Gifted Students' Motivation and its Impact on the Development of their Giftedness

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to examine the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of the gifted students from Hadhramout Gifted Center HGC in Yemen, and to investigate the impact of these intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on their giftedness development. A qualitative approach was adopted; data has been collected through an open- ended questionnaire that was prepared by the researcher and distributed among a sample of gifted students who were chosen purposively from HGC. The interpretative phenomenological method has been used to analyze the data using, Atlas ti. The results indicate that the majority of the participants consider it interesting to explore new things, and experience curiosity and desire to achieve their goals as their intrinsic motivations. Whereas, the minority consider preference to serve the community, competition preference and self-confidence as their intrinsic motivations. On the other hand, half of the participants consider rewards as their extrinsic motivation, whereas 40 % of them consider exams scores, verbal praise, parents and environment as their extrinsic motivations. Regarding the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on the development of giftedness, the majority of the participants believe that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations affect positively the development of their giftedness development. Finally, based on the findings, some recommendations were provided.