Identification model of gifted students in secondary education

The aim of this article is to describe the identification and assessment procedure to identify high ability secondary school students in the Spanish region of Murcia. In the screening process questionaires addressed to parents, teachers, and pupils nad based on the Multiple Intelligences Theory were used. In the identification process two other instruments were used: a) the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) aimed to assess the following areas: reasoning, verbal abilities, numerical and abstract reasoning, spatial aptitude, mechanical reasoning, attention and perceptive aptitudes, and b) the TTCT (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking) in order to assess the main abilities of creativity (fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration). These two assessment tools will allow us to distinguish gifted from talented (Castelló and Batlle, 1998). In a third stage, the socio-emotional characteristics of the identified students are analysed using: c) the BFQ-NA whose aim is to assess the personality dimensions (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion; agreeableness and neuroticism), and d) emotional intelligence questionnaires (EQ-i:YV and EQ-i:YV-O Barón and Parker, 2000). 565 took part in this research. The students were aged 11-18 (M= 14.6 and SD= 1.08) and attended high schools of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) of the Murcia Region. The results showed different profiles of gifted and talented stduents. The cognitive-emotional complexity of these exceptional students is discussed