The major purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of Life Education Course on improving the sense of life meaning of gifted elementary students. The secondary purpose was to compile a life education course for gifted students of elementary schools. The third purpose was to design a scale of life meaning of gifted elementary students. The study used the pretest-posttest control group design. The subjects are 40 gifted students in 5th grade from two elementary schools in Taipei. The experimental group participated in thirteen sessions of the training course, one session per week and 90 minutes per session. During the experimental period, the researcher who taught the training course wrote teaching records as well as the observer wrote observation records. After experiment, subjects were interviewed in-depth by the researcher. Instruments used for this study included the Scale of Life Meaning of gifted elementary students, the feedback questionnaire of the programs, the suggestion questionnaire of the course, the teaching record form, the observation record form and the interviewed guideline form. The data were analyzed by one-way ANCOVA. The Opinions of the experimental subjects, observer' s observation, comments by means of the feedback questionnaires, and teaching records were used as supplementary to analyze results of this study. The main findings were as follows:1.There were positive effects on improving the sense of life meaning of the experimental group2.The subjects reported that they enjoyed the whole training course, and also reported that the Life Education Course was an excellent curriculum 。3.Positive effects on students' development were found which were asfollows:(1)Help students to develop their self-concept, self-esteem and selfacceptance.(2)Help students to develop their multiple abilities.(3)Help students to understand the positive meaning of death and reduce the fear of death.(4)Help students to find their life meaning and to appreciate the other variant lives.(5)Help students to arrange their lives for their life purposes.(6)Help students to understand the positive meanings of difficulties and improve their frustration bearing abilities.(7)Help students to approve their interpersonal relationship and the ability of love.(8)Prevent students from committing suicide. Based on the research findings and discussion, several suggestions for the practicing of the Life Education Course were offered and the future researches were proposed. |