Nowadays, in their work, teachers encounter pupils with different abilities, among others with potentially gifted children. The teachers’ task is to recognize such pupils. For a more efficient process of discovering and recognizing gifted pupils, it is good to incorporate parents of abovementioned children, who can become an important part of this process with their information.
In the theoretical part of my master's thesis I present the concept of giftedness and kinds of it. Here are described traits, which are good leads and of help to parents and teachers alike in identification of giftedness. I touch upon grades and methods of recognition, explained some ways of working with this group of pupils. The second part is focused on parents, presented their role in the recognition and promotion of giftedness, and shows in which way to include parents into the educational system most efficiently. Exposed are some programs, both here and abroad, which are intended for parents and their gifted children.
Within the empirical part, I explore and compare opinions of pupils’ parents, who were identified as gifted, with opinions of parents whose children were not recorded as gifted. I am interested what the experiences of parents were in this area. I examine and compare views on the regulation of the education of gifted pupils in the school, with parents of gifted children but I am also interested in how they were involved in the process of recording their child as potentially gifted. The study involves 432 parents of gifted pupils who attended the ninth grade and 1129 parents of pupils who were not identified as gifted.
Results of the research show that both, parents of gifted and parents of their classmates, believe the position of gifted in Slovenian schools is pretty good, considering the care of gifted and educational work with them. Differences between the groups are visible in opinion about order of identification of this group of children. Parents of gifted pupils see this position worse than parents of their classmates. Difference of opinions between the two groups comes in view of the soundness of identifying this group of pupils. Parents of gifted pupils see this situation worse than parents’ classmates. Parents also do not want more than a consultative role. The fact, that a pupil is identified as gifted, in most part influences higher grade results as well as personal satisfaction, as well as unanimously ruling out the fact that due to this, the pupil became conceited. Schools are mostly successful in adapting activities during class, because parents are satisfied with them, but are aware that the teachers’ motivation for work with the gifted is the most important factor for the development of their gifted child. Parents of gifted pupils see the biggest advantage in heterogeneous groups in accepting, while parents of pupils hope on mutually benefitting help. Parents do not see, due to the fact that they are in class together with ungifted and vice versa, drawbacks for gifted pupils.
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