Maximizing the motivated mind for emergent giftedness

The main goals of this article are to explain how the theory of the motivated mind conceptualizes the productive interaction of intelligence, creativity, and achievement motivation and to show how this theory can help educators to maximize students' emergent potential for giftedness. According to this theory, students' motivated minds are complex‐adaptive systems comprised of two co‐evolving psychological subsystems: cold‐order thinking expressed as serious intelligence and hot‐chaotic thinking expressed as fun creativity. When these co‐evolving subsystems become fully differentiated and integrated, students' complex capacity for giftedness emerges as fluid‐adaptive thinking. This enhanced thinking capacity is both seriously intelligent and playfully creative at the same time. Students' optimal motivation for self‐regulating and educators’ ideal leadership style for promoting fluid‐adaptive thinking are operationally described. The motivated mind is also compared and contrasted with Renzulli's three rings of giftedness, Gardner's multiple intelligences, Stemberg's successful intelligence, and Csikszentmihalyi's optimal experience of flow.