Examining the Methods and Strategies which Classroom Teachers Use in the Education of Gifted Student

Teachers are the leading people who are the most responsible for students’ education. The method and strategies that the teacher chooses influence the student’s academic, cognitive and affective development directly. In each class, there are students whose cognitive qualities are different from each other. Gifted students differentiate from their peers in relation to their learning speed and perception capacity in terms of their potential when compared with their peers. The teacher plays a critical role in the development of inborn competent of these students having such qualities. The aim of this study is to examine the methods and strategies which classroom teachers know and use in the education of gifted students.
The research population is composed of classroom teachers working in formal educational institutions within the borders of Tekirdağ. Taken into consideration attainability, 177 teachers from 72 schools out of the research population were included in the study with the method of random sampling. In the research, interpretive sequential design was used as a model. The study was implemented in two phases. In the first phase, data were collected from teachers participating in the research on the methods they know and use in educating gifted students through a form made up by the researchers. In the second phase, interviews were implemented with 17 of the willing teachers participating in the first phase of the study in order to determine the method/strategies they use in educating gifted students and the problems they encounter while using the method/strategies. As a device of data collection, semi-structured interview forms developed by the researchers were used.
As a result of the research, it was discovered that the strategy which is the most known and used is “resorting to the supplementary reading sources”. The problems they encounter while using the method/ strategies they know are crowded classes, too much workload, economical limitation