Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Children with social disabilities -- United States -- Psychology; Gifted children -- United States -- Identification; Resilience (Personality trait) in children; Head Start programs -- United States; United States; Academic theses; Field guides;

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between characteristics of giftedness and resiliency in preschool children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The literature suggests that giftedness and resiliency may be related. For example, there appears to be considerable similarity between the traits identified as characteristics of giftedness and those traits identified as characteristic of resiliency. However, only limited research has been conducted directly examining similarity between of giftedness and resiliency. In the current study, 54 children attending Head Start programs were rated by their teachers on a measure of resiliency, the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), and a measure of giftedness, the Gifted Evaluation Scale (GES-2). The scores from the two scales were correlated to determine the relationship between the two constructs, giftedness and resiliency. Though no significant correlation was found between the composite scores on the two scales, a trend was indicated by correlations between the DECA subscales of attachment and initiative and the GES-2 subscales of creativity and intelligence. Implications for educators involve providing positive attachment experiences and initiative-based activities in early childhood programs for children to build the skills needed to be successful later in life.

Year of Submission

2004

Degree Name

Specialist in Education

Department

Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations

First Advisor

Melissa Heston

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2002

Object Description

1 PDF file (96 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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Education Commons

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