Identifying Academically Talented Students: Some General Principles, Two Specific Procedures

Abstract

Talent signifies potential for the attainment of excellence in some domain. Procedures for identifying academic talent that were developed at the turn of the twentieth century emphasized the measurement of a cognitive potential that was thought to forecast successful learning in any domain or learning context. While not rejecting the utility of the measures of cognitive ability devised to estimate this learning potential, most psychologists now see talent as a more variegated concept and the development of expertise as dependent on much more than superior cognitive ability. The concept of aptitude offers a useful way to integrate these disparate strands into a coherent theory. In this chapter, I discuss the identification of academically talented children from the perspective of aptitude theory. Aptitude refers to the degree of readiness to learn and to perform well in a particular situation or domain. The primary aptitudes for academic success are (1) prior knowledge and skill in a domain, (2) the ability to reason in the symbol systems used to communicate new knowledge in that domain, (3) interest in the domain, and (4) persistence in the type of learning environments offered for the attainment of expertise in the domain. Although the principles discussed here are useful for all students, they are particularly important for the identification of academically promising minority students. The chapter concludes with examples of two procedures for combining ability test scores, achievement test scores, and teacher ratings in a principled way to assist in the identification of a talent pool.