Major Events in Gifted Education

Reformation of the Public School System

1845

Horace Mann, better known as the Father of American education was a Boston educator and legislator. He was a major force in pioneering the public school system reformation. Due to his work, the K-12 school system became the new norm.

Measuring Intelligence

1905

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon design the first true intelligence assessment. The test accurately measures one's vocabulary knowledge and thinking skills. Binet's work supported English psychologist, Charles Spearman's model for human intelligence. Furthermore, Henry Goddard popularized the test across the United States (Stanley, 2015).

Identification of Giftedness in Children

1916

Lewis Terman, commonly known as the Father of the Gifted revised and adapted the Binet IQ test to measure giftedness in children. Terman was a psychologist in Stanford University. Additionally, the term Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was created to describe an individual's mental age (mwelldunn, 2010). This assessment is still used today as an gifted identification tool.

The Need to Serve the Gifted

1926

Leta Hollingworth was an American educator, psychologist, and feminist. Her major contributions revolutionized how giftedness was perceived and approached. Some of her major contributions to gifted education included writing the first gifted children's book titled Children Above 180 IQ: Standford Binet, establishing a need to have a personalized curriculum for the gifted, and developing and teaching the first college course on giftedness (Cherry, 2020).

Giftedness Influencers

1983

Abraham Tannenbaum, a psychologist pioneered the groundbreaking "Sea Star" model to measure potential giftedness in children (Columbia University, 2021). His work connected the various theories regarding factors influencing giftedness from psychologists like Terman, Hollingworth, Gardener, Renzuli, and Gagne. The five-point Sea Star includes the areas of an individual's special aptitudes, non-inherited facilitators, environmental support, general ability, and chance (mwelldunn, 2010).

Equity in Education

2015

The launch of the Soviet's (1957) first satellite Sputnik sparked the need to identify and service the most capable in the US. However, not much has occurred at the federal level, decisions were left to the state and local government. The NCLB Act (2001) noted the need to provide services for the gifted however problems with the language created issues of implementation. The ESSA (2015) included a clause which required public schools to identify and service gifted learners across the US.