Middle School Students’ Beliefs About Intelligence and Giftedness

Abstract

This study investigated middle school students' beliefs about intelligence and differences in the development of intelligence across ages, beliefs about giftedness and the development of giftedness, and how beliefs about intelligence and giftedness were related. A total of 52 eighth graders from two regular classes (n = 36) and one gifted class (n = 16) at a public school in the U.S. Midwest completed a survey and a vignettes task. Results revealed that participants associated intelligence with school and non-school intelligence, knowledge and learning, smartness, and motivation. They associated academic giftedness with intelligence, motivation, school achievement, and high ability. Participants were more certain young children could grow intelligence. Most participants endorsed incremental views of intelligence and giftedness. This was more evident in students holding an incremental belief about intelligence, and in non-gifted students. Gifted participants and those holding an incremental belief about intelligence placed more value on motivation and learning. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. Keywords perceptions of intelligence, perceptions of giftedness, beliefs about the development of intelligence, beliefs about the development of giftedness Students' beliefs about intelligence are of particular interest to researchers and educators because these beliefs impact students' achievement motivation (Dweck, 1986;

Examining Students’ Perceptions of Giftedness, Need for Cognition, and Goal Orientations

“…Given that gifted students do perceive giftedness as more fixed than intelligence, we reiterate messages from previous literature (Makel et al, 2015;Tan et al, 2019) that educators and practitioners should consider the importance of communicating a developmental view of giftedness in educational settings. Our findings indicated that students associated giftedness with being "smart" and "different" and reveal how students perceive giftedness as a general rather than specific view of ability.…”

“…Overall, their study challenged the assumption that “implicit beliefs about giftedness and intelligence are synonymous and that giftedness automatically and uniformly connotes fixedness” (p. 208). In Tan et al’s (2019) previously mentioned study, they also found that most participants (consisting of both identified and nonidentified gifted students) endorsed an incremental view of both intelligence and giftedness, though more of their participants held incremental views toward intelligence than giftedness. They also found that nonidentified gifted students had more incremental views of both intelligence and giftedness than gifted students.…”

“…However, other research has shown that secondary students identified as gifted compared to students not identified as gifted held more entity views of intelligence (van Bemmel, 2015). Additionally, Tan et al (2019), using a sample of 52, eighth-grade students (identified gifted and not identified as gifted), found that more students not identified as gifted (81%) believed their intelligence could grow compared to identified gifted students (50%). However, 50% of the identified gifted students believed intelligence could grow from learning and hard work compared to 42% of students not identified as gifted.…”

Presenting a Model of Self-handicapping Based on Time Perspective and Intelligence Beliefs mediated by Academic Self-efficacy in Students

“…People with incremental IQs, unlike people with innate IQ beliefs, work harder to achieve academic and non-academic achievement, use more appropriate or adaptive coping strategies, seek to improve their competencies and abilities, use less self-empowerment strategies, and fail. They see an opportunity for growth and development (Tan & et al, 2018).…”

Identificação por professores de alunos com dotação intelectual: construção de instrumento e evidências de validade de conteúdo

“…Embora entenda-se que esse tipo de AH/SD vem sendo valorizada desde os primeiros estudos na temática, ocasião em que tal fenômeno era compreendido como sinônimo exclusivo de alta inteligência, tal equívoco ainda se faz presente no senso comum (Tan et al, 2019). Identificada por meio de testes que avaliavam esse construto e, consequentemente, estimavam o quociente de inteligência (Sternberg & Kaufman, 2018), tal prática acabou por excluir muitos potenciais que não são adequadamente avaliados por esse tipo de instrumento, ou ainda pelas limitações das áreas em que estes avaliam.…”