Renzulli's three rings model: what is it?

The intelligence It 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 presents to some degree. Its definition is by no means straightforward, and has often involved breaking it down into more discrete and quantifiable dimensions.

However, the intelligence construct has been conditioned by abilities, above all academic nature, ignoring other valuable expressions (such as creativity or flexibility cognitive).

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.

Renzulli's three rings model

joseph renzulli he is a professor of Educational Psychology in Connecticut (USA), and has dedicated a large part of his professional career to the study of gifted people. That is why he is considered one of the great authorities on the subject worldwide, being 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 capacities 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 change. Likewise, he rejects the idea that it is a phenomenon reducible to its psychometric properties, highlighting that it underlies the interaction of other factors that can be enhanced with pedagogical resources suitable.

For this reason, he emphasized 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 basic dimensions would promote a highly gifted decision-making process, not only among students, but also in population general.

Renzulli recognizes intelligence as a polyhedral and complex construct, made up of both practical, creative and analytical abilities. However, he points out that aptitude is not a simple sum of all of them, but also needs in a specific way of management, regardless of the level at which they occur in an individual given.

His studies of the question, which have gone on for decades, have concluded that this giftedness is expressed in two qualitatively different ways. Furthermore, it assumes the harmonic convergence of three dimensions (or rings): high skills, creativity and commitment to the task. In the following, 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 with each other and be capable of improvement. significant through timely training, this being the most elementary purpose of his proposal (above the classification or the ID).

1. academic talents

Who have this form of talent show an intelligence related to the solution of the demands that are deployed in school or university environments, and that can be accurately measured by using standardized procedures (WISC, for example). It is, for this reason, the type of endowment that is detected with greater frequency in general. The identification of a high IQ it would suppose 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 results. academics, since it starts from a theoretical model in which it is conceived as the 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 work. Thus, it is an aptitude that is not necessarily generalized, nor is it excessively informative when it is understood separately.

2. Creative and productive talents

The intelligence of highly creative people, contrary to what was stated in the previous assumption, does not is represented in the classic evaluation tests (designed according to the skills of the curriculum academic). These are individuals who are internally motivated to develop their personal achievements., and that also tend to be inspiring for others.

Thus, it describes any way of acting whose priority is oriented towards the development of original ideas, as well as novel solutions and genuine products; whose conception contemplates an impact on one's own life and that of others. It supposes the abandonment of 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 value and social.

the three rings

Renzulli's theory of the three rings explores the constitutive dimensions of the second of the mentioned talents, the productive creative, founded on the interaction between the subject and his atmosphere. All of them are variables that can be strengthened through specific procedures, with the exception of the first one, rooted in genetic and neurodevelopmental aspects.

then 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 one 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 life daily, in situations other than the controlled context of school evaluation tests (generalization).

The author of this model understood as high abilities the capacity (or potentiality) to execute a concrete task (that required specific cognitive domain), at least above the 80th-85th percentile (in contrast to the reference group). It is a way of quantifying, in operational terms, what performance would be necessary to be considered as optimal performance (bearing in mind that these are skill sets that can be quantified with a traditional psychometric method).

Despite the fact that this type of ability is closely associated with achievements that are highly relevant at school age, the literature on this question 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 refers to the way in which the person feels motivated to carry out a specific task, showing perseverance and devoting 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 related to directly with the same 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 the thought and action that leads to the performance of a meaningful task in a deeply attentive and fluent.

3. Creativity

The creativity It can be understood as the recourse to original thinking that allows us to approach the structural aspects of the problem being addressed., so that the solutions are not limited to influencing its surface, but rather establish cognitive or behavioral alternatives from which a more efficient or effective product is derived. In many cases, it supposes a deliberately naive look, devoid of conventions, which harbors a constructive and innovative power.

In this way, creativity can be expressed as a questioning of what is established, in such a way that the discourse that is articulated before decision-making is built on transversal approaches and divergent. The result of creative thinking usually has a qualitative impact on the advancement of the disciplines in which this unfolds, opening new paths that over time are incorporated into the normative heritage of its procedures of base.

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 classical 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 every person could carry out, in propitious conditions, a gifted conduct. In conclusion, high endowment would not be a stable trait, but rather an attitude or disposition that could fluctuate over time. over time, and on which falls the responsibility of the professionals who participate in the system educational.

Bibliographic references:

• Renzuli, J. (2005). The Three Ring Conception of Giftedness: A Developmental Model for Promoting Creative Productivity. In Reis, S.M. (Ed.) Reflections on Gifted Education, 55-86. Waco: Prufrock Press.
• Renzulli, J. and Gaesser, A. (2014). A Multi Criteria System for the Identification of High Achieving and Creative/Productive Giftedness. Education Magazine, 368, 96-131.