Social emotional consequences of accelerating gifted students

Abstract

This dissertations reports four studies on the social-emotional effects of accelerating gifted students. The research concentrated on how and to what extent educational programs, in interaction with environmental and personal factors, influence the functioning of gifted students, in the short and the long run with a focus on social emotional characteristics. It became clear that teachers in secondary education have a positive attitude concerning the cognitive abilities of accelerated students, but also that they expect accelerate students to have social problems, an expectation not supported by international literature and findings in one of the studies in this thesis; accelerated and non-accelerated gifted students barely differ from each other with regard to self-concept, behavioral characteristics and social contacts. However, in a study on the self-concept and social status of accelerated and non-accelerated students in first and second grade of secondary education, accelerated students, in particular boys, appeared to experience more social emotional problems. Assuming that giftedness is a multi-dimensional and dynamic concept, possible explanations were considered that may explain this difference, for example the different methodological designs of the two studies, the influence of teacher attitude and the moment of measurement. It appeared that accelerated gifted students in comparison with non-accelerated (older and probably non-gifted) classmates experience more social-emotional problems, whereas accelerated gifted students in comparison with non-accelerated gifted age mates do not. This may mean that not acceleration causes the differences, but (an)other factor(s). Possible factors are discussed. Longitudinal intervention studies, that consider the relation and causality between personal, family and school factors are recommended for future research. The most important recommendation for educational practice is that teachers receive a more extensive training in giftedness and gifted education including acceleration