The Impact of Grouping Gifted Students on Motivation

Abstract

Encouraging and facilitating learning for children is an important role for educators. How best to motivate children to learn is a critical question when educating gifted children? Motivation is that commitment to involvement with the learning process. A distinction can be made between goal orientations to achievement with a focus in this study on mastery goal orientation and performance goal orientation. This study considered whether mastery goal orientation was more prevalent when gifted pre-adolescent children (aged 10-12 years) in NSW schools, Australia, were grouped together in a selective class (experimental group) in contrast to children placed in non-selective class situations (comparison group). The results indicated that mastery goal orientation decreased significantly for all children over time but the magnitude of these decreases was similar across the two groups. In fact, for this age group all motivation was decreased over time for both the selective class groups and the non-selective class groups. Further research on the affective and motivational outcomes for gifted children and their learning is suggested. Pre-adolescent developmental influences are discussed.