The Social Construction of Giftedness

Abstract

White (2006) produced a penetrating examination of the lives and beliefs of the men responsible for shaping the field of research on intelligence, intelligence testing and its influence on schooling in England at the start of the twentieth century. White’s work is important because of its long view from the Reformation to contemporary policy, and because it assumed giftedness as a socially constructed concept. Francis Galton, having first posited innate, general intelligence in 1865, is often said to be the founder of the field.