The concept of giftedness has evolved significantly over time. Today, it still lacks a singular and precise definition, but it is continually evolving. One notable model found in the literature is the Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) by Gagné. This model appears to be a valid contribution to better understanding giftedness, the characteristics of gifted students and the problems related to these constructs. The article aims to highlight the characteristics of gifted students, underlining critical points and strengths in (...) relation to the various contexts, specifically to the school context, and to Gagné’s model (personal, scholastic, environmental and social), with a focus on future implications. (shrink)

In this essay, Alain Caillé reconstructs the “singular history of the MAUSS (Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences)” from when in early 1980 a group of friends from different disciplines (sociologists, economists, philosophers, etc.) decided to found the “Bulletin du MAUSS” to counter the growing hegemony of utilitarianism and economism in the human sciences and in the philosophical disciplines themselves. The Bulletin would initially become the “Revue du MAUSS trimestrielle” from 1988 to 1992 and from 1993 to 2022 the “Revue (...) du MAUSS semestrielle” until its current anglophone extension “MAUSS International”. The author takes Marcel Mauss’ definition of the gift as a “total social fact” and explains that the gift paradigm is a “translation operator” in the sense that it is continuously enriched in interaction with existing discourses. The theoretical operation that Caillé proposes is to explicate Mauss’s discovery by moving from a simple gift paradigm, based on the perspective of simple reciprocity between giver and recipient, to an expanded gift paradigm. In this way, it can dialogue with other paradigms and other currents of thought (theory of recognition, theory of care, theory of human development, etc.). And from here to a conception of the gift as “adonnement”, i.e. the commitment of human subjects to bring something new and unprecedented into the world. (shrink)

In Ricoeur’s last works, we can find what he calls a poetics of love. Choosing the “dialectic” path of a comparison between love and justice, Ricoeur claims that justice lies in the rule of equivalence (give to each his own); the disorientation of love, instead, suspends the return, the equivalence, the exchange. Love does not say: “do ut des”, but rather (if we can transform the expression) it says “do ut dem”, to offer without expecting anything in return: this is (...) what Ricoeur calls a “first gift”. However, it is an expectation that is always open to the possibility of a “surprise”: the surprise of a “second first gift” able to fulfill the gratuity of the original act of donation. This essay questions this possibility of “mutual gift”. (shrink)

Since technology has been entering into human beings’ everyday life, individuals established a deep relationship with digital technology, thus an embodied link between people and digital instruments has been born. This is particularly evidenced by recent literature about screen time (duration of time spent by the individual in using electronic/digital media like television, smartphone, tablet or computer), it significantly influences different human beings’ dimensions: physical, psychological and neurological functions. Impact of digital technology on human beings can be considered as a (...) result of syntonic functioning in order to improve different people’s life areas (e.g., work, social or intimate relationship, learning), while the dystonic relationship is evidenced as a result of human addiction to digital technology. The present study aims to provide a cognitive and social psychology perspective on how screen time is changing our existences, defining digital technology as a gift which people should be aware of in terms of positive but even negative consequences in everyday life. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Marcel Mauss’s “Essay on the Gift” (1925) is not only intended to inaugurate a new paradigm on the terrain of ethnology and anthropology, but at the same time to make the gift a kind of novum organum of the social sciences and of moral and political philosophy itself. In the first part, I reconstructed the critique that M. Merleau-Ponty and C. Lefort have made to Lévi-Strauss’s “structuralist” reading of Mauss, and, in a second part, (...) I emphasised the importance that M. Hénaff assigned to the ceremonial gift of traditional societies as an intentional procedure of public mutual recognition between groups. But, using some of A. Caillé’s indications, I explain that this device of mutual recognition and alliance, characteristic of the gift cycle (giving/receiving/ reciprocating) also applies in modern societies whenever legal-political institutions become sclerotized and lose their legitimacy in the face of new actors in political action (newcomers or new arrivals, to use the Arendtian category of natality in a broad sense). (shrink)

The author rereads Mauss’ “Essay on the Gift” to focus on the essential differences between the archaic gift and the modern gift, the first of which is the separation between people and things. In fact, if in so-called primitive societies the gift is a “total welfare” (religious, economic, social, political), in modern societies the circulation of things becomes autonomous and we find the gift in the sphere of primary ties and, only partially, in those of the market and the state. (...) The paradox of the gift, which Mauss emphasises, is its being a mélange of obligation and freedom: why do we in turn give when we receive something as a gift? This aspect – reciprocating the thing received – in Māori society is referred to as “hau” and contains the identity of the giver: the gift encloses, in a way, the self of the giver. For Mauss, even in modern society, presenting something to someone implies presenting something of the Self. Even when it comes to the gift between strangers, such as the gift of blood or the gift of organs, it expresses the social identity of the giver and the recipient, since it can be perceived as society’s recognition of a general gift or of the recipient’s belonging to this society. (shrink)

In an era increasingly characterized by pluralism and globalization, intercultural pedagogy represents a starting point for addressing the challenges that today’s society confronts us with daily. Throughout history, cultures have changed through interactions, exchanges, and hybridization, leading to the formation of an increasingly pluralistic and multicultural society. Against this background, it is crucial to develop approaches based on dialogue and mutual recognition. However, acceptance and willingness to encounter require an educational path that is promoted by schools from childhood, especially in (...) view of the monocultural mentality that too often characterizes more and more people and prevents the opening of a path that counteracts ethnocentrism in favor of a broader perspective. From this point of view, intercultural pedagogy proves to be the only approach that can guarantee the formation of individuals ready to create a truly multicultural society. (shrink)

The term “giving” refers to the altruistic act of offering something to another person for free without expecting anything in return. While prosocial behavior can also be found in very young children, altruistic behavior emerges later, with the moral and cognitive development, also supported by adult praise, that children may receive within the educational relationship. Education, in fact, has the noble purpose of guiding people to a better condition than they are now, through relationships. The aim of this paper is (...) to review the works that have analyzed the effects of praise in the relationship between teacher and student. Experimental studies over the last 50 years have shown that praise is a low-cost strategy that teachers can use to increase adaptive behavior in the classroom and decrease problem behavior. Furthermore, the use of praise improves the classroom climate, as it is a vehicle for positive emotions. Modern neuroscience has now shown how emotions play an important role in learning, including school learning. Therefore, we could consider praise as one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give to their students. (shrink)

What is profoundly under question, especially today, in the aftermath of the pandemic, is on one hand the phenomenon of desire, on the other hand the experience and capability of desiring of the human being. Taking a look at the social situation of the country – recalling first the investigation of the 44th Censis Report 2010, the contents of which in some ways are re-proposed in a naturally volved way in the following one of 2020 –, we are given an (...) image that relaunches our thought owards a need to deepen the ontology of desire and a possible educational pedagogy about it. Our society is depicted as “with no inner desire”: a crisis of desire emerges, in the sense of a crisis about the power of having a vision about the future and capacity of planning with excitement. In this paper, recalling Kant and his transcendental productive imagination as well as the new path of affective neurosciences perspective, going through the Theory of Attachment, I aim at opening a possible way to overcome this impossibility to desire arguing a different hermeneutics in comparison to what the tradition, especially that of J. Lacan, left us about this important and vital faculty of the human being. (shrink)