Strategies Used by Intellectually Gifted Students to Cope With Stress During Their Participation in a High School International Baccalaureate Program

Individuals respond to threats to affiliation and achievement needs through drawing on a repertoire of coping strategies specific to a given situation. Gifted adolescents in college-preparatory high school programs may be faced with novel stressors, and may have unique coping strategies to manage these challenges. The current study considers responses to surveys of stress and coping as well as focus group interviews of gifted and high-achieving students enrolled in an academically intense curriculum, the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. Findings of this secondary analysis of archival data sets indicate gifted students experience levels of stress similar to their IB classmates not identified as gifted. Additionally, gifted students were similar to IB peers not identified as gifted with respect to how they cope with school; likenesses included positive reframing, time and task management, avoiding tasks, and seeking social support. However, gifted IB students differed from IB classmates with respect to anger coping, humor, and problem-solving approaches. Putting the Research to Use With the growing interest of International Baccalaureate Programs throughout the United States, educational personnel, researchers, and administrators are considering the social-emotional needs of gifted and high-ability students served in these challenging academic programs. Understanding the needs of this unique population of students is critical to supporting the cognitive and affective growth of IB students, and this study provides a glimpse into the thoughts of IB learners with respect to their stress and coping. The findings of this study suggests that gifted students in IB and their IB peers experience similar stressors and coping responses, though some differences in anger coping, humor, and problem solving were unique among gifted IB students in this sample.