The Journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
4. Rejection
This category only included 3 questions which were all positively worded and related to the
idea of acceptance of giftedness. Figure 4 illustrates the pre and post mean scores while Table 4
outlines the Wilcoxin signed rank test scores and the effect sizes for the individual items within this
category. All three items attracted mid level responses at both pre and post administrations and
although the differences were statistically significant for two of the statements, the effect sizes were
small to moderate. The main change in this group of questions related to teachers feeling their
authority threatened by gifted students (Item 25) but with the post score still below 4, there was still
a degree of ambivalence as illustrated by the following comments from reflective journals:
“I don’t know if threatened is the right word – I know that I felt a bit concerned when I had a Grade 2
student who was doing Yr 9 calculus on my prac this year – but I didn’t see it threatening my authority”
(Kayla, 2010).
“My mentor has a really gifted kid who can be a pain in pointing out errors etc but I don’t think she is a
threat – just a pain in the….” (Alec, 2009).
Figure 4: Pre & post results for items relating to rejection.
There was very little change in the item related to gifted individuals being rejected because
of envy, and this ambivalence was explained by a number of respondents in their reflective journal
entries:
“I couldn’t really answer this one with any certainty as I don’t fully believe that gifted people are
rejected” (Dan, 2010).
“I am still undecided about this one – I guess it is sometimes envy but so many gifted people aren’t
even recognized as gifted so it wouldn’t be for that reason only” (Wilma, 2009).
Table 4: Wilcoxin signed rank/ effect size results for rejection items.
Item z p Total N Ties R
19 -4.265 .000 660 116 .18
25 -7.982 .000 660 59 .33
31 -1.269 .205 662 125 .05
*r values in bold indicate a large effect size, while values in italics indicate a medium effect size.
5. Ability grouping
This category included 4 questions relating to the practice of ability grouping, 3 of which
were negatively framed. Figure 5 illustrates the pre and post mean scores while Table 5 outlines the
Wilcoxin signed rank test scores and the effect sizes for the individual items within this category. For
each statement within this category, the difference in responses in the post survey differed was
40 Gifted and Talented International – 26(1), August, 2011; and 26(2), December, 2011.