I come at this book as a parent and a mentor of talented youth. I am interested in honing my skills to be more effective in serving these students. This book is written especially towards those working in gifted education, whether at a K-12 level or higher. Rinn gathers all of the research and presents it in a careful manner. She also exposes where research consensus is currently lacking and requires more study. All in all, she presents a comprehensive and balanced take into an interesting and important topic.
Rinn addresses four fundamental questions: What is Development? Are gifted individuals qualitatively different from nongifted individuals? Which psychosocial skills are necessary in the development of talent? And what effect does the environment have on the development of psychosocial skills conducive to the development of talent? In turn, she breaks these questions into several smaller topics which serve as her chapters.
To be frank, the first section (on development) seemed unnecessary and not to cover any new territory. A developmental approach is certainly needed for gifted and talented individuals, but this topic seemed to distract from the whole thrust of the book in which newer thoughts were elaborated. I would have reduced this section to a single chapter at most because many other books on education deal with this topic adequately.
To me, the most interesting topics are whether gifted individuals have a different make-up than the rest of the population and whether mental health challenges are different for this population. Rinn examined these topics in depth and arrives at some tentative conclusions – although the data are, at best, somewhat mixed in its opinion. She covers a wide swath of challenging difficulties, including perfectionism, emotional intensity, self-belief, motivation, imposter syndrome, big-fish-in-little-pond syndrome, and mental illness.
Overall, this book is suited to those interested in guiding, teaching, and mentoring gifted and talented individuals, either in education or research. As the author suggests in the last chapter, this book might also prove helpful to professional counselors who often lack a skill set to effectively deal with gifted-and-talented issues in their work.
Social, Emotional, and Psychosocial Development of Gifted and Talented Individuals
By Anne N. Rinn
Copyright (c) 2020
Prufrock Academic Press
ISBN13 9781646320042
Page Count: 301
Genre: Education
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