A Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent
Françoys Gagné, PhD.
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Gagné's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) proposes a clear distinction between the two basic concepts of giftedness and talent:
Giftedness designates the possession and use of untrained and spontaneously expressed natural abilities (called aptitudes or gifts), in at least one ability domain, to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers.
Talent designates the superior mastery of systematically developed abilities (or skills) and knowledge in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places an individual within at least the top 10% of age-peers who are or have been active in that field or fields.
Gifts
The DMGT proposes five aptitude domains (see Figure l, PDF 15kb): intellectual, creative, socioaffective, perceptual/motor, and "others." These natural abilities, whose development and level of expression is partially controlled by the individual's genetic endowment, can be observed in every task children are confronted with in the course of their schooling; for instance, the intellectual abilities needed to learn to read, speak a foreign language or understand new mathematical concepts, the creative abilities needed to solve many different kinds of problems and produce original work in science, literature and art, the physical abilities involved in sport, music or woodwork, or the social abilities which children use daily in interactions with classmates, teachers, and parents.
High aptitudes or gifts can be observed more easily and directly in young children because environmental influences and systematic learning have exerted their moderating influence in a limited way only. However, they still show themselves in older children and even in adults through the facility and speed with which individuals acquire new skills in any given field of human activity. The easier or faster the learning process, the higher the natural abilities. It is these high natural abilities that many laypersons call "talent" or "natural talent".
Talents
As defined in the DMGT, talents progressively emerge from the transformation of these high aptitudes into the well-trained and systematically developed skills characteristic of a particular field of human activity or performance. These fields can be extremely diverse. Figure 1 shows some of the many talent fields relevant to school-aged youth. A given natural ability can express itself in many different ways, depending on the field of activity adopted by the individual. For example, dexterity as a natural physical ability can be modelled into the particular manual skills of a pianist, a painter or a video game player.
Similarly, intelligence as a natural ability can be modelled into the
scientific reasoning of a chemist, the game analysis of chess player or
the strategic planning of an athlete.
Talent development
In the DMGT, high natural abilities or aptitudes act as the "raw material" or the constituent elements of talents. It follows from this relationshipthat talent necessarily implies the presence of high natural abilities; one cannot be talented without first being gifted. The reverse is not true, however. It is possible for high natural abilities to remain simply as gifts and not be translated into talents, as witnessed by the well-known phenomenon of academic underachievement among intellectually gifted children. The process of talent development manifests itself when the child or adolescent engages in systematic learning, training and practising; the higher the level of talent sought, the more intensive these three activities will be.
Intrapersonal catalysts
The developmental process is facilited (or hindered) by the action of two types of catalysts: intrapersonal and environmental. The intrapersonal catalysts are subdivided into physical and psychological factors, all of them under the partial influence of the genetic endowment. Among the psychological catalysts, motivation and volition play a crucial role in initiating the process of talent development, guiding it, and sustaining it through obstacles, boredom and occasional failure. Hereditary predispositions to behave in certain ways (temperament), as well as acquired styles of behaviour (e.g., traits and disorder), also contribute significantly to support and stimulate, or slow down and even block, talent development.
Environmental catalysts
The environment manifests its significant impact in many different ways. The surroundings exert their influence both at a macroscopic level (e.g.geographic, demographic, sociological) and in a more microscopic framework (size of family, socioeconomic status, etc). Many different persons, not only parents and teachers but also siblings and peers, may exert positive or negative influences on the process of talent development. Gifted education programs within or outside the school belong to the category of undertakings; they are a more systematic form of intervention to foster or hinder talent development. Finally, significant events (the death of a parent, winning a prize or award, suffering a major accident) can influence markedly the course of talent development.
Refer Figure 1: Gagné 's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT.97) See attached PDF (14kb) 1&2
Chance
Chance could be added as a fifth causal factor associated with the environment; but, strictly speaking, it is more exactly a characteristic of some of the elements placed in any of the other four categories (e.g., the "chance" of being born in a particular family; the "chance" of the school in which the child is enrolled deciding to develop a program for gifted and talented students). Chance is also a major causal factor in the determination of the genetic endowment.
Prevalence
Any definition of normative concepts must specify how subjects differ from the norm, and what it means in terms of the prevalence of the population subsumed under the label. In the DMGT, the threshold for both the giftedness and talent concepts is placed at around the 90th percentile (approximately 1.3 standard deviations above the mean); in other words, those who belong to approximately the top 10% of the relevant reference group in terms of ability (for giftedness) or achievement (for talent) may receive the relevant label.
Levels
It must be clearly noted, however, that this generous choice of threshold is counterbalanced by a recognition of levels or degrees of giftedness or talent. Within the 10% population of "basically" gifted or talented persons, the DMGT recognizes four progressively more selective subgroups. They are labelled "moderately" (top 1%), "highly" (top 1 in a thousand), "exceptionally "(top 1:10 000) and 'extremely" (top 1: 100 000) respectively. In the cognitive domain, the five groups correspond to approximate 1Qs of 120, 135, 145, 155, and 165.
As in other fields of special education, the nature of the intervention program which a school develops for gifted or talented students should be influenced by the level of the students' giftedness or talent as well as the domain(s) or field(s) in which it is sited.
Additional readings
Gagné , F.(1993). Constructs and models pertaining to exceptional human abilities. In K.A. Heller, F.J.Monks & A.H. Passow(Eds.), International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent(pp.63–85). Oxford:Pergamon Press.
Gagné , F (1995). The differentiated nature of giftedness and talent: a model and its impact on the technical vocabulary of gifted and talented education. Roeper Review, 18, 103–1 1 1.
Gagné , F. (1995). Hidden meanings of the "talent development" concept. Educational Forum, 59, 350–362.
Links
A summary of the differentiated model
http://www.nswagtc.org.au/info/definitions/gagnemodel.html
Professor Gagné's distinction between giftedness and talent has dominated gifted education in recent years. He prepared this summary for the NSW Ministry of Education, as a comparison to its own distinction on this basis of whether the child's potential was based in a single domain (called "talented") or in multiple domains (called "gifted"). It was published in July 1997. It should be noted that in 1999, Gagne made substantial revisions to the model.