Regardless of whether or not a student is identified as gifted, Joseph Renzulli’s 3 ring model is an extraordinary framework for understanding learning.
In this video I explain the 3-ring conception and how it relates to executive function. It breaks down the 3 elements necessary in order to have “gifted behaviors.”
Here’s the model:
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Video transcript:
Everybody this is Seth with SethPerler.com. I hope you’re doing well. By the way, if you haven’t subscribed on YouTube, you can go ahead and click the red button below and click subscribe and you’ll get updated every time I post a new video. But welcome to this Sunday’s video, today I’m going to talk about Joseph Renzulli. He’s been in the field of gifted education for about 30-40 years, he’s been around a long time and he’s been a huge influence on me in the last 10 years. Huge influence. He’s really influenced the way that I think about working with kids. It doesn’t matter if the kids are gifted it or not gifted or labeled or not, it doesn’t matter. The paradigm I’m about to show you today, which is called a Renzulli’s three-ring conception of giftedness is really powerful in terms of helping you understand sort of the potential of kids and a potential pitfall. So I’ll go into that right now.
So, Joseph Renzulli, he designed this three-ring conception, I believe in the 80s, and what he said is ‘when a human being or when a student or a child has three particular components mixed together, then they have, where the red is they’re displaying gifted behaviors. So he wouldn’t necessarily call a human being ‘gifted,’ I think that’s a sort of elitist tone that that seems to give off was distasteful to him and for many people, I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be. So people can just play gifted behaviors when these three things are present there are gifted behaviors. So people can display gifted behaviors when these three things are present. So what are these three things?
The first one is called above-average ability, so you can have an above-average ability in any number of ways. You can be intuitive and be above-average in your intuition. In your creativity, in math and science and writing and reading and visual-spatial thinking, in design. You name the area. You think of something that you’re talented in or that your child is talented in that’s above-average ability. So in order to have these behaviors, these gifted behaviors, you have to have an above-average ability in that certain area. You don’t have to have above-average ability in all areas by any means by the way. What are the areas that you have above-average ability in?
Then you have to have creativity. You have to have this plus this. So when you have above-average ability in creativity you’re doing pretty good, you got a lot going on. Okay, so creativity. The ability to create, to design, to invest, to think of new solutions to problems. Now if you have these two, they don’t do much on their own. If you don’t do anything with them, and let’s say you use your ability to create a cure for cancer but you don’t tell anybody about it, you don’t publish it, you don’t do anything about it, it’s just in your mind. Or if you design a car that can get 1,000 miles to the gallon, but it’s just in your mind but you have the ability of creativity but you don’t do anything with it, it’s pretty valueless. So what do you need?
You need what Renzulli calls task commitment. Now to me, the task commitment part, the follow-through, the being able to do something with these things. When you have all three of these then you have the gifted behaviors. This part is the part that my students struggle with because my students are struggling with executive function issues. That’s the ability of the brain to execute tasks like doing homework, cleaning your room, studying for a test; the ability to follow through with something. And when you have it, when you struggle with executive function, whether you’re failing out of classes, are almost failing, or you have ADD or dyslexia, Aspergers or anything, what ends up happening is that thing that struggling students struggle with is task commitment, is executive function. How do we execute tasks? Particularly, how do we execute a task that we don’t want to do? So if the student has to read a novel that they’re not into, how do we execute that task. If you have to study for a test or homework you don’t care, how do you execute that task because literally any career path that anybody takes anywhere in the world is going to involve doing things that you don’t want to do. You’re going to have to learn to have the resiliency to commit to the task and to execute tasks pieces of it that you don’t like, don’t enjoy, that are not pleasurable to you. It’s not all fun and games as they stay right. So how does the brain override the resistance to not do something so that they can actually follow-through and do it because it is the piece of the puzzle. Now, note, I’m not saying that all homework is valuable, so there are many things that schools have kids that truly are busy work and a waste of time for the student and cause more resentment and more discouragement then necessary. So I have to be taken into consideration but generally speaking, it doesn’t matter whatever we do, we are going to have to figure out what to do to override the resistance in the brain and use our executive function to execute tasks that we may not want to do.
So this is Renzulli’s contribution, one of his contributions, and I just think it’s brilliant and a really helpful concept for us to think about because when you don’t have task commitment is that it threatens your long-term well-being. It is often no in the short-term of what they want, but it’s very difficult for them sometimes to see how these things might affect them long-term and what we want we want you to have an awesome life in the long term where you get to design and create the life you want. Not a life where you’re in some job that you hate, feeling like you don’t have choices in life. We want you to have choices and freedom. Okay, and that’s what it’s about. And that’s what education hopefully is able to deliver is like this ability to do anything you want in life. Craft your life, but task commitment, that’s the part where people get in trouble. So I hope this video is helpful to you if you like it, go ahead and subscribe on Youtube or visit my site and subscribe to my weekly vlogs. If you are appreciating my work, please share my blog with one person today and help me spread my work with people. Have a great weekend, take care.
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This is exactly what we are continuing to struggle with viz. the overt or passive lack of commitment that results in failing grades. How do you get a student to realize that commitment , not just to a task , but to yourself, to your ideals, to other people is empowering and is an integral part of a fulfilling life?
I find this diagram fascinating, but what does one do, knowing this, to help foster “task commitment” in children? It’s that elusive executive-function piece. It is when that piece is missing that children, who could otherwise find fulfillment putting their “above average” and “creative” skills to use, get very frustrated, receive negative feedback and school and in life, and may eventually give up. How to you develop this 3rd piece in kids?
Nice job. I like that you brought up the barriers of resistance, follow through and resentment around completing unfavorable tasks. Can you talk more about overriding them or point me to another video of yours that speaks to this? Thanks!