Teachers of Gifted Girls: Are There Differences in Classroom Management?

Abstract

Ninety elementary school teachers responded to descriptions of gifted students by ranking the appropriateness of classroom actions categorized as “social relationship” or “academic challenge” interventions. The purpose of the study was to discover differences in classroom management of gifted girls, as compared to gifted boys or students not identified by sex on the stimulus material. Students were also described as either “conformist” or “assertive” behavior types. The research design was a 3 × 2 factorial analysis of variance with repeated measures on the second factor. Results indicated significantly more “social relationship” interventions for assertive than conformist gifted and significantly more “academic challenge” interventions for conformist than assertive gifted. No significant differences in classroom management of gifted girls appeared. Possible explanations include absence of sex stereotyping of the gifted and salience of giftedness, rather than sex, on the instrument used. Observational studies are proposed as measures of more subtle aspects of classroom management and possible divergence of written responses from actual behavior.