Gifted Students.

Gifted students are individuals who are recognized for performance that is superior to that of their peers. Although giftedness is typically associated with schooling, gifted individuals exist across academic and nonacademic domains. In this review, we begin by acknowledging some of the larger debates in the field of gifted education and provide brief summaries of major conceptual frameworks applied to gifted education, dividing them into three categories: frameworks focused on ability, frameworks focused on talent development, and integrative frameworks. We then discuss common practices used to identify gifted students, giving specific attention to the identification of those in underrepresented groups, followed by brief overviews of the numbers of students who are classified as gifted, programming options for gifted students, and social and emotional issues associated with being gifted. We conclude with a discussion of several unresolved issues in the field.

Are awe-prone people more curious? The relationship between dispositional awe, curiosity, and academic outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: Guided by a functional account of awe, we aimed to test the hypothesis that people who often feel awe are also more curious (Studies 1 and 2), and that this relationship in turn relates to academic outcomes (Study 3). METHOD: In Study 1 (n = 1,005), we used a self-report approach to test the relationship between dispositional awe and curiosity. In Study 2 (n = 100), we used a peer-report approach to test if participants' dispositional awe related to how curious they were rated by their friends. In Study 3, in a sample of 447 high school adolescents we tested if dispositional awe related to academic outcomes via curiosity. RESULTS: We found that dispositional awe was positively related to people's self-rated curiosity (Study 1) and how curious they were rated by their friends (Study 2). In Study 3, we found that dispositional awe was related to academic outcomes via curiosity. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that among the seven positive emotion dispositions tested, awe was related to unique variance in curiosity, and this link in turn predicted academic outcomes. This work further characterizes awe as an epistemic emotion and suggests that activities that inspire awe may improve academic outcomes.

Demographic group differences in adolescents' time attitudes.

In the present study, we examined demographic differences in time attitudes in a sample of 293 adolescents. Time attitudes were measured using the Adolescent Time Attitude Scale (Mello & Worrell, 2007; Worrell, Mello, & Buhl, 2011), which assesses positive and negative attitudes toward the past, the present, and the future. Generally, African Americans and Asian Americans reported higher scores for negative time attitudes and lower scores for positive time attitudes than European Americans and Latinos, with medium sizes. Adolescents in the low socioeconomic status group reported a less favorable evaluation of their past than middle and high SES peers, but there were no meaningful differences in time attitudes by gender. Findings indicate that middle SES adolescents, high school juniors and seniors, Latinos, and European Americans had higher representation in positive time attitude clusters (i.e., Positives and Balanced) than high SES adolescents, high school freshmen and sophomores, and African Americans.

Promoting hope in minoritized and economically disadvantaged students.

Minoritized and economically disadvantaged (MED) students encounter a host of detrimental factors within the academic setting (e.g., racism, classism, low expectations). In order for them to be successful, ways must be found to help them achieve academically despite their disadvantageous academic environments. Recent research indicates that hope theory might provide a pathway for MED students to have a higher chance at success. In this review, how hope has the potential to take on a special significance for MED students as well as how it can be leveraged to increase their odd of academic and life success is discussed. In addition, recent research centered around promoting hope in MED students, both formally and informally, is reviewed. Altogether, this review has implications for cultivating hope in schools.

Beyond perceived ability: the contribution of psychosocial factors to academic performance.

In this study, we examined the contributions of grit, hope, and academic self-efficacy to academic achievement in a sample of 609 academically talented students ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. Our hypothesis was that these variables would predict academic achievement above and beyond the contributions of demographic variables and perceived ability. After establishing the reliability and structural validity of scores for the three constructs in this sample, regression analyses indicated that hope and academic self-efficacy were predictors of perceived ability and that academic self-efficacy was the most robust predictor of academic achievement. Grit was not a meaningful predictor of either perceived ability or academic achievement. We concluded that psychosocial variables can contribute to performance in talented students, but research is needed to establish which psychosocial variables are the most useful.