üstün Zekal rencilerin Bak A s yla üstün Zeka Etiketinin rencilerin e itli Alg lar üzerindeki Etkileri (Effects of Gifted Label on Gifted Students' Perceptions)

Purpose and Significance: Labels function in education as means of delivering specialized services to identified students (Hickey & Toth, 1990) and the label “gifted” is widely used to describe advanced academic performance or cognitive development. The label gifted can affect both familial and peer relationships. It may also affect the child’s sense of self-worth both directly and through the response of others to the label. The related literature shows that the label “gifted” has been hypothesized to be perceived both positively and negatively by students, their parents and friends. Nevertheless, such a hypothesis has not been investigated sufficiently to draw certain conclusions. The purpose of the current study was to investigate possible positive and negative effects of gifted label. The study was distinct in terms of its methodology through which labeling effects were investigated both before and after students were labeled as gifted and comparisons were made with a control group. The following research questions were examined: 1.Do gifted students’ perceptions about themselves and about their parents’ and friends’ attitudes towards them differ from non-gifted students’ perceptions?2.Do gifted students’ perceptions of themselves before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?3.Do gifted students’ perceptions of their parents’ attitudes towards them before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?4.Do gifted students’ perceptions of their friends’ attitudes towards them before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?Method: Research participants consisted of 415 sixth-grade students (47.5% female and 52.5% male) who applied to the Education Programs for Talented Students (EPTS) at Anadolu University in Eskisehir in Turkey and who filled out the Gifted Label Effects-Scale (GLE-S) during their applications. The gifted group included 28 students who were identified to be gifted among the 415 students by the identification system of the EPTS. These students were accepted to the EPTS programs. Because two of them dropped out the program before the posttest was administered, the research group included 26 gifted students. The comparative group included 387 non-labeled students who applied to the EPTS but not identified to be gifted. Of the gifted sample 23.1% was female and 76.9% were male. As a posttest the GLE-S was administered to the gifted students after they attended the EPTS programs