There are two paths that gifted children can follow that can be facilitated by educators within the context of the public school system, and that subsequently will lead to productive lives. These paths reflect educational responses to two unique, although partially overlapping, domains of giftedness. The proposed overall construct of giftedness is not a totally new construct, but rather is a reflection of an attempt to resolve an artificial dichotomy that seems to have evolved in the gifted literature.

The conception of giftedness proposed is one based on student learning and performance needs, hence the label child-responsive model. The model accepts, while adapting, some basic premises of two existing paradigms of giftedness that have competed for attention in the schools. It is predicated on the belief that the school environment should recognize the behaviors and characteristics of the exceptional learner from these two realms and respond to the concomitant learner needs in each group by creating learning environments that will maximize the opportunities for exceptional learners to extend their achieved and potential expertise in areas of high performance. The response involves creating the most challenging learning tasks – requiring students to utilize the knowledge, skill, and understanding they bring to the situation at the highest level possible, but also challenging them to extend those achievements beyond their current stage of accomplishment. In other words, learning experiences should be based on Vygotsky's (1978) notion of zone of proximal development across the domains of performance excellence that the gifted learner brings to the learning situation.