“Gifted” and “Talented” from Conflict in Theory to Confusion in Practice; A Turn in Gifted and Talented Policy

One of the strong concepts in the educational area is the concepts of “gifted” and “talented”. These concepts have been the concern of the educational intellectuals and in the 20th century run a mainstream in the psychology. Among these, in some underdevelopment countries like Iran, it has been noteworthy because of the development, and many gifted policies have been developed. Regarding the analytic approach, in this paper, we examine this concept from a philosophical-educational view and then we evaluate its challenges in the action area. In the end, we propose some turns in the gifted policies by apply tacit deduction. There are four theoretical challenges like ambiguity on the concept of superiority, challenge in the concepts of validness and usefulness, the concept of potentiality as an instrument of domination in the educational system, and the potentiality as an illusion stems from modern human narcissism in front of this concept and its components. On the other hand, in the action area some dichotomies like inherent/acquired, potential/actual, and instantaneous/gradual challenge educational judgments about students’ potentiality. In the end, we proposed 5 turns in potentiality policies. Some of these turns are: turn from formal to informal and semi-formal educational systems, turn from single views to multiple views, turn from external evaluations to internal and inclusive evaluations, and turn from static vies to dynamic views about human potentialities.