From Leading to Guiding, Facilitating, and Inspiring: A Needed Shift for the 21st Century

In the 21st-century context, problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication are the most valued skills in the workplace. Thus, those in positions often labeled as “leadership” need to make a valuable shift: to guiding, inspiring, and facilitating rather than directing. In this article, I review research on two styles of leadership, transformational and transactional, and relate this research to discussions of the same two types of giftedness. Research on the effectiveness of leaders at engendering creative problem solving has shown the transformational style to be more effective. Leaders are guides in the process rather than the content, facilitators of the gathering and exchange of information from varied sources, and role models as they exhibit effective problem-solving behaviors themselves. As role models, they inspire others to take risks, think innovatively, and collaborate with others. Examples of methods for identifying exceptionally talented leaders and behaviors to observe are provided. In addition, an evidence-based model for igniting, cultivating, extending, and strengthening exceptional talent in leadership is described.

Use of Dynamic Assessment with Gifted Students

This article discusses the application of dynamic assessment with gifted students. We define dynamic assessment in terms of its inclusion of intervention and feedback during the course of assessment, as well as the focus of the model on the students' use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and responsiveness to the interventions provided during the course of the assessment. Dynamic approaches vary on a continuum of flexible clinical applications to more rigorous psychometric approaches. They also differ in relation to the nature and timing of the interventions, as well as the content domains tapped. Finally, we review the history of the use of dynamic assessment with gifted students. This use demonstrates the utility of this approach for the purpose of determination of eligibility for gifted programs, which has been particularly relevant for students from culturally diverse backgrounds. Dynamic assessment has been usefully applied for classification purposes in the cases of both students with mental retardation as well as those who are gifted.