• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.519-542
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• 2008

The purpose of the present study was to examine the emotional characteristics related to gifted children's happiness, such as happiness index, optimism, psychological wellbeing, and school education happiness. For the study, 201 gifted students who were currently enrolled in gifted education centers, 124 potentially gifted students who were nominated by teachers for their scientific interests and high performances, and 141 general middle school students participated in the study. The results indicated that both the gifted and the potentially gifted students showed significantly higher emotional characteristics related to happiness compared to the general students. There was no significant difference between the gifted and the potentially gifted in the diverse aspects of happiness. Interestingly, significant interaction between gender and giftedness was found. Girls were happier when they were identified as the gifted, compared to the boys. Variables related to the happiness were also investigated, and the results indicated that the peer relationship and the family happiness were the most important variables that explained gifted children's happiness in general.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-155
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• 2009

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the effectiveness of a gifted education program. To analyse the effectiveness of an education program for the gifted affiliated with a university, the study carried out a quasi-experimental design to compare the 153 gifted students who enrolled in an education center for the gifted and the 131 potentially gifted students who were nominated by teachers for their high achievements and interests in science but without any education services for the gifted. These two groups of students were compared in the aspects of problem finding ability in science, motivation, self regulation, science-related attitudes, and science anxiety through the pre- and post-treatment settings. The results indicated that the gifted group showed a significant improvement in originality and elaboration of problem-finding ability, but the potentially gifted group showed significant decrease in most variables of problem finding. Related to motivation and self-regulated learning, gifted students showed an increase in cognitive strategy use and decrease in intrinsic value, but the potentially gifted students showed significant decreases in most variables related to motivation and self-regulation, except intrinsic value. Related to the scientific attitudes and science anxiety, there were no significant changes between pre- and post-tests in the gifted group, but significant decreases in most variables were found in the potentially gifted group. The results of paired t-test and Ancova indicate that significant differences between the gifted and the potentially gifted groups are mainly due to the significantly lowered performance in post tests in the potentially gifted group, rather than a significant increase in gifted group.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.679-701
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• 2014

As the validity issue of teacher nominations for the identification of gifted students has been raised recently, this study purports to test the validity of teacher nominations for selecting scientifically gifted students. As the criterion variables, domain specific traits such as science creative problem solving skills and science attitudes and domain general characteristics such as divergent thinking skills, creative attitudes, intrinsic motivation, and leadership were analyzed. Scientifically gifted students, potentially gifted students who had never been enrolled in gifted programs but were nominated as the scientifically gifted by teachers, and general class students participated in the study. The results of ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in all variables but originality factors of the TTCT and science creative problem solving skill test between gifted/nominated students and general class students; gifted/nominated students were significantly superior in these variables to general class students. The discriminant functions analysis yielded a discriminant function that significantly discriminated between gifted/nominated and general class students. Variables loaded on the discriminant function were science creative problem solving skills except for the originality subfactor, and science efficacy. These results imply that while teachers are likely to consider adaptation-oriented academic excellency related to logical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and science performance when nominating students, they may ignore the innovation-oriented property which is indicated as the fluency and originality factors of TTCT. Also, the criteria of teacher nominations are presumed to be congruent with the selection criteria of the gifted education program which pursued academic excellency as the educational goal. This suggests that with such criteria, high performing students in the science area can be sufficiently identified by teachers with no further identification procedures or/and tests.

• New Physics: Sae Mulli
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• v.68 no.12
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• pp.1338-1346
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the curriculum of a university-affiliated science gifted education center based on the core competencies and to suggest a direction for improving the education at the gifted education center. For this purpose, we set the 12 core competencies as follows: 6 cognitive competencies such as knowledge, creativity, scientific thinking ability, inquiry ability, problem solving ability and fusion ability, and 6 non-cognitive competencies such as task commitment, self-directed learning ability, motivation reinforcement and challenge, communication skills, collaboration ability and leadership. The curricula of the science gifted education centers reflect all the competencies, but some competencies are only potentially included in the contents of the programs. In this study, we present examples of education programs by each competences and suggest additional descriptions for the development of gifted education centers.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.509-541
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• 2014

There was a great need to consider a core competency-based approach as a new direction of the science education for gifted students according to the value and vision of the 21st century knowledge-based societies. Therefore we developed a core competency model of scientist and examined its validity as a prerequisite for a core competency-based education of science gifted students. In order to this, the survey was conducted after developing questionnaire through the theoretical review of the various resources such as paper, book, and newspaper articles and the qualitative analysis of the behavioral event interview, and then an exploratory factor analysis was performed to validate the factor structure based on the results of the survey. The results revealed that the core competency model with the 5 cluster units of competency and the 15 core competencies was potentially constituted. And the reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the core competency model were verified through the confirmatory factor analysis. The cognitive cluster consisted of 5 competencies and they were as follows: creative, comprehensive, exploratory, analytical, and conceptual thinking competency. The achievement-orientation cluster consisted of 3 competencies and they were as follows: initiative, preparation & problem solving, and strategic influence competency. The scientific attitude cluster consisted of 3 competencies and they were as follows: flexible thinking & attitude, passion for research, and views about science competency. The personal effectiveness cluster consisted of 2 competencies and they were as follows: diverse experiences and global attitude competency. Finally, the networking cluster consisted of 2 competencies and they were as follows: personal understanding and communication competency. Findings were expected to provide the basic data for developing programs and establishing strategies based on the core competency as well as introducing the core competency model of scientist to science education for gifted students effectively.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.57-81
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the quality of life of musically talented students as measured by their external experiences (e.g., activities, companions) and internal experiences (e.g., flow, emotion). The participants in this study were 33 musically talented students (10 males, 23 females) aged 13 to 19. Study data were collected for 7 consecutive days using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which employs a cellular-phone as a signaling device. The results were as follows: First, in response to the 1625 random signals, musically talented students reported that 40.9% of their time was spent on productive activities. An additional 33.4% of time was used for maintenance activities and the rest of their time was spent on leisure/social activities. Also, musically talented students reported that 48.5% of their time was spent alone. When they were alone, they spent a lot of time engaging in productive activities (44.3%). Second, in order to measure the flow of their life, two methods were used. One used a 4-channel flow model (i.e. apathy, boredom, flow, anxiety) and the other used 8 dimensions and conditions of the flow experience (i.e. concentration, self-consciousness disappears, action and awareness merge, distorted sense of time, freedom from worry about failure, clear goals, immediate feedback, balance between challenges and skills). According to the former, when engaged in music-related activities, musically talented students usually reported flow (54.0%), while they felt apathy (41.3%) for daily routines activities. According to the latter method, musically talented students experienced flow for most productive activities, while they experienced flow least for maintenance activities. Emotional variables of ESF are comprised of 10 semantic scales (i.e. happy-sad, strong-weak, active-passive, sociablelonely, proud-ashamed, involved-detached, excited-bored, clear-confused, relaxed-worried, cooperative-competitive). Musically talented students reported experiencing the most positive emotion for social activities and experiencing the most negative emotion for maintenance activities. Results of this study assert that musically talented students had to trade off immediate enjoyment for developing their special gifts. They could not afford as much time for socializing with friends, and they had to spend more time alone compared to their peers without such gifts. Consequently, they were found to deprive themselves of the spontaneous good times that teenagers usually thrive on. They were helped in this respect by their autotelic personality traits, especially their strong need for achievement and endurance. The downside, however, is that the moment-to-moment quality of their moods suffered. The argument concerning musically talented students applies for all adolescents. The choices that talented students must make between immediate gratification and long-term development, and between solitude and companionship, are the same choices every young person must make, regardless of her or his level of talent. All of us have gifts that are potentially useful and worthy of being appreciated. But to develop these latent talents we must cultivate them, and this takes time and the investment of mental energy. The lifestyle that musically talented students develop can show us some of the choices all of us must make in order to cultivate our gifts.