An Intervention for Motivating High-Ability, Secondary School Students from Low SES families: A Design-Based Study

Inequity in gifted education is a concern in many countries, visible in the underrepresentation of low SES students in the higher levels of secondary education in general, and in high-ability programs in particular (Aalders et al., 2020; Ford et al., 2019; OECD, 2011; Vlaamse Overheid, 2021). Because motivation and achievement are strongly related (Gottfried et al., 2001; Hornstra et al., 2013; Meens et al., 2018), an intervention, aimed at enhancing the motivation of high-ability students from low SES families, was developed, piloted, and evaluated in an exploratory design-based, mixed method pilot study with a pre-test-intervention-post-test design.