Differential Descriptions of Gifted Learners

Abstract

Using a fluent self-report technique, the investigation identified the extent to which learners, teachers, and parents name and rank-order gifted-learner descriptors similarly. Certain descriptors were commonly named across subjects, and certain others emerged as most frequently named by subject group. Intergroup correlations, however, tended to discriminate between adult subjects and learner subjects where the former clustered around affective-interactive descriptors and the latter around academic descriptors. Reasons for the adult-learner clusters are posited, and questions about what the data might mean are posed.