with about 30 gay lesbian and
bisexual youths and Table 11.4 shows the issues they most frequently mentioned
facing. A retrospective survey with adult GLB people also affirmed
these issues.
These students are often highly sensitive and intense. It is important
that the counselor or teacher indicate that the student would be safe in talking
to or coming to the office. A display of a small Rainbow Coalition flag
or books on the shelf indicate the counselor or teacher’s awareness that the
issue is out there. The use of nonoffensive language such as “my partner”
instead of boyfriend or girlfriend and saying the term “gay/lesbian/bisexual”
is a beginning. Forming a gay/straight alliance and letting the students do
the networking is another suggestion. “Make your office and classroom a
safe place,” said Friedrichs (1997).
Peterson (1998) did a qualitative study that asked 14 GLB college students
about their experiences. Ten major themes emerged:
1. They said being gay was a reality to be reckoned with (not to decide
about), and that once they realized they were gay, it was not a fluke.
By grade 11, most knew they were gay.
2. They felt a sense of inner isolation in spite of being social—as if they
were the only ones; others were treated as outcasts.
3. They had a pervasive sense of differentness.
4. They had a lack of role models, a lack of the presence of gays in the
curriculum, and a lack of validation.
5. They felt a sense of danger. One female said, “A group of boys made
me their pet project. They almost had me cornered several times.” A
male said, “I became an easy target for passive and aggressive acts,
all of which were anonymous.”
6. Hypersensitivity was a reality, being both gifted and gay.
7. They had many behaviors to deflect and divert in order to be “OK.”
8. They often became overinvolved in school and community activities
as a result of their inner discovery. One said, “I was top of my
class, hyper-involved in extracurriculars. In structured activities, I
was safe.”
596 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Table 11.4
Ways Educators Can Deal With Needs of Gay, Lesbian,
and Bisexual (GLB) Youths.
Need Problem When Need Is
Addressed
Ways Counselor or
Teacher Can Deal With
Problem
Sex
1. To discuss a variety of
different sexual behavior
patterns
Self-isolation when GLB student
gives specific information
about self
Answer frequently asked
questions by GLB youth
nationally, even if they’re
not asked by particular GLB
youth at hand
Peer Relationships
2. For friends in two or more
of these categories: women,
gay men, lesbians, bisexuals,
non-teens
Continued isolation, even
after GLB finds these friends
Find support group explicitly
for GLB group, in school or
community
3. For GLB student alliances
with straight students
Difficulty in GLB and straight
students working together
for school policy changes
Become actively involved in
working for these changes
4. For gay, lesbian, or bisexual
role models (teachers or
speakers)
Problem in GLB youth relating
completely to words and
actions of adult speakers or
teachers
Speakers can be asked
about current trends they
support among GLB youth
Parent-Child Relationships
5. For child’s independent
search for personal happiness
and career choice
Dangers of underachievement
in GLB youth who seek
a “too-independent” course
Schools, churches, socialservice
agencies can be
encouraged to offer mentors
for GLB youth
6. For parental pointers
toward GLB role models in
the community
Danger in parents finding
“off the mark” role models
for their GLB youth
Parents seek out a variety
of role models through GLB
youth centers
7. For independence training
School Acceptance
8. For school-provided counseling
opportunities for GLB
youth
Counseling that doesn’t
address discrimination or
doesn’t affirm GLB identity
directly
Become actively involved
with your own GLB students
in affirming their struggle for
identity and in redressing
discrimination among them
9. To talk and write about
troubling issues/feelings in
school
GLB youth feelings may not
be understood, or may even
be betrayed, by teachers or
peers
Set, and abide by, rules of
confidentiality in class discussions
and writings on
GLB topics
10. For acceptance of loners Telltale signs of suicidal
ideation or substance abuse
may go unnoticed with GLB
loners
Follow up on suicide or substance-
abuse signs in these
students
Note. From The Edge: Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Pupils, by T. P.
Friedrichs, 1997. Speech at the National Association for Gifted Children Conference, Little Rock, AR.
Reprinted with permission.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 597 9. They felt angst, depression, and experienced suicidal thoughts.
None of them “came out” to their teachers, and only a third came
out to their parents.
10. When they went to college, they felt less depressed as they drew
closer to the support groups available there.
Underachievement
There are several writers and researchers who have made important
contributions to our knowledge of underachievement. Among these are
James Delisle, James Gallagher, Sally Reis, Sylvia Rimm, Susanne Richert,
Patricia Supplee, and Joanne Whitmore. Lori Flint has done life histories
of successful adults who were underachievers that have contributed to our
knowledge, as well. Underachievement continues to plague educators of
the talented as one of the most recalcitrant problems that high-IQ youth
continue to have. By now we know that each underachiever is different,
and that each case of underachievement must be looked at individually to
determine the reason for the underachievement, which allows us to be better
able to reverse the underachievement.
What is underachievement? The quick answer most people would give
is that underachievement is not receiving the grades that one’s IQ would
indicate are possible. Another quick definition is that underachievement is
receiving high scores on standardized achievement tests but low grades in
school. A third definition of underachievement blames the causes for the
underachievement; for example, underachievement is caused by learning
disabilities, underachievement is caused by the social climate of the school,
or underachievement is caused by affective characteristics in the child.
People usually assume that the underachiever is receiving lower grades
than test scores would indicate are possible, and that this failure to achieve
is somehow a refusal to achieve.
Underachievement may come about from environmental and personal
factors. Environmental factors are such things as peer influence, poor teaching,
and insufficient schools. Changing the environment often changes the
pattern of underachievement. The environment can be changed by teaching
the student how to cope, or by moving the student from the environment.
Personal factors include neurological difficulties such as learning disabilities
or physical difficulties such as hearing impairment. Silverman (1989a)
found that underachievers often had difficulty in sequencing, while being
above average in vocabulary and having the ability to reason abstractly, to
perceive spatial relations, and to analyze mathematical relations.
Oh, how underachievement bothers educators of the academically
talented! Here is a child with a high IQ who refuses to do the work in
the classroom. Here is a child with high achievement test scores who
598 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
refuses to turn in the projects. The educators beg, cajole, compliment, and
harangue the child. The parents beg, cajole, compliment, and harangue the
child. “You have such potential! You should be doing better! You won’t get
into a good college with grades like these! You could do so well; why won’t
you produce?” The child is the powerful force in these dynamics, both with
the parents and with the school, and that is why Rimm (1986) insisted that
there must be a “tri-focal” approach to reversing underachievement—the
school, the parents, and the child must all take responsibility for the reversal
or the underachievement will continue. The child is the key figure in this
triangle. When all three work together, the achievement may happen; however,
Rimm (2003) noted that the “bi-focal” approach, where the child and
the school work together is also possible: “Reversing the pattern without
parental assistance is not as efficient, but is nevertheless effective for many
children” (p. 433).
It is often assumed that children want to do well in school, and schools
and parents are often quick to blame themselves for underachievement. It
is often assumed that the evils of the society—racism, classism, prejudice
against the handicapped—are to blame for underachievement. It is often
assumed that children are feckless victims of “the system.” If this is true,
then why do some children from lower social classes, of various races, with
learning disabilities and physical handicaps, achieve despite the “system,”
and others do not? The quality of resiliency discussed above seems operational
here.
What are the personality traits of people who underachieve? For underachieving
males at least, Terman and Oden (1947) found that those who
didn’t meet the potential their IQ scores indicated were (1) unable to persevere,
(2) unable to formulate goals, (3) preferred to drift rather than to take
action, and (4) had low self-confidence. These problems were chronic; that
is, they continued from childhood to adolescence to adulthood (Terman &
Oden). Underachievement, Delisle (1992) reminded us, is often in the eyes
of the beholder.
Whitmore’s Work on Underachievement
Whitmore’s 1980 book, Giftedness, Conflict, and Underachievement,
was a milestone in that she specifically studied children who, in 1970, were
put into a special program that sought to remedy underachieving behavior.
This program was called the Cupertino Project, and it focused on second
and third graders who were had very high IQs but who were underachieving.
Individualized instruction was offered and results showed that students’
achievement generally improved over the long term. However, the
Cupertino program had drawbacks, including the cost.
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 599 Rimm’s Work on Underachievement
Rimm (1986, 2003) used a behavioral approach to the reversal of underachievement.
She described four different categories of underachievers:
the dependent conformers, the dependent nonconformers, the dominant
conformers, and the dominant nonconformers. These are children who are
outside what she called the “circle of achievers.” Here are characterizations
of these children.
Underachievers were grouped into dependent children and dominant
children, conformers and nonconformers. Dependent children manipulate
adults and others in their environment by such plaintive pleas as “help me,”
“nag me,” “protect me,” “feel sorry for me,” “love me,” and “shelter me.” The
difficulty is in determining when these pleas are manipulative and when
they are genuine. Rimm said parents and teachers “must assure yourselves
that these children can build self-confidence and competence only through
effort and perseverance, and that it is indeed a true kindness to permit
these children to experience some stress” (Rimm, 1986, p. 148).
Rimm suggested steps in remediation for each of these groups. She
was quick to point out that family patterns often foster or encourage
underachievement, for passive-aggressive children often have one passive-
aggressive parent and one who is made the bad guy; likewise, with
aggressive children, there is often aggression in the family. Patterns in the
family can be both positive and negative for achievement. Rimm said that
potentially harmful family models included the following:
1. the notion of “I didn’t like school either,”
2. having a home that is disorganized,
3. having passive-aggressive parenting, and
4. having parents who are overworked who come home exhausted,
complaining, and failing to provide models that work is satisfying,
challenging, and life-enhancing.
Rimm’s work was criticized for being too negative to parents. In a review
of Rimm’s How to Parent So Children Will Learn (1990b), Baum (1990) said
that “Rimm does not take into account different parenting styles, values,
and good instincts” and she stated that Rimm’s rules make many parents
feel guilty. However, proponents of clinical interventions utilizing behavioral
approaches such as Rimm’s would say that drastic measures are often
needed in reversing underachievement, which is often entrenched, insidious,
and a hallmark of dysfunction in the family or school. “Rimm is tough
love,” said one therapist. Rimm’s advice to parents appears regularly on
national television and radio and her books are best-sellers.
600 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Divorce and Underachievement
These days, there are many children of divorce, and gifted children are
not immune from this social phenomenon. The family is in chaos. Karnes
and Marquardt (1991a), in their consideration of legal issues having to do
with gifted children, said, “we were surprised by the number of child custody
and child support cases where the giftedness of the child became an
issue” (p. 98). Rimm (1986) seemed to feel that achievement can continue
throughout the divorce, but Wallerstein and Blakeslee, in their longitudinal
studies of children of divorce (1989, Wallerstein & Lewis, 2000), noted that
underachievement is almost always a byproduct of divorce, even years later.
Boys who are between the ages 6 and 8 when their parents get divorced
“have a particularly difficult time adjusting to the changes in their lives”
(Wallerstein & Blakeslee, p. 77). They often are unable to concentrate, and
may withdraw or “clobber everyone in sight” (p. 77).
Wallerstein and Blakeslee (1989) attributed this to fears of being overwhelmed
by female authority just at the age when developing strong identifications
with their fathers and other male figures was crucial. The authors
followed their subjects for 25 years and concluded sadly that about a third
of the children they studied still lacked ambition 10 years after the divorce,
and said that they were “drifting through life with no set goals, limited educations,
and a sense of helplessness” (1989, p. 28). Twenty-five years later,
they still bore scars, and Wallerstein and Lewis (2000) advised parents who
are about to divorce to have joint custody or to make sure they act like
adults in the custody situations, thinking of the children at all times.
That gifted and talented youth are exempt from the tragic consequences
of their parents’ divorces is certainly false. Indeed, if we give the
theory of asynchrony and the theory of emotional intensity (such as noticed
in overexcitabilities) some credence, study after study has shown that gifted
and talented youth may be more vulnerable, for their sensitivities are often
higher tuned and deeper felt, as their advanced intellects and intensities
cope with the splits in their nuclear families (Feldman & Piirto, 2002).
In fact, one immutable fact that was found by the Johns Hopkins SMPY
researchers was that high academic achievers most often came from families
that were intact (Benbow, 1992).
Richert’s Work on Underachievement
Richert (1991b) presented a refreshingly different definition of underachievement,
pointing out the obvious but often overlooked question:
What if the IQ is not a good measure of potential after all? What if the IQ
test that puts the child in people’s minds into “underachieving status” was
inaccurate? Richert noted that “underachievement is most often defined in
terms of academic achievement” measured by school-related methods such
as grades, standardized test scores, and teacher-made test results (p. 147).
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 601
What if these are not good ways of assessing underachievement? What if
the tests themselves are the problem?
The child’s life as a whole should be assessed. Does the child who gets
low grades and who has high test scores have an intense life of achievement
at home? Does she read seven books a week? Does he program computers
and participate in a wide network of computer friends throughout the area?
Does she have sketchbooks and do intensive drawing and artwork? Does
he practice his music for 7 hours a day? How is this child underachieving?
Richert, in questioning the definition of underachievement, posed an interesting
conundrum: If many high achievers in later life found the schools
stifling and boring, and the teachers and rules worse, what is the role of the
schools in talent development in the various domains?
Delisle’s Work on Underachievement
Delisle (1992) also questioned the definition of underachievement. He
stated that underachievement should be differentiated from nonproduction.
Saying that the sad history in the attempts to reverse underachievement
indicates that perhaps there was nothing there to reverse because
“the term itself was (and is) too ill defined” (p. 127), Delisle nevertheless
attempted to define it. A nonproducer is someone who is “very much in
touch with both himself and the world of learning but unwilling to do much
of his assigned work” and an underachiever is “a lost soul in the academic
miasma called school who desperately wants to do better—and feel better—
but is at a loss as to how she might begin to do either” (p. 120).
Supplee’s Work on Underachievement
In 1990, Supplee wrote Reaching the Gifted Underachiever, and she
used Abraham Tannenbaum’s conception of giftedness to define underachievement.
Tannenbaum (1983), in Gifted Children, said that giftedness
emerges if all five arms in a “starfish” are present (see Figure 1.5). Supplee
said that the underachievers she studied were missing one or more of the
starfish arms; some had high IQs but didn’t have other factors; some had
fantastic special abilities but didn’t have persistence; some were very poor,
a negative environmental factor, although they had all four other factors;
and some had physical or learning disabilities, which fall into the chance
arm. The presence of a program for underachieving gifted children is also a
chance factor in the life of an underachieving student.
Supplee (1990) said school-survival skills are “necessary for success in
school but normally are not taught there” (p. 144). You could call these the
tacit knowledge needed in school. Many underachievers are not cued to
play the school game. They can’t “read” their instructors; they are not sensitive
to the environment of the classes or the school; they blunder where
they should tap dance. School-survival skills were taught to underachiev602
Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
ers using role-playing, among other strategies. Among the school-survival
skills need by underachievers were:
1. how to listen, and look as if they were listening,
2. how to ask a teacher or a friend for help,
3. how to bring needed materials to class,
4. how to follow written and oral instructions,
5. how to memorize efficiently,
6. how to use an assignment pad well,
7. how to study for tests,
8. how to complete short-term assignments,
9. how to complete long-term assignments,
10. how to contribute to a class discussion,
11. how to ignore distractions,
12. how to ask a question in class,
13. how to decide what to do when assigned work is finished,
14. how to set medium- and long-range goals,
15. how to deal with an accusation,
16. how to accept consequences for mistakes in work or behavior,
17. how to negotiate with the teacher,
18. how to make good decisions,
19. how to deal with time pressures and schedules,
20. how to set priorities,
21. rewarding themselves for tasks well done,
22. learning to say no when work must come first, and
23. how to overlearn something to make sure it’s mastered (Supplee,
1990, pp. 145–146).
These skills are necessary for all good students, and underachievers lack
some or most of them. For gifted underachievers, the ability is not the question;
other factors present difficulty in achievement. Flint (2002, 2004) took
life stories of four successful adults who had been underachievers. They had
refused to play the “school game.”
Lack of success in school led to years of personal difficulty, including
substance abuse and suicidal tendencies, leading to hitting
bottom. After hitting bottom, each made the conscious choice to
change, which included a return to college to successfully complete
formal education. (Flint, 2002, p. 1)
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 603
Their ultimate success lends hope to the despair of all those who
bemoan the underachievement of gifted and talented youth. The caution
here is that they had to hit bottom before rising up.
An Individual and Group E ducational Guidance Plan (IEP)
By now it is obvious that the counseling and guidance component in a
talented youth’s life is as important as the curricular component, for who
but the adult professional guidance person, the adult expert in the education
of the talented, can guide the choices the talented youth makes? For
this it is necessary to have a regularly updated plan on file. This plan should
be jointly made by the school and the student, with active participation
and input from the parents and the various instructors of the student. The
plan should have components that include specific information about the
student’s talent areas, assessment instruments or observational instruments
that have been administered, or predictive behaviors that have been
observed. There should be a short-term component and a long-term component.
This plan should follow the student from school to school, level to
level, and should be periodically consulted and modified. The specialist in
talent education should be aware of this plan, as should all the teachers the
student has, especially the teachers in the talent area(s). The plan should
be administered by guidance personnel or specialists in talent education.
Figure 11.2 shows an outline of such a plan.
Conclusion
A final word. Anti-intellectual feelings are common in a supposedly egalitarian
society. While many people think that talented youths will “make it
on their own,” and while still other people resent these youths and blatantly
discriminate against them, seeing them as privileged and lucky and therefore
not deserving of special treatment, the facts are obvious. These are
children, too. They were born into this world the way they were. They didn’t
ask to be born with talent potential, with academic potential, with the ability
to think quickly, to remember, to formulate abstractions, to question, to
love learning. They have social and emotional needs based on the way they
are, just as do all other children. They need adult advocates who will guide
them, counsel them, and look out for them, just as do all other children.
604 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Name ________________________________________________ F _____ M _____ Date of Birth ________
Date ________ School ________________________ District________________
City, State__________________________________________________________
Person administering this plan ____________________________________ Title ______________________
Talent area(s): _____ Mathematics _____ Verbal _____ Science _____ Social Science
_____ Foreign Language _____ Visual Arts _____ Vocal Music _____ Instrumental music _____ Drama
_____ Dance _____ Athletics _____ Socioemotional _____ Mechanical
_____ Technological _____ Invention _____ Leadership _____ Business _____ Other
I. Means of assessment of talent area(s) (Attach protocols)
(Do not use composite scores; use individual content area scores.)
_____ 1. Standardized group ability test. Which?___________ Talent area(s)________________________
_____ 2. Standardized individual ability test. Which? ___________ Talent area(s) ___________________
_____ 3. Standardized group achievement test. Which? ___________ Talent area(s) ________________
_____ 4. Standardized individual achievement test. Which? ___________ Talent area(s) ______________
_____ 5. Proficiency test. Which? ___________ Talent area(s) ____________________________________
_____ 6. Behavioral checklist. Which? ___________ Describe behaviors checked. (Attach protocol).
_____ 7. Personality inventory. Which?___________ Comment. (Attach protocol)
_____ 8. Predictive Behaviors. _____ Observed by Family _____ Self-Referred _____
Observed by Teachers _____Observed by Peers _____ Community
What behaviors indicate talent in this student?
_____ Projects _____ Portfolio _____ Extracurricular interests and achievements
_____ Out-of-school interests _____ Contests _____ Grades _____ Other
Describe the behaviors indicated.
9. Student personal and vocational interest inventory administered? _____ Yes _____ No (Attach)
10. List student interests.
11. Student curriculum modified to accommodate talent area? _____ Yes _____ No (Attach)
12. Student’s parents consulted about student’s talent? _____ Yes _____ No
Attach memo of parent conference. Date held _____________________
For person in charge of plan:
Attachments: Item 1____ 2 ____ 3 ____ 4 ____ 5 ____ 6 ____ 7 ____ 8 ____ 9 ____ 10 ____ 11 ____ 12 ____
II. Short-Term (One-Year) Talent Development Plan
A. Interventions in classroom: ____ Placement in special class ____Honors class
____ Placement in special school ____ Advanced placement ____ Resource teacher ____ Cluster group
____ Pull-out program ____ Curriculum compacting ____ Acceleration ____ Enrichment ____ Other
Describe modifications:
B. Interventions outside of class: ____ Individual counseling ____ Group counseling
____ Individual assessment ____ Group assessment ____ Mentor(s) found ____ Individual lessons
____ Group lessons ____ Special club(s) ____ Extracurricular participation ____ Scholarships
____ Summer programs ____ Saturday programs ____ Contests ____ Competitions
____ Projects in area(s) of talent(s) ____ Community involvement ____ Library involvement
____ College planning ____ Other
Describe the items checked:
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 605
C. Guidance: ____ Group guidance ____ Individual guidance ____ Mentoring ____ Shadowing
____ Testing ____ Talent and interest guidance ____ Ongoing career information
____ Gender-specific guidance ____ Special projects/programs ____ Peer guidance
____ Parent guidance ____ Scholarship information ____ Other
Describe:
D. Counseling: ____ Social-emotional—needs group counseling
____ Social-emotional—needs individual counseling ____ Referral to therapist
____ Gender-specific counseling ____ Sex/substance abuse counseling
____ Counseling dealing with asynchrony ____ Peer counseling ____ Family counseling
____ Cross-age counseling ____ Other
Describe:
III. Long-Term (2- to 5-Year) Talent Development Plan
A. Interventions in classroom: ____ Placement in special class ____ Honors class
____ Placement in special school ____ Advanced placement ____ Resource teacher ____ Cluster group
____ Pull-out program ____ Curriculum compacting ____ Acceleration ____ Enrichment ____ Other
Describe modifications:
B. Interventions outside of class: ____ Individual counseling ____ Group counseling
____ Individual assessment ____ Group assessment ____ Mentor(s) found ____ Individual lessons
____ Group lessons ____ Special club(s) ____ Extracurricular participation ____ Scholarships
____ Summer programs ____ Saturday programs ____ Contests ____ Competitions
____ Projects in area(s) of talent(s) ____ Community involvement ____ Library involvement
____ College planning ____ Other
Describe the items checked:
C. Guidance: ____ Group guidance ____ Individual guidance ____ Mentoring ____ Shadowing
____Testing ____ Talent and interest guidance ____ Ongoing career information
____ Gender-specific guidance ____ Special projects/programs ____ Peer guidance
____ Parent guidance ____ Scholarship information ____ Other
Describe:
D. Counseling: ____ Social-emotional—needs group counseling
____ Social-emotional—needs individual counseling ____ Referral to therapist
____ Gender-specific counseling ____ Sex/substance abuse counseling
____ Counseling dealing with asynchrony ____ Peer counseling ____ Family counseling
____ Cross-age counseling ____ Other
Describe:
Date: ________________
Initials: _______________
Scheduled update of plan:
Figure 11.2. Guidance and counseling plan for talent development
Note. Guidance and counseling plan designed by Jane Piirto, 1994a, revised in the second edition (1999a),
and revised again in this edition.
606 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
Case E xample:
Judith Resnik
Dr. Judith Resnik (1949–1986) was the second American woman in
space, but her accomplishments do not stop there. Resnik was the first
Jew to enter space. She received her bachelor’s degree in electrical
engineering in 1970 from Carnegie-Mellon University. She then went
to work for RCA Corporation where she worked in their missile and
surface radar division, as well as their service division. She left in 1974
to become a staff scientist in the neurophysiology laboratory at the
National Institutes of Health.
She continued her schooling at the University of Maryland, where
she received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1977. She went to
work as a product developer for Xerox Corporation. When she heard
that NASA was going to admit women into the space program, she was
determined to become an astronaut. She did everything she could to
be in the best physical shape, and learned as much as she could about
NASA and space. She joined NASA’s space program in 1978.
She and Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, worked together
on the design and development of the remote manipulator system. She
also worked as a commentator for ABC to explain what was happening
on board for the fourth shuttle mission. Tragically, Dr. Resnik was one
the seven astronauts killed in the explosion of the Challenger (Shuttle
Mission 51L) on January 28, 1986.
Resnik attended Firestone High School in Akron, OH, graduating
in 1966. Resnik “maintained top-notch grades, sought further Jewish
education, and made her own beginning forays into male-female relationships,
all the while enduring parents who were constantly at war,”
according to biographers Bernstein, Blue, and Gerber (1990, p. 17).
She took the most advanced courses in science and mathematics and
a photograph of the mathematics club shows her as the only female
member. She graduated as valedictorian of her class. One of her mathematics
teachers saved her Advanced Placement mathematics test to
use as a model of neatness and logical thinking for students.
Judith displayed an attitude of risk taking by dating Len Nahmi, a
boy of Arab/Irish heritage, sneaking out of her room at night to meet
him, as her parents didn’t approve. Her parents divorced while she was
in high school, and she lived with her mother, who hated her boyfriend.
Her mother Sarah “demanded unceasing perfection from her daughter”
(Bernstein et al., 1990, p. 18). Judith sued to have her father be
given custody of her, and she won. But, she and Len broke up under her
Soci al-Emotional Guid ance and Counseling Needs of the Talented 607 mother’s pressure, only to reunite years later, after Judith’s divorce from
a suitable Jewish boy. Len had become a pilot for Canadian Airlines,
and he encouraged her in her efforts to become a licensed pilot.
Judith now had the unwavering support of the two men closest to
her—her father and her former boyfriend. When her divorce became
final, she sent a postcard to Len with two words on it: “I’m single.” She
also contacted Senator John Glenn of Ohio, the first American astronaut
to orbit the earth, asking his help in entering the space program.
Len gave her the practical advice that she should share with NASA
whatever good things happened to her while her application was in
process.
Judith began getting into physical condition. She passed the rigorous
NASA physical and was one of 200 female candidates. In January
1978, she became one of four women accepted as an astronaut candidate.
Resnik demonstrated the personality and academic qualities
referred to throughout this book. She took risks, and she demonstrated
persistence and resilience, even in the face of personal problems such
as her parents’ oppositional marriage and their divorce during her vulnerable
high school years. She survived her own divorce and went on
to become an American heroine.
Summary
1. The guidance and counseling needs of the gifted and talented have been
historically underemphasized.
2. A key internal description of having a high IQ is asynchronicity.
3. Research into the psychosocial and affective development of high-IQ
students indicates generally positive adjustment for moderately high-
IQ students, and less positive adjustment for very high-IQ students.
4. Academically talented and other talented youth need specially informed
counselors and specialists to help them with their talent development.
5. Among guidance issues that should be addressed are academic planning,
acceleration, career development, finding mentors, multipotentiality,
learning styles, testing, program articulation, vocational guidance,
volunteerism and service, and the gender issues underlying all of the
above.
6. Common counseling issues for talented youth are issues of anger, boredom,
having a very high IQ, introversion, intuition, peer relations,
608 Curricu lum, Counseling, and At-Ri sk Talented Stud ents
perfectionism, overachievement, resilience, self-concept/self-esteem,
stress, sexual identity, and underachievement.
7. An individual educational guidance plan (IEP) is necessary for all talented
students.
8. Challenger astronaut Judith Resnik displayed persistence, resilience,
and academic talent in pursuing her goal to be in the space program.