Root-metaphorical world views strongly influence the thoughts of scholars and practitioners in scientific disciplines. Gifted education is not immune to such influence. In order to clarify conceptual foundations of gifted education, recent literature was analyzed to reveal the degree to which each of 4 world views (contextualism, organicism, formism, and mechanism) reflects and shapes the thinking of scholars in the field. Analyses revealed philosophical biases toward contextualism and organicism in terms of subject-matter emphases and a bias toward mechanism in the preferred research methodologies. A comprehensive understanding of the conceptual foundations for gifted education requires recognition of contributions from the 4 world-view perspectives.
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Don Ambrose (1998) studied this question.
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