Studying the meaning of giftedness: Inspiration from the field of cognitive psychology

Despite efforts to create alternative strategies to identify students from diverse backgrounds, there remains a disproportionately small minority representation in programs for the academically gifted. One reason for this discrepancy may be the effect of teachers’ theories of giftedness on how they nominate students for gifted programming. However, very little research has been conducted on teachers’ individual theories of giftedness. Inspiration for new ways of conducting research on theories of giftedness may come from research on concept and category formation from the field of cognitive psychology.