ABSTRACT
This chapter supports the Enrichment Matrix as a guide to maximizing education for the brightest students at school. Defining giftedness is only the first step toward designing education for bright, school-age children. Static sub-factors denote individual status, usually relating to group norms, group identity, or other external criteria. Dynamic sub-factors refer to processes of human functioning and of the situational contexts in which individual behavior is shaped. Although criticisms have sometimes suppressed reference to IQ in popular discourse on the nature of giftedness, they have not suffocated the valuation of IQ by behavioral scientists engaged in research on high scholastic potential or by educators planning to qualify children for advanced study at school. The static non-intellective factors, including social conformity and alienation, mental health and mental illness, self-concept and self-efficacy, and perfectionism, can all be packaged as varieties of motivation.
