Educating the gifted student: Eagerness to achieve as a curricular competence

Abstract

During the last decades, high intellectual abilities have been revealed as a decisive curricular factor that evidences the need to adapt content to students' characteristics. In Spain, various autonomous communities have designed programs that, through extraordinary activities, seek to respond to this demand and provide talented students with the appropriate context for the development and strengthening of their skills. In the case of Madrid, this proposal includes private involvement of an entrepreneurial nature that has demonstrated the possible connection between the two environments when considering the labor asset, fundamentally oriented to the resolution of projects by adolescent subjects with above average cognitive capacities. This research has examined, by means of a 180º questionnaire completed by 342 subjects (comprised of parents and skilled children, teachers and classmates) in seven Madrid schools, the possibility of identifying the ‘eagerness to achieve’ competence, considering that its early distinction enables its development in educational contexts and the training of students in order to promote individuals who focus their professional work towards the completion of assigned activities. The results obtained have also made it possible to draw up a generic profile of the talented student by combining his or her own assessments and those of his or her environment, and to recognize their most highly valued inherent aptitudes as well as those least valued. Durante las últimas décadas, las altas capacidades (AACC) se han desvelado como un determinante curricular que evidencia la necesidad de adaptar los contenidos a las características de los alumnos definidos por las mismas. En España, diversas comunidades autónomas han diseñado programas que, mediante actividades extraordinarias, persiguen responder a esta demanda y otorgar a los estudiantes talentosos el contexto propicio para el desarrollo y fortalecimiento de sus habilidades. En el caso de Madrid, esta propuesta presenta una participación privada de carácter empresarial que ha evidenciado la posible conjunción entre sendos entornos al considerar el activo laboral, fundamentalmente orientado a la resolución de proyectos, en el sujeto adolescente con AACC. Esta investigación ha examinado, mediante un cuestionario con naturaleza 180º cumplimentado por 342 personas (padres e hijos habilidosos, docentes y compañeros escolares) en siete centros madrileños, la posibilidad identificativa de la competencia afán de logro al considerar que su distinción prematura permite su trabajo en el contexto educativo y la formación del alumnado en aras a promover a un individuo que orientará su labor profesional hacia la finalización de las actividades asignadas. Los resultados obtenidos han permitido trazar, igualmente, un perfil genérico del estudiante talentoso mediante la combinación de sus propias apreciaciones y de las de su entorno y reconocer a las aptitudes inherentes mejor valoradas al igual que las calificadas de forma contraria.