The Journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
On the grounds of the latter group of theories, a number of models for understanding and
educating the gifted have been proposed, which have stressed, among other factors, the role of
motivation in the manifestation of giftedness and in the education of the gifted. For example,
Sternberg (2005) has placed intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the centre of his model of the
development of abilities into competencies, and competencies into expertise. Renzulli (Reis &
Renzulli, 2010; Renzulli, 1978, 2002; Renzulli & Reis, 2010) regarded motivation (task commitment)
as a component of giftedness, partially overlapping with the other two components of the model,
namely, above average ability, and creativity. Francois Gagné viewed motivation and volition (needs,
interests, passions, values, resource allocation, adaptive strategies and effort) as catalysts for the
transformation of gifts into talents according to his Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent
(Gagné, 2004, 2005, 2009).
The Munich Model of Giftedness (Heller, Perleth, & Lim, 2005; Perleth, Sierwald, & Heller,
1993) considered achievement motivation as a non cognitive personality characteristic which
operates as one of the mediators between person-related talents and the performance areas of
expertise. Feldhusen (Feldhusen, 2005; Feldhusen & Hoover, 1986) has also stressed the importance
of motivation, self concept, and achievement goals for the nurturance and development of gifted
students’ capabilities. Gottfried and colleagues (A. E. Gottfried & Gottfried, 2004, 2009; A. W.
Gottfried, Cook, Gottfried, & Morris, 2005) described motivation not simply as a construct related to
giftedness, but they further proposed a conceptualization of motivation as an area of giftedness in
and of itself.
The area of student motivation has attracted the attention of theorists and researchers for a
long time and thus the body of research is enormous. Here, only a brief presentation of the literature
will take place, in order to be discussed in relation to the findings of the present study. Pintrich & De
Groot (1990) categorized student motivation under a model that proposes that there are three
motivational components which are linked to student learning: an expectancy component, a value
component and an affective component. In this article, only the first two components are going to be
discussed, due to the attention they have received by the literature concerned with gifted motivation.
The expectancy component of student motivation includes students’ beliefs about their
ability to perform a task. Constructs such as self-esteem, locus of control, outcome expectations,
even self concept are included in this component. The predominant construct, however, of this
component is self-efficacy, which is concerned with people’s beliefs in their capability to produce
given attainments (Bandura, 1997). According to Bandura (2006), perceived self-efficacy should be
distinguished from other similar constructs (Schunk & Pajares, 2005), although the distinction
between self-efficacy and self concept is relatively subtle (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003). In a review of the
literature regarding academic self-efficacy, Klassen & Usher (2010) concluded that students’ beliefs
about their academic capabilities powerfully predict a wide range of academic behaviors, and that
self-efficacy beliefs are related to the effort students will expend on an academic task or activity,
their perseverance in confronting obstacles, and their resilience in the face of adverse situations. In
gifted motivation, it has been demonstrated that IQ and other cognitive measures contribute to
higher self perception of abilities and self-efficacy of students (Pajares, 1996). Consequently, gifted
students have been found to exhibit higher self-efficacy in verbal and math self-efficacy and to feel
more challenged, compared with their non gifted peers (Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent, & Lavirée, 1993;
Pajares, 1996; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990) while non gifted students tended to overestimate
their confidence in their abilities compared with gifted students (Ewers & Wood, 1993; Pajares,
1996).
The value component includes students’ goals and beliefs about the importance and interest
of the task. This component encompasses several related constructs concerning goal achievement
that have extensively been studied in the past forty years, after behaviorist approaches to motivation
were proven to be insufficient to fully explain human motivation. In the early 70’s the concept of
intrinsic motivation was introduced; since then it has been developed into a comprehensive theory of
motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b). The achievement goal construct was
introduced by Dweck and her colleagues (Diener & Dweck, 1980; Dweck & Elliott, 1983) in an effort
to explain why children of equal ability responded differently to failure: Some appeared helpless
while, others, displayed an adaptive, mastery response pattern. Dweck and Leggett (1988) described
two types of goals in volitional behavior: performance goals, in which the purpose of behavior is to
demonstrate one’s competence (or avoid demonstrating one’s incompetence), and learning goals, in
which the purpose of behavior is to develop one’s competence and task mastery. Nicholls (1984)
described achievement motivation under the terms ego involvement and task involvement. Ego
132 Gifted and Talented International – 26(1), August, 2011; and 26(2), December, 2011.