title: "Help! I am gifted"
title: the development of self-concept (self-theory) and self-esteem amongst
      gifted students in English secondary schools and the influence of school
      culture
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Zschaler, Andrea
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2019

description: How do students, who have been identified as gifted and talented,
      experience their time at secondary school? What elements of their
      school's culture help or hinder their personal and academic
      development?
      
      This longitudinal study focuses on the lives of five students in an
      English secondary school, who had been identified as gifted and talented,
      and on how they developed personally and academically during the 4 years I
      observed them. Their interviews tell a compelling story about what it
      meant for them to be labelled as gifted and what aspects of their
      schooling either helped or hindered their personal and academic
      development. One of the key findings of my research is that a Formal
      school culture, which is mainly concerned with examination grades and
      progress, seems to discourage students from being enthusiastic about
      learning and thus fully engaging in lessons. Further, this academic
      disengagement hindered some students to learn how to study independently
      and how to revise for tests and examinations effectively.
      
      Influenced by the work of Dweck (2000) this study explores how
      self-theories of
      
      gifted students develop in the setting of an English secondary school in
      connection with the school culture and how this influences their academic
      engagement. My research is based on a typology of school cultures
      developed by Hargreaves (1999) which embraces academic as well as
      social-emotional aspects of schooling thus complementing my research
      questions well. The study follows a mixed methods approach and includes
      data from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and informal
      observations. To track the educational journey of the students I used a
      visual tool called the Blobs which enabled me to illustrate changes in
      students' perceptions of their personal as well as academic situation
      in school.
      
      The main findings of this study centre around the difficulties some of the
      observed students had in developing a positive self-theory in respect to
      learning and academic engagement to be able to fulfil their academic
      potential. Also, students shed some light on what kind of learning
      environments they liked and what aspects of a Formal school culture seemed
      to hinder their personal but also academic development. Especially, a
      focus on grades only, as well as not very engaging and challenging lesson
      content on a regular basis, seemed to lead to a coasting approach to
      learning and to school, which slowed academic progress for some of the
      students. My data suggest that labelling some students in a school or
      class as gifted or talented can be counter-productive and in most cases
      did not have many positive connotations for the students observed. Rather,
      it seemed that on occasions it actually led to more struggles and negative
      experiences with peers as well as teachers.