Abstract:

The objective of this study is to analyse the effects of the psycho-education program developed for the social-emotional development of gifted students on social emotional skills, loneliness and friendship qualities. The study group consisted of 32 (3rd and 4thgrade levels) gifted students; 2 experimental (16 gifted students) and 2 control (16 gifted students) groups. The data of the research were; “Social-Emotional Ability Perception Scale”, “Friendship Quality Scale” and “Loneliness Scale for Children” were collected by applying. Within the scope of the study, 8 sessions of the psycho-education program were applied to the experimental groups and no study was conducted on the control groups. The research design is a quasi-experimental model with experimental and control groups (pre-test, intermediate measurement 1, intermediate measurement 2, and intermediate measurement 3, post-test, follow-up test-1). With “Mann Whitney U”, “Wilcoxon Signed Sequences Test” and “Linear Mixed Effects Model” were used for the data analysis and the results were analysed in SPSS 21 program. The findings of the study showed that the psycho-education program applied increased the students' perceptions of social-emotional skills and friendship qualities, but did not provide differentiation in loneliness level. All the findings obtained from the research were discussed with relevant researches in the literature and recommendations were made to the application and researchers.

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