Beyond compare? Thoughts towards an inclusional, fluid, and non-normative understanding of giftedness

This chapter is written from the stance of a practitioner researching his own practice as an educator in the field of giftedness. I describe how a model of gift-creation has emerged through critical responsiveness to my own practice, and I offer a parallel description of the conditions under which gifts can be grown – rather than identified. These descriptions underlie an argument for shifting professional focus from dominant twentieth-century western rationalist approaches to the field of gifted and talented education, with their deterministic, dualistic, individualistic, pragmatic, tool-for-result (cf. Vygotsky 1978), and knowing-centred associations, towards a concept of giftedness which is co-constructed (not identified) in a social, relationally respectful, activity-oriented, dialectical, tool-and-result (Vygotsky 1978; Newman and Holzman 1993) manner and context.