The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children

What Do We Know?

Maureen Neihart, Maureen Neihart, Sally M. Reis, Nancy M. Robinson, Sidney M. Moon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000489743
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children remains the only book that provides a comprehensive summary of the empirical research on the social and emotional development of gifted children by leading authorities in the field. It includes several features that make it the leading text on what we know about the social and emotional development of gifted children. For example, it summarizes the most significant findings from the empirical research on the topic. It also includes noteworthy variations that have been observed across cultural groups or global contexts. Each chapter also provides a short description of the practical applications that can be made from the research. This second edition includes an entirely new section on the psychosocial aspects of talent development, as well as addresses the burgeoning interest and research base regarding gifted performance. The text also includes several new topics that have emerged from the research in the past decade, such as the neuroscience of talent development and motivation for talent development. This book is a service publication of the National Association for Gifted Children.

SECTION IV

PROMISING SUPPORTS AND INTERVENTIONS

DOI:10.4324/9781003238928-20

INTRODUCTION

What interventions are demonstrated to significantly impact the social or emotional development of gifted children? Intervention is where the research in our field is weakest. We wish we knew much more. Our field has a widespread practice of recommending social and emotional practices for which there is little or no empirical support. The authors in this section offer several explanations for this as well as some solutions to resolve the problem. They focus on four broad areas of intervention that have some empirical evidence for their effectiveness: academic acceleration, high-ability grouping, counseling, and mindsets.

You might consider the following questions as you read this section: Are the most popular practices those with the strongest empirical support? Are there some interventions that seem to have greater advantage for certain subpopulations of gifted students (e.g., disadvantaged, twice-exceptional, certain minority students)? Is there anything it seems we should stop doing?

One limitation of the research that Plucker identifies is that studies often focus on effects on self-concept, but social and emotional needs are much more than self-concept. Our understanding of the benefits of some common practices is limited by the narrow focus of the outcomes we typically measure. Research results are also often not consistent enough to confirm that a particular intervention is beneficial. Sometimes, though, we can state with confidence that certain recommended practices are clearly not harmful to gifted children’s social and emotional development. In the final chapter, the editorial team presents a synthesis of the major findings from the entire book and proposes specific next steps for research.

An important key idea that we come back to at the end is that intervention matters little if the instruction and curriculum is not appropriate. Teaching quality and the goodness of fit between the personal characteristics of the student and his or her learning environments cannot be replaced by even the most sophisticated of educational or psychological interventions.

CHAPTER 17

THE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF ACCELERATION

KRISTOFOR WILEY

DOI:10.4324/9781003238928-21

INTRODUCTION

The literature on the academic benefits of acceleration is overwhelmingly supportive. The landmark publication A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Children (Colangelo, Assouline, & Gross, 2004) summarized 30 years of individual studies, along with meta-analyses of those studies. The research was updated in 2015 in A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America’s Brightest Students (Assouline, Colangelo, VanTassel-Baska, & Lupkowski-Shoplik). In both reports, the researchers found academic advantages across multiple outcomes for a variety of acceleration practices.

The 2015 report addressed the social and emotional lives of gifted students, concluding that there are very few times and circumstances when acceleration may cause difficulty in these domains (Cross, Andersen, & Mammadov, 2015). Studies of stakeholder attitudes, however, indicate that these neutral findings are often at odds with anecdotal experience and traditional wisdom (Rambo & McCoach, 2012; Siegle, Wilson, & Little, 2013). Although training in gifted education can improve attitudes toward acceleration (Hoogeveen, van Hell, & Verhoeven, 2005), the will to implement a policy of acceleration can still be thwarted by institutional resistance (Lohman & Marron, 2008). For acceleration to become widely accepted and wisely used, increased awareness of its merits and limitations must move beyond gifted educators to all of the stakeholders in an educational environment.

MAJOR FINDINGS

META-ANALYSES

Meta-analytic studies bring together statistical results from an array of individual studies, with the goal of achieving a broader perspective on the research. As part of A Nation Deceived, Kulik (2004) produced a seminal meta-analysis of social and emotional results from acceleration studies conducted over the previous 40 years. Kulik found that educational plans (e.g., planning for college) benefited from acceleration, while “liking for school,” “participation in school activities,” and “self-acceptance” all showed inconsistent or negligible relationships with acceleration. Importantly, only a “small number of studies” (p. 18) were identified as addressing affective topics, and there were “few studies from recent years” (p. 21). Kulik’s statistical analysis in the report is followed by a comprehensive review of research by Robinson (2004), who suggested that while we still have much to learn, “educators’ worries about harming students by accelerative choices can generally be laid to rest” (p. 64).

Steenbergen-Hu and Moon (2011) supplemented Kulik’s (2004) meta-analysis, increasing the number of studies synthesized and incorporating research published through 2008. The authors focused on factors that might explain the concerns of practitioners in the absence of empirical evidence. Their results echoed those of Kulik, demonstrating no consistent social or emotional differences between accelerated and nonaccelerated students, regardless of whether comparison was made to age peers or grade-level peers. In addition, they found no differential results on the basis of gender or type of acceleration. The authors did detect a significant effect of grade level at acceleration, with students accelerated in elementary grades experiencing social and emotional advantages, while secondary students showed a slight decline in self-esteem upon acceleration. This recommendation for early acceleration supports prior findings and is, in turn, supported by subsequent individual studies.

INDIVIDUAL STUDIES

While meta-analytic studies offer a clear snapshot of the wide landscape of research, they have several limitations. Social and emotional research concerning acceleration is confounded by multiple definitions (e.g., “giftedness,” “self-esteem,” and “acceleration”). Meta-analyses bring multiple studies together to make them statistically comparable, but in doing so, these potentially important differences are lost through consolidation into uniform definitions. This makes it critical to identify studies specific to the purpose and interpret results in the context of the study design. This information is highlighted in the studies presented below, clustered by the acceleration practice addressed.

Grade-based acceleration. Skipping one or more grades is one of the more common forms of acceleration. In fact, Colangelo, Assouline, and Marron (2013) suggest that much of the resistance to acceleration stems from “the misconception that acceleration refers exclusively to grade-based acceleration” (p. 167). Unlike some other forms, grade-based acceleration typically involves the omission of a full year of curriculum, as well as the replacement of an established peer cohort with a new one.

Research on grade skipping is supportive. Hoogeveen, van Hell, and Verhoeven (2009) followed 53 students in the Netherlands as they were accelerated past a single grade level into grades 7 or 8, using the Self-Description Questionnaire II (SDQ-II; Marsh, 1990) to assess differences in self-concept. The comparison group was the newly acquired cohort of grade peers. The authors found no significant differences in total self-concept, but there was a difference in social self-concept regarding same-sex relations, with accelerated students scoring lower than nonaccelerated peers. As students moved into their second year after acceleration, these social differences were exacerbated in boys but disappeared among girls. The authors suggested this may be a result of later onset of puberty in boys, exacerbating physical differences between accelerated and nonaccelerated boys. These results indicate the importance of considering gender when selecting students for acceleration.

In addition to the SDQ-II, Hoogeveen et al. (2009) surveyed the accelerated students and their peers to paint a picture of social standing and reputation among the students. Students were asked to list the three students they liked most, the three they liked least, and which students most often showed a variety of behavioral traits, from conceit to leadership. The authors used the nominations of popularity to calculate social impact (the number of times a student was mentioned, positively or negatively) and social preference (the difference between the numbers of positive and negative nominations). Repeated measures analysis indicated that accelerated students tended slightly toward higher social impact (η² = 0.013). For reference, this was slightly less pronounced than the difference between boys and girls (η² = 0.022). The accelerated students received lower standardized scores for social preference (η² = 0.078), which dwarfed the difference between girls and boys (η² = 0.014). In summary, the accelerated students were more frequently mentioned as a notable facet in the social experience of their classmates, but typically in a more negative sense.

In terms of trait reputation, conceit was mentioned more often among accelerated students (η² = 0.121), while cooperation (η² = 0.057), helpfulness (η² = 0.052), and humor (η² = 0.032) were moderately lower among the accelerated sample. Together with the SDQ-II results, these results suggest that while general self-concept seems unrelated to acceleration, the landscape of peer relations is probably still affected.

Hoogeveen, van Hell, and Verhoeven (2012) produced a complement to this study, incorporating a much broader age range and introducing an analysis of environmental factors. The authors assessed 148 accelerated students and 55 nonaccelerated students, all identified as gifted and ranging in age from 4 to 27 years, using three forms of the SDQ calibrated to different age groups. SDQ results indicated no overall differences between accelerated students and their grade peers. There were, however, different results based on the grade at acceleration. The nonaccelerated students showed a decline in both peer relations and general self-esteem as they entered grades 4–6, while accelerated students did not. This interaction with grade level at acceleration is a consistent theme, and the authors draw on these results to recommend early acceleration, suggesting that the passage of time has a positive effect on the self-concept of accelerated students.

The authors also employed a parent questionnaire and student diaries as part of their study. From these sources, the authors discovered that in secondary, nonaccelerated students, the quality of parent interaction had a significant and meaningful impact on total self-concept. This relationship was statistically insignificant for accelerated students, and the authors suggested that the accelerated students were “less susceptible to personal and environmental factors” (Hoogeveen et al., 2012, p. 598). Parents also indicated that risk-avoidance and “underground” behaviors (e.g., denying giftedness or abstaining from gifted programming) were less prevalent in accelerated students.

Early entrance. In the same year that A Nation Deceived was published, Gagné and Gagnier (2004) published a study on students admitted early to kindergarten in Quebec. They assessed 98 early entrants, 43 in kindergarten and 55 in second grade, on four social and emotional constructs: Integration, Maturity, Achievement, and Conduct. To gain greater resolution for comparison, the researchers divided the nonaccelerated classmates into four quarters based on month of birth.

Across all four measures and in both grades, the accelerated students consistently scored higher than their youngest classmates. In most cases, the mean score for the early entrants fell squarely between the second and third cohorts of their classmates (i.e., centering on the age median). In addition, in second grade, the accelerated students exhibited higher achievement scores than all comparison groups. Thus, early entrants did not represent behavioral outliers in either kindergarten or second grade, and their academic achievement recovered and once again exceeded their classmates by second grade.

In an attempt to capture faculty perceptions, the researchers also asked teachers to indicate their five best- and worst-adjusted students on each of the four scales above. The ratings were designed to be blind to the acceleration status of the individual students to avoid bias in the ratings. The results indicated that teachers in both grades found 30% of accelerated students to be “struggling” on two or more scales, in contrast with just below 24% across the entire sample. In the context of the more positive results described above and the authors’ admitted limitations on keeping...