Is There Any Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Abstract

In this rejoinder, the author reacts to five commentaries on his target article (Gagné, 1999) on the nature of abilities, gifts, and talents. He defends the worthiness of his quest to achieve some consensus among professionals in the field of gifted education over the definition of the core concepts of giftedness and talent and also, the validity and usefulness of his distinction between high natural abilities (gifts) and high systematically developed ones (talents) in comparison to alternative proposals. He finally reiterates, in the light of the criticisms received, the basic arguments supporting his conviction that his own differentiation between giftedness and talent is the most appropriate and defensible solution to gifted education's terminological conundrum.