Anne N. Rinn - Social, Emotional, and Psychosocial Development of Gifted and Talented Individuals

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rinn, Anne N., 1978- author.

Title: Social, emotional, and psychosocial development of gifted and talented individuals / Anne N. Rinn.

Description: Waco, TX : Prufrock Press Inc., 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: This book merges the fields of individual differences, developmental psychology, and educational psychology with the field of gifted education for a complete overview of the social, emotional, and psychosocial development of gifted and talented individuals-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020014709 (print) | LCCN 2020014710 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646320042 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646320059 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646320066 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Gifted persons--Psychology. | Creative ability--Psychological aspects. | Developmental psychology. | Educational psychology.

Classification: LCC BF412 .R43 2020 (print) | LCC BF412 (ebook) | DDC 155.45/5--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014709

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014710

Copyright 2020, Prufrock Press Inc.

Edited by Stephanie McCauley

Cover design by Micah Benson and layout design by Shelby Charette

ISBN-13: 978-1-64632-006-6

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Dedication

For Dr. Sidney Moon.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Early in my career, in the years just following the completion of my doctorate, I met up with Dr. Sidney Moon after a conference presentation that had just ended at the National Association for Gifted Children annual conference. I had adopted her as one of my mentors a few years prior, and in that meeting we were talking about my future in the field of gifted education. Among many other things, she told me I should write a social and emotional textbook for the field. I laughed and told her I did not think I had anything to say. Her expression never wavered as she looked straight at me and said, One day you will. Well, she was right. Thank you, Dr. Moon, for believing in me.

In the Spring 2018 semester, I had the opportunity to teach a new doctoral seminar on the social, emotional, and psychosocial development of gifted and talented individuals. Knowing I would also be writing this book, the syllabus for that class served as the first draft of the table of contents. I was fortunate to spend an entire semester in deep discussion with my insightful doctoral students on a topic with which I had been absorbed since I was an undergraduate. As a sophomore in college, my first paper in my Honors Introduction to Psychology class was on how self-concept differed between gifted and average-ability individuals. I have learned quite a lot since then, and I learned even more in leading the doctoral seminar in 2018. So, to that end, thank you to the brilliant students in that class: Sam Earls, Kacey Crutchfield, Melanie Meyer, Jessica Ottwein, Noel Jett, Kris Majority, Kay Shurtleff, Mattie Oveross, Kathy Soles, Lindsay Lee, and Sarah Roberts.

Thank you to Dr. Tracy Cross and Dr. Paula Olszewski-Kubilius for reviewing and providing feedback on drafts of a proposal for this book. And, thank you to Dr. Don Ambrose, Dr. David Dai, and Dr. Rena Subotnik for reviewing and providing feedback on drafts of this book. I am so thankful for your time, thoughtfulness, and kindness.

Introduction

Anyone whose chosen field is meant to support the development of unusually intelligent humans needs to begin with an understanding of who he or she is. (Tolan & Piechowski, 2013, p. 8)

Consider for a moment the following scenarios:

A professional musician is feeling performance anxiety, which is affecting his ability to perform.

A new graduate student feels like she does not belong in her graduate program because everyone else seems so much more accomplished and talented.

A young gymnast struggles with trading high school social experiences for training for the Olympics.

A seventh-grade honors student has seemingly lost all motivation for his schoolwork.

A second grader newly identified for gifted programming realizes that she is different from her same-age peers but does not understand how or why.

What do these individuals have in common? They all exhibit talent within their respective domains (i.e., academics, sport, music). Each of their talents has been recognized by others (e.g., experts in their field, educators). They have each experienced varying degrees of success (this is not to say the second grader is successful because she was identified for a gifted program, but she has done well academically for a couple of years). Yet, they are all experiencing something affecting their ability to reach their potential in their domains of talent that is seemingly unrelated to their actual talents. Reaching ones potential does not just depend on ones abilities, skills, or knowledge within a particular domain; just because a person has the requisite specific abilities and talents to succeed in a domain does not guarantee that they will be successful.

For many years, researchers have examined noncognitive skills and affective factors that contribute to achievement in grades K12, experiences in higher education, and production and performance in the workforce. Researchers have termed these noncognitive skills or affective factors differently over time: work ethic, leadership, emotional intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, character traits, personality, drive, and psychosocial skills, to name a few (see Kyllonen et al., 2014). When looking at achievement, performance, or success in a domain of talent, noncognitive skills are just as important as domain-specific abilities along the talent development continuum (along with a host of environmental factors). Some even argue that noncognitive skills are more important than domain-specific abilities in the development of talent (e.g., Duckworth, 2016; Goleman, 1995).