Childhood Giftedness, Adolescent Agency

Abstract

Although considerable research has addressed development from childhood giftedness to adult excellence, subjective perceptions of this development by gifted individuals themselves have remained largely unexplored. This multiple case study examined the ways in which young adults, who in the past had been identified as gifted, made sense of their giftedness based on cues obtained from their social environment and the impact of this sensemaking on their development. Some participants made sense of their giftedness in a way that prevented them from developing a sense of agency in their education: Their sensemaking was based on social control or, conversely, on effortless learning and easy victories they experienced in childhood. The participants who showed the highest level of achievement and motivation in early adulthood perceived themselves as "agents of their learning" and made sense of their extraordinary outcomes as resulting from effortful, proper, and self-directed practice. Our findings indicate that a sense of agency is critical to maintaining gifted-level achievement through adolescence. We have identified some of the social environment factors that can diminish or enhance that sense of agency in high-achieving children.

Systemic Approach to the Development of Reading Literacy: Family Resources, School Grades, and Reading Motivation in Fourth-Grade Pupils

“…To understand the complexity of these interactions between developing individuals and their social surroundings, we consider a "systemic" perspective that conceptualizes learning development as a context-dependent and interdependent process of adaptation of the learner and his or her outcomes, learning behavior and motivation to the learning environment, which determines the future learning opportunities of the learner (Ziegler and Phillipson, 2012;Ziegler et al, 2014;Mudrak and Zabrodska, 2015;Mudrak et al, 2019b). From this point of view, crucial moments in the development of competence stem from the ways in which these cognitive, behavioral, motivational, and environmental components of the developmental systems interact, how these interactions change the system as a whole, and how they stabilize or disrupt the system in learning pathways toward further development (Mudrak and Zabrodska, 2015;Mudrak et al, 2019b).…”

“…However, while the development of learning potential has been shown to be related to family influences (Bloom, 1985;Monks and Mason, 1993;Jessurun et al, 2016), less focus has been placed on the specific processes that take place between the concrete attributes of learning individuals and their family environment. To mitigate this gap in the literature, we strive to understand the ways in which the available developmental resources (Bakker and Demerouti, 2014;Mudrak and Zabrodska, 2015;Vladut et al, 2015; are "functional in achieving goals or stimulating personal growth" (Bakker and Demerouti, 2014, p. 38) and, in this way, contribute to the development of learning-specific motivational characteristics and manifested learning outcomes.…”

“…In this way, we may perceive school grades as an important means through which students can manifest their learning outcomes. School grades are considered evidence of good academic potential throughout childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, with a substantial impact on students' developmental resources, support, opportunities, and motivation (Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2007;Mudrak, 2011;Mudrak and Zabrodska, 2015;Sternberg, 2015).…”

Conflicts between high level academic success and creativity

“…Samples are usually very small, such as the unscientific sample of 9 students aged 17-23 collected by "internet searches and word of mouth" (Mudrak & Zabrodska, 2015). Each was interviewed in an office with minimal reference to environmental influences.…”

Gifted Adolescent Wellbeing: An Australian Case Study

“…Three case studies by Mudrak and Zabrodska (2015) used NEH to explore gifted adolescent learning, postulating the influence of social-environmental factors on individual autonomy and progress. Their studies documented gifted students who relied on effortless ease of learning in junior-school, failing to progress in secondary school.…”