Investigation of the effect of emotion-focused therapy oriented psycho-education program on the self-efficacy of special (gifted) students

The purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of the psychoeducational program based on the emotion-focused therapy approach in improving the self-efficacy levels of gifted students. For this purpose, the research was carried out with gifted students studying in Anatolian high schools at science high school or level. Therefore, the aim of this study is to increase the self-efficacy of gifted students, who are considered to have a great impact on the future of our country, in order to enable them to fully use their potential. The research was conducted with gifted students studying at İzmir Atatürk High School, Bornova Anatolian High School, İzmir Girls' High School and Cihat Kora Anatolian High School in the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, a 2x3 experimental design consisting of pretest, posttest and follow-up test with experimental and control groups was used in order to determine the effect of applied psycho-education on the "self-efficacy levels" of gifted students. The study group of the experimental research consisted of 10 (4 girls, 6 boys); the control group consists of 12 (6 girls, 6 boys) gifted students. Personal Information Form and Self-Efficacy Scale were used as data collection tools. A total of eleven weeks of emotion-focused therapy-oriented psycho-education was applied to the experimental group. Within the framework of the determined experimental design, the pre-test at the beginning of the eleven-week psycho-education and the post-test after it was completed were applied to both groups. In addition, the follow-up test was applied to both groups eight weeks after the end of the psycho-education. Mann Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests were used in the analysis of the data and the results were analyzed in the SPSS 25 program. As a result of the analysis of the data, according to the mean scores of both the post-test and the follow-up test, it was found that the average of the social self-efficacy sub-dimension of the students in the experimental group was significantly higher than the students in the control group; however, as a result of repeated measurements made for the same group, it was observed that there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the gifted students in the experimental group in all three sub-dimensions of the self-efficacy scale. It is evaluated that the data obtained as a result of the experimental study will raise awareness about increasing the self-efficacy of all students, especially gifted students, and will also contribute to the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy, which is one of the third generation therapies, in various fields. Keywords: Emotion-Focused Therapy, Gifted, Self-Efficacy