Different Pathways in Learning and Achievements: Emotional and Cognitive Needs of Gifted Students

Paper

This study aims to investigate the cognitive and emotional demands of gifted students and their correlations with variables such as gender and year of study. The investigation included 25 gifted students selected from among 254 examinees. Participants were undergraduate and graduate students—five students for each year of study at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad—who have been learning English as a foreign language. Convenience sampling was used to recruit the participants. The research is exploratory, based on a quantitative approach and systematic non-experimental observation. The findings suggest that students' emotional needs are generally stronger than their cognitive needs. The average student performance on questions about emotional needs is generally better than that on questions about post-cognitive needs. Depending on the student's gender and educational stage, there are statistically significant variations for each of their cognitive and emotional demands. This is a clear reference to the fact that females have stronger emotional demands than males, yet there is a difference between their cognitive needs. Although these issues need not necessarily impair students' performance in class, they require their teachers' attention and the curriculum's inclusion. The talented pupils endure emotional and cognitive issues throughout the early study phase. According to the study's findings, different cognitive and emotional needs apply depending on the level of the course, with first-year students having the greatest needs. This highlights the importance of being mindful of the student's cognitive and emotional demands from the beginning of their study at the university level, which is also late adolescence.