Abstract:

The study investigated the relationship between educators’ demographic and professional characteristics and their attitudes toward gifted education. The variables examined in relation to attitudes toward gifted education were gender, highest educational degree earned, capacity in which the educator serves (teacher, guidance counselor, administrator, etc.), the grade span within which the educator serves (preschool, grades 1 through 3, etc.), type of school employed (public or private), years of experience as an educator, years of experience as an educator in small locations like villages or towns, and years of experience as an educator in locations larger than towns. Data were collected from 421 educators of preschool through university who were employed in various schools or educational institutions in Istanbul, Turkey during the 2011-2012 school year. The Educators’ Attitudes toward Gifted Education Scale, which was originally developed by the authors, was used to collect data on the attitudes. The scale included 15 items, which were on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’.

The scale, shown to be valid and reliable in a journal article already published, measured the following four factors:
1) Degree to which educators perceived gifted students as a national treasure
2) Degree to which educators perceived gifted education as an elitist practice
3) Degree to which educators believed that gifted students had different academic needs, and
4) Degree to which educators believed that gifted students had different social/emotional characteristics and needs.

Each factor was measured as the total score of the items measuring that factor. To examine the aforementioned relationships, independent samples t-test, paired-samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance, or correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient) was used. One finding was that the educators believed more in gifted students’ differential academic needs than in their differential social/emotional needs. Another interesting finding was public school educators’ more positive attitudes toward gifted students and gifted education than those of private school educators. The level of their perception of gifted students as a national treasure was higher, and the level of their perception of gifted education as an elitist practice was lower. A third finding was that male educators’ perception of gifted students as a national treasure was higher than that of female educators (although not statistically significant). Further exploration of this finding revealed that administrators valued gifted students more than homeroom teachers did, and 17 out of 20 administrators in the study were male; while 95 out of 138 homeroom teachers were female. All of the findings above were interpreted in the paper within the global context as well as within the context of education in today’s Istanbul. Recommendations were also made about teacher preparation and in-service teacher training as they are related to educators’ attitudes toward gifted students and gifted education.

Keywords:

Gifted education, teacher attitudes.