A comparative study of gifted and non-gifted middle-school students in terms of classroom environment and attitudes within a large urban school district

Abstract

The What Is Happening In this Class? and Students' Adaptive Learning Engagement in Science questionnaires investigated differences between gifted and non-gifted middle-school students' perceptions of classroom learning environment and attitudes. The sample consisted of 495 students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 in 31 classes from 10 different schools. Significant but small differences emerged for the learning environment scale of Involvement and the attitudinal scale of Self-Regulation. For the learning environment scale of Cooperation, both the sex effect and the giftedness-by-sex interaction were statistically significant. Correlational analyses revealed that each of the six learning environment scales of the WIHIC was related positively and significantly with each of the four attitudinal scales of the SALES.