Leadership: A Conceptual Framework for Recognizing and Educating

Abstract

Is leadership an innate quality of the person? Can it be taught? Or is it simply a feature of small group behavior and organizational structure? Or perhaps just a naive notion that allows us to attribute the cause of daily events to .our fellow humans rather than the less personal and, consequently, less identifiable factors of world economic activity and multinational maneuverings.Starting with a few general comments on leadership, this paper then notes the historic origins of its inclusion as a type of giftedness in the American government's definition of gifted and talented. Given this federal perspective, the construct is considered from a gifted point of view and then from a leadership frame of reference. In these two sections, selected concepts and research findings are reviewed. This is followed by a short section speculating on the implications of the marriage of these two areas of study on the identification and education of potential leaders in our schools.For the purpose of this paper leadership is regarded as a phenomenon embedded in the matrix of events which combine to form such complex social processes as political, economic, and religious movements. A leader is understood to be that person invested with the responsibility to maintain and change both the incidental and basic fabric of such movements. Such an individual is distinct from someone whose charge is fundamentally the maintenance of whatever group or organization he or she serves. So organizational supervisors and middle management personnel, who have so frequently served as the subjects of research on leadership, are not seen as true leaders. Within this presentation leadership implies eminence, an eminence characterized by social action. This action eminence serves to distinguish social leaders from people who have attained eminence through thoughtful reflection and production. There is no question that such gifted individuals attained leadership within their fields of work. However, theirs is primarily a reflective form of leadership. Within the following pages I will be looking at the action leader, speculating about the nature of this type of talent. My remarks will focus on both what we do and do not know about this subject. The Beginnings of a CategoryIn 1972 the United States Commissioner of Education published a report on the status of gifted and talented education in America. Perhaps the most significant portion of that paper was the attempt of its authors to establish a definition of giftedness that would reflect the multidimensional approach to the phenomenon which had emerged during the previous decade, while at the same time making the definition useful for future policy and planning of federal program development. Taking perhaps the simplest explanatory approach available, the report established a taxonomic strategy for defining giftedness, isolating a series of supposedly distinct categories of gifts and listing them as separate operational entities. As the definition evolved leadership emerged as a natural component. The c...

Giftedness and Talent: Reexamining a Reexamination of the Definitions

“…Recently, Foster (1981) has attempted to integrate the models of Renzulli and Cohn. As illustrated in Figure 3, the synthesis undertaken by Foster is, in effect, quite simple: he inserts Cohn's model in between the left and right hand sides of the Renzulli model.…”

“…Review of the Literature Four major trends of opinion are presented in the literature : (a) no distinctions between giftedness and talent, (b) conceptual separation between intelligence and other abilities, (c) marginal distinctions, and, finally, (d) the recent models of Renzulli and Cohn, subsequently integrated by Foster (1981). ).…”

Emergence and maintenance of leadership among gifted students in group problem solving

“…Theorists within the field posit that gifted students should be exposed to experiences that will introduce skills in group leadership (Foster, 1981;Kitano & Roeper Review, Volume 12, No. 4.…”

“…(Bass, 1981). Foster (1981) provided an analysis of efforts to characterize leadership. He derived a taxonomy describing such efforts through four approaches which situate leadership as an inborn or developed trait within an individual or as consequence of the social or situational demands of the group.…”

Leadership Positions and Sex Role Stereotyping Among Gifted Children

“…There is a growing need for the development of leadership concepts and skills in gifted youth (Foster, 1980(Foster, , 1981Kitano &Tafoya, 1981;Magoon, 1981;Parker, 1983;Plowman, 1981). To that end, there have been various leadership materials developed (Gallagher, 1982;House, 1980;Karnes & Chauvin, 1985;Parker, 1983;Richardson & Feldhusen, 1986;Roets, 1981;Sisk & Shallcross, 1986).…”