ACCEL: A New Model for Identifying the Gifted

Serious identification of the gifted started with the work of Lewis Terman early in the 20th century. Terman’s model, based largely on IQ, may have made sense in the early 20th century, but it no longer makes sense today. The problems that society needs its gifted individuals to solve in the 21st century require much more than IQ—in addition to analytical, IQ-like skills, they also require creative, practical, wisdom-based, and ethical skills. In this essay, I discuss some of the background for the conventional IQ-based model of gifted identification and education and then consider the problems the world faces today and why IQ is insufficient to solve them. I then present a new model—ACCEL (Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership)—that perhaps will better prepare our gifted students for the world of the future.