Giftedness research reflects the efforts of extraordinary people. Its origins are tied to the names of three eminent scholars. In an effort to gauge natural intellectual abilities, Francis Galton developed measurement criteria and collected measurements on over 7,500 adults in England between 1888 and 1894. Galton, who assumed that children could inherit the potential of their parents, referred to these children as gifted children. Some years later, William Stern established giftedness research in Germany. A true scientific pioneer, Stern invented the concept of the IQ (intelligence quotient) in the early twentieth century. In the United States, Lewis Terman expanded Stern's view of gifted children using his own adaptation of intelligence testing. In 1921 he started a longitudinal study of 1,500 children in California with extremely high IQs and continued to evaluate them throughout their lives. One of his main findings was that IQ alone could not predict success in adulthood.
While in Great Britain and in the United States giftedness research continued to flourish, the Second World War put a stop to it in Germany. After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany the German public was suspicious of concepts such as natural gifts or elitism. Indeed, giftedness research was not pursued for several decades.
The rehabilitation of the concept of giftedness in Germany has had several fathers, among them Kurt A. Heller, Franz J. Ménks, Klaus K. Urban, and Wilhelm Wieczerkowski. Yet even in the 1980s researchers in this field were met with harsh rebuke. In the issue of the weekly newspaper ZEIT of August 12, 1985, one reads how the Senator for Education in Hamburg, in his opening speech at the sixth WCGT-conference on giftedness, questioned the very necessity of gifted education by maintaining that regular schooling should be adequate for addressing the needs of the more able. To the dismay of the assembled giftedness researchers, he made a comparison between gifted education and the promotion of the elite in the Third Reich: "We are all aware how this worship of the golden calf ended." Nowadays the situation has changed. The concepts of giftedness and giftedness research are now fully appreciated, and while the field's rebirth has had several fathers in Germany, the rebirth of giftedness research, in particular, at the international level is most closely associated with Kurt Heller. His seminal influence has many reasons.
Author(s): Kurt A. Heller
Series: Talent, Expertise, Excellence 6
Publisher: Lit Verlag
Year: 2010
Language: English
Commentary: pages 188 and 189 missing from scan source
Pages: 576
City: Münster
Munich Studies of Giftedness
Foreword (Albert Ziegler)
Preface and Acknowledgments (Kurt A. Heller)
Contents
PART I: Theoretical and Developmental Aspects of Giftedness and Talent
Chapter 1 The Munich Model of Giftedness and Talent (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 2 The Munich Longitudinal Study of Giftedness (Kurt A. Heller, Ernst A. Hany, Christoph Perleth & Wolfgang Sierwald)
Chapter 3 Scientific Ability and Creativity (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 4 Metacognitive Strategy Research: Results from a Study with Young (Pre-School) Children (Colleen S. Browder)
Chapter 5 Strategy Use and Metamemory in Gifted and Average Primary School Children (Christoph Perleth)
Chapter 6 The Development of Problem Solving Capacities in the Domain of Technics (Ernst A. Hany & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 7 How Leisure Time Activities Correspond to the Development of Creative Achievement: Insights from a Study of Highly Intelligent Individuals (Ernst A. Hany)
Chapter 8 Individual and Social Conditions of Academic Excellence in University and Work (Kurt A. Heller)
PART II: Assessment of Giftedness, Identification, and Talent Search
Chapter 9 Perspectives on the Assessment of Giftedness (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 10 Basic Issues of Identification (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 11 The Munich High Ability Test Battery (MHBT): A Multidimensional, Multimethod Approach (Kurt A. Heller & Christoph Perleth)
Chapter 12 Teachers' Cognitive Processes of Identifying Gifted Students (Ernst A. Hany)
Chapter 13 Identification of Underachievement: An Empirical Study on the Agreement Among Various Diagnostic Sources (Albert Ziegler & Heidrun Stoeger)
PART III: Gender Differences and Intervention Studies
Chapter 14 Gender Differences in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences (Kurt A. Heller & Albert Ziegler)
Chapter 15 Implicit Theories of Mathematics and Physics Teachers on Gender-Specific Giftedness and Motivation (Kurt A. Heller, Monika Finsterwald & Albert Ziegler)
Chapter 16 Comparison of the Academic Motivation of Average, Gifted and Highly Gifted Girls and Boys (Albert Ziegler, Kurt A. Heller & Susanne C. Stach)
Chapter 17 Motivational Preconditions for Girls Gifted and Highly Gifted in Physics (Albert Ziegler, Kurt A. Heller & Patrick Broome)
Chapter 18 Conditions for Self-Confidence Among Boys and Girls Achieving Highly in Chemistry (Albert Ziegler & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 19 German Olympiad Studies: Findings from a Retrospective Evaluation and from In-Depth Interviews. Where Have all the Gifted Females Gone? (Angelika Lengfelder & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 20 Attributional Retraining as an Attempt to Reduce Gender-Specific Problems in Mathematics and the Sciences (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 21 Attribution Retraining for Self-Related Cognitions Among Women (Albert Ziegler & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 22 Effects of an Attribution Retraining With Female Students Gifted in Physics (Albert Ziegler & Kurt A. Heller)
PART IV: Gifted Education and Counseling
Chapter 23 Fundamental Questions about Gifted Education (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 24 Education and Counseling of the Gifted and Talented (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 25 The Benefit of Gifted Classes and Talent Schools for Developing Student's Competences and Enhancing Academic Self-Concept (Heiner Rindermann & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 26 Approach and Avoidance Motivation as Predictors of Achievement Behavior in Physics Instructions among Mildly and Highly Gifted 8th Grade Students (Albert Ziegler & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 27 Gender Differences in Science Education: The Double-Edged Role of Prior Knowledge in Physics (Markus Dresel, Albert Ziegler, Patrick Broome & Kurt A. Heller)
PART V: Program Evaluation Studies
Chapter 28 Theoretical and Methodological Problems of a 10-Year Follow-Up Program Evaluation Study (Kurt A. Heller & Ralph Reimann)
Chapter 29 Evaluation of Gifted Courses for Nurturing Technical Creativity (Cornelia Facaoaru)
Chapter 30 The Enrichment Program "Hector Seminar": A Longitudinal Evaluation Study in MINT (STEM) (Kurt A. Heller, Angelika von Bistram & Antonie Collier)
Chapter 31 Evaluation of a Summer-School Program for Highly Gifted Secondary-School Students: The German Pupils Academy (Heinz Neber & Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 32 A State-Wide Acceleration Program at the German Gymnasium (Kurt A. Heller, Heiner Rindermann & Ralph Reimann)
Chapter 33 Support for University Students: Individual and Social Factors (Kurt A. Heller & Petra Vitek)
PART VI: Cross-Cultural Studies on Giftedness and Creativity
Chapter 34 Need for and Functions of Cross-Cultural Research (Kurt A. Heller)
Chapter 35 Adapting Conceptual Models for Cross-Cultural Applications (Kurt A. Heller & Christoph Perleth)
Chapter 36 German-Chinese Study on Technical Creativity (Kurt A. Heller & Ernst A. Hany)
Chapter 37 Gifted Females: A Cross-Cultural Survey (Kurt A. Heller & Albert Ziegler)
Chapter 38 Evaluation Study of the International Academic Olympiads. Three Decades of Cross-Cultural and Gender Findings from North-American, European and East-Asian Olympians (Kurt A. Heller & Angelika Lengfelder)
Book Chapter Sources
List of Contributors
Subject Index
