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An Analysis of the Peer Relationships of Gifted and Gifted-Creative Primary Students

The purpose of this study was to compare the peer relationships of highly gifted and highly gifted-highly creative primary students in a gifted classroom of a public school. The study was conducted using thirty-one highly gifted first, second, and third graders who had scores of 140 or better on the WISC-R, WPPSI, or Otis-Lennon.
At the beginning of the school year, the Creativity Assessment Packet was administered to the class. The top 20 percent scorers in the class (termed gifted-creative) and those who scored in the bottom 20 percent of the class (termed gifted) on the CAP were targeted for observation. In addition, a sociogram was administered to each student individually for the purpose of determining each child's social status. A bivariate correlation coefficient was employed to express the degree of any relationship between creativity scores and rankings on the class sociogram. Observational anecdotes were used in the discussion of the
sociometric results.
The following findings resulted from the study. The gifted-creative students, as a group, ranked higher on a class sociogram on measures of friendship and choice of academic work partners than did the gifted group. On sociometric measures of choice of creative work partners, there was no significant difference. During observations, the gifted students displayed approximately the same amount of positive verbal behaviors as the gifted-creative students. The gifted students did exhibit more isolated behavior, especially during academic tasks, than.did their gifted creative counterparts. The gifted-creative group displayed much more verbal and physical aggression than the gifted group.
This report concludes that in the gifted classroom under investigation, gifted-creative and gifted pupils differ in their peer relationships thus supporting findings documented in past research. However, information from the sociogram seemed to suggest that the gifted-creative students, as a group, achieved higher social status within this gifted classroom than the gifted students.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc331836
Date12 1900
CreatorsGreene, Debra Blatt
ContributorsBlack, Janet K., Kemerer, Frank R., Hammack, Barbara G., Seward, Rudy Ray
PublisherNorth Texas State University
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatv, 109 leaves, Text
RightsPublic, Greene, Debra Blatt, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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