Exploring the Characteristics of Gifted Pre-School Children: Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

Based on SDG4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, and based on the fact that education is the core of Palestinian values, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education launched an inclusive education policy in order to integrate all students into the educational system, regardless of their talents, abilities and disabilities. Therefore, the Palestinian Government seeks to develop educational practices to adapt to the needs of all students, including gifted children. Consequently, the identification of gifted pre-school children in Palestine aims to better include them in the general education curriculum. The current study aims to investigate the characteristics of gifted children through the perceptions of the pre-school teachers in Palestine. A mixed-methods approach was adopted. The quantitative data were collected by the “Scale for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Gifted and Talented Students”. The pre-school teachers in the sample were randomly selected, consisting of 450 female pre-school teachers. The qualitative data were collected by semi-structured interview, which 15 female pre-school teachers took part in. There was a significant difference in teachers’ perceptions according to their academic qualifications, and according to whether gifted children need a particular curriculum or not, but there was no significant difference in teachers’ perceptions according to their experiences. The final result shows that there were many positive perceptions regarding the characteristics of gifted children through qualitative data. Therefore, there was consistency between the qualitative and quantitative data of the study. This study emphasizes the significance of continuing to highlight the characteristics of gifted children and conducting more research to reveal them.