In the field of education within diversity, this book deals with knowing deeply the students who show intellectual giftedness. Through this book a set of questions are raised to be explained by the study of cases.
It is important to state that the male gender is used to make easier both the written expression and the general comprehension but it is clear that it comprises male and female genders of any group: children, youth, teachers, form master/mistress... Anyway, gender differences are made when required.
Others of our previous publications emphasized the necessity of considering that the group of gifted children is very heterogeneous and, considering only their intelligence level, their IQ scores are rating from about 130 to more than 200. This book tries to study deeper this topic, starting with establishing the theoretical basis on the concept of intellectual giftedness and identification through a revision of the most recent theories about intelligence as the Model of Multiple Intelligence by Gardner, the Model of Giftedness and Talent differentiation by Gagné, the Successful Intelligence by Sternberg or the Emotional Intelligence by Goleman.
The questions raised in this first chapter are the following : - what is the relation between the Intelligence Quotient and the school learning?, - Do the intelligence differences determine the kind of teaching to administer?, - Are the gifted a reality or they are simply precocious and talented students?
Once the theoretical base has been explained in the first chapter, the matter is focused on the identification of gifted students in special populations. Then, a proposal of screening to identify the gifted in primary and secondary education is presented. This second chapter ends with the following questions: - is any teacher able to identify the intellectually gifted student at the classroom? and a proposal on observable behaviours within the classroom and which are the teachers' features which facilitate the learning of the intellectually gifted children is included; - what is the gifted students' opinion about their teachers?
The next and ample chapter deals with child's psychology, and the following points are deeply studied: - may a child who shows learning disorders be intellectually gifted?, - is "school phobia" a cause of their school lack of adaptation?; - is it a usual fact that the gifted are hyperactive?, - is it possible that the gifted student shows a generalized disorder of his/her development?, - are the gifted students more sensitive than the non-gifted ones?. Intellectually gifted children with associated disorders.
The fourth chapter is focused on the extremely gifted children. Very few researches have been made on this kind of students til this moment , and probably due to the sortage of real cases who can be seen and studied, as Dunlap stated : only one out of 290,000 children show an IQ score above 170. In this chapter we have wanted to focus the attention at the small group of extraordinarily gifted since despite they summ up a small number they have the right to be met and receive a proper education. Linda Siverman & Kathi Kearney's study on the family features of 32 extraordinarily gifted children (170 IQ) was our starting point.
Our study is only about the cases of 10 children with an extremely high level of IQ score: equal or above 189 and about their families. Presently, there is no other reference in Spanish of any other similar study. The following questions are dealt with through this section: - what are these children's features?, - is it true that the higher a child's IQ score reaches, the worse that child's adaptation, social, school and individual problems are?.
Before reaching the conclusion section of this book, a brief description about the educational options for these kind of students is included, with the only purpose of presenting the possible services to meet their needs, and such possible educational options are the topic of our forthcoming book. This section about Educational Brief descriptions includes the educational options for sgifted children, the educational proposal of the Spanish educational system and a deep study on the acceleration to end this section answering the following question: - to which extent may the acceleration be harmful for the child's development?
We think that this book may be very useful to know the gifted student for professionals of the fields of Psychology and Education and for parents. We are aware that only everybody's effort will make possible an educational improvement and we hope to contribute with this book to know deeper the gifted and how meeting diversity educationally.
