Abstract
The field of gifted and talented studies has its origins in the intelligence quotient research of the late 19th and early 20th century. These psychological foundations remain a strong influence even though the field has since expanded to include other paradigms and greater diversity in conceptions of giftedness and talent. Some researchers argue that the field could benefit from greater interdisciplinary engagement, especially in studies of gifted and talented girls, which tend to include a focus on how gifted girls’ external environments influence their emotional worlds. This article proposes that concepts developed by critical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu are useful for expanding and deepening understandings of the internal and external worlds of gifted and talented girls. It offers evidence from a recent qualitative study with academically gifted and talented teenaged girls in New Zealand. The results highlighted the marginalised position of the gifted and talented identity and the privileging of identities that were based on dispositions versus innate ability. The study also identified a hierarchy of valued forms of capital within the teenage girl social landscape and a resulting theorisation of an empowered gifted and talented girl habitus. This article demonstrates how Bourdieu’s work is a constructive addition to the field.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to discuss how the theoretical concepts of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu can help advance the gifted and talented field’s understanding of gifted and talented girls’ lived experiences as they navigate their social landscapes.This article is based on a qualitative research study investigating gifted and talented girls’identity constructions and their understandings of empowerment
Because this article has a theoretical focus, it will emphasise the contributions of Bourdieu’s theory to the research. It achieves this by first distilling the key findings of existing research in the gifted and talented field, including the research on gifted and talented girls. It highlights relevant theoretical contributions from Bourdieu’s corpus of work and demonstrates how empirical research conducted with a Bourdieusian approach can yield findings that deepen and extend the field’s understanding of gifted and talented girls
The results propose heteronormative feminine, white-centred beauty, and popularity as valued capitals in the girls’ social fields, affirming research on gifted and talented or successful girls [25,46,55]
Summary
The purpose of this article is to discuss how the theoretical concepts of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu can help advance the gifted and talented field’s understanding of gifted and talented girls’ lived experiences as they navigate their social landscapes.This article is based on a qualitative research study investigating gifted and talented girls’identity constructions and their understandings of empowerment. Because this article has a theoretical focus, it will emphasise the contributions of Bourdieu’s theory to the research. It achieves this by first distilling the key findings of existing research in the gifted and talented field, including the research on gifted and talented girls. It highlights relevant theoretical contributions from Bourdieu’s corpus of work and demonstrates how empirical research conducted with a Bourdieusian approach can yield findings that deepen and extend the field’s understanding of gifted and talented girls. While two of the three dominant paradigms—talent development and differentiation [5]—demonstrate growing recognition of the influence of external social worlds on whether gifted and talented children, including girls, are able to actualise their talents [4,6,7], there has been surprisingly little in-depth engagement with sociological theories
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