The Effect of Training in Gifted Education on Elementary Classroom Teachers' Theory-Based Reasoning about the Concept of Giftedness

Abstract

Classroom teachers play an important role in the identification of gifted students through teacher recommendations and referrals. This study is an investigation of teachers' theories of giftedness using methods adapted from those used to study theory-based reasoning in categorization research. In general, the teachers in this study focused on traditional characteristics of giftedness and did not tend to include characteristics associated with diverse gifted students in their theories. Comparisons of teachers with greater and fewer hours of training in gifted education showed no significant differences between the groups. However, there was also little consistency among the teachers in their graphic representations of their theories, suggesting that not all elementary classroom teachers define common characteristics of giftedness in the same way.