Evaluation of gifted students motivation: More than to be or not to be motivated

In the scientific literature on giftedness, two opposite categories of population are often investigated: successful students and underachievers. As we know, motivation is central in the learning process and school achievement. Therefore, motivation is also helpful to explain the differences between successful gifted students and underachiever gifted students. (Baker, Bridger, & Evans, 1998; McCoach & Siegle, 2003). The purpose of this presentation is to identify specificities of gifted students' motivation, and stimulate researchers and educators to pay attention to this variable as a multi-faceted factor, and not as a monolithic one. The population we studied consisted of gifted young adults who completed secondary school with or without failures. A thematic analysis of their narrative about their motivation was conducted. Results showed that the subjective value they associated with the tasks (Wigfield and Eccles (1983, 2002), and the way they constructed and protected their self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura (1989, 2003)) determined several motivational profiles. Moreover, a high or a low motivational level may sometimes hide important traits, like unhealthy perfectionism. For giftedness identification and counselling, these findings suggest that it is important to measure more than the intellectual level, and that the motivational profiles should also be taken into account within a global approach of the individual