How Do Gifted Middle School Youth Express Themselves?: An Exploratory Action Research Study

Learning more about how young people express themselves to develop their voice is essential to establishing methods to grow action-focused citizens. An under-researched population due to age and identification, 136 middle school gifted and talented (GT) students collaborated with the teacher-researcher in an exploratory action-research study to self-report on expression through a written survey. The categories of “Speaking”, “Appearance”, “Other”, “Speaking + Appearance”, and “Speaking + Appearance + Other” ranked highest, with an emphasis on sharing opinions and insights, clothing as an expression of personality, and sports and hobbies as expressions of self, being the most frequently reported. Gifted youth express themselves in various combinations of all reported categories (speaking, appearance, artistic, written, and other). Still, the results emphasize a collaboration of three main categories alone and in conjunction with each other (speaking, appearance, and other). More research comparing the nuanced components of categories (types of art, physical endeavours, etc.), as well as comparing gifted and non-gifted adolescents, is needed to determine whether this reflects all youth or whether factors that separate gifted and non-gifted youth in development play a role in divergence. Adults who interact with this population in any setting will benefit from the knowledge gained to foster engagement and facilitate opportunities for youth to share their voices in their own world. Using tailored results from their own class survey could help teachers collaborate with their students to develop a learning environment that encourages open discussion of issues that youth want to actively address and change.