Examining the Most and Least Changeable Elements of the Social Representation of Giftedness

Josué Pérez, Leire Aperribai, Lorea Cortabarría and Africa Borges
Additional contact information
Josué Pérez: Department of Clinical Psychology, Psychobiology and Methodology, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
Leire Aperribai: Department of Psychology, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
Lorea Cortabarría: Department of Education, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
Africa Borges: Department of Clinical Psychology, Psychobiology and Methodology, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 13, 1-14

Abstract: Giftedness and high abilities have been broadly defined and this fact has led to many problems related to the detection and educational response given to gifted or highly able pupils due to the stereotyped social representations of the concepts. However, the main misconceptions might be changed with the aim of solving the mentioned problems. For this purpose, the aims of this study are to explore the main misconceptions of giftedness and to identify which among them seem to be most and least changeable. A questionnaire with the most extended myths and stereotypes about giftedness was applied in a sample of 824 participants. The items’ analyses were carried out by first studying item-test discrimination indices (test classical theory), and secondly, the a and b parameters of items (item response theory). The results show that there are items that would be easily changeable (9 items) and others less malleable (4 items). Therefore, it might be concluded that the social representation of giftedness would have peripheral elements that could be changed, while there would be less malleable central elements. Thus, different strategies to foster the change of the social representation of giftedness should be considered, which will have social and educational implications.

Keywords: change; elements; giftedness; social representation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/13/5361/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/13/5361/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:13:p:5361-:d:379670

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().