Exceptional Performance

Educators and educational researchers often assume that knowledge, learning, and human behavior in general are normally distributed. But considerable evidence shows that positive-skew distributions characterize many objects and fundamental processes in biology, crime, economics, demography, geography, industry, information and library sciences, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and the production and utilization of knowledge. The evidence in these fields and in learning research suggests possible modifications in educational theory, research, measurement, philosophy, and practice.