ABSTRACT
Gifted education is an important endeavor in the East Asian countries. A framework that could guide this endeavor is suggested in Ziegler and Phillipson (2012), using the actiotope model of giftedness as the theoretical framework. The actiotope model presents an impressive approach to fostering gifted students that goes beyond current approaches to giftedness. The need for the “paradigm shift” suggested by Ziegler and Phillipson is based on their assumption that traditional “mechanistic” approaches run short in only trying to dissect giftedness “into its measurable parts.” Such multifactorial models (by Gagné, Heller, Mönks, Tannenbaum and others) try to identify three types of factors (internal cognitive, internal non-cognitive, external) and use these for the prediction of exceptional accomplishments. Referring to Lipsey and Wilson’s (1993) meta-analysis of traditional gifted education that – according to Ziegler and Phillipson – showed minimal to, at best, moderate effect sizes the authors derive the need for a paradigm shift.
