Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. A common question asked by parents of high-performing children is whether their child is gifted or "just" bright.
They recognize that their child seems to be more advanced than other kids the same age. They may have first noticed that their child reached many developmental milestones early. Or they see that their child has taught themself to read at age three or is able to multiply double-digit numbers at age five. In school, a high achiever would be a student who gets high marks and good grades. They do the work that is required and do it well.
They tend to be well-organized, with good time-management skills, which is why they turn in neat and tidy work on time. They also tend to be well-behaved, adjusting well to the classroom environment and participating enthusiastically in classroom discussions.
On the other hand, being gifted denotes intellectual ability, a trait that may or may not translate into high academic performance. Giftedness also called talented and gifted or TAG is primarily determined through testing, which is often conducted by school districts.
There are a variety of ability areas that may be assessed, including general intellect, creativity, leadership abilities, and specific subjects, such as math. Testing for giftedness may also be done privately, using a variety of methods or tests. Standards of what constitutes giftedness are defined on a state and local level using a variety of tests to measure ability. While high achievers may also be gifted, some high achieving students may not technically be considered gifted.
Additionally, some gifted students may not do well in school for a variety of reasons. As noted above, high achievers are not necessarily gifted, although some high achievers are also gifted. High achievers are often externally motivated by the desire to get good grades or even high praise. They also can often be motivated by stickers with smiley faces. However, high achievement is not a sign of giftedness. In fact, some gifted children are underachievers.
Beyond simply being smart, studies show that many traits, such as conscientiousness and openness, impact how well kids perform at school. High achievers may need an educational environment beyond what is offered in the average classroom, but that is not necessarily the same environment required by gifted kids to be successful. Confused yet? Don't be. These processes are the results of the joint action of mental functions such as emotion, motivation, behavior, cognitive function, and reflective ability.
Thus, if we only focus on one particular function, we cannot get a comprehensive and dynamic picture in authentic settings. Second, identity integrates multiple factors such as history, culture, and social background. It is the term Erikson adopted, in his theory of identity development, to reflect what seems possible for oneself in a particular historical, cultural, and sociological time period. Identity exists and develops progressively and clearly in the constructive process balancing continuity and novelty, in the dialectic relationship between conformity and uniqueness, and in the continuous interaction with others.
Undoubtedly, the causes underlying IPHAS are multiple, given the ways in which the social, historical, and cultural factors interact with individuals. Furthermore, the treatment of identity as an integrative concept facilitates further intervention by focusing on the factors related to sociocultural and historical backgrounds.
Such an approach assists in fundamentally modulating the regulative processes of identity. Therefore, the analysis and exploration of identities within the social interactional framework can give rise to an intervention that is appropriate to its specific social settings. He posited that:. This suggests that identity is an integrated process of understanding and regulating the self, embodied in the maintenance of self-sameness and meaning in the immediate interaction with significant others.
In recent years, researchers have also started to pay more attention to the dynamic regulation process of identity from a micro-dynamic perspective Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al. In this research, we will utilize the process-oriented concept of self-identity and analyze self-identity based on the framework of cultural psychology, which brings the symbolically regulated nature of mental activity to the forefront.
Within this framework, psychological process is regulated through semiotic mediation Valsiner, , through which a person perceives and attributes values and meanings to their experiences Nogueira, Signs represent objects and yet take on new forms and meanings specific to the interpreter beyond the objects represented.
Furthermore, signs do not occur in isolation; rather, they are co-constructed and constrained within social interactions. Generalization is one of the characteristics of the sign to create an abstracted reflection upon the initial context Valsiner, Human sense making is regulated through signs that are hierarchically structured Valsiner, In the hierarchical structure of a personal sign mediation system, self-identity corresponds with the signs on the highest level, overgeneralized, and speechless, while also deeply embedded into our functioning and sense making, powerfully guiding mental reactions in specific contexts.
Generalization and contextualization are the reciprocal processes enabling the construction and reconstruction of self-identity, as well as being the regulative functions of self-identity. In specific activities, if internal reflective dialogues occur within an individual, it means that distinct regulative activities of self-identity are set in motion. According to Bakhtin Circle, the meaning and sense production process are social and ideological, dialogical, and multi-voiced. The meaning of an experience is produced in relation to multiple voices, internalizing different social positions and meanings Nogueira, Signs within a regulative process are always future oriented, both in their immediate impact turning the next immediate future into a new present and in their general orientation toward encountering similar situations in indeterminate future moments Valsiner, The identity process can be explained by social relations with social others and by a temporal connection linking the past, present, and future, both of which dialogically affect and constitute subjectivity.
Therefore, in analyzing self-identity, we need to pay attention to the internal dialogue process and bring self-identity from the background to the foreground. Identity is distributed among persons, artifacts, activities, and settings and facilitates reflection over the emotional and cognitive processes of self-defining Poole, From those specific activities, we expect to be able to perceive the actual regulation process of the abstract concept of self-identity, especially in relation to those activities that could arouse strong emotions.
Thus, the emotional experience is a prism through which the influence of the environment on a child is refracted and through which we can see how a child becomes aware of, interprets, and emotionally relates to a certain event. In the present research, we conduct a case study of typical students with IPHAS through the framework of an idiographic approach.
The two are not antithetical or incompatible, however, but mutually inclusive and together strive toward generalized knowledge Salvatore and Valsiner, Between the two approaches, idiographic research is often criticized for being inadequate in obtaining generalized knowledge, but, in fact, its goal is to pursue nomothetic knowledge through the singularity of the psychological and social phenomena.
The criticism is often due to the fact that assumptions regarding research objects and mental activities are distinctly different between idiographic and nomothetic approaches. Yet, psychological phenomena are non-ergodic and have their own idiosyncrasies. Idiographic approach conceives of mental activities as a self-organizing open system Thelen and Smith, The occurrence of psychological phenomena does not follow simple causal relationships, but, rather, connections of relationships in a complex system.
To build a local model of particular, contingent phenomena, researchers need to use abductive generalization to find general rules in complex phenomena. Different from inductive generalization in the nomothetic approach, the idiographic process is conducted through abductive logic, which is aimed at promoting the creation of new knowledge through the generalization of the model of functioning of the single case De Luca Picione, In the abductive logic, theory and evidence are circularly bonded within an open-ended cycle.
Unlike the inductive inference, abduction does not pursue the general rule namely, the regularities through the generalization of redundancies ; rather, it uses the general rule i. Thus, the idiographic approach is fundamentally open to variability, and it pays attention to deviations from the norm, transformation of phenomena over time, and dynamic and systemic aspects of phenomena De Luca Picione, In particular, we analyze typical students susceptible to the inhibition phenomenon and explore the causes underlying this phenomenon.
Moreover, the study further establishes a theory that better explains the phenomenon. The current study also constitutes a departure from further interventional research for students exhibiting the inhibition phenomenon.
In future work based on the current research, the ultimate goal is to enable these students to achieve higher accomplishment in schoolwork as well as better mental health and overall wellbeing. As noted above, the research adopts an idiographic approach. In doing so, it focuses on contingent and unique individual systematic cases and their subjective experience in order to build general understanding from a single phenomenon.
The in-depth discussion on IPHAS is approached through multiple perspectives—from micro to macro, from short to long periods of time, and from the participants to their interactions with culture and society. Specifically, two research questions will be explored in the research:. What are the characteristics of the self-identity of high-achieving students who are susceptible to this inhibition phenomenon?
In this research, we focused on an activity in which inhibitive behaviors would be present to a greater degree. The activity centered on telling stories based on pictures provided. Four images were used from prior research Wu et al.
These particular images were chosen because their themes would be familiar to the students and so would likely elicit stories more easily. Three students formed one group; one was a student with high scores, while the other two students had achieved medium and low grades, respectively.
All three students in each group were asked to raise their hands to tell a story based on each of the pictures. Please tell stories about the four pictures shown. There is no right or wrong, no good or bad about the stories.
Just tell the story. In this activity, in total, 22 groups of students were tested, with each group consisting of one high-achieving student and two students whose performances ranged from medium to low grades. This way of grouping gave us 22 high-achieving focal students in total. We measured the performance of the students by considering two factors: 1 reaction time and 2 the quality of story content.
For the latter, story content was evaluated based on the structure of the story with reference to a story-telling scoring system Teglasi, After the analysis of the data, we derived four categories of high-achieving students based on the length of reaction time and the degree of the structure of story:.
To gain an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of these kinds of students, the two most typical students from category A were chosen to be the focus of the study. Yet, in our designed story-telling activities, their performances showed a sharp contrast to their high academic performances. They felt nervous and found it difficult to be involved in the activities. K was the class deputy in charge of studies, and J was the class monitor.
They were from different classes and were both ranked at the top of their respective classes in the recent midterm and final exams. This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Guidelines of Academic Ethics, Shanghai Normal University. The activity was recorded with permission from the teachers, parents, and students.
It lasted about 60 min, with 30 min for each group. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by two researchers following completion of the activity. The interviews consisted of two sections: the first focused on the individual experiences in the activity, while the second was an exploratory section. The second, exploratory section was divided into three subsections. Questions in this part included reference to the happiest and the most unhappy thing about school and their views on the examination.
Self-evaluation and reflection come into existence when individuals establish relations and carry out interactions with others. Thus, this part of interview aimed to understand self-definition from different perspectives. The third part investigated what kind of person they wanted to and not to be the most. The intention here was to explore their future-oriented possible selves, desirable and undesirable Markus and Nurius, Each student was interviewed for about 15 min, and the interviews were audio-recorded.
To make up for such a limitation of the interview data, we conducted sentence completion tests. In the sentence completion test, three questions were featured, as follows:. Xiao Ming spent a lot of time trying to solve a very difficult question, but he failed.
Xiao Ming raised his hand to answer a question but gave the wrong answer. The sentence completion test was conducted in the form of dialogue. Specifically, the interviewer uttered the first half of the sentence, which describes a situation, and the participants were then asked to finish the sentence as quickly as they could. This part was tape-recorded as well.
Following the aim of the research, we adapted analytical methods from Jordan and Henderson and Heath et al. Analytic foci were selected by identifying fragments of video with meaningful events. The data included two parts. The second part was a general discussion of daily school life. The sentence completion test was also used as supplementary material to gain an insight into how participants construct meaning. Three researchers were involved in above processes of analyses. They watched the videos, discussed them with one another, and arrived at the research results that are presented in the next section.
The task of making up stories about pictures was unfamiliar to all students, but both J and K had top scores in their classes and their Chinese linguistic abilities—including expression ability—were recognized by their teachers, so the task should not have been difficult for them. However, when we look at the whole activity, these two students did not perform well. Four pictures were shown in turn. J only raised her hand for the last two pictures, and K only told a story about the last picture.
Their stories were simple, comprising one to three sentences. By contrast, students with average academic performance told one to two stories about each picture, with every story containing more than two sentences.
There was also some common behavior between the two students when each picture was shown, as follows:. In the first round, they were mainly excited and involved. When they saw the first picture, they showed a high degree of arousal, looked serious, frowned, and sometimes bit their lips and pens.
When the others raised their hands, they told stories to themselves in a low voice with more concentration but never raised their hands. When the experimenter asked if anyone wanted to tell a story, they did not answer but bit their lips and fingers more. In the second round, they were mainly conflicted and nervous. In contrast to their state of involvement in the first round, the two participants were not as focused and observed the facial expression of their peers and the experimenter frequently.
When others raised their hands several times, both of them showed anxiety and regret. When the experimenter asked if anyone wanted to answer, they both looked at the experimenter and looked like they wanted to but were afraid to respond.
You can raise your hand when the story comes into your mind. In the third round, there was either a breakthrough or a state of helplessness. When the third picture was shown, their anxiety became more obvious.
J bit her lips all the time and blushed. K wiggled back and forth in his seat. How can you still have [stories to tell]? Then it begins to rain heavily, and they all leave. K still did not raise his hand once during the whole section. When experimenter gave a sign of changing the picture, K bent over and buried his face in his hands.
In the fourth round, they became involved and competitive. When the last picture was shown, their involvement improved. K changed his posture from leaning back against the seat to leaning forward and looking at the picture. When another classmate told a story, he started to prepare. He kept observing the experimenter, raised his elbow, and seemed to want to raise his hand but still hesitated. Just tell us. Because of the experience in the third round, J was not as hesitant as K was, and she raised her hand to tell a story after other classmates finished.
By comparison, L was the second to raise his hand in the group when the first two pictures were presented, and the first to raise a hand when the third and fourth pictures were presented. The four stories had an average length of The characters were depicted with personality and characteristics, and the content of the story had certain meanings. Let us take the third picture as an example. After seeing the picture, L thought for about 40 s before raising his hand, and replied:.
Xuanxuan and Mingming are a pair of brothers. One day, the two brothers got up and looked for food. When their mother came back, she found that there were glass pieces that she liked on the ground, and asked them who did it. He went out in the sunset to think about who exactly was wrong.
Then he thought that, being the older brother, he should take on the responsibility, so he went back and told his mother that he did it. The mother beat him Mingming [and] Xuanxuan saw it and thought Mingming was very pitiful. He then took the initiative to admit the mistakes, and they became good brothers again. In the first round of storytelling activity, L also started with excitement, and soon was involved in the process of creating a story, staring at the picture with his hand holding his chin.
When another student next to him first raised their hand, he made no obvious movements, but, after the classmate finished speaking, he raised his hand to tell the story. The second story was created in a similar manner to the first. For the third picture, L was the first to raise his hand and told the story we have quoted above.
After the fourth picture was presented, L reacted in a shorter time than for the third one and raised his hand high, unlike in the previous three rounds, when his hand was placed on the table. He was notably more excited and dedicated. He stayed highly involved during the process, and the story quality was relatively high.
First, the activity was regarded as a learning or examination task. R: Why do you think it is interesting? K: Our study can be improved through an exam like it. For students susceptible to inhibition, the fun of the activity was reflected in whether they could learn from it. If it was helpful in gaining knowledge or in improving their scores, it was an interesting activity.
It seems evident that students benefit from spending their lessons learning, rather than, for instance, watching their teacher trying to keep order in the classroom. Disciplinary issues or administrative tasks are usually the main time sucks, and in fact, the more disruptive a classroom is, the more likely it is to have lower-achieving students, which in turn leads to more time spent on other tasks such as keeping order or administration. In order to maximise the class time spent on teaching and learning, teachers and school leaders could find alternative ways of dealing with administrative tasks and novel ways to improve relationships with students who are more likely to disturb classes.
An interesting finding that may also be felt among teachers but perhaps forgotten by education authorities is that the more satisfied teachers are with their work environment, the better students tend to perform in school. School leaders and educational authorities could take advantage of this by reviewing working conditions — in consultation with teachers — in order to identify the areas that need to be improved.
Notably, school leaders can foster collaboration among teachers, grant teachers more autonomy over their work as well as involve them in school decision making. The data we collected indicate that as the average concentration of academically gifted students in the classroom increases, students tend to perform better.
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