Abstract

This article notes the low rate of highly talented or gifted students formally identified in Spain compared to international benchmarks. These students are not properly identified, so a lack of specific educational responses for these highly talented students is also expected. Trying to counteract this trend, this article presents an enrichment program imparted to a group of students with high intellectual abilities during the academic year 2017/18 over three weekly sessions during school hours, where emerging technologies were an important key in how it was delivered. The experimental design included an experimental group of high ability students and two control groups, one consisting of students with high abilities who did not receive specific educational responses and another consisting of a group of regular schoolchildren in terms of abilities. The results showed that the implementation of specific educational responses improved children’s levels of adaptation and in some cases, their school performance. These data are discussed in an attempt to recommend enrichment programs integrated into the classroom as an appropriate educational response to gifted or high ability students. Attention to diversity of all students in the classroom is possible, for example by resorting to ICT, increasing the educational inclusion of students with high intellectual capacity.

Abstract

Adult performance of high ability individuals has seldom been researched. Current results suggest that adult excellence occurs at lower rates than high ability individuals identified in their infancy or youth, with few cases of high intellectual abilities among adults that yield excellence products. This paper focuses on the analysis of the relative frequency of biographical traits that are associated with high ability as well as to the opportunities that allow building particular knowledge structures that are non-conventional and support innovation in people who excelled. A retrospective biographical analysis was performed on a sample of 120 individuals that generated renowned excellence products, in different fields, in the XXth century. Variables associated to high abilities were: precocity; learning problems; social problems in school; and academic excellence. And the variables associated with the generation of knowledge structures that support innovation were: academic-professional continuity; strong influence of particular individuals; and high productivity. Significant differences were found, showing a low presence of the first four variables and a higher presence of the last three. It follows that the trajectory towards excellence does not seem to correlate with a high level of intellectual resources but with a certain use of sufficient resources, whether cerebral or external technological support.