Self-Perception of Giftedness in Adolescents Selected for Gifted Education Programmes

Abstract

Specialized support for gifted children and adolescents should be based on the specifics of their social situation of development which is largely determined by the fact of identifying a person as gifted. ‘Labeling giftedness’ has a significant impact on the system of interpersonal relationships and self-attitude of children and adolescents. However, there is no holistic construct of the phenomenon of ‘self-perception of giftedness’ in psychology today, therefore, we defined the theoretical and empirical development of this construct as the goal of our study. The paper presents the results of this study which describes the construct of ‘self-perception of giftedness’ basing on the survey of 422 adolescents aged 15—17 years who had been selected for gifted education programmes. Using factor analysis we identify the main dimensions of the construct typical for late adolescence: giftedness resources/risks assessment; environment of risks and resources manifestation (internal/external); localization of conditions for high achievement (internal — external).Basing on the analysis of the significance of differences, we outline the perspectives of using the construct to reveal gender specifics of self-perception of giftedness in older adolescents enrolled in gifted education programmes.