Exploring Differences Between Gifted and Grade-level Students’ Use of Self-regulatory Learning Processes with Hypermedia

Abstract

Research comparing gifted and grade-level students has shown they display differences in their knowledge of self-regulatory strategies. However, little research exists regarding whether these students differ in their use of these strategies. This study aimed to address this question by examining think-aloud data collected from gifted and grade-level students engaging in a complex learning task while utilizing a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system. We also examined both declarative knowledge and mental model measures of learning to determine whether these groups differed in their actual performance. Our results show that gifted students did outperform grade-level students in all outcome measures. In addition, gifted students more often utilized more sophisticated self-regulatory strategies than grade-level students. Grade-level students were more likely to use less effective strategies that do not promote the encoding of knowledge. Recommendations for future intervention studies are based upon these findings.