The talents of children who are considered gifted are not fixed and can be nurtured or lost depending on their academic experiences, according to an American Psychological Association book to be released in January.

"The essence of this book, and the reason I found it so exciting, is that it is moving away from this idea of talent as something that some people have and some people don't. It's showing talent as something developable," said Carol S. Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor who wrote the foreword to The Development of Giftedness and Talent Across the Life Span.

The structure of schools doesn’t always support the more recent perspective on academic talent, said co- editor Frances Degen Horowitz.

If schools were to view giftedness as more of a developmental process than an immutable attribute, they would likely need to test children more often. And children might move in and out of “gifted” programs more frequently, based on their individual needs.

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Source: Education Week, 10.15.08