Using a structured group experience to enhance the group interaction and leadership skills of gifted children

The primary purpose of this investigation was to assess the differential effects of a structured group experience in television production on the group interaction and leadership behaviors, peer ratings, and teacher evaluations of a select group of gifted elementary school students. The secondary purpose was to assess the differential display of group interaction and leadership behaviors and differences in teacher evaluations of gifted children who had been designated as high or low independent on the basis of their scores on the Children\u27s Personality Questionnaire.;The research sample for the primary phase consisted of 20 gifted children from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in the Williamsburg-James City County public schools. The subjects (12 males and 8 females) were self-selected into two groups; one which served as the treatment condition and one as the control condition. The treatment condition involved the children\u27s participation in a Television Production Workshop; a workshop in Logic and Problem Solving served as the control condition.;A Non-equivalent Control Group Design was used for this phase of the study. During the third week of treatment and during the next to the last week of treatment, videotapes were made of all subjects working in groups; these interactions were analyzed using the Interaction Process Analysis (IPA, Bales, 1950). Teachers and peers rated the subjects during the final week of treatment using the Barclay Classroom Climate Inventory (BCCI, Barclay, 1978).;The Mann-Whitney U Test was used for analyzing all the data to determine if significant differences existed between the experimental and control groups in the areas of the number of group interaction behaviors displayed, the number of leadership behaviors displayed, the ratings of peers, and the ratings of teachers. All hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance.;Major findings included the following: (1) A statistically significant difference was observed between the experimental group and the control group on three scales of the IPA. The treatment group showed more gain in the number of opinion-give behaviors displayed, but less in the number of orientation-giving and orientation-seeking behaviors displayed. . . . (Author\u27s abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI