Social Interactions of Gifted Children in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Environments

The question of social interaction of gifted children with their peers leads to a number of disputes among specialists in giftedness. It is known that such an interaction has a beneficial impact on the intellectual development and social growth, supports developing a various set of social skills and abilities. Generally, gifted children build good relations with their peers, especially in elementary school. At the same time, gifted children can feel neglected and not needed, have difficulties when establishing and monitoring the relations with their peers. Educational environment (homogeneous and heterogeneous) plays its role in educating gifted children and has both advantages and disadvantages. Understanding of the nature of social interaction helps developing necessary interventions with the purpose to make a gifted child adapted. The goal of the paper is the analysis of foreign research of social status, educational environment and social interaction of gifted children with their peers; representation of the results of empirical research of social status and social interaction of gifted children working and playing together which was carried out by the author in Holland with the help of sociometric and behavior tools (Instrument Observational Protocol for Interactions within the Classroom (OPINTEC-v.5). It is found out that in spite of the fact, one of eight participants was the most rejected among peers, five participants became popular among peers. When working and playing together, the gifted children chose gifted and non-gifted children for interaction and established close interactions with them. When working together, the gifted children interacted more with popular peers and peers of neutral social status, while when playing together – with peers of neutral social status. With reference to social interaction of gifted children with peers, only those patterns were found out that demonstrated social effectiveness and social correspondence

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