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Lessons from our kissing cousins: third culture kids and gifted children.

Article Excerpt
The similarities between gifted children and children who have lived outside their home country are striking. Both groups experience aloneness, knowledge beyond that of their classmates, and feel gaps between them and their classmates. Although research into the global awareness of gifted children is a relatively new phenomenon in our global age, research into the characteristics of children who have lived overseas has been conducted for many years.

Although this article does not contain a thorough literature review on the characteristics of either gifted children or children who have lived overseas, this article offers information relevant to members of the gifted community who wish to increase global awareness in gifted children. The first section examines characteristics of children who have lived in countries foreign to their own. The second section compares those characteristics with characteristics of gifted children. Similarities between the two groups of children suggest that the gifted community might benefit from lessons learned from the experiences of children who have lived abroad.

The author recently spent 2 years teaching expatriate children at Hangzhou International School in Hangzhou, China, and the next section highlights relevant comments from former students. The author obtained the comments by asking former students to answer questions intended to elicit information about the students' expatriate status, their experiences abroad, and their experiences upon returning to their home countries. The comments, although obtained through informal means, illuminate the nature of global awareness, suggest noncurricular methods of raising global awareness, and recommend areas for further research.

The last few sections offer suggestions to members of the gifted community. A section on pedagogy includes recommendations for those who wish to raise the global awareness of gifted children. A section on study-abroad programs recommends programs suitable for gifted children interested in studying abroad during their high-school years. A section on research includes recommendations for research into the global awareness of gifted children. These recommendations are particularly relevant to educating gifted children in the global community.

THIRD CULTURE KIDS

The U.S. Department of State, in an apparent effort to assist diplomatic and military families returning from overseas tours, posts information on its Web site about the concept of Third Culture Kids (TCK). Originally developed by sociologist/anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem over 40 years ago (Useem, 1999; see also Pollack & Van Reken, 1999), the concept of TCK refers to children who have lived outside their passport country with their parents during childhood; these children have blended elements of their passport culture and the foreign culture into a third culture (Kidd & Lankenau, n.d.). Pollack and Van Reken describe the third culture as an interstitial culture, a culture between cultures. Useem recognizes that the experience of living overseas as a child differs significantly from the experience of living overseas as an adult. Because children are more impressionable than adults, children absorb foreign cultures as parts of their own emerging culture. In contrast, adults living overseas observe rather than absorb foreign cultures, and thus adults view foreign cultures as apart from their own culture rather than as parts of their own culture.

The TCK community exists in the form of e-mail discussion lists, international school alumni associations, and college groups. The community includes those who refer to themselves with the appellation global nomad (Pollack & Van Reken, 1999). Since global business has expanded in recent decades, the TCK community has seen increasing numbers of children with parents working overseas for business purposes rather than for military, diplomatic, or missionary purposes (Eakin, 1998; Kidd & Lankenau, n.d.). Eakin notes an estimate from 1998 that there may be over 4 million TCKs worldwide. Judging by the large growth of global businesses and international schools during the past 9 years, there are undoubtedly many more TCKs in the world today.

Just as many students enrolled in domestic schools are gifted, many children enrolled in international schools are gifted. TCKs graduate from college at rates four times that of non-TCKs (Useem & Cottrell, 1999). One study by an organization of missionary agencies found that 73% of TCKs graduate from university and 25% of TCKs graduate from university with honors (Pollack & Van Reken, 1999). Thus, the gifted community and the TCK community likely overlap to a greater degree than chance would predict. The larger the overlap, the more meaningful are the lessons that the gifted community can learn from the TCK community.

SIMILARITIES: GIFTED CHILDREN AND THIRD CULTURE KIDS

The U.S. Department of State includes the entire book by Eakin (1998) on its Web site. The book, designed to ease problems that families face when they bring their children back to the United States after years overseas, offers detailed descriptions of TCKs around the world. The descriptions leave little doubt that gifted children and TCKs are kissing cousins in many academic, social, and emotional respects.

Eakin (1998) explains that TCKs returning to their home country face the fact that they no longer match their home culture. TCKs often feel alien in typical school environments in their home countries. Pollack and Van Reken (1999) explain, "while TCKs and their peers at home may indeed look exactly alike, they don't share a common worldview" (p. 248). Gifted children may similarly feel alien in typical school environments, although their feelings stem from intellectual uniqueness rather than from the uniqueness of foreign experience. Young, gifted children, during the years before they begin school, may have little idea that they differ emotionally, socially, and intellectually from others. Jackson and Peterson (2003) found evidence that when they begin school, some young, gifted children...

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