Identification of the Gifted in Art

Abstract

The problem of identifying the gifted and talented in art has, in recent years, become a significant issue in education. This problem has emerged out of a renewed general concern for educational opportunities for the gifted and talented. Current methods, such as portfolio review, are time inefficient, costly, and not adequately defensible as valid and reliable. Teacher identification has many flaws deriving, in part, from teacher subjectivity and insufficient knowledge about the behaviors of the gifted. (Gallagher & Rogge, 1966; Hildreth, 1966, Torrance, 1969; Gear, 1976). The greatest problem is the confusion over constitutes valid identification criteria. In their study of gifted art students, Getzels and Csikszenthmahalyi stated, Insofar as there is no generally accepted theoretical scheme applicable to artistic performance, we had no certain guidelines as to which instruments were likely to prove most fruitful (Getzels & Csikezenthmihalyi, 1976, p. 24). The evaluation of student art products and performance has occurred on two dimensions. Each dimension represents a form of knowing as presented by Maccia (1974). One form, knowing how to do, is described by Maccia as knowledge of options which are restricted by rules of protocol or preference, such as, for this case, aesthetic judgment. The other form, knowing what to do, is viewed by Maccia as innovative or creative knowing. Knowing what to do requires the transference of paths or structures from one activity to another; or simply inventiveness. Maslow (1970) characterizes how to do as means centered and generally concerned with protocol, procedure, ritual and ceremony. He explains that knowing what to do relates to the ability to judge pertinence and breadth of implication of the ends. In assessing the gifted in art, it is necessary to evaluate the individual's ability to know what to do and how to do as well as motivational factors which might be called, in order to be consistent, why do. There is a strong thread of agreement in the literature of aesthetics and art with regard to the essential value of works of art (Arnheim, 1972; Broudy, 1972; Kuhn, 1975). The primary concept, it would seem, for the superior artist, is the quality of his or her information handling which of course must then be convincingly projected in the medium. The mental process required, then, is not so much creativity in the sense of cleverness or inventiveness given simple problems. Rather the need is to examine the capacity to evaluate, process and order complex information. The ability to handle complex information has been described in the psychology of information processing as cognitive complexity or integrative complexity. Barron described this factor as a bi-polar factor which opposes a preference for perceiving and dealing with simplicity, when both of these alternatives are phenomenally present and when a choice must be made between them (Barron, 1953, p. 163). Bieri explains that the cognitively complex person has available more construct dimensions than the cognitively simple person. Dimensions are units of conceptual functioning and represent the elements of content of thought (Bieri, 1955). Theories of complexity-simplicty have as their basis Lewin's (1935) theory of personal structure. Lewin envisions the life space of the individual as encompassing personal constructs and environmental constructs (Weiner, 1972). Schroder, Driver and Streufert examined the effects of complexitysimplicty on the individual's ability to handle increased amounts of complex information (1967). The rationale for their test of simplicity-complexity was that the more integratively complex the structure is, the more ways there are in which a stimulus may be perceived by the individual. Through a series of experiments they found that the cognitively complex person has the ability to invent more resolutions to stimuli which are conflicting or