A systematic perspective on giftedness: The Actiotope Model of

Ziegler (2005) criticized the relative lack of learning and environment orientation in conceptions of giftedness and, hence, in the diagnosis and promotion of giftedness. In a call for a paradigm change, Ziegler et al. (2012) noted that “it is not enough to pay lip service to the importance of the environment or to fragment the research field into gifts (talents, abilities, etc.), internal moderators (e.g., high motivation), and external moderators (e.g., mentors), which collude in a simple summative or multiplicative manner. Better suited are models within the ecological or systemic paradigm…” (p. 196).

Ziegler (2005) proposed a systematic model of giftedness—the Actiotope Model of Giftedness—that focuses on the interactions between individuals and the specific systems that surround them to explain the development of excellence. For the development of excellence, there has to be an effective interplay between the person and her or his environment, goals, and learning. Hence, Ziegler argued that research on giftedness has to move away from an investigation of individual personality traits to an examination of the system surrounding an individual and her or his environment, which leads to specific actions.

Before stating the model’s positions concerning the main categories of differences among conceptions of giftedness (see Section 1.1.1), the main assumptions of the Actiotope Model of Giftedness will be described. The core of the model is the actiotope that comprises the person and the environment with which she or he can interact. More concretely, four components have to be differentiated: (A) The action repertoire of a person consists of all actions that a person has objectively at her or his disposal in a certain situation. People’s action repertoires differ on the basis of inter- and intrapersonal

determinants. A fifth-grader will probably have a smaller action repertoire in physics than a tenth-grader, for example, based on school curriculum. Intrapersonal determinants like ability are at the core of many conceptions of giftedness. Therefore, these models can be seen as subtheories of the Actiotope Model of Giftedness. (B) A persons’ goals contribute to actions. Particularly, goals to develop excellence and to exercise excellent actions are central for giftedness. (C) The environment that frames someone’s actions has an important influence on the development of excellence, including, for example, a person’s family, peers, and teachers, the resources that a person can draw on, and the specific setting of the talent domain that dictates what actions are seen as excellent. (D) The subjective action space is a person’s internal representation of all possible actions that can be conducted in a situation with certain conditions. A person chooses a specific action based on this representation. The subjective action space does not have to be congruent with the objective action repertoire. A person might misjudge which actions she or he can perform.

As situations change, these four components have to coevolve and the interactions between them have to adapt effectively in order for a person to achieve excellence.

Persons need to learn, for example, to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful actions in certain situations, to recognize conditions for the execution of actions, to generate variations of actions, and to anticipate the usage of knowledge and actions.

Feedback and discussion of possible future actions under certain conditions are needed for effective adaptation. Furthermore, based on the complex and permanent changes of the actiotope, the system needs to be stable to ensure effective development to excellence.

An actiotope is stable if its components are co-adaptive and complementary (Ziegler &

Philipson, 2012).

Hence, with regard to the categories of main differences between conceptions of giftedness (see Table 1.1, p.16), first, outstanding actions are defined as excellent. Persons who possibly and probably manifest excellence are seen as talented or gifted. Second, the role of intelligence is not the focus of the model; instead, mastery of preceding learning steps is crucial for the development of excellence. Third, giftedness is seen as domain-specific, and, fourth, as multidimensional. Fifth and sixth, the model includes environmental variables and sees giftedness as malleable. Seventh, the assessment of what actions are outstanding is not based on a general social norm across all domains (e.g., the 5 percent of most excellent individuals in a domain) but on a comparison with

Table 1.1

Description of Conceptions of Giftedness in Relation to Categories of Main Differences Between Conceptions of Giftedness

Eight, systems are of concern in this model, and Dai (2009) indicated that the differences in the actiotope are of a qualitative nature.

Overall, there is no uniform definition of giftedness. Different conceptions of giftedness can lead to the identification of different students as gifted and to different explanations for their giftedness (see Sternberg and Davidson, 2005). The work on systematizations to extract key characteristics from groups of conceptions and discuss the main tensions between them can provide a framework of what can be subsumed under the construct of giftedness and in which direction the development of conceptions might go. Whether the steps taken by scholars like Subotnik et al. (2011) and Ziegler (2005) will lead to a unification of the field remains to be seen. For now, there is no one definition of giftedness that teachers should know or with which they are confronted in the school setting. This has to be kept in mind in discussions of teachers’ beliefs about giftedness and their judgments about giftedness in students. Moreover, how teachers’ beliefs about giftedness are linked to scientific conceptions of giftedness is discussed and empirically investigated in this dissertation.