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Project

It takes a village to raise a talented child. The role of social classroom relationships in the development of cognitively gifted and non-gifted students

Our society is more than ever in need of innovative thinkers and creative minds to generate ideas and solutions for current and future problems. Supporting students to develop their full potential is crucial to meet this need. Contemporary models on giftedness and talent development highlight the importance of a social environment that supports the transformation of ability into talent. In this doctoral project, we shed light on the role of peers and teachers in the development of adolescents’ engagement and disengagement. In the first studies, we focused on early adolescents in general, in later studies, we focused on cognitively gifted students in particular. We used data from the TALENT sample, a large longitudinal sample of 3,409 students from 166 classes in 27 schools in Flanders, who were followed along Grade 7 and Grade 8. Using a standardized cognitive test, 403 students were identified as high-ability (top 10%; Gagné, 2004). Students, parents, and teachers completed surveys at four waves of data collection spread over two consecutive school years. 

In the first part we pursued two main research objectives. First, we focused on how different types of peer groups have an impact on individual students’ behavior by comparing how the (dis)engagement of classmates, friends, and popular students affected the development of behavioral and emotional engagement and disengagement of individual students. In addition, we addressed the possibility of a moderation effect by cognitive ability and by self-esteem (Chapter 1). Results from the multilevel analysis showed peer effects from all three peer groups and unique contributions from friends and classmates. No moderation effects were found. In a second study, we investigated if peer effects were the result of a socialization process by controlling for selection effects (Chapter 2). Using on peer nominations, we performed longitudinal network analyses to examine the influence of friends, popular students, and intelligent students on behavioral and emotional engagement and disengagement. Friends influenced all types of (dis)engagement. Popular and intelligent students influenced emotional (dis)engagement. 

In the second part of the project, we examined the role of teachers and peers in the development of high-ability adolescents. In the first study, we addressed feelings of loneliness among high-ability students (Chapter 3). We used latent growth curve modeling to model the evolution of loneliness and examined the effect of individual characteristics (i.e., personality, level of intelligence, gifted label, and gender) and social contextual characteristics (i.e., social preference, friendship quantity, and victimization) on this evolution. We found all individual and social contextual characteristics, except for gifted label, to predict loneliness over time in expected ways. Lastly, we focused on the role of teachers and investigated how the affective quality of teacher-student relationships affected the engagement of high-ability students (Chapter 4). Based on the academic risk hypothesis we examined if the effect of the teacherstudent relationship quality would be more important for students at higher risk of poor academic performance, i.e., high-ability students from a low SES background or with a learning or developmental disorder. We measured the teacher-student relationship in terms of teacher affiliation and teacher dissatisfaction and addressed both behavioral and emotional engagement and disengagement. Results from the latent growth curve analysis confirmed teacher affiliation and dissatisfaction to be predictive of behavioral and emotional engagement and disengagement. Low SES moderated the relationship between teacher dissatisfaction and behavioral disengagement. The effect of teacher dissatisfaction on emotional (dis)engagement was moderated by a diagnosed learning or developmental disorder.

Results from these studies show the complexity of adolescents’ peer context and the key role of peers and teachers in the development of cognitively gifted students’ engagement. Also, they highlight the diversity in developmental outcomes within the high-ability group.

Date:8 Jul 2019 →  22 Jun 2022
Keywords:giftedness
Disciplines:Social and emotional development, Educational and school psychology, Motivation and emotion
Project type:PhD project