ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief historical-geographical discourse on the Shona and Shona family of languages as background to explicating the construction of giftedness by the Shona of Central-Southern Africa. Central-Southern Africa includes territories south of the equator and north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The chapter describes the identification of Shona students with giftedness in school settings from our experience providing school psychology services in Zimbabwe, a country with 90% of its 12 million people speaking modern Shona and Shona family languages. It discusses the sociocultural antecedents of giftedness in Shona society. The chapter considers the elements of the participatory model of giftedness among the Shona to include spiritual foundations, agents, levels, contexts, domains, qualities, and mediators. In traditionalist Shona society (or those mostly resident in rural areas and with very strong ancestral beliefs), the domains of community participation are tied to productivity within agricultural-subsistence economies, social needs of family, and clan affiliations, including spiritual supplication with the departed ancestors.
