The Career Decisions of Gifted Students and Other High Ability Groups

Jae Yup Jung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138596238
• eBook ISBN: 9780429946752
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

High ability individuals – gifted students, prodigies, geniuses and twice exceptional students – are a group with enormous potential to have an impact on the advancement of different occupational fields, as well as the lives of others in society.

The Career Decisions of Gifted Students and Other High Ability Groups is the first ever scholarly monograph devoted to an examination of the career decisions of this group. Drawing on extensive research, it provides fresh insights into the history, the influential factors, and the processes associated with the career decisions of gifted students, prodigies, geniuses, and twice exceptional students.

Of relevance to researchers, psychologists, counselors, teachers, policymakers, and families, it also provides possible directions for future practice, to allow for the optimal support of the career decisions of these highly able individuals.

1
Introduction

Humans are faced with a multitude of decisions, of varying degrees of importance, in their lifetime. A decision may be defined as a “commitment to a course of action that is intended to produce a satisfying state of affairs” (Yates, Veinott, & Patalano, 2003, p. 15), or in more scientific terms,

a response to a situation that is composed of three parts: (a) there is more than one possible course of action under consideration . . . (b) the decision maker can form expectations concerning future events and outcomes following from each course of action . . . and (c) consequences, associated with the possible outcomes.

(Hastie & Dawes, 2001, pp. 25–26)

A “good” decision has been variously defined as one that yields “good” outcomes, produces a positive effect, improves future options, enables self-approval, facilitates several goals of the decision-maker, minimizes conflict among these goals, and/ or is arrived at using a “good” decision-making process (Janis & Mann, 1977; Schneider & Barnes, 2003; Yates et al., 2003).

The career decision

Among the various decisions that humans make today, one very critical decision that is usually made by early adulthood is the choice of one’s future career. A number of different perspectives exist on what specifically constitutes a career. In its broadest sense, a career may be seen as being synonymous with the work-life history of an individual, regardless of the type of work that is performed, or the sequence of training and work positions that are held (Brown, van Leeuwen, & Mitch, 2004). Most people who participate in the workforce in any capacity may be considered to have a career under this perspective. In comparison, narrower conceptualizations restrict usage of the term to the working lives of individuals who engage in professional-type activities with a certain underlying structure of occupational progression (e.g., in fields such as academia, accountancy, engineering, medicine, and law), or to individuals who demonstrate “distinguished” work-related accomplishments. Such conceptualizations are consistent with the view that careers are a “patterned sequence of occupational roles through which individuals move over the course of a working life . . . (with) . . . increased prestige” (Marshall,1998, p.55), which suggests that careers may only be pursued by individuals in a certain select group of reputable occupations (Brown, van Leeuwen, & Mitch, 2004). The first, more inclusive and more contemporary, of these two conceptualizations has been adopted in this monograph.

As an area of study, the career decisions of individuals have been investigated by scholars in a diverse range of fields including psychology, sociology, economics, and related disciplines (Baldock, 1971; Hesketh, 2001; Russell, 2001). Brown, van Leeuwen, and Mitch (2004) have suggested that psychological perspectives commonly seek to investigate the “distinctive traits of individuals” in relation to their career-related cognitions and behaviors, while sociological perspectives focus on “interrelations between people and the setting in which the career develops,” and economic perspectives are typically directed toward the investigation of issues such as “the development and rationale for internal labor markets, which include a progression of positions (‘job ladders’) that can be attained by promotion within the firm” (p. 6). With their roots in one or more of these perspectives, multiple career decision theories have been developed, including the trait and factor theories (Holland, 1997), the theory of career stages (Super, 1963), the theory of circumscription and compromise (Gottfredson, 1981, 2002, 2005), social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), career construction theory (Savickas, 2002), and the multiple sociological theories (e.g., Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997). Duffy and Sedlacek (2007) have noted that one unifying theme among the various theories “is an emphasis on person-centered variables” (p. 591).

The career decision is an important decision for a number of reasons. First of all, it may have long-term consequences with respect to one’s education and/or training that will be required prior to entry into the career (Creed, Patton, & Prideaux, 2006; Jung, 2012). Furthermore, it may influence meaning in the career decision-maker’s life, along with his/her financial situation, social status, and day-to-day lifestyle (Johnson & Mortimer, 2002; Jung, 2012; Young & Collin, 2000). Moreover, substantial costs appear to be associated with making an “incorrect” career decision, “changing” the career decision at some point in time after the initial decision has been made, or being unable to make the career decision prior to the completion of one’s education (Jung, 2012).

The decision about one’s future career appears to be more complex now than ever before. Serious attention to the study of career decisions only commenced at around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in North America and Western Europe resulted, for the first time, in the creation of a range of new occupations requiring specialized skills (Savickas & Baker, 2005). The situation today has evolved further, due to influences including globalization, advances in technology, changes to labor markets, changes to organizational structures, changes to employment patterns, increased job insecurity, and changes to societal values (Russell, 2001; Storey, 2000; Störmer et al., 2014). A career decision-maker today is faced with a wide, internationalized labor market that is filled with organizations with lean structures that are making use of advanced technologies, employing a diverse work force, and using flexible employment arrangements (Storey, 2000; Störmer et al., 2014). Furthermore, unlike in the past, modern career decision-makers are unlikely to expect to spend (or be guaranteed) their entire working lives with only one employer (Reitzle, Körner, & Vondracek, 2009; Watt & Richardson, 2008). Indeed, reflecting the changing conceptions of career, recent literature has introduced new notions such as the boundaryless career (i.e., careers that involve physical and psychological mobility across jobs, organizations, occupations, and countries) and the protean career (i.e., careers that are self-directed by the individual; Segers, Inceoglu, Vloeberghs, Bartram, & Hendrickx, 2008).

The career decision today has also been affected by the changes to the general level of educational attainment, and the expansion of higher education. Many scholars have noted that there has been a strong increase in the general level of educational attainment in all countries around the world over the past hundred years (Kelley & Evans, 1996; Tunny, 2006). Some contributing factors to this pattern may include economic growth, declining fertility levels (i.e., a greater ability to devote educational resources to children), increasing urbanization (i.e., better access to educational resources), and increasing levels of parental education. It is likely that a generally well-educated population may be able to better fill the complex and highly skilled jobs that are being newly created in modern societies.

The focus of this monograph is on the career decisions of gifted students, and other related high ability groups (i.e., prodigies, geniuses, and twice exceptional students), who due to their exceptional and often outstanding capabilities, may be considered to have “the greatest potential to contribute to, and advance, the different career fields, and have the greatest impact on the work and nonwork lives of others in society” (Jung, 2017b, p. 51).

Giftedness

Gifted individuals differ from the rest of the population in significant ways with respect to their abilities, traits, characteristics, behaviors, and accomplishments. At the present time, multiple different beliefs and philosophies, that have been “characterized as broad or narrow; from restrictive and exclusive to open and inclusive, conservative or liberal, and theoretical or atheoretical” (Callahan & Hertberg-Davis, 2013, p. 14), have been proposed on what constitutes giftedness. Unfortunately, no single definition is yet to achieve consensus as the optimal definition among international scholars in the fields of giftedness and gifted education.

IQ-based definitions

One of the first widely accepted definitions considered giftedness to be a high level of IQ. As an example, in his pioneering work, Genetic Studies of Genius, Terman (1925) considered gifted individuals to be those who scored in the top 1% on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which is an IQ test that was translated and refined from prototype French-language instruments. Terman and his colleagues (Terman, 1925; Terman & Oden, 1947, 1959), who followed a cohort of such students over more than three decades, are credited for undertaking the first large-scale longitudinal study of the educational and career outcomes of gifted students. Two other scholars who adopted IQ-based definitions, and hence the view that giftedness may be a narrow, unitary, hereditary, and fixed trait, were Cox, who conducted retrospective studies of high IQ individuals at around the time of Terman (Cox, 1926), and Hollingworth (1942), who conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of 12 profoundly gifted children with IQ scores in excess of 180 (Olszewski-Kubilius, Subotnik, & Worrell, 2015). While other definitions of giftedness that not only recognized intellectual abilities, but also abilities in other domains, were also proposed at this time, it was only when the limitations of the IQ-based definitions of giftedness were recognized that they started to gain a wide level of acceptance (McClain & Pfeiffer, 2012).

Marland definition

One such alternative, multifaceted definition of giftedness was developed by the U.S. Federal Commissioner of Education, Sidney Marland, in the Marland Report (1972). In what became known as the U.S. “federal” definition of giftedness, Marland gave acknowledgement to six different domains of ability, including: (a) general intellectual ability, (b) specific academic aptitude, (c) creative or productive thinking, (d) leadership ability, (e) visual and performing arts, and (f) psychomotor ability. Under this definition, giftedness was deemed when ability or achievement in any one of the six domains is at a level (i.e., representing a minimum of 3% to 5% of the school population) such that differentiated educational interventions, that go substantially beyond educational interventions provided under the regular school curriculum, were necessary. The definition appears to have incorporated the views of multiple gifted education scholars at the time, including those of Terman (i.e., general intellectual ability), Thorndike and Spearman (i.e., specific academic aptitude), Guilford (i.e., creative or productive thinking), and DeHaan and Havighurst (i.e., creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing arts, and psychomotor ability; Callahan & Hertberg-Davis, 2013; Gross, 2000).

Three ring definition of giftedness (Renzulli, 1978, 1988)

Due to his dissatisfaction with the existing definitions, Renzulli (1978, 1988) proposed an alternative definition that drew upon research on eminent individuals. In his “three ring definition” or “three ring model” of giftedness, Renzulli proposed that giftedness constitutes the possession, or the capability to possess, a cluster of three different traits – above average ability (i.e., defined as general or specific ability at the top 15% to 20% level in any given area of human endeavor), creativity (e.g., originality of thought, flexibility, and openness to experience), and task commitment (e.g., perseverance, endurance, hard work, dedicated practice, self-confidence, and self-belief). An interaction is considered to be necessary among these three traits to allow the production of a creative output before giftedness may be deemed (Renzulli, 1978, 2005). The novel, flexible, and groundbreaking perspective on giftedness appears to have achieved a high level of acceptance among scholars and practitioners in the United States and other parts of the world (Miller, 2012). Nevertheless, one criticism is that it was developed based on data collected from accomplished adults, and as such may not necessarily be reflective or appropriate for gifted children and adolescents (Delisle, 2003; Kaufman & Sternberg, 2008).

Tannenbaum's star model (Tannenbaum, 1986, 2003)

In contrast to Renzulli, Tannenbaum drew on the psychological and educational literature on the distinguishing characteristics of gifted children and adolescents, in proposing a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 History of the career decisions of gifted students
• 3 Factors influencing the career decisions of gifted students
• 4 The career decision-making processes of gifted students
• 5 The career decisions of prodigies
• 6 The career decisions of geniuses
• 7 The career decisions of twice exceptional students
• 8 Conclusion
• Index