Comparing School Connectedness, Academic Motivation and Academic Achievement between Smart School Students and Traditional School Students in Esfahan

The purpose of this study was compare school connectedness, academic motivation and academic achievement between gifted school students and traditional school students. The research population of this study comprised all the gifted high schools in Esfahan and all the traditional schools is the in Esfahan regions 1 & 3. Sampling method for gifted school students was census takiro and for traditional ones cluster sampling. The instrument used in this study included. The school connectedness questionnaire provided by Bery et al., for measuring academic motivation Hermes’ academic Motivation Questionnaire, and finally academic students GPAs as indices of academic achievement. Statistical methods used for analysis consisted of descriptive and non parametric methods. Results show that there are significant differences in school connectedness and its factors, academic motivation and academic achievement variables between gifted school students and traditional school students. All variables indicated the higher performance of the gifted students on the above variables compared to traditional school students.