Poster by: Megan Chrostowski
Session: Session A| Time: 9:00AM-9:20AM | Location: Room 202
The practice of educational labelling is rooted in the goal of providing support and resources to children with exceptional learning needs. While much research has explored negative aspects of labelling students according to their learning needs, recent studies explore an enabling perspective of educational labelling: labels can trigger a meaning-generating process that results in gradually formed self-knowledge that can positively impact student outcomes. Our study aimed to explore potential positive benefits of the labelling phenomenon focusing on how labelling impacts the formation of self-knowledge and how self-knowledge triggers positive school adjustments. Bounded within an exploratory case study method, we interviewed twelve grade 10 – 12 students in a gifted education program housed within a public school. Nine interviewees reported having a single educational label (Gifted, G), while three reported having additional labels (Gifted and other Special Learning Needs, G/SLN). Our results revealed that those with a single G label spoke of disconnection between their label and their self-knowledge due to a perceived social mythology around giftedness that led to pressure to perform, anxiety, and internal dissonance around what it means to “be gifted”. They expressed a desire for more direct support around their G label. In marked contrast, students with multiple labels articulated a strong sense of self-knowledge with regards to their SLN. They spoke of explicit, personalized educational and social-emotional supports provided by adults with specialized knowledge. These supports contributed to positive learning, social-emotional, and behavioural adaptations. This research illuminates a disparity in the support provided to students based on educational labels between those with G labels and those with G/SLN labels. We propose that several pedagogical changes will assist students labelled as gifted to build self-knowledge around their learning needs: specialized training in gifted education will enable educators to understand and support the special learning needs of this population and inclusive education practices that celebrate diversity and nourish all learners will help to break down the mythology surrounding educational labels.