While Korean society is increasingly interested in welfare, educational support for disadvantaged and poor classes has increased too. Compared to the concern, however, the effort to improve diversification and quality of education for them is yet insu...
While Korean society is increasingly interested in welfare, educational support for disadvantaged and poor classes has increased too. Compared to the concern, however, the effort to improve diversification and quality of education for them is yet insufficient. One such example is the gifted but alienated, and studies on these children in Korea are scarce.
As an effort to understand alienated gifted students, I investigated, by using the qualitative case study, scientifically gifted student with economic difficulty and physical disadvantage. The student I studied attends the Saturday Physics Class which is an after-school science class offered by the Seoul National University. Qualitative study emphasizes constant interaction between the researcher and the participant in rapport, thus it is very useful to fully understand the context of life of the object person and participant’s characteristics. For this, participant observation was carried out at the field and but also the interview was done with the participant, his mother, and his teacher of 5th grade. Field documents and self-reports were also used to understand the student synthetically. As a result, I could summarize learning habits of the participant into two parts; ‘learning characteristics’ and ‘learning tactics’. In this report, learning characteristics mean attitudes or patterns of learning affected by economic or physical factors. The learning tactics are the strategic methods for learning to satisfy his intellectual desire under the circumstance of the socioeconomic and physical disadvantage.
The first learning characteristic I found is ‘spontaneous learning’ which is leading and initiative attitudes for learning. Spontaneous learning originates from the internal motivation, and also desire to overcome the inferiority complex coming from the economic situation and physical disorder is a great motive for his learning. With a sense of personal control and support of his surrounding helpers, it seems that the complex provided compensatory motivation to cover shortcomings. Second characteristic is ‘struggle for learning’ to overcome isolation in societal relation. Because of poverty and health problem, he lacked appropriate care from early years. Especially at school, his overbearing desire to express intellectual ability together with the distinct crippling of his leg had caused his exclusion from teachers and other students. And this interpersonal problem made him a boy of principle and live life centered at learing. Fortunately, after his mother and teacher of 5th grade started to pay attention to his talent and supported him emotionally and steadily, he could gradually prove his potential and get into the social network.
I found the following three in terms of learning tactics. First, he made a full use of ‘various learning routes’. Most of all, reading many books including textbooks was a leading role in his abundant knowledge. And he participated in the diverse activities such as gifted programs, science contests or camps, and private science center once a week. This helped him learn multifaceted areas. Second, he enabled himself to bring ‘metacognitive thinking’. Having plenty of time after school, he considers the time as opportunity to use his metacognitive ability. He studies spontaneously according to his plans and needs. His self-examination diary contains series of metacognitive process including learning planning, checking, and self-reflection that he frequently uses. The third tactic is ‘fervent response’ as means of stable learning condition. His learning at school is based on the amicable relationship, therefore there seems intentional actions to bring sympathy among his peers and to harmonize with them.
The implications of the findings from this research is as follows. The role of emotional supporters is very important for the gifted who has the disadvantage of being alienated due to the socioeconomic background or health problem. Therefore, during the period of personal development, opportunities should be continuously provided for them to help build relations. This means alienated students need social supports so that they could learn diversely.