Almost Forgotten Research Contexts: William Stern’s Giftedness Research

Abstract

This article examines the concept of intelligence and giftedness of the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern, the leading intelligence and giftedness researcher in Germany from the early 20th century to 1933. Stern developed a multifactorial giftedness model that integrated empirical and philosophical perspectives and was thus far ahead of his time. This concept was not taken up for a long time—not least because of the break that the research on giftedness suffered in Germany in 1933—and has not yet been presented with the required complexity and interdisciplinarity. In the USA, Stern’s research has so far been reduced to the IQ formula he created. The author presents Stern’s concept of giftedness in the context of the particular scientific–historical and educational–political situation in Germany in the first third of the 20th century. The pedagogical conclusions that Stern associated with the research on giftedness, and which essentially referred to the requirement to support all gifted children, regardless of social class, are also illuminated.