Art as a safe place for gifted students

Abstract

This study addresses the problems of gifted students in the Spanish education system. This under-detected group often experiences poor performance, bullying, and a deep sense of disenchantment, as school is not perceived as a safe place for their cognitive and emotional development. Added to this is a gender bias in detection, wich imposes a double exclusion for girls in this group. Institutional responses (acceleration, grouping, and enrichment) are often generalized and ineffective, as they do not address the underlying problem. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of art as a safe place for giften students, given its potential as a tool for self-knowledge, emotional expression, creativity, and freedom. Four extracurricular art workshops for giften adolescents were implemented at the University of Cádiz (2019-2023), prioritizing improvisation and student initiative. The qualitative research methodology based on educational ethnography and participant observation provides results confirming that the conditions createda safe place model, demostrating excellent technical quality, overwhelming creativity, intense socialization among peers in an environment of respect and trust, and above all, the open and profuse expression of feelings, emotions, and thoughts, wich makes the students feel happy and in their comfort zone. It is concluded that interventions should prioritize the creation of this safe place in contranst to rigid and pre-established educational proposals.