Are Teachers Prejudiced Against the Label "Gifted" or Against Students' Actual Intelligence?

• In Event: Poster Session 18
  In Poster Session: Identification of and Teacher Beliefs About Gifted Students

Abstract

This paper examines whether the "disharmony hypothesis"— high ability being concomitant with low social skills, an idea which has been disproven by empirical data—holds true across the intelligence spectrum. Previous studies have often focused on fictitious persons or on targets raters perceived or knew to be gifted. However, it is unclear how this translates into judgments of actual individuals along the entire ability spectrum. Given that cognitive ability ratings are related to the target's intelligence, we explored whether the discrepancy ("tilt") between teachers' ratings of primary school students' cognitive and social abilities is related to students' actual cognitive ability. Results indicate no distorted ratings, but increasing correlations between tilt and actual ability suggesting that profiles form in others' perception.

Author

• Tanja Gabriele Baudson, University of Luxembourg