Altas capacidades, precocidad y autoconcepto en la educación primaria

Abstract

This research entitled: "High Abilities, Precocity and Self-concept in Primary School Education", pursues the achievement of three objectives related to the study of high intellectual abilities. The first one deals with the identification of exceptionality profiles. The second one investigates the stability of the intelligence and the third one focuses on how high abilities students and their peers valued and seen themselves. For the main objective analyzes two processes of identification of high intellectual abilities, at the beginning and at the end, the Primary Educational stage, through the protocol developed by Castelló and Batlle (1998). A second objective applies and compares two identification procedures implemented in the Region of Murcia: the protocol of the year 2003 and its revised version in 2017. On the other hand, the self-concept of students who show talent and their peers is valued. In addition, we analyze the relationship of the six dimensions of self-concept with other variables and the predictive value of self-concept about academic performance with students with high capacities. This empirical study has involved 295 students (55% female students) who made up two cohorts of an educational center, with similar number of students. The instruments used are: The BADyG (Yuste et al., 2012); the Creative Thinking Test (Torrance, 1974); the GARLEY Self-Concept Questionnaire (García, 2001) and their academic performance. From the results it follows: the identification of exceptional profiles is different depending on the age at which it is assessed; as well as. The number and typology of profiles evidence by each protocol being the 2017 protocol more hard. The profiles of exceptionality obtained in the Primary School stage show that for most of the students change over age, confirming the flexibility of the cognitive features configuration. On the other hand, the self-concept of students with exceptional profiles shows a better value than their peers, in 5 dimensions of 6 valued, which portrays, significant differences in the intellectual self-concept. There is also a positive relationship between self-concept and academic performance, albeit of a moderate degree. The educational conclusions and implications derived from this study are put forward in various proposals including: to determine the precocity profiles at Primary School level; the advisability of applying collective testing at school to identify a many as possible; and the need to develop a guide on high intellectual abilities for the Region of Murcia aimed at parents and teachers.