Adaptation and Motivation of Greek Gifted Pupils: Exploring some influences of primary schooling

The main purpose of this study, on the theoretical framework proposed by Renzulli (1986) and by Van Boxtel and Monks (1992) and Monks, Van Boxtel, Roelefs and Saunders (1986), was to explore pupils' motivation and adaptation to school life in relation to the identification of giftedness. A pool of 1765 primary school pupils were initially tested for Visual-Motor Integration and Creative Thinking. Their teachers nominated 90 of them as gifted, who in turn were assessed in regard to their level of school adaptation and motivation by questionnaires based on Power and Cotterell (1979) and on Entwistle (1968). The comparison groups were five nominated pupils, verified as gifted, seven more nonnominated, but gifted (all 12 identified through psychometric and statistical criteria), and ten non-gifted but nominated pupils. The results indicated that the gifted pupils, depending on whether or not they are identified by their teachers, feel partially motivated and exhibit lower than the expected adaptation at school. The findings are discussed in the light of the current Greek school system.