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4.1.7 Gifted Student Hopefulness: A Goal Directed Strengths Approach for Student Success and Personal Well-Being

It is not unusual to hear parents, teachers, or students use the term hope in the educational setting. “I hope my child has success in mathematics again this year.” “I hope I make friends at my new school.” “My hope for my students is that they develop problem solving skills.” But what exactly does the word hope mean? When we read or hear the word hope used in this way, we might think of optimism, positive thought, or other constructs that are about an individual’s outlook on the world in general. While, having a positive disposition and an optimistic outlook is important to overall well-being, this unstructured, immeasurable, nebulous conception of hope assumes that the individual is a passive participant in the outcome. We want to equip parents and teachers with effective tools to help gifted children. As well, we want gifted children to have the ability to set goals that are commensurate with their ability, and we want them to be active participants in the achievement of academic, social, personal, and spiritual goals. Conceptualized as an active construct, hope becomes a framework that supports goal achievement and is then a contributor to personal and psychological well-being. The construct of hope is positioned in the study of positive psychology. Historically, the approach in studying psychological well-being has been a deficit model where psychologists centered their work on the treatment and alleviation of pathologies when they existed. More recently, some psychologists have taken an increasingly proactive and positive approach to the study and development of individuals and their happiness, life satisfaction, and personal well-being. This positive approach is termed positive psychology and it is the scientific and practical pursuit of optimal human functioning. This session presents the construct of hope as goal directed thought processes; the joining of pathways thinking and agency thinking as a recurring process where both pathways thinking and agency thinking are essential for hope and successful goal attainment. Additionally the researcher will present findings from a completed study on the contribution of hopefulness in honors college students (n=91) and early college entrants (n=122) to overall personal well-being. The study used the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale to measure hopefulness and Personal Well-being Index – Adult to measure levels of personal well-being. Results suggest goal directed hopefulness, is important to gifted college student development and their personal well-being.

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