Empowering of the teacher’s identity crisis for supporting quality young gifted education

Abstract

To support good education for young gifted children, needed teachers who have a strong character, in ‎terms of principles, professionalism, and identity. If the teachers who teach these gifted children have ‎weak characters, either because of internal or external factors, then the resulting education is not ‎optimal. One of the important factors that must be considered is the teacher's identity. The topic of ‎empowering teacher's identity in young gifted education has less attention from researchers even ‎though this theme is essential to study. This study aims to determine the problems faced by private ‎school teachers in young gifted education, how it impacts their professional identity crisis, and what ‎strategies proposed to strengthen their identity crisis? Research conducted a qualitative approach. Data ‎were collected through open questionaries distributed to 45 teachers. After data analyzed qualitatively, ‎the researcher goes to choosing 16 teachers involved in the Focus Discussion Group (FGD) for ‎deepening the theme and data validity. This study revealed that teachers of private elementary schools ‎face many problems, which in turn losing their teacher's professional identity. Three types of teachers ‎concerning identity crisis were founded. Most of them vulnerable to change their teacher's professional ‎identity. Strategies to empower their identity crisis as professional teachers proposed.‎