Moral development in preparing gifted students for global citizenship

Abstract

Gifted students have the potential to become tomorrow's world leaders with a strong grasp of the ethics and morality of issues related to global politics, economics, health, religions, and the environment. The heightened sensitivity of the gifted to justice, fairness, honesty, and a sense of responsibility to act on such ideals, accelerates the development of knowledge, attitudes and skills needed for global citizenship in the twenty-first century. If gifted students are provided with an appropriately challenging and respectful global curriculum, we can help them prepare to do good works with global impact. This chapter examines ways that global learning experiences in schools can encourage the gifted to adopt high ethical standards, moral behavior, and attitudes in order to lead our interconnected, interdependent, globalized world. © 2009 Springer-Verlag US.