Abstract
Seventy-four students in three different Grade 9 classrooms of high-performing learners from the same suburban, comprehensive secondary school, completed a questionnaire focused on their preferences for a friend to stand by his or her position in case of a disagreement, to maintain their own position themselves, and to modify their own stance. Each group reflected high performance in a different way: International Baccalaureate (n = 27) requiring overall high grades, Enriched French (n = 24) requiring second language proficiency, and Sports Excellence (n = 23) based primarily on athletic ability. The International Baccalaureate students had the highest preference for standing one’s position, but were willing to ultimately modify their position. Sports Excellence students had the most friends, but the number of friends was not related to the preferences. Academically very able students seem to enjoy some disagreement with their friends.
Keywords
There has been cyclical interest over the decades in gifted students’ interpersonal relationships. Two threads in particular, elaborated in the literature review, converged to generate the questions posed in this study. First, in contrast with the academic stereotype of being solitary by nature, gifted adolescents do not differ from others in the numbers of friends they have or would like to have (Shore, Walker, Gyles, & Chichekian, 2011); there is some preliminary evidence that they are more likely than others to regard specific friendships as meeting particular friendship needs (Gyles, Shore, & Schneider, 2009), they are more tolerant of ambiguity—essentially agreeing to disagree (Barfurth & Shore, 2008); and they prefer to work with others in school when they have some say about with whom they work and on what kind of task (French, Walker, & Shore, 2011). Second, their style of competition is to a greater extent task- rather than other-oriented; task-orientation is, in turn, correlated with a lower number of conflicts in their friendships, friendlier competition, and relationships more likely persisting over summer holidays (Schapiro, Schneider, Shore, Margison, & Udvari, 2009). Overall, gifted students’ friendships appear to be different in notable nuances rather than in major dimensions from what is known about adolescent friendships generally.
One of the subtleties that has not been further explored is how gifted students might respond when they perceive a state of disagreement with a good friend. This is important to investigate because teachers are often concerned about harmony and collaboration in the classrooms (e.g., Strahan, L’Esperance, & Van Hoose, 2009), but gifted students might present a challenge that teachers should embrace rather than counter, both in terms of maintaining a productive learning environment and fostering gifted students’ development of valued friendships. Previous research on the converging topics suggests that gifted students would not demand or expect resolution of differences with other learners as a condition of sustaining a relationship. Also, the extent to which this is the case might be related to the nature of the learning environment and to the variations different program structures impose or offer in terms of how working relationships are created and maintained in the classroom or group, for example, if friends may work together in group activities and who decides (Walker & Shore, 2015). Finally, the reported number of friends in and of itself should not influence these preferences.
Literature Review
Friendships Among Gifted Learners
The present study explored the above topics that we have characterized as a preference for one’s friends to stand firm in a disagreement and to do so oneself. Friendships among gifted students have received renewed attention in the last decade and more. Previously,
much of what has been written about friendships among children and adolescents has not paid explicit attention to high-achievers, which has more often dealt with topics such as whether or not this student population has more or fewer friends than others, or whether or not they have a preference for solitude. (Schapiro et al., 2009, p. 71)
Other studies have highlighted issues such as popularity, social influences, or school performance (e.g., Goulet, Cantin, Archambault, & Vitaro, 2015). For most of the 20th century, the primary foci were that gifted youth, especially younger children, experienced social isolation and felt less liked by others even if their peers regarded them as popular, unless they could find others such as themselves (Hollingworth, 1926; Schneider, Clegg, Byrne, Ledingham, & Crombie, 1989; Winner, 1996); they began at younger ages than other children to search for kindred spirits or friendships in which they can fully express their feelings and concerns (Gross, 2002, 2009); they appeared to have fewer and older friends defined more by mental than chronological age (Gross, 1993; Janos, Marwood, & Robinson, 1985); and they experienced less intimacy in friendships (Mayseless, 1993). Even if gifted students sometimes enjoy and make good use of solitude, they nonetheless also relish contact with peers (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993). Preferring to work with others, in school or otherwise, can also be affected by the fact that peers with similar interests are not necessarily the same people as other students of the same age and grade (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Matthews & Foster, 2005). Possibly valuing solitude in certain situations might also be related to reports of a higher percentage of introversion among gifted children and youth than in the population as a whole (Cross, Speirs Neumeister, & Cassady, 2007) and that this could be as high as 75% (Silverman, 1993), but our focus is primarily on friendship issues in the context of learning and teaching.
Gifted students also seem to thrive to some extent in certain competitive situations, especially when the focus is on the skill and not necessarily beating others at the game (Schapiro et al., 2009). Nonetheless, there does not appear to be a significant difference between the numbers of close friends reported or desired between gifted and other students (Shore et al., 2011). Schapiro et al. (2009) and Gyles et al. (2009) speculated that gifted students might build each of their friendships around a smaller set of positive qualities or pillars. In an illustration of these differences, Shore, Walker, and Gyles (2009) presented preliminary analyses from students’ responses about their closest specific, dyadic friendships; students in gifted programs assigned lower value to the importance in their friendships than students in regular programs for feelings of closeness, companionship, and avoiding conflict—they more highly rated competing for fun.
Friendly disagreements among gifted students
Gifted learners might offer useful insights about how they perceive and cope with disagreements in their friendships and how they may be more tolerant of disagreement or ambiguity than others (Barron, 1958; Masden, Leung, Shore, Schneider, & Udvari, 2015; Schapiro et al., 2009). Lovecky (1992) defined perceptiveness as “an ability to view several aspects of a situation simultaneously, to understand several layers of self within another, and to see quickly to the core of an issue” (p. 22) and identified it as one of the traits common to gifted learners, implying that friendly reasoned disagreement might be a tenet of intellectualism. For example, perceptive learners were described as being adaptive to either of two cognitive or emotional positions regarding their relationships with others: focus on the perceived cohesion of the others’ viewpoint and wonder what is different about their own or view the world from a standpoint of rightness, not understanding how others can be so lacking in perceptiveness, a particular problem for gifted children who can be insightful, even while being rigid. Gross (1989) also discussed the forced-choice dilemma that confronts gifted learners who desire to excel in an area of talent that is undervalued by their friends’ conflicts with their need to be accepted by their peers. This conflict between the two complementary motivational variables might be central to the psychosocial context of gifted youth and also a reason why some retreat behind a mask of social conformity, which might ultimately influence the nature of friendships among gifted students across domains.
Barfurth and Shore (2008) demonstrated that students aged 9 and 10 years learned from each other in constructive ways using social initiatives by discussing, defending, modifying, and actively seeking solutions to a complex school task. Students working together on a group project to build a Lego model that demonstrated the principle of mechanical advantage explained their answers to each other more often than did other classmates, but the friends also criticized each other more often than did other classmates. Cognitive progress on parts of the task was frequently preceded by dominant students making social moves that welcomed contributions from less assertive members of the group. Resolution of disagreements at times included interactive actions such as integrating others’ ideas, modifying one’s own ideas, and asking others for clarification and explanation, providing evidence against the assumption that disagreements among learners during collaboration are unproductive.
How and the extent to which individuals come to a common understanding without resorting to a conflict also may be reflective of the nature of friendship qualities. Most of what has been written about friendships in young people and about how they deal with disagreements is based on typical populations. Teachers, parents, and others often seek ways to assuage disagreements among young people, but general advice might not apply universally to a gifted population. The literature includes many studies on resolving or mitigating conflict or disagreement (e.g., Bickmore, 2011; Laursen, 1993). Might gifted students’ tolerance for ambiguity and friendship patterns lead them to be willing to deal differently with disagreements with their friends?
The Role of the Learning Setting
Walker, Shore, and Tabatabai (2013) examined the process of role diversification and perspective taking within two different classrooms through dialogue among two groups of four students interacting during inquiry-unit activities. Four different influences were examined in the context of these roles: classroom context, teacher personalities and teaching style, individual student personalities, and group dynamics. They concluded that the method by which the groups of students were created had an impact on the nature of roles in terms of social and cognitive roles. Specifically, those students who did not choose their working partners adopted fewer roles, specifically roles reflecting social perspective taking.
In an educational context, learning environments can encourage the growth of constructive argumentation by focusing on the development of skills typically observed in social processes, such as asking questions, giving explanations, listening respectfully, and discussing disagreements. Barfurth and Shore (2008) and Walker et al. (2013) illustrated such processes in action. The former showed that attempts to resolve conflicts often come about when individuals involved in a disagreement tend to be flexible and willing to modify their position or receive new input, and the latter characterized these processes in terms of increased role diversification. Disagreements might also occur more frequently with those with whom one has developed close relationships (e.g., parents, friends, or sometimes classmates) simply because one has more frequent contact with them. Feeling supported in a context is important to friendship quality (French et al., 2011), but disagreements do occur, and having different friendships upheld by different configurations of priorities might contribute to sustaining the quality of friendships among gifted students.
Numbers of Friends
French et al. (2011) examined gifted and comparison groups of high school and college students’ current and ideal numbers of friends to better understand the role of friendships. Although high school control group students reported having more good friends than did the gifted students, the gifted friendships emphasized a smaller number of more specialized qualities such as talking, getting advice, and the stability of the friendship, whereas other students might have more consistent expectations for the benefits gained from all of their friends (also see Gyles et al., 2009; Walker et al., 2013). In general, the college students placed more emphasis on having things in common and on receiving support from friends. These were not absolute differences, but they are tendencies that challenge or qualify past understandings that gifted prefer to do things alone rather than with others.
It is conceivable that students with a smaller number of friends would be more prepared to understand their friends’ perspectives and thus be more flexible to resolve a conflict, and presumably, reinforce or protect the friendship. Conversely, those who report a higher number of friends might invest less effort to come to an agreement with a particular friend. But Shore et al. (2011) found no relation with numbers of friends. Friendship numbers warrant further exploration.
Research Questions
From the renewed research into gifted students’ friendships and competitive styles, we are left with a missing piece of the puzzle, namely, understanding their preferences in the face of a disagreement with a good friend. If they would value resolution over standing one’s ground, it could indicate that their valuing of support from friends was weighted more highly than their finding the thrill in the disagreement itself, rather than a victory. Different learning contexts that identify giftedness in different ways, for example, as high potential or high performance, might also lead to systematic differences in preferences for standing firm or modifying one’s position in a disagreement. Should this be confirmed, it would help avoid overgeneralizing about what gifted learners prefer or do without being clear about the circumstances in which performance is examined, as with the myth of gifted students being loners. Finally, if the numbers of reported friends are related to preferences to stand firm or modify one’s position, independently or in any of the settings, this would emphasize the importance of additional contextual variables and especially focus on the importance placed on preserving friendships by not challenging their foundation versus willingness to trust or perhaps take a chance that a good friendship, one worth preserving, can withstand the pressure of protracting a disagreement for what might be the pleasure of it.
Previous converging but not direct research on these topics pointed to the likelihood that gifted students would prefer that their friend and they themselves hold firm in the face of a disagreement, that the degree to which this is so could be related to variations in the learning setting, and that the reported number of good friends would likely be unrelated. Our specific questions were as follows:
Method
Sample and Context
Approval for the study was granted by the university research ethics board and the school district. Data were collected from 74 students in three different Grade 9 classrooms of gifted learners from the same suburban, comprehensive secondary school. Each classroom reflected giftedness in a different way: (a) International Baccalaureate (IB; n = 27), (b) Enriched French (EF; n = 24), and (c) Sports Excellence (SE; n = 23). We chose these three selective-entry classes because of their common but differently defined high performance, and from the same grade to avoid comparisons with different-aged groups that could have reflected developmental differences.
IB
The IB program selectively admitted students based on prior overall academic performance. Grade 9 IB students followed a demanding curriculum by studying at least two languages (language of instruction and additional language of choice) to support the understanding of their own cultures and those of others. Students were encouraged to participate actively in local and global communities by serving their community with 15 to 20 volunteer hours and to reflect on that experience. The IB program emphasized intellectual challenge and encouraged students to make connections between traditional subjects and the real world. It fostered development of skills and qualities such as communication, intercultural understanding, global engagement, and individual inquiry. The IB students functioned as a cohort and stayed together for virtually all their classes. The classes afforded multiple opportunities within the curriculum for interactions among friends and others.
In addition to community engagement, service, and activism, past IB graduates have identified social bonds, especially the development of strong and lifelong friendships, as highly important and a critical and long-lasting aspect of their IB experience (Wright, 2015). Their accounts attested to the importance of longer term outcomes, characteristics of the IB program beyond academic subjects. Similarly, Taylor and Porath (2006) studied two cohorts of IB graduates, from 1996 and 2000, who also indicated experiencing lasting benefits such as “a strong work ethic; critical thinking, organizational, time management, and communication skills; a broader perspective of the world; and life-long friendships” (p. 154). In broader terms, fostering lifelong friendships supports previous research suggesting a range of lasting influences from the IB program (Aulls & Peláez, 2013; Culross & Tarver, 2011).
EF
Students admitted to this program were required to have achieved a minimum grade of 85% in French as a second language in previous academic years. The EF program taught French language and literature as a mother tongue subject (rather than second language) at an enriched level, and students were expected to achieve the same curricular objectives native speakers studying entirely in French. Courses in science, technology, and social sciences were taught exclusively in French; therefore, the students were in a cohesive cohort for about half the school day. Giftedness was more narrowly defined compared with the IB group, but still in academic terms, and students interacted over the school day with other students of a much wider range of achievement. We observed these students and their teacher in French classes, as well as students from the IB and EF groups, and the use of discussion and small-group dramatizations requiring planning was frequent in all, thereby affording many opportunities for learners to agree or disagree with friends or simply other classmates.
SE
Admission into the SE program was based on competitive selection similar to that of the IB, but in combination with evidence of elite athletic performance. Entrance examinations comprised English, French, and mathematics in addition to a specific athletic evaluation. To remain in the program, student-athletes were required to maintain a minimum average of 75% while completing the same course requirements as the regular stream in a 50% compacted academic day to allow sports training to be built into their schedules five days per week. SE involved athletic participation at a national competitive level and opportunities for high-level training to develop student-athletes’ potential within their chosen sport. These students formed a well-defined cohort within and between classes, in the athletic settings, and on busses traveling to competitions.
Data
Questionnaire
We used four questions from the McGill Benefits of Friendship Survey (MBoFS) originally developed by Shore et al. (2011) during a preliminary study about gifted secondary and university students’ actual and desired numbers of friends and the roles the friends played in their lives. The actual and desired numbers were not greatly different, and the university students ascribed fewer roles for each friend. That study affirmed that gifted adolescents are not loners in fact or wish, and that they do find value in their friendships. The MBoFS had 10 questions for secondary students and 14 for postsecondary students (the additional questions asked the latter to reflect about the same issues during their teenage years). Secondary school students’ data for the 2011 report and the present study were collected simultaneously. Three of the four following questions used for this study were evaluated on a 7-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 6 (absolutely yes) asking participants to rate the importance attributed to different perspectives during disagreements between friends:
At this time, how many good friends do you have?
In general, suppose you were to have a disagreement with any friend, to what extent would you think it is important and appropriate that your friend sticks firmly to his or her position?
In general, suppose you were to have a disagreement with any friend, to what extent would you think it is important and appropriate that your friend appreciates you sticking firmly to your position?
In general, to what extent would you be willing to modify your position in the disagreement to bring about a resolution?
The other six questions, not used in the present study, asked for a definition of a “good friend,” how many friends the student would ideally want, the benefits received from each identified good friendship, how they meet new friends, desired qualities of a new friend, and what might challenge the quality of a friendship.
Collection
Parental consent and student assent documents were distributed and collected in sealed envelopes by the classroom teacher, and 100% of the data were obtained. We did not offer any compensation to the students.
Results
Overview of the Data
The most relevant descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The IB group had higher means and lower standard deviations than the EF and SE groups on preference for a friend to maintaining his or her position in a disagreement and to maintaining one’s own position in such a situation. These global results are presented graphically in Figure 1. The IB and EF groups reported similar average numbers of friends, but the SE group reported nearly double the average number.
Descriptive Statistics on Preferring to Hold Firm in Disagreements and Numbers of Friends.
Note. MF = friend maintain position; MO = maintain one’s own position; MD = modify one’s own position.
Preferences for holding firm during disagreements.
Preferences for a friend to maintain his or her own position (MF) and to hold one’s own position (MO) were highly correlated within all three groups (rIB = .68, rEF = .56, rSE = .83; p < .004 in all cases). Correlations between the preference to hold one’s own position (MO) and modifying one’s own position (MD) were very low (−.04 to .23) and nonsignificant, as were correlations between MF and MD (.00 to .28). The lack of independence between MF and MO, however, supported exploring these variables separately rather than through a multivariate analysis.
There was homogeneity of variance among the groups, which allowed us to perform comparative analyses. Standard tests were conducted to ensure that the data met the criteria for the selected analyses.
Preferences Within Academic Contexts
The differences visible in the left of Figure 1 reflect the significant differences we found. Within the IB group, there were significant differences between a preference to modify one’s own position and both a friend holding firm (t24 = 2.60, p = .016, d = 0.64) and holding firm oneself (t24 = −3.27, p = .003, d = 0.72). Effect sizes (Cohen, 1988) were medium. No other within-group difference was significant.
Preferences Between Program Contexts
Of the three groups studied, the IB sample had previously demonstrated the highest overall academic performance across subjects (vs. selection based on performance primarily in French or sports). As noted above, significant differences between the preference variables were observed only within the IB group.
To compare how gifted learners in the three different academic contexts (IB, EF, and SE) differed with regard to preferences for holding firm during disagreements among friends, we conducted three independent-samples t tests (IB-SE, IB-EF, and EF-SE). We used participants’ average replies regarding importance attributed to (a) preference for a friend to maintain his or her position (MF), (b) maintaining one’s own position (MO), and (c) modifying one’s own position (MD). The IB group revealed the highest ratings for MF (M = 5.16, SD = 1.03) and MO (M = 5.00, SD = 0.96), and the SE group did so for MD (M = 4.54, SD = 1.59). The lowest mean scores for MF and MO were from the EF group: M = 4.48, SD = 1.08, and M = 4.61, SD = 0.99, respectively, and for MD from the IB group, M = 4.25, SD = 1.04 (see Figure 1). However, an equal-variances t test revealed a statistically significant difference for the friend maintaining his or her position (MF) only between the IB and EF groups (t48 = 2.28, p = .03, d = 0.63); this reflected a moderate effect size. All other mean comparisons were nonsignificant with small effect sizes, likely in part due to the considerably larger dispersion of scores on most of the measures in the SE group. In a disagreement with a friend, the highest academically achieving of the three groups most strongly (and significantly) preferred that their friends stick to their position, at a similar level also higher than the other two groups (but not statistically significantly so) that they themselves hold firm, but did not differ from the other groups in willingness to modify their own positions.
Relation to the Reported Actual Numbers of Friends
The SE group reported the highest actual average numbers of friends (M = 6.06, SD = 4.05), followed by the EF group (M = 3.42, SD = 1.78), and the IB group reported the lowest (M = 3.28, SD = 1.21). This was expected for the cohort-based SE program given that students shared the same class throughout high school years compared with students in IB and EF who changed classrooms for different subjects. The IB and EF students, both meeting more stringent academic selection criteria (especially the IB), reported just more than half the numbers of close friends compared with those in SE. There was no apparent general relation between the number of friends and approaches to disagreements within all three groups. Although there was a significant difference between the actual number of friends reported by IB students compared with SE (t27 = 3.23, p = .003, d = 0.82) and EF versus SE (t31 = −2.94, p = .006, d = 0.78) students (the former being a large effect size and the latter being at the top of the range for moderate effect sizes), the reported numbers of actual friends were not significantly related to students’ approaches to perspective taking during disagreements.
Discussion and Conclusions
Our principal discovery is that in all our groups of Grade 9 students, identified as gifted on the basis of different combinations of excellent prior performance, the students selected on the basis of the most stringent academic prior performance, the IB group, stood out as preferring a friend to hold firm in a disagreement, and that they themselves also hold firm. Nevertheless, they provided a hint that this stance did not preclude modifying their own position at a later point. Our initial question was about the program impact, but the critical feature appears to be more about the manner of selecting the students. The only program effect seems to be that the strong cohort structure of the SE program also provided a platform for the largest reported numbers of friends. These numbers were accompanied by wide dispersion, and the numbers of friends were, as anticipated, not related in any of the analyses to the preference for a friend or oneself to stick to a position in a disagreement.
Preference for holding firm in a disagreement might not be essentially different for a friend or oneself, but holding firm did not imply intransigence that implied ultimately never modifying one’s own position. Not having anticipated the latter situation, we did not collect data to explore that point further in the present study.
Disagreements can be productive and constructive from a cognitive perspective (in the processes of learning), even though, from a social perspective, they may not appear to be a genuine or productive form of collaboration. Negative views of disagreements as being counterproductive can be altered by implementing instructional approaches that encourage learning by respectful, constructive argumentation.
Students differently defined as gifted respond differently to how they should approach the resolution of disagreements with friends. This adds an additional nuance to the emerging understanding that gifted learners actually do prefer to work with others on academic tasks (French et al., 2011), especially when they have some say in the creation of the groups. The popular myth that gifted students prefer to work alone contains this additional layer of complexity when examined under conditions such as an inquiry-driven constructivist pedagogy (Aulls & Shore, 2008; Vygotsky, 1978). For example, the nature of interaction among gifted students might be supportive of collaborative work if and when their own needs and learning goals are aligned with the learning context or situation. It should not be surprising to see active disagreements in dialectic situations among such students when they work in groups, but how they deal with these in the normal course of their personal friendships might be different. How they deal with these disagreements may differ, in addition, in relation to the kind of giftedness or academic context that the students share. In mixed-ability classes, however, other students might be puzzled or perturbed by the willingness of gifted students to sustain or even encourage disagreement, and to actually do so. This study highlights the need for teachers to help all students learn that there are different ways to collaborate and that one need neither rush nor feel pressured to rush toward harmonious resolution. Indeed, agreeing to continue to disagree but to engage courteously can be a worthy goal.
The study further exposed the complexity of gifted students’ friendships, in that some among them prefer to work through issues by holding firm to diverging views with friends. This might challenge some friendships, but it seems to be a risk some of our participants were willing to take.
Perhaps academically gifted teenagers enjoy a little friendly sparring and get a bit of a charge from keeping it going. They are not worried about undermining a friendship. That fits with the Schapiro et al. (2009) results that showed friendly competition being welcomed by gifted students, with Barfurth and Shore (2008) who showed that able students can take a leadership role in a group and empower other students to contribute to solving curricular problems, and with wanting to work with others when they can have some control over the process, for example, choosing with whom to work, especially a friend (Walker et al., 2013).
Limitations and Future Research
Given that our sample was drawn from one high school, it may be prone to selection bias and the actual data may not be representative of other gifted students in similar or other academic contexts. Including older and younger groups, as well, would enable extending comparisons to include developmental differences and investigate if and how these might have an impact on perspective-taking skills. A study of college-age students, for example, would be framed somewhat differently. Undergraduates might be less likely to come from class or program cohorts, they are older, there is a wider age range within this sample, and program diversity is greater.
Future research could identify a subset of variables related to the specific approaches that characterize one’s position when facing a situation in which friends are in disagreement. The current research questions could also be applied to sex differences given that males and females might choose their friends based on different priorities (Richard et al., 2002). Also, friendship stability could be an interesting variable to consider in a similar analysis given how much students might be influenced by different learning environments. It would be beneficial, for both theoretical and practical reasons, to compare gifted and other students, as well as to include questions about nonfriends or students who would not normally choose to work or socialize together (Berndt, Perry, & Miller, 1988).
The possible role of social desirability in responses is not clear. Might the most academically gifted students be more able to resist giving a socially appropriate reply (i.e., favoring harmony) than the other students, or did the replies reflect independently held preferences? The potential contribution of personality variables (e.g., introversion), none of which we examined, could be interesting to explore.
We especially noted within the IB group—arguably the most academically gifted of our three groups—students more highly rated the preference for a friend standing his or her ground during a disagreement than holding firm oneself. Speculatively, this could be interpreted as a preference that both parties hold their positions during an argument, but yielding some willingness, not significantly different from that expressed by the other groups, to modify one’s own position, perhaps later. Preference to sustain a disagreement for whatever benefit or pleasure need not imply total unwillingness to ever modify one’s own position. It would be interesting to study the processes and decision points for different students as they decide when, if ever, to redirect the disagreement by modifying their own positions in a disagreement with a friend. How do they judge the risk to, or pressure on, their friendships as part of such processes?
Finally, we were intentionally vague in the questionnaire about what we meant by disagreement or friend and whether the friend was to be a school friend or not. Schapiro et al. (2009), near the end of a series of studies of adolescent friendships, were explicit about using school-based dyads. The present study explored new territory. We did not limit the domain of disagreements to their personal or academic lives. Barfurth and Shore (2008) described a study about academic disagreements, but the present participants had no such frame for this question. Neither did any participant ask what was meant by the words friend or disagreement. Having established that an interesting result was obtained, namely, that gifted students preferred that a friend hold firm in a disagreement, it would be interesting to refine in future research what kinds of disagreements and nature of the friendships they imagined as the context for their responses.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank all the teachers, administrators, and Grade 9 students at Heritage Regional High School in Chambly, Quebec, Canada (near Montreal), and the Riverside School Board for their gracious help in conducting this study. Particular thanks are extended to Ms. Kim Barnes, then vice-principal and now principal, and teacher Mme. Johanne Bouthillier.
Authors’ Note
Tanya Chichekian is now at the Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, and at Dawson College, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and authorship of this article: This study was supported by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and research grants and a doctoral fellowship from the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture.