Extending the Scholar Baller Model to Support and Cultivate the Development of Academically Gifted Black Male Student-Athletes

Professional athletes and entertainers are often identified as the source of emulation for young males, especially Black males. With far less romanticized career representations than those in the athletic arena, many Black families foster, knowingly and unknowingly, a polarized path to elusive goals of a professional athletic career. Explicitly focusing on academically gifted Black males who are also athletically talented, gifted education teachers have an opportunity to support and cultivate dual identity development complement both athletic and scholar identities, acknowledging the cultural significance sport and athletics play. This article seeks to provide gifted education teachers with a framework to fulfill these goals—the Scholar Baller Model. Through its integration into the curriculum, gifted education teachers can enrich the pre-college experiences of academically and athletically gifted Black males, resulting in more positive convergence of their academic and athletic identities that will, in turn, cultivate more positive educational outcomes and career options for collegiate-level Black athletes.

Social and personal identity of gifted primary schoolchildren

Education in a specialised class is considered as a social factor influencing the identity of intellectually and academically gifted primary school children. An analysis of the empirical results of the study of social and personal identity of intellectually and academically gifted third-formers studying in a specialised class is given. The identity of gifted pupils is multilevel, multicomponent, in terms of differentiation, it is ahead of the development of the identity of their peers. Most gifted children in a specialised class are satisfied with their identity. At the same time, the problems of environmental friendliness of differentiation of classes by the level of academic success are noted. Peers of gifted children attending the same school often have a negative identity, that is, negative self-perception.

Factors Related to Suicidal Cognitions of Academically Gifted Students in the Chinese Social–Cultural Context: An Exploratory Study

From the perspective of positive psychology, this study examined the variables in four domains of personal resources under the broaden-and-build theory concerning their relationships with suicidal cognition among academically gifted students. A total of 386 academically gifted secondary school students in China participated in the study. First, the descriptive analysis results indicated that the mean score of suicidal cognition was below average, but these students were experiencing sleep deprivation problem in their daily lives. Second, based on the broaden-and-build theory, correlational analysis results suggested that most of the variables from the four domains of resources were significantly related to suicidal cognition. Most important, regression results showed that cognitive and psychological resources appeared to be the most influential for suicidal cognition. Furthermore, parents should be alerted that, for academically gifted students, parental relationship (social resource) is important, as lack of such a positive relationship (i.e., parents’ alienation) showed strong negative effect on suicidal cognition of these students. This was the first study that used the framework of broaden-and-build theory to study and compare the predictive effects of resources on suicidal cognition of academically gifted secondary school students in the Chinese social and cultural contexts.