Effectiveness of Martin’s Cognitive Behavioral Intervention on Educational Motivation and Psychological Well-being of Gifted High School Students

The irreplaceable role of education in all aspects of development requires paying attention to all students including gifted children in all educational and behavioral fields, etc. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of Martin's behavioral methodology on the psychological well-being and academic motivation of gifted male high school students.

The present study used a quasi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group. The statistical population of the present study included gifted male high school students in Isfahan in the academic year 2010-2011. The purposive sampling and random assignment methods were used in this study. Thus, 30 students were selected by purposive sampling method from gifted high school students in Isfahan and they were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received educational intervention in 13 sessions of 75 minutes over two months. The questionnaires were Pekran's (1989) Psychological Welfare Questionnaire and Walrand et al. (1992) Academic Motivation Questionnaire. The data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) using SPSS/24 software.

The results showed that Martin's methodological-behavioral method is effective on the components of psychological well-being (F=7.48,P< 0.003) and external academic motivation(F=14.78,P< 0.001) and internal academic motivation(F=12.39,P< 0.001). This method can be used to increase psychological well-being and academic motivation.

Considering the cognitive effectiveness of Martin's behavior on increasing psychological well-being as well as increasing external and internal motivation, it is recommended that this method be used in the educational system to increase students' psychological well-being and academic motivation.