scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Kurt A. Heller

Other affiliations: University of Göttingen
Bio: Kurt A. Heller is an academic researcher from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The author has contributed to research in topics: Gifted education & Creativity. The author has an hindex of 27, co-authored 138 publications receiving 2735 citations. Previous affiliations of Kurt A. Heller include University of Göttingen.


Papers
More filters
Book
01 Aug 1993
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a review of significant theory and research in all aspects of giftedness, both to help frame more valid research questions and to provide guidance for educational policy and practice.
Abstract: Containing 53 chapters, this handbook draws on some I8 nations to provide across-national perspective that is unique. Written for readers with a sound knowledge base, it is designed as a synthesis and critical review of significant theory and research in all aspects of giftedness, both to help frame more valid research questions and to provide guidance for educational policy and practice. lt will provide researchers, practitioners and policy makers with a comprehensive evaluation of theoretical and empirical research and descriptions of program and practice dealing with all aspects of the nature, nurture and realisation of giftedness and talent.

363 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the present and future of research and education of the Gifted and Talented in the United States and present a review of the state of the art.
Abstract: Changing Conceptions on Giftedness and Talent. Development of Giftedness and Talent. Identification of Giftedness and Talent. Gifted Education and Programming. Counseling and Nurturing Giftedness and Talent. Examples of Country Efforts, Policies, Programs and Issues. Present and Future of Research and Education of the Gifted and Talented.

331 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 May 2005
TL;DR: In this article, the Munich Model of Giftedness (MMG) is used as an example of a multifactorial conception of giftedness and talent, along with the recently developed dynamic process approach to this model (Munich Dynamic Ability-Achievement Model of Guidedness [MDAAM], and the following questions arise: How should gifted individuals be identified and instructed? And how should their learning outcomes or excellent performance be assessed?
Abstract: A decisive factor in the determination of effective gifted education is the fit between the individual cognitive and noncognitive (e.g., motivational and other personality) factors of the developmental and learning processes on the one hand and the environmental influences that are mainly from the social settings of family, school, and peers on the other hand. This chapter is based on multidimensional conceptions of giftedness and talent, such as the Munich Model of Giftedness (MMG), as well as on interaction models, such as the Aptitude–Treatment Interaction (ATI) by Cronbach and Snow (1977) and Corno and Snow (1986). When considering the MMG as an example of a multifactorial conception of giftedness, along with the recently developed dynamic process approach to this model (Munich Dynamic Ability–Achievement Model of Giftedness [MDAAM], the following questions arise: How should gifted individuals be identified and instructed? And how should their learning outcomes or excellent performance be assessed? These and other questions will be answered according to the MMG and the MDAAM, respectively. GIFTEDNESS AND TALENT FROM A THEORETICAL POINT OF VIEW Our knowledge regarding giftedness and talent is supplied by different sources of information and research paradigms. Approaches that are particularly relevant to conceptualizing giftedness or talent are the psychometric approach, the expert–novice paradigm, explanatory approaches from the field of cognitive science or cognitive psychology, and social psychology, as well as retrospective and prospective (longitudinal) studies.

158 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the Munich Model of Giftedness has been used for identifying gifted and talented students, and a discussion of the benefits and dangers of identification measures has been carried out.
Abstract: After a brief introduction with four main questions related to identifying gifted and talented students, this article centres on the following topics: (1) multidimensional conceptions of giftedness as preconditions of suitable identification procedures, (2) functions and benefits vs. dangers of identification measures, (3) methodological problems and (4) practical recommendations for the identification of various groups of gifted and talented students. Key words: Identification, Giftedness, Munich Model of Giftedness The necessity for the identification (and education) of gifted and talented students is often the subject of controversial discussions. There are several questions which provoke varying opinions from experts and lay persons alike. The following sections deal with four main topics of gifted identification and its related aspects: 1. What is to be identified? Questions concerning the relevant diagnostic variables arise, that are additional to conceptual problems. 2. Why or for what purposes is the identification attempted? In the literature, a substantial differentiation between talent searches (for special gifted programs or educational measures) and single case diagnostics (e.g. in the school counseling context and/or for intervention purposes) has been made. In both cases, benefits and dangers of identification procedures must be weighed. 3. How can gifted and talented students be identified? This question is directed at sources of diagnostic information and measurement instruments as well as at information processing and decision strategies concerning being gifted or not, the fit between individual (learning) needs and social (instructional) conditions of gifted education, etc. Identification and program evaluation aspects also are included in this section. 4. When, or more precisely at what point in time or developmental stage, should gifted children and talented youth be identified? Should single attempts or continuous diagnostic approaches be used? Voluntary or obligatory participation in talent searches (inside vs. outside of school)? These and other questions must be answered, especially with regard to the second question mentioned above. Finally, practical recommendations for the identification of various groups of gifted and talented students will be discussed. For greater detail see Heller (1987, 1989, 1991/2000), Hany (1993), Monks & Heller (1994), Feldhusen & Jarwan (2000), Perleth, Schatz & Monks (2000), Sternberg & Subotnik (2000), Trost (2000), Sternberg & Grigorenko (2002), among others. Multidimensional Conceptions of Giftedness and Talent as Preconditions of Suitable Identifying Procedures Our knowledge regarding giftedness and talent - both terms are used synonymously according to the recent literature (cf. Heller, Monks, Sternberg & Subotnik, 2000/2002; Sternberg & Davidson, 2004) - is supplied by different research paradigms. Approaches that are particularly relevant to the identification of gifted or highly gifted students are based on the psychometric vs. the expert-novice paradigm. Whereas the psychometric (so-called statusdiagnostic vs. dynamic or process-oriented) models are focused on the individual potential which should be identified for diagnostic or prognostic purposes, the expert-novice paradigm focuses more or less on personality (motivational and learning) and social-cultural conditions in which giftedness (intelligence) plays only a slight role. However, recent attempts have been made to combine both research paradigms in order to optimize the amount of insight into what we call giftedness or talent (cf. Perleth & Ziegler, 1997; Ziegler & Perleth, 1997; Ziegler & Heller, 2000; Perlelh, 2001; Heller, Perleth & Lira, 2004). Other - synthetic approaches stem from Sternberg (2000, 2003). For practical diagnostic purposes, psychometric (multidimensional) giftedness models still remain to be indispensable (see Lubinski 2004). …

125 citations


Cited by
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article proposes an alternative framework to account for individual differences in attained professional development, as well as many aspects of age-related decline, based on the assumption that acquisition of expert performance requires engagement in deliberate practice and that continued deliberate practice is necessary for maintenance of many types of professional performance.
Abstract: The factors that cause large individual differences in professional achievement are only partially understood. Nobody becomes an outstanding professional without experience, but extensive experience does not invariably lead people to become experts. When individuals are first introduced to a professional domain after completing their education, they are often overwhelmed and rely on help from others to accomplish their responsibilities. After months or years of experience, they attain an acceptable level of proficiency and are able to work independently. Although everyone in a given domain tends to improve with experience initially, some develop faster than others and continue to improve during ensuing years. These individuals are eventually recognized as experts and masters. In contrast, most professionals reach a stable, average level of performance within a relatively short time frame and maintain this mediocre status for the rest of their careers. The nature of the individual differences that cause the large variability in attained performance is still debated. The most common explanation is that achievement in a given domain is limited by innate factors that cannot be changed through experience and training; hence, limits of attainable performance are determined by one’s basic endowments, such as abilities, mental capacities, and innate talents. Educators with this widely held view of professional development have focused on identifying and selecting students who possess the necessary innate talents that would allow them to reach expert levels with adequate experience. Therefore, the best schools and professional organizations nearly always rely on extensive testing and interviews to find the most talented applicants. This general view also explains age-related declines in professional achievement in terms of the inevitable reductions in general abilities and capacities believed to result from aging. In this article, I propose an alternative framework to account for individual differences in attained professional development, as well as many aspects of age-related decline. This framework is based on the assumption that acquisition of expert performance requires engagement in deliberate practice and that continued deliberate practice is necessary for maintenance of many types of professional performance. In order to contrast this alternative framework with the traditional view, I first describe the account based on innate talent. I then provide a brief review of the evidence on deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance in several performance domains, including music, chess, and sports. Finally, I review evidence from the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and examine the role of deliberate practice in this domain.

2,492 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The problem of which cues, internal or external, permit a person to label and identify his own emotional state has been with us since the days that James first tendered his doctrine that "the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact".
Abstract: The problem of which cues, internal or external, permit a person to label and identify his own emotional state has been with us since the days that James (1890) first tendered his doctrine that \"the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion\" (p. 449). Since we are aware of a variety of feeling and emotion states, it should follow from James' proposition that the various emotions will be accompanied by a variety of differentiable bodily states. Following James' pronouncement, a formidable number of studies were undertaken in search of the physiological differentiators of the emotions. The results, in these early days, were almost uniformly negative. All of the emotional states experi-

1,828 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results of the first meta-analytic review of the literature on personality and creative achievement are presented, to present a conceptual integration of underlying potential psychological mechanisms that personality and creativity have in common, and to show how the topic of creativity has been important to personality psychologists and can be to social psychologists.
Abstract: Theory and research in both personality psychology and creativity share an essential commonality: emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual. Both disciplines also share an emphasis on temporal consistency and have a 50-year history, and yet no quantitative review of the literature on the creative personality has been conducted. The 3 major goals of this article are to present the results of the first meta-analytic review of the literature on personality and creative achievement, to present a conceptual integration of underlying potential psychological mechanisms that personality and creativity have in common, and to show how the topic of creativity has been important to personality psychologists and can be to social psychologists. A common system of personality description was obtained by classifying trait terms or scales onto one of the Five-Factor Model (or Big Five) dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Effect size was measured using Cohen's d (Cohen, 1988). Comparisons on personality traits were made on 3 sets of samples: scientists versus nonscientists, more creative versus less creative scientists, and artists versus nonartists. In general, creative people are more open to new experiences, less conventional and less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive. Out of these, the largest effect sizes were on openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity. Further, there appears to be temporal stability of these distinguishing personality dimensions of creative people. Dispositions important to creative behavior are parsed into social, cognitive, motivational, and affective dimensions. Creativity like most complex behaviors requires an intra- as well as interdisciplinary view and thereby mitigates the historically disciplinocentric attitudes of personality and social psychologists.

1,736 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jun 2006
TL;DR: There are several factors that influence the level of professional achievement as discussed by the authors, such as extensive experience of activities in a domain is necessary to reach very high levels of performance, however, extensive experience does not always lead to expert levels of achievement.
Abstract: There are several factors that influence the level of professional achievement. First and foremost, extensive experience of activities in a domain is necessary to reach very high levels of performance. Extensive experience in a domain does not, however, invariably lead to expert levels of achievement. When individuals are first introduced to a professional domain after completing their basic training and formal education, they often work as apprentices and are supervised by more-experienced professionals as they accomplish their work-related responsibilities. After months of experience, they typically attain an acceptable level of proficiency, and with longer experience, often years, they are able to work as independent professionals. At that time most professionals reach a stable, average level of performance, and then they maintain this pedestrian level for the rest of their careers. In contrast, some continue to improve and eventually reach the highest levels of professional mastery. Traditionally, individual differences in the performance of professionals have been explained by an account given by Galton (1869/1979, see Ericsson, 2003a, for a description). According to this view, every healthy person will improve initially through experience, but these improvements are eventually limited by innate factors that cannot be changed through training; hence attainable performance is constrained by one's basic endowments, such as abilities, mental capacities, and innate talents. This general view also explains age-related declines in professional achievement, owing to the inevitable degradation of general capacities and processes with age (see also Krampe & Charness, Chapter 40).

1,482 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent.
Abstract: This is the first handbook where the world’s foremost “experts on expertise” review our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent. Methods are described for the study of experts’ knowledge and their performance of representative tasks from their domain of expertise. The development of expertise is also studied by retrospective interviews and the daily lives of experts are studied with diaries. In 15 major domains of expertise, the leading researchers summarize our knowledge of the structure and acquisition of expert skill and knowledge and discuss future prospects. General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise, such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.

1,268 citations