As businessman Alexandre Costa Pedrosa points out, giftedness is one of the most misunderstood topics in the field of education. The popular image of a gifted student is still that of the child prodigy who gets top grades in everything, answers first, finishes tests in record time, and never shows any difficulty. This image is deeply mistaken and, worse than that, it is responsible for making thousands of highly capable children invisible because their talents are never recognized if they do not fit into this narrow stereotype.
This article is a practical guide for educators who want to broaden their perspective and identify signs that often go unnoticed.
Why isn’t the gifted student always the best in the class?
According to Alexandre Costa Pedrosa, this is the first and most important conceptual shift that any educator must make when working with giftedness. A gifted student is not defined by conventional academic performance, but by a set of cognitive, motivational, and creative characteristics that often clash with the structure of traditional schooling. A student with intellectual abilities far above average may have mediocre grades because they are deeply bored by the pace of the class, because they understand the answers so quickly that they lose interest before completing assignments, or because they channel their energy into interests that the school does not value.
The concept of giftedness adopted by the Brazilian Ministry of Education is based on Joseph Renzulli’s model, which proposes the interaction of three components: above average ability in one or more areas, a high level of task commitment, and elevated creativity. None of these components necessarily translates into high grades. A student may have extraordinary mathematical ability while also struggling with writing, reading, or emotional regulation. This configuration, known as twice exceptionality, is particularly invisible to the untrained eye.
According to Alexandre Costa Pedrosa, chronic boredom is perhaps the most consistent and most ignored sign. When a gifted student does not find the presented material challenging, the resulting behavior may include inattentiveness, side conversations, refusal to complete repetitive activities, or, at the opposite extreme, complete passivity that mimics laziness. A teacher who interprets these behaviors solely as indiscipline or lack of interest misses the opportunity to realize that behind that behavior there is a mind asking for more stimulation than the standard curriculum provides.
What are the concrete signs teachers should observe beyond grades?
Vocabulary is often the first observable indicator. Children with high abilities tend to use sophisticated words and complex sentence structures for their age group, often absorbed through intense reading or interaction with adults. They ask questions that go beyond the lesson content and investigate causes, connections, and exceptions to rules while most classmates are still assimilating the basic information. This behavior may be perceived as arrogance or an attempt to monopolize the class, but it generally reflects genuine curiosity and divergent thinking.
According to businessman Alexandre Costa Pedrosa, emotional intensity is another sign that is often ignored or misunderstood. Gifted children tend to feel everything more intensely. They may become deeply distressed by perceived injustices, react strongly to criticism, develop excessive empathy toward animals or fictional characters, and display unusual aesthetic sensitivity to music, art, or literature. Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski described these characteristics as overexcitabilities, which manifest in intellectual, psychomotor, sensory, imaginative, and emotional domains. Recognizing these overexcitabilities as traits of giftedness rather than behavioral problems is a fundamental step.
A preference for working alone or with older people, rejection of activities they consider meaningless, the tendency to question rules and authority with logical arguments instead of simply obeying, and the ability to absorb new content with far less repetition than classmates are other relevant indicators. Individually, each one may have other explanations. Together, especially when they persist over time and across different contexts, they form a profile that deserves specialized evaluation.
How can teachers act after identifying these signs?
Identification by the teacher is not a diagnosis, but it is the first and most important trigger for the formal evaluation process to begin. The technical recommendation is that the educator document observations with concrete examples, such as remarkable statements, unusual answers, spontaneous productions, and recurring behaviors, and present this material to the pedagogical coordination team for referral to the school’s specialized educational support service or the broader education network. In many municipalities, there are specialized centers for gifted education linked to education departments.
While this process takes place, there are simple pedagogical adaptations that any teacher can implement in the classroom without waiting for a formal diagnosis. Offering tasks with different levels of complexity within the same topic, allowing the student to explore content more deeply or from angles not covered in the curriculum, giving options for independent projects in areas of interest, and creating peer mentoring opportunities are enrichment strategies that benefit not only gifted students, but the entire class, comments Alexandre Costa Pedrosa.
Author: Diego Rodríguez Velázquez
