Renzulli’s Three Rings Model: What Does It Consist Of?
Intelligence is one of the most important objects of study in Psychology since its evaluation began to be considered in the last decade of the 19th century.
It is a capacity that every animal has to some degree. Its definition is not at all simple, and has often involved breaking it down into more discrete and quantifiable dimensions.
However, the construct of intelligence has been conditioned by abilities, especially of an academic nature, ignoring other valuable expressions (such as creativity or cognitive flexibility).
In this article we will present a theoretical model aimed at exploring the way in which human beings develop creative productions, for which classical intelligence is just one more factor: Renzulli’s three rings model.
Joseph Renzulli He is a professor of Educational Psychology in Connecticut (USA), and has dedicated much of his professional career to the study of people with high abilities. That is why he is considered one of the great authorities on the subject worldwide, and is also the director of the National Center for Research on Gifted and Talented. The theory of the three rings is one of his most recognized contributions.
This relevant author considers that high abilities cannot be understood as a stable dimension or trait, that is, as an attribute whose expression in a given subject manifests itself regularly and without changes. Likewise, it rejects the idea that it is a phenomenon reducible to its psychometric properties, highlighting that it is underpinned by the interaction of other factors that can be enhanced with appropriate pedagogical resources.
For this reason, underlined the concept of gifted behaviors as a way of acting that can occur in all individuals under specific conditions and at certain moments in life. In this same sense, he proposes that an educational macrosystem aimed at stimulating the base dimensions would promote a highly gifted decision-making process, not only among students, but also in the general population.
Renzulli recognizes intelligence as a multifaceted and complex construct, made up of practical as well as creative and analytical skills. However, he emphasizes that aptitude is not a simple sum of all of them, but also requires a specific way of management, regardless of the level at which they occur in a given individual.
Their studies on the question, which have continued for decades, have concluded that this giftedness is expressed in two qualitatively different ways. Furthermore, he assumes the harmonic convergence of three dimensions (or rings): high skills, creativity and commitment to the task. In what follows, all these issues will be detailed in order to shed light on the interesting model of Renzulli’s three rings.
Two types of Giftedness
Renzulli and his team conceived two types of talented or “gifted” people (a word that does not have an exact equivalent in Spanish): academics and productive creatives.
He considered that both were important, and that they could often be subject to close relationships between them and be susceptible to significant improvement through appropriate training, this being the most basic purpose of his proposal (above classification or identification).
1. Academic talents
Those who have this form of talent They show an intelligence related to the solution of the demands that arise in school or university environments, and that can be measured accurately through the use of standardized procedures (WISC, for example). It is, for this reason, the type of endowment that is detected most frequently in general. The identification of a high IQ would imply a special educational need that would have to be addressed with the design of curricular adaptations.
There is a close association between this particular type of intelligence and high academic results, since it is based on a theoretical model in which it is conceived as adaptation to this particular type of environment. However, it does not have to be related to success in other areas of life, including personal and professional. Thus, it is an ability that does not necessarily generalize, nor is it excessively informative when understood separately.
2. Creative and productive talents
The intelligence of highly creative people, contrary to what was stated in the preceding assumption, is not represented in classic evaluation tests (designed based on the skills of the academic curriculum). These are individuals who are internally motivated to develop their personal achievements and who also tend to be inspiring to others.
Thus, it describes any way of acting whose priority is oriented towards the development of original ideas, as well as innovative solutions and genuine products; whose conception contemplates an impact on one’s own life and that of others. It involves abandoning the conventional paths through which it is expected to be possible to achieve success, in order to explore inhospitable paths (and not always obvious at first glance) through which returns of high personal and social value will be obtained.
Renzulli’s theory of the three rings explores the constitutive dimensions of the second of the aforementioned talents, the productive creative, based on the interaction between the subject and his environment. All of them are variables that can be strengthened through specific procedures, with the exception of the first of them, rooted in genetic and neurodevelopmental aspects.
Next We proceed to describe the characteristics of each of the rings that make up this theoretical model.
1. High skills
High abilities can be understood in two ways. The first of them describes the accentuated presence of traits whose effect is transversal (such as general intelligence) or more specific (mathematics, reading, etc.); while the second refers to the particular way in which all these skills are expressed in everyday life, in situations other than the controlled context of school evaluation tests (generalization).
The author of this model understood high abilities as the ability (or potential) to execute a specific task (that required a specific cognitive domain), at least above the 80-85th percentile (in contrast to the reference group). This is a way to quantify, in operational terms, what performance would be necessary to be considered optimally functioning (given that these are skill sets that can be quantified with a traditional psychometric method).
Although this type of capabilities is closely associated with achievements that are very relevant at school age, the literature on this issue indicates that they do not effectively predict the achievement of goals of greater social or personal relevance in adult life. In fact, classic works on this topic find that such skills only explain 10% of the variance in total (average) performance in the job.
2. Commitment to the task
This dimension It refers to the way in which the person feels motivated to carry out a specific task, showing perseverance and dedicating time to its development. It is associated with other variables, such as self-efficacy, which describes the perceived ability to successfully carry out a particular activity. In this case, the motivation that emerges is purely internal, so the behavior is maintained without the need for it to be followed by external incentives.
Internal or intrinsic motivation stimulates the fundamental need to feel useful, which is why it is directly related to self-efficacy and the generation of positive feelings such as self-satisfaction and competence. This degree of involvement has also been associated with a state of flow, that is, the fusion between thought and action that leads to the performance of a meaningful task in a deeply attentive and fluid way.
3. Creativity
The creativity It can be understood as the resource to an original thought that allows us to approach the structural aspects of the problem being addressed, so that the solutions are not limited to affecting its surface, but rather establish cognitive or behavioral alternatives from which a product of greater efficiency or effectiveness is derived. In many cases it involves a deliberately naive view, devoid of conventions, which harbors a constructive and innovative power.
In this way, creativity can be expressed as a questioning of what is established, so that the discourse that is articulated in decision-making is built on transversal and divergent approaches. The result of creative thinking usually has a qualitative impact on the progress of the disciplines in which it is deployed, opening new paths that over time are incorporated into the normative heritage of its basic procedures.
Gifted Behavior
Creative and productive talents, as can be seen, also require high skills in conventional cognitive domains. For this reason, they represent the exact point at which conventional intelligence converges with creativity and high task-oriented motivation, two dimensions that are particularly susceptible to training. Thus, giftedness departs from the classic psychometric criterion (two standard deviations above the mean of population intelligence, which was equivalent to a raw score of 130).
For all this, It would be possible to reinforce motivation and creativity by resorting to specific methods from which everyone could carry out, under favorable conditions, gifted behavior. In conclusion, high giftedness would not be a stable trait, but rather an attitude or disposition that could fluctuate over time, and on which falls the responsibility of the professionals who participate in the educational system.
