Socio-psychological aspect of modern junior schoolchildren’s academic giftedness
The results of several empirical research generalizations are represented in this article. The congruence of teachers’ and parents’ thinking about different kinds of giftedness and its manifestations of primary school academically gifted learners is discussed here. The specific features analysis of personal characteristics of academically and intellectual gifted today’s children is performed. Sample: total 586 persons: teachers – 60, 240 primary school learners, 286 – learners’ parents. The following idea is proved: a child’s self-evaluation depends on parents’ opinion about their child and it conforms to parents’ expectations. It’s determined that the higher parents evaluate self-regulation level, the level of independence, the higher child’s indicators of self-control and motivation for success are. We have made conclusions that primary schoolchildren can try to draw attention to themselves in order to get acceptance and approval by grown-ups and peers, they also have excessive anxiety level connected with school fears: control and the assessment of knowledge. Authorial express diagnostics was used to study teachers’ and parents’ ideas about different kinds of child’s giftedness and its manifestation. It turned out that at the beginning of studies primary school teachers are less aware of potential giftedness of their children: behavioral and artistic. The spectrum of views about grown-ups’ giftedness broadens to the end of primary school, especially it concerns motivational criteria. The focus group method to estimate the formation level of teachers’ thinking components when working with gifted learners was used. It is found that not only at primary school but also at secondary and high school we can see insufficient representation and formation of teachers knowledge about their work with gifted learners and it is the perspective for further work. It is shown that regular work with teachers stimulates the transformation of professional thinking characteristics from situational up to supra-situational: prediction, reflexivity, the depth and broadness of analysis, self-development orientation are changed.