Developing the Interest of Gifted Adolescents in Biology: The Role of Social Environment Influence

This thesis explores the issue of developing gifted adolescents' interest in biology in the context of the social environment with the aim of identifying key factors that support or, conversely, limit the development of professional interest in this group of students, and describing their mutual relationships at the level of family, school, and leisure activities. The thesis is based on the concept of theoretical models of giftedness, motivation, and psychosocial development of adolescents and builds on approaches to giftedness development based on the interaction of internal predispositions and external conditions. The empirical part uses a combined research design including a questionnaire survey and focus groups conducted among participants of the Biology Olympiad summer camp (cat. D and C) - Běstvinka 2024. Qualitative analysis using thematic analysis was performed in MAXQDA software, and its results show that the development of interest in biology is strongly determined in particular by the quality of family support that respects the interests of the gifted and promotes autonomy, the approach of teachers who enable active learning and individual development, and a leisure environment that expands opportunities for self- realization outside of school, where gifted individuals can meet...