Counseling Gifted Clients and Their Families: Comparing Clients' and Counselors' Perspectives

Abstract

The literature on counseling the gifted comes mainly from an individual-and pathology-based approach with roots in clinical psychology. This study investigated the application of a systemic and resource-based approach with roots in a postmodern orientation to counseling for gifted families. Two sets of participants were interviewed: three counselors and three families who had recently completed counseling using a postmodern approach. A multiple case study was conducted, using constant comparison of the transcripts of interviews to develop themes describing the experience of participants in counseling. Readings of the transcripts produced categories of themes related to roles and goals of counseling. The themes indicated that counselors saw a process of negotiating expectations, while client family members felt that they received the type of service they expected when they began counseling. The findings suggest that clinicians may want to be overt in their theoretical orientation with clients and be aware of how they are meeting or not meeting the clients' expectations.

Affective Interventions for High-Ability Students From 1984-2015: A Review of Published Studies

“…The types of direct affective interventions were varied. They included workshop-style programs (Barnette, 1989; Kerr & Ghrist-Priebe, 1988; Kerr & Robinson Kurpius, 2004), programs with multiple components (Olszewski-Kubilius & Laubscher, 1996), guidance curricula (Ciechalski & Schmidt, 1995; Clark & Dixon, 1997; Cleary, Platten, & Nelson, 2008; Elmore & Zenus, 1994; Mofield, Chakraborti-Ghosh, 2010; Olshen & Matthews, 1987), small group discussions (Kerr, 1986; Peterson, 2013; Peterson & Lorimer, 2011, 2012) and individual and group counseling/consultations (Bourdeau & Thomas, 2002; Humes & Clark, 1989; Jackson & Moyle, 2009; Kerr, 1986). Meanwhile, the lengths of intervention of these different studies were also varied because some of them were full-day programs, while others took place over a longer period of time with shorter interventions each time (e.g., 22 min, 40 min).…”

“…Individual counseling/consulting studies. Although only three selected studies in this review related to individual counseling/consulting (Bourdeau & Thomas, 2002;Jackson & Moyle, 2009;Kerr, 1986), this type of study needs to be discussed separately because of the unique focus. Kerr's (1986) was a study focused more on participants' preference of types of individual counseling (i.e., nonstructured and structured individual counseling) instead of what was offered in the individual counseling.…”

“…They reported that after the consultation, a positive behavior changed and described these changes in a narrative way without quantitative data. Among them, Bourdeau and Thomas (2002) offered a good example that represents this effort to present what they did in individual counseling. Bourdeau and Thomas adapted the multiple-case study approach to study the dynamic between the families of the gifted clients and their counselors from both sides' perspectives.…”

Counseling the Gifted: Past, Present, and Future Directions

“…Specific studies have surveyed psychologists (Pfeiffer, ), parents (Yoo & Moon, ), and school personnel (Moon, Kelly, & Feldhusen, ) about what is needed in terms of service or future research. Qualitative studies and conceptual articles have been written by practitioners detailing their experiences working with gifted clients or families (Bourdeau & Thomas, ; Bratter, Sinsheimer, Kaufman, & Alter, ; Grobman, ), and there has been an increase in studies pertaining to misdiagnosis and assessment in working with the gifted (Amend & Peters, ). The literature has primarily emphasized suggested best practices that typically focused on children and adolescents (Assouline, Colangelo, & Heo, ) and models and approaches to counseling (Mendaglio, ).…”

Parents' Guidance Resources during the Identification Process for the Gifted and Talented Students at the Şanlıurfa BİLSEM

“…The "Guidance needs" section consisted of a total of 39 five-point Likert-type items with four sub-dimensions (Academic, Social, Psychological and Opportunities Provided by the Family), which was written on the basis of the relevant literature [6,10,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]33]. The option of the open-ended "other" was also added to the end of these items.…”