This hermeneutic, or interpretive, inquiry questions the historical cultural roots of the assumption that giftedness is defined in terms of essential properties that identify a select few children. It proposes, instead, a gifted way of life that is constituted by possibilities and is open to all persons. The hermeneutic paradigm of textual…

The background, challenge, opportunity, and excitement of hermeneutics can be explored in three signposts of a hermeneutic turn in a doctoral research proposal: from being gifted to gifted reading, from method to interpretation, and from metacognition to the hermeneutic circle. A change in the research site of a study of the metacognitive…

This conference presentation interprets the historic-cultural meaning of giftedness-as-potential. In this view, giftedness is seen as a gold mine, and good education results in the mining of the precious golden essence that is buried deep within individual students. The historic roots of this metaphor can be traced back to Plato's plan in "The…

This paper notes that gifted education has been dominated by psychology and proposes, in contrast, to de-psychologize the concept of "giftedness-at-risk" with an alternative model which sees ontological giftedness, becoming the best one can be, as not the property of an elite few but a permanent positive human possibility for all.…