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This study focuses on the examination of Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles in predicting positive and negative perfectionism among academically gifted students. Through cross-sectional random sampling procedures, 448 form four students (16 years old) involved particularly those who scored straight A's in Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR). The participants responded to three related instruments, comprises of the International Personality Item Pool, Parental Authority Questionnaire, and Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. The study utilized K-Mean cluster analysis to cluster the perfectionism of the students.Stepwise multiple regressions used to determine the role of Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles in predicting positive and negative perfectionism. The findings showed 259 (57.8%), 136 (30.4%), and 53 (11.8%) students were clustered to dysfunctional/neurotic perfectionistic, healthy/normal perfectionistic, and non-perfectionistic, respectively. The results of two separate stepwise multiple regression analyses found that positive perfectionism was significantly predicted by several factors including paternal authoritative style, openness to experiences, maternal authoritative style, and conscientiousness. On the other hand, negative perfectionism was significantly predicted by maternal authoritarian style, neuroticism, and paternal authoritarian style. As predicted, permissive parenting style showed no contribution in predicting positive and negative perfectionism. Implications, limitations, and recommendation of the study are addressed briefly in this research. In fact, this is one of the first empirical studies of perfectionism relating to Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles among academically gifted students in Malaysia.

This study was conducted to identify the overexcitabilities profile of gifted students. The Dabrowski's concept of overexcitabilities is the heightened intensity and sensitivity displayed in the gifted students' behaviours when responding to the stimuli in the environment. These characteristics give a negative impression that these students have behaviour or disciplinary problems. Dabrowski had identified five domains of overexcitabilities which are psychomotor, sensual, imagination, intellectual and emotional. The presence of overexcitabilities in gifted students is measured by using the Self-Assessment Overexcitabilities instrument. The findings showed that 88% of the gifted students have at least one high level of overexcitabilies. The findings also identified four profiles of gifted students' overexcitabilities which displayed very distinct level of intensities across the five domains. The profiles' characteristics are (i) Profile 1 -high imagination; (ii) Profile 2 -all domains are high; (iii) Profile 3 -high psychomotor, (iv) Profile 4 -all domains are low. It also showed that not all gifted students have high overexcitabilies as proven by Profile 4. It is concluded that, even though the gifted students have almost the same level of intelligence, but they have different characteristics of overexcitabilities.

Validity and reliability are crucial when conducting research to ensure the truthfulness of an instrument. This study investigated the measurement functioning of an instrument on students' awareness of space science. The instrument was administered to 206 secondary school students involved in the Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance π outreach program. Two experts evaluated the content validity of the instrument. Data were analyzed using the Winsteps 3.71.0.1 software to obtain the Rasch model analysis (RMA) on item reliability and persons' separation, item measure, item fit based on PTMEA CORR, polarity items, misfit items, unidimensionality, and a person-item map. The findings revealed that the items are valid, reliable, and appropriate to measure awareness of space science.

Students are the nation's asset or natural resources who need to be educated to achieve their optimal level of development. They need to be properly nurtured to allow holistic development in all domains namely; physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual. This is crucial for the building of a strong and respectful nation and its civilization. Teachers are entrusted to educate students. Educating is more than just mere teaching. It is necessary for teachers to possess good characters to be supportive and accommodative of their students' learning needs, and to nurture students' intra and interpersonal skills the crucial elements in developing gifts into talent as proposed by the Differentiated Model of Talent Development (DMGT). This paper discusses teachers' characteristics and the underlying character strengths. Character strengths are positive psychological ingredients, which influence thinking, feeling, and behaving. A qualitative survey was carried out via face book social network, to capture respondents' reflections on their teachers' characters that have affected them positively. The respondents were university students and graduates from many different fields of studies. They were from prestigious schools where only academically talented students were selected to enroll. They were invited to response to this posting; "Dear friends, please feed me with some data from your own reflection. What teachers' characters have affected you positively? Thank you for sharing". Thirty one people had responded to the posting. Their responses were analyzed to identify themes that described their teachers' characters, which had affected them positively. Three most frequent character strengths identified by the respondents were; wisdom and knowledge, humanity, and transcendence.