From diversity to talents: the perspective of primary school children

Abstract

Over the years, the definition of talent has changed strongly: from one-dimensional,
additive and static to multidimensional, multiplicative and dynamic.
Consequently, the educator’s task changes: not to design individualized
learning paths, but to create settings that allow everyone to have productive
interactions between themselves and the environment.
However, only during adolescence do the skills necessary to reflect on
one’s own abilities, objectives, demands and possibilities offered by the
context mature and allow one to combine them and transform talent from
potential to success, to make it available to the community. The knowledge
of the stages of children’s development, of how they interpret diversity and
the possibilities of using it for complex aims, is essential to adequately support
even younger children. Through a nursery rhyme, the theme of diversity
was introduced to some primary school classes. Eighty-four children
marked their conception of diversity through drawings. The sketches were
then analysed to understand the stages and trajectories that their reflections
run through during development.