Competitions

Competitions and Gifted and Talented Students

Competitions are part of a continuum of approaches for identifying and meeting the needs [Page 166]of gifted and talented students. Therefore, they serve a dual purpose: the identification of special abilities, and the development of knowledge and skills. In the United States, more than 275 competitions have been identified for gifted and talented students. Three types of competitions are available for gifted and talented students: teams working together; long-term independent research projects, often facilitated by a mentor; and series of tests, often above level, for identifying exceptionality. Competitions may be performance based, with a set of criteria against which one's performance is judged, or they may be head-to-head, with the goal being to outperform and defeat one's opponents. In other words, participants may be competing against the skills and knowledge of others, or against their own abilities based on an external entity like a timer or problem to be solved.

One of the longest-standing team competitions for gifted and talented students is Future Problem Solving, developed by E. Paul Torrance in 1974. This is an international program serving thousands of students throughout the world with both competitive and noncompetitive options, including Team Problem Solving, Community Problem Solving, and Scenario Writing. Studies undertaken in Australia and the United States indicate that a majority of participants in Future Problem Solving report positive impacts upon their ability to think about solutions to global issues and problems.

One of the best-known long-term, independent, project-based competitions is the Intel Talent Search (formerly Westinghouse), which started in 1942 and involves more than 1,500 secondary school students each year. Follow-up surveys conducted by the sponsors of this competition indicate that three National Medal of Science winners, nine MacArthur Foundation Fellows, two Fields Medalists, and six Nobel Laureates are included in the finalists from the past six decades. Intel also sponsors the International Science and Engineering Fair, which annually brings over 1,500 students from 40 countries together to compete in science projects.

Among the longest-standing testing competitions are the Olympiads, which date back to as early as 1894 when the first mathematical contests were organized in Budapest, Hungary, followed by the first ever mathematical Olympiad in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1934. These regional, and mainly European, contests provided the platform from which international competitions were launched, beginning with the International Mathematics Olympiad, which was first held in Romania in 1959. Other disciplines followed suit, with the development of international Olympiads in physics (1967), chemistry (1969), informatics (1989), biology (1990), and astronomy (1996).

...