Developing Excellence in Gifted Children: Adaptation of Actiotope Model of Giftedness for Turkey

Excellence is one of the most important goals of education. It is proposed that the development of excellence be interpreted as a process of adaptation to certain environments, specifically the acquisition of functional action repertoires in talent domains. Two types of regulation are distinguished, homeostatic and allostatic regulation. There are endogenous and exogenous resources that effect education system and excellence. This provides two types of capitals the educational and the learning capital. The educational capital includes the economical and exogenous resources; while the learning capital includes endogenous resources and the characteristics that individuals have. The systemic approach is important for the development of excellence, especially for gifted students. According to systemic approach we can’t consider the gifted students independent from the environment that they live. The resources effect the development of excellence in the gifted students. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to introduce the Actiotope Model of Giftedness to the Turkish researchers and to create a new perspective for the gifted education in Turkey with underlying the importance of mentorship, parental training, self regulated learning, and planning.