The Blunting of Occam’s Razor: Omnicompetent Reductionism Distorting Conceptions of Giftedness

Abstract

Theoretical and practical work in gifted education has been dominated by mechanistic precision in measurements designed to select students for gifted programs and guide them through their development. Too much faith in mechanistic precision can become a form of dogmatism that obscures very important, less-measurable dimensions of human ability. This interdisciplinary analysis explores this form of dogmatism while illustrating some ways in which it misaligns gifted education with turbulent, complex 21st-century trends and issues.