Abstract
Students who have high abilities demand educational responses, both inside and outside of the classroom. The best type of educational strategy depends on the characteristics of the students, the school, the educational system, and the country. For this reason, the level of attention paid to high-ability students can vary across nations. To guarantee the efficacy of programs that are implemented both inside and outside of school, it is essential to offer to these students the support that they need. The students' parents are a fundamental component of this scenario. This study evaluates the educational support provided to students with high abilities from a parental perspective. This study's aim is to evaluate the opinions that parents in several countries hold about the educational responses to gifted students, as well as to compare the types of strategies implemented in these countries' respective educational systems. Parents of students with high abilities completed an ad hoc online questionnaire that was designed to identify the types of educational responses, the students' participation in enrichment programs (inside and outside of school), the parents' level of satisfaction with these programs, and any difficulties or problems that occurred. A mixed methodology was used, with both quantitative and qualitative survey questions. ALCESTE software was used to analyze the open-ended (qualitative) questions. This research, which was directed by the Network of Research, Intervention and Evaluation in High Intellectual Abilities, focused on three countries: Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Descriptive analysis were carried out for analyzing the questions related with the educational support and demographic information. Qualitative analysis were used to analyze open-ended questions. The results provide evidence on which types of educational responses are being implemented in those countries, how they are being used, and whether they offer appropriate support for the needs of high-ability students.
Highlights
Students with high intellectual abilities constitute a highly heterogeneous group, which is why there is no consensus about the characteristics that define them (López Andrada et al, 2000; Colangelo and Davis, 2003; Pérez, 2006; Matthews and Yun Dai, 2014)
In response to the first question, the parents mostly consider that these students should receive a specific educational response, since only 4 of the 244 interviewees (1.6% of the total) disagree
Once the parents’ opinions on the educational response that their children of high abilities have been analyzed, it was asked if their children had received an educational response according to their needs
Summary
Students with high intellectual abilities constitute a highly heterogeneous group, which is why there is no consensus about the characteristics that define them (López Andrada et al, 2000; Colangelo and Davis, 2003; Pérez, 2006; Matthews and Yun Dai, 2014). These students’ cognitive functioning differs from that of their normative peer (Sastre-Riba and Domenech, 1999; Sastre-Riba, 2008). Researchers have confirmed that students with high intellectual abilities have cognitive activity that is characterized by high learning speed, good capacity for (and flexibility in) understanding and solving complex problems, high efficiency at generating new strategies to solve each problem, and intellectual precocity (Sastre-Riba and Domenech, 1999; Cross and Coleman, 2005; Van Tassel-Baska, 2013; Verche et al, 2018). Researchers have described the characteristics of each of these strategies in depth (e.g., Colangelo and Davis, 2003; Colangelo and Assouline, 2009; Subotnik et al, 2011; Tourón, 2012; Elices et al, 2013)
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