Teacher judgments about students’ giftedness

Study 2 investigated teacher judgments about students’ giftedness. As intelligence is—particularly at the elementary school level—one of the main facets of most conceptualizations of giftedness, its influence on teacher judgments was examined (see Sternberg & Davidson, 2005). Study 1 showed that elementary school teachers also

tended to see intelligence as an integral characteristic of giftedness. Furthermore, students’ giftedness has to be seen in relation to other students’ abilities; this notion pervades scientific conceptions about giftedness (Freeman, 2005; Ziegler, 2005) and is included in teachers’ beliefs about giftedness as well (Lee, 1999; Zhang & Sternberg, 1998). In this study, elementary school teachers’ nominations of students for an enrichment program for gifted students were viewed. In addition to considering students’

individual level of intelligence, this study focused on the average level of intelligence in a class. Furthermore, teacher variables such as beliefs about giftedness and intelligence and experience in the area of giftedness were included.

In addition to the hypothesis that students with higher intelligence levels would have a higher probability of getting nominated, the hypothesis was formulated that for students with the same intelligence test score, the class-average level of intelligence would be negatively connected to their chances for nomination. These hypotheses were informed by the research literature on reference group effects in teacher-assigned grades (e.g., Südkamp & Möller, 2009) and teacher judgments about cognitive abilities (e.g., Trautwein & Baeriswyl, 2007). The study discriminated between crystallized and fluid intelligence. Furthermore, it explored whether teachers’ beliefs in domain-specific or holistic giftedness, beliefs in the mutability of intelligence, and experience in the area of giftedness were related to nominations or moderated the association between the class-average level of intelligence and students’ nomination probability.

As expected and in alignment with previous research (Acar et al., 2016; Machts, Kaiser, Schmidt, & Mӧller, 2016), higher fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores were connected to a higher probability of nomination. The correlations of students’ test scores in fluid (r = .39) and crystallized (r = .33) intelligence with teacher nominations were similar to the results of Machts et al.’s (2016) meta-analysis. Importantly, nomination probabilities differed for students with the same fluid or crystallized intelligence scores depending on the class-average level of fluid or crystallized intelligence. Students in classes with lower average levels of intelligence had a higher probability of getting nominated than students in classes with higher average levels of intelligence. Therefore, the study showed that the negative reference group effect of students’ abilities on teacher judgments (e.g., Baudson, Fischbach, & Preckel, 2014;

Südkamp & Möller, 2009) seems to be generalizable to teacher judgments about students’

giftedness. The finding was in contrast to McBee’s (2010) finding that more students get

identified as gifted if the average level of achievement is high. However, teacher nominations were only one identification method in McBee’s study; specifically, one of the other identification methods was achievement tests, and he could not adequately control for students’ individual abilities.

In Study 2, the relations of three teacher variables with teachers’ nomination decisions and the negative reference group effect were investigated. Teachers’ beliefs about the malleability of intelligence were not connected to teacher nominations or the reference group effect. Therefore, although they were related to beliefs about giftedness in Study 1, they did not function as guides for judgments about whether or not a student is gifted. Concerning teachers’ experience in the area of giftedness, the results showed that students had a lower probability of getting nominated if their teachers had experience in the area of giftedness. However, when separated by the kind of experience, no type of experience was significantly associated with teachers’ nomination decisions, but some kinds of experience strengthened or lessened the negative reference group effect. In comparison to teachers without the following kinds of experiences, teachers who stated that they had attended lectures or courses about giftedness at a university or read literature about giftedness were less prone to the negative reference group effect, and teachers with off-the-job training were more affected by it. On-the-job training and having taught gifted classes were not connected to the reference group effect. However, the reasons for this complex pattern could not be explored in this study and one can only speculate that the results might be due to differences in scientific rigor, foci, or practice orientation among the various types of training.

Teachers’ beliefs that giftedness is holistic were connected to the concern that teachers might think that students will make it on their own and do not need special support (Moon, 2009). Therefore, the developed scale about the belief that giftedness is holistic or domain-specific from Study 1 was included in Study 2. Teachers in Study 2 had domain-specific rather than holistic views of giftedness. This belief was not related to students’ probability of getting nominated per se but indirectly via a moderation of the negative reference group effect. In classes with low average levels of intelligence, but not in classes with high average levels of intelligence, equally intelligent students’ chances of getting nominated were higher if teachers saw giftedness as holistic instead of domain-specific. Therefore, this belief seems to function more as a filter of information than as a direct guide for the nomination decision. Furthermore, focusing on elementary school

teachers who nominated students for an extracurricular enrichment program, these results showed that a holistic view of giftedness was not a disadvantage for students. Teachers with more domain-specific views of giftedness might use different indicators for giftedness and might therefore be less affected by the average level of intelligence. For example, Study 1 showed with a small but significant correlation that teachers who saw giftedness as domain-specific tended to see intelligence as less important. Hence, whereas teachers with holistic views might concentrate more on fluid and crystallized intelligence and therefore be more prone to effects of class-average fluid and crystallized intelligence, teachers who see giftedness as domain-specific might focus more on domain-specific abilities and might be, in turn, more sensitive to the class-average levels of these variables.