Socio-demografski činioci uspešnosti darovitih učenika
Socio-Demographic Factors of Success of the Gifted Students

Summary/Abstract: Although success of the gifted population is often indicated as a subject of empirical exploration, it is noted that this issue remains insufficiently clarified in the aspect of socio-demographic characteristics. In an effort to complement the knowledge on the aforementioned "neglected" sphere, there has been carried out an empirical research that puts the issue of success of gifted students in the context of four different domains (music, painting, sports and mathematics). A variable of giftedness has been considered in two ways in the research: firstly in terms of its representation in the various domains of giftedness, and then from the standpoint of its relation to the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. If the specified aspects of the research subject were further concretized, it would mean that the research aims to provide answers to the following questions: whether there is and what is the difference structure in the level of success of the students gifted in different domains, and whether there are connections between the success of gifted students and their social -demographic characteristics? A variable of success has been realized through two types of indicators: academic achievement, and participation and awards in competitions. In the capacity of independent variables, the following socio-demographic characteristics appear in the research: age of the respondents (15-19 years old), sex of the respondents (dichotomous variable: male - female) and the parents’ level of education (which includes three categories: elementary and / or secondary school, college or university, master's degree or doctorate). The survey was conducted in Serbia, on the sample of 473 respondents who attend specialized secondary schools for the gifted from Novi Sad, Belgrade and Kraljevo. Although convenient, a sample has a satisfactory degree of representativeness, since the entrance examinations for these schools include the application of the tests of specific abilities, where the prescribed minimum number of points required for entry means that candidates should have developed specific skills in relation to the average population. By examining the differences in the level of success of the respondents, given the domain of giftedness, it has been found that the music gifted students are leading in relation to the other respondents, and both in terms of the school success and in terms of the advanced-type success, which is consistent with previous research on similar issues. Age of respondents appeared to be significant only in the case of the school achievement, in the sense that older students achieve better results at school than the younger ones, while in the advanced type of success there are no statistically significant differences with respect to these socio-demographic characteristics. These findings are related to a tendency to improve the achievement of gifted students along with the introduction of the domain and in the school context. When it comes to examining the relationship between sex and indicators of success, there has been determined the lack of statistically significant differences between boys and girls, thus compromising attempts to clearly connect the success in a particular domain with sexual affiliation. Success of gifted students in this research has not shown a tendency towards changing, in relation to the level of parents’ education. However, these findings to not justify the conclusion that the success of gifted individuals is completely independent from the level of parents’ education, hence the test sample consists of different domains of giftedness, which is why there is a probability to get the difference if separated. Based on the analyzed results of the research, it has been concluded that the phenomenon of giftedness is multi-dimensional. Therefore, it is significant for the research to examine relevant socio-demographic characteristics that may affect its manifestation, but it is necessary to specify and concretize it within the framework of individual domains of giftedness.

• Details
• Contents