Smart contexts for 21st-century talent development: Sociocultural approaches to gifted education

This chapter discusses a sociocultural perspective on gifted education and talent development that addresses the importance of context in children’s development. Sociocultural approaches to talent development emphasize that the talent is the result of the individual working successfully within their social and cultural context. The chapter offers a more extended discussion of the kinds of shifts that might be considered in order to enact these principles in 21st-century classrooms. It also offers a brief overview of some key tenets of sociocultural theory and offer educational applications derived from these tenets. From a sociocultural perspective, knowledge is produced collaboratively. Talent identification must move beyond assessing knowledge acquisition and toward a consideration of what learners may accomplish when working in their zone of proximal development. From a sociocultural perspective, the success of the individual-as-gifted approach is limited and illusory, and a greater use of contextual approaches may produce many more instances of talent and giftedness.