Interdisciplinary expansion of conceptual foundations:Insights from beyond our field

Abstract

The field of gifted education is very complex, covering broad and deep conceptual terrain. Insights about giftedness and talent are available from diverse academic disciplines and at multiple levels of analysis. These levels are captured in an interpretive framework that moves from the macrolevels of broad sociopolitical, cultural, and economic contexts through the levels of the immediate classroom context and psychology of the individual to the microlevels of organic structure, microbiology and the subatomic realm. From each level, examples of insights of possible relevance to gifted education are provided as illustrations of the potential an interdisciplinary and interlevel search has for expanding the conceptual foundations of the field.