ECHA2022 - Lotte van Lith, Rooted Giftedness

The giftedness of our natural environment is abundant. Its intricate complexity, drivenness and intensity leaves a tourist mesmerized and a researcher baffled by the endless mysterious aspects of the Earth we inhabit. At the same time, we are experiencing and facing an ecological catastrophe that marks a painfully disintegrated relationship between humans and non-human agency. In the field of giftedness, we also have to expand our focus on the characteristics and environmental factors that either hinder, or promote development of a person in order to sensitively take into account who we are as agents’ part of a much bigger and complex ecosystem. Who can individuals with high developmental potential be in our vivid, yet also vulnerable, disintegrating ecosystem?

What if we draw from the giftedness of the non-human environment, learn to see complexity and intensity from her perspectives and by doing so, existentially and practically get inspired about coping with both, individual and collective, challenges in a balanced manner? What can we learn about our future understanding and guidance of the gifted by radically empathizing with nature?

In this multimodal, performative talk, we will meet an existentially estranged, gifted young adult. We are going to discover through storytelling that this person will be invited by his mentor to start a dialogue with four representatives of nature. These representatives will share stories about their lives, needs and outlook on life. They will invite the young adult (and the listeners) to understand their values, their interconnectedness and our relationship to their well-being. Through this empathic and playful understanding we will re-examine what the future of gifted education and guidance may look like. And while doing so, we will also become aware of the unknown qualities the future entails, the qualitative adaptability and transformational giftedness (Sternberg) it demands and how human agency will have to be understood from an entirely different perspective.

Lotte van Lith, A Lot of Complexity, Amersfoort, Netherlands

In 2022 the National Talent Centre of the Netherlands hosted the 18th Conference of the European Council for High Ability in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The ECHA 2022 Conference brought together experts, professionals and interested parties from all over Europe and beyond to share knowledge, gain inspiration and exchange experiences. The congress offered a varied, high-level program with top speakers and a wide range of parallel sessions.

www.echa2022.org