Gifted and talented students need challenging learning environments. Above average students get bored or frustrated in the schools when they are not challenged. However, it is not certainly known if challenge-seeking is one of the gifted and talented students’ peculiar characteristics independently of learning environments. This paper aims at finding an answer to this question: Do gifted and talented students have common characteristic related to challenge?
The study sample consists of 40 fifth, sixth and seventh grades of gifted and talented students and 40 fifth, sixth and seventh grades of randomly chosen average students who both receive their education in the same district of Istanbul, Turkey. Participants complete Student Information Sheet and Challenge Test in their classrooms.
Student Information Sheet includes questions about their parents’ education level, the number of family members, working conditions of parents and students’ school grades. Challenge Test which is not based on knowledge developed by the researcher to observe whether or not students select challenge. Questions in the test are grouped into seven categories which are the easiest, very easy, easy, intermediate, hard, very hard, and the hardest. Students solve the question after they choose its level. There are three sections and each question is given 2 minutes. Implementation of Student Information Sheet and Challenge Test approximately takes 20 minutes.
Two groups of students are compared according to their challenge acceptance-rejection behaviors determined by Challenge Test. Data is analyzed with t-test. The results are discussed in consideration of the factors determined by Student Information Sheet.
Summary :
Theme: Trends in research and theory of giftedness.
Objectives: The main objective of the study is to find whether or not challenge-seeking behavior is one of the common characteristics of gifted and talented students compared to average students.
Relevance of the individual contributions to the symposium: While challenge has a critical role in gifted and talented education, it is not known if challenge-seeking is an inner characteristic of the gifted. This research is relevant with respect to a theory of giftedness which explains what giftedness means. This paper contributes to the question of how giftedness should be defined in terms of challenge-response.