A Psychosocial Approach to Improving Growth in Gifted Students' Academic Writing

Underachievement for all student populations remains a pressing concern for educational systems, and gifted student populations are no exception. However, many aim for academic-focused interventions while leaving out the social-emotional driving factors in underachievement. Researchers have found connections between social-emotional interventions and academic success, but there have been fewer studies targeting the impact of a domain-specific, social-emotional intervention embedded into the academic course as a possible ameliorating factor for underachievement with gifted students. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact that a growth-mindset intervention has on gifted students’ growth and achievement in language arts when embedded into the classroom curriculum for the first semester. In this quasi-experimental, quantitative study, survey data and achievement data were collected and analyzed. I found that the intervention could not be said to have significantly impacted students’ growth in language arts or mindset towards academic writing. However, the intervention did result in significantly positive growth in general growth mindsets towards intelligence. The results indicate that while psychosocial interventions can impact a students’ mindset, more time or more targeted intervention may be necessary to see the impact of that growth on secondary measures such as achievement. On this basis, it is recommended that further research and studies may need to be conducted in domain-specific interventions and longitudinal data may also be necessary to further understanding of how to address the full scope of driving factors behind gifted students’ underachievement in a specific domain, such as academic writing