Giftedness

In this article we present the story of a young,university-educatedwoman,who struggles with making,choices in her career and in her life. In th iscase reportwe,provide background,information on gifted people at work (what jobs and companies are appropriate for highly gifted, how to deal with interpersonalproblems, how to apply for a job, how to talk about the conditions in which you perform best) and how psychological processeslike irrational thoughts, the process of making choices and dealing with emotions work out in the highly gifted. Our conclusion is that learning to make choices can give gifted people the joy of living and the joy of working! Keyword: gifted adults,adults making choices,career counseling,u niversity-educated Authors Arnolda P. (Noks)Nauta is an occupational physician and organizational psychologist. Nauta helps professionals, such as physicians and psychologists, expand their expertise in th e field of gifted people. She writes articles, makes presentations an...

John Senior and Michael F. Shaughnessy have asked Hanna David 14 questions about her counseling work with gifted children, youths and families:
What prompted you – drove you initially to work with able children in a counselling setting?
1. How does your client group identify themselves to you?
2. Is it fair to suggest that sometimes it must be difficult to tell when you meet a family group?
3. as to who is the person requiring the counselling? Do you for example work with family groups as well as with individual children?
4. Is working through the many layers of emotional trauma and distress  very challenging?
5. In your journey to the heart of the child. Do you occasionally work in triage manner?
6. You work, if I may observe, in a particularly challenging and sometimes very dangerous environment – even before you meet a child. Do you find humour a ‘door opener’ in your work?
7. Do you observe a difference in whether you face to face counsel or counsel through virtual meetings? Is one more effective than another and if so, how would you characterise the differences?
8. During the time you have been working with able young children what changes in the issues you and the young learner working together have had to focus on?
9. In an increasingly challenging world environment how do you imagine the future for supporting the well-being and mental health of able children?
10. : I imagine sometimes you will hear difficult things from those you counsel. Who do you talk to? How do you protect your emotional integrity?
11. What guidance would you offer to those who are beginning their journey in counselling young people? What would you suggest they avoid and what would you recommend as an approach to forming an effective partnership between the counsellor and the counselled?
12. What are you working on now?
13. What do you see as the current social and emotional needs of the gifted?
14. The needs of the gifted are many- but are the competencies of our gifted teachers up to the challenge?
15. Are there instances where gifted kids just need to be left alone to pursue their own interests?
16. What is the role of the mentor in gifted education?
17. There are many journals and conferences about gifted- do they really help the classroom teacher?
18. What have we neglected to ask?
Dr. David has answered all of them in length.

In this study, we examined the relationship between the parental attitudes and self perception of the children who are nominated as gifted children. We included 3rd grade primary school students (240 children) and their parents in the study. We used the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and the Parental Attitude Scale in order to collect the data. Student-t and one-way analysis of variance tests were used to analyze the data and the correlation between the scores of the scales were evaluated. Conclusively, we state that the self perception of the children is affected by the family structure and the education level of the mothers and fathers. Furthermore, there is a significant association between the attitudes of the parents (democratic, authoritarian and permissive attitudes) and the perception of children regarding the happiness, popularity, compliance, physical appearance and school status.

The influence of coaches working with students in grades 6-12 in the context of an extra-curricular academic competitive team such as Science Olympiad has not been well studied. The purpose of this study was to examine the influences of a successful head coach in the Science Olympiad program by studying a coach and team that has consistently reached the highest level of success in this program. This qualitative, intrinsic case study investigates one middle school Science Olympiad coach, Drew Kirian, and his team. Drew is one of only two coaches that has guided his team to six consecutive national championships in the Science Olympiad Program, making him a unique coach. Three categories emerged which help explain the components of successful coaching in the Science Olympiad program: structure, relationships, and expectations. These themes are well aligned with the coach-athlete relationship model developed by Mageau & Vallerand. This model may be useful in describing the necessary components of a successful coach in the academic competitive team context.