Sprecher
Beschreibung
High ability and talent development literature present different and sometimes competing or contradictory goals for talent development. One side emphasizes that talents should be developed to enable individuals with high abilities to make societal contributions, while the other side focuses on the individual’s personal life goals. This paper investigates how the philosophical theories of Aristotle and Kant can contribute to a better understanding of talent development and its goals. Both of these theories provide a normative basis for an ethical duty to develop one’s talents and suggest that the dichotomy between societal and personal interests should not exist. Talent development should aim for realizing one’s potential and contribute to a meaningful way of living driven by self-determined goals that integrate personal interests and societal contributions. It is suggested that talent development should include a wide range of talents, including moral talents.
Schlagworte/Keywords
Aristotle; happiness; high ability; Kant; self- actualization; talent development
Personenbeschreibung/Bio-Note
Anne Van de Vijver is professor of Law at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and serves as the chair of the Antwerp Tax Academy, an interfaculty institute dedicated to tax science. Anne conducts research at the inter-face between law, ethics, and psychology. Her research aims to integrate theoretical and methodological perspectives, for example, by incorporating moral development into legal theory. She is also honors coordinator and European Council for High Ability (ECHA) specialist in gifted education. The final paper during her ECHA training laid the foundation for this publication.
Sven Mathijssen is the vice program director of the ECHA qualified Radboud International Training on High Ability (RITHA; Radboud University, the Netherlands). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of 'Talent', a Dutch popular-scientific journal about giftedness for teachers. In his doctoral research program, he analyzed human figure drawings (HFDs) of children with high intellectual abilities. His goal is to develop a screening instrument for analyzing HFDs that can be used as part of the identification process of the talents and educational needs of young children with high intellectual abilities.
Schulstufe - Zielgruppe / Educational Stage - Target group
Mostly secondary education, career education, and tertiary education, but it may also be applicable to early childhood education and primary school