The Effects of Academic Giftedness and Gender on Developmental Trajectories of Hopelessness Among Students Living in Economically Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

Abstract

Although there is much research on adolescent poverty, research related to youth living in communities characterized by extreme poverty who are also identified as academically gifted is lacking. This study explores the development of hopelessness in these youths, compared with peers not identified as gifted, using data from the Mobile Youth and Poverty Study. Specifically, trajectories of hopelessness as a function of gifted status and gender are explored. Results indicate that boys experience greater feelings of hopelessness than girls, regardless of their gifted status, and students identified as gifted have lower levels of hopelessness than their peers not identified as gifted. These latter differences are particularly pronounced during early adolescence (age 10 years) but decline over time and largely disappear by later adolescence (age 18 years). Results suggest that boys may be particularly vulnerable to declining effects of gifted classification as a protector against hopelessness across age and that disadvantaged students who are identified as gifted may benefit from gifted programs that continue at an intense level through their high school years.

Meninas negras em programas para educação de superdotados. Uma revisão de literatura

“…Não encontramos nenhuma publicação que incluía essa terminologia em português ou espanhol. Considerando as regiões geográficas, ou seja as localidades mundiais em que os artigos foram produzidos, apenas três foram escritos fora dos EUA, dois na África do Sul (Bolland et al, 2019;Maree et al, 2001) e um no Canadá (Leroux, 1994).…”

Connecting QuantCrit to Gifted Education Research: An Introduction

“…Operating through a lens that race and racism are ingrained in our society, the lack of race/ethnicity discussion beyond demographic information is troubling and in ways, display how Whiteness is the standard and continually given priority in gifted education. Tenet 2 was exemplified well in Bolland et al (2019) where connections between poverty and racism were mentioned early on to tie into how these experiences would affect students' affective and psychosocial behaviors. Through this example, researchers created a context that highlights the systemic issues that are more than likely going to affect the educational experiences of multiple student populations.…”

The social and emotional world of gifted students: Moving beyond the label

“…A comparative scholarship following that study agrees. Bolland, Besnoy, Tomek, and Bolland (2019) studied hopelessness among low‐income gifted students and found gifted identification to be predictive of lower levels, and another meta‐analysis by Francis et al (2016) framed results surrounding depression in a meta‐analysis of multiple studies, finding that gifted students, in general, were less prone to anxiety and depression.…”