Renzulli’s Three Rings And Superior Intelligence

Joseph Renzulli is an American educational psychologist who has developed an interesting work around the concept of higher intelligence. He has been the director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut for years. He was also an advisor to the White House Task Force on Gifted and Talent Education.

Renzulli’s work has not always been well interpreted. Some think that his theses have been aimed at establishing a model to diagnose or identify people with superior intelligence. That is not exact, since Renzulli has rather insisted on working with educational methods that lead students to superior performance.

Renzulli’s model is known as “the three rings.” These refer to the three areas that define the paradigm of higher intelligence: intellectual ability , creativity and commitment to the task. Renzulli believes that there are avenues for those talents to develop and facilitate above-average performance.

High capabilities and superior intelligence

Gifted behaviors or gifted  ( gifted  to Renzulli) are a way of acting that can manifest in any person, in specific circumstances. There are also moments in life when these behaviors become more apparent. This means that, for this theorist, high abilities and superior intelligence are not stable phenomena.

For Renzulli, intelligence is a complex phenomenon in which a set of  analytical, creative and practical skills are put into play. Such skills that rarely manifest themselves in a wild way, but require a management model on which to support their expression.

On the other hand, for Renzulli there are two great types of talented people who could be considered of superior intelligence. These two types are:

• Academic talents. It refers to those people who achieve high performance in the school or university environment. To this group belong the majority of people considered as gifted intellectually or with superior intelligence.
• Creative talents. It is up to those who focus on developing original ideas, novel solutions, and genuine breakthroughs. In this case there is no transit through the conventional paths of intelligence, but there is a great deal of work on the ideas themselves.

Renzulli’s three rings

For Renzulli there are three areas in which superior intelligence is expressed. These areas are not isolated from each other, but rather interact with each other. It is precisely the interaction between them that gives rise to a performance that could be classified as “gifted”.

The three domains are also known as “the three rings”, because Renzulli plots them as three intersecting Venn diagrams. Such dimensions are:

• High skills or above average ability. Understand general skills and specific skills. It is the most stable field and corresponds to what we usually know as higher intelligence. It does not guarantee high achievement power in everyday performance.
• Commitment or strong involvement in the development of a task. It is what we commonly know as perseverance. It is a trait that is usually present in people with superior intelligence. Obstinacy is the force that allows you to overcome the impossibility of finding quick answers.
• Creativity. It is the ability to see reality from perspectives that deviate from the ordinary or the conventional. It is characterized by cross and divergent thinking.

Education and talent

The concept of intellectual giftedness is controversial. For a long time the idea of ​​higher intelligence was associated only with the measurement of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). This, in turn, focused on the execution of logical and mathematical operations. For many, this look was extremely limited.

Renzulli, with his theory of the three rings, does not restrict higher intelligence only to the realm of academic abilities. Add a disruptive intellectual trait: creativity. Likewise, he integrates an element of personality into his conception: perseverance. In this way, the gifted is seen as an integral being.

The concept of “gifted talents” remains controversial. There are those who think that there is so much influence from the environment in this regard that if someone receives the label of “gifted” they will become someone with a superior performance, regardless of their IQ. Likewise, poor education could undermine any talent. From the hand of Renzulli, we could say that superior talents are a matter of educational management.