Renzulli proposed a dichotomy between schoolhouse giftedness (manifested by high test scores) and creative productive giftedness (manifested by high level performance and innovative ideas). Renzulli argued that psychological characteristics such as task persistence, creativity, and motivation are as important to creative productivity as is intellectual or academic ability and that these characteristics should be sought out and cultivated in school programs. Recently Renzulli shifted his emphasis toward the background factors in his model, i.e, the personality and environmental factors influencing gifted behaviour. Opportunity, chance and environmental factors play a great role in nurturing talent / giftedness.
MyPal believes in Renzulli’s philosophy of educating and mentoring the gifted /talented students. Each student may be gifted in one way or the other. Parents and Teachers have to identify the talents with continuous and systematic targeting the precursors of domain specific talents through formal and informal processes. Talent development is too often left to chance rather than to strategic and targeted effort. Talent development process process involves recognizing that domains of talent have different developmental trajectories and that transitions from one stage to another are influenced by effort; opportunity; and instruction in content, technical, and psychosocial skills.
As proposed by Rena F. Subotnik, Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, and?Frank C. Worrell (2011) each stage in the talent-development process is also characterized by different strategies and goals of instruction; initially, to engage young people in a topic or domain (“falling in love”), then helping the individual develop the needed skills, knowledge, and values (“teaching for technique”), and finally helping the talented individual develop their own unique niche, style, method, or area of application (“mentoring for personalized niche”).
MyPal Online School follows the above principles in its approach for talent search and talent development in Math and Computer Science among middle school and high school students to supplement the school curricula.
