Teachers' understanding of giftedness

Today, no educational institution can escape the problem of working with gifted pupils. Gifted pupils are classified into the group of children with special needs, which means that they should be recognised as such and enabled to develop their abilities with appropriate didactic approaches. In the first part, the authors of this paper warn about unclear definitions of the terms intelligence, giftedness and talent, due to which it is even more difficult to identify them. All the definitions have in common the finding that the high achievement of gifted pupils is an important differentiating factor and that gifted pupils have specific traits in cognitive thinking, learning performance, motivation and the social-emotional area. Different authors offer different methodologies for identifying gifted pupils, which emphasise the teacher's observation of the child, school achievements and intelligence tests. The authors found that a three-phase model for detecting gifted pupils (recording, identification and the notifying and opinion of parents) has been established in Europe. In the empirical part, the authors examined the ability to recognise those traits of gifted pupils that determine the phenomenon of giftedness. Results show that teachers recognise and identify these traits, but not reliably enough. Possible interpretations are inadequate education of teachers in the area of giftedness, which is consequently shown in inappropriate didactic approaches in working with gifted pupils.