Teachers’ attitudes toward giftedness and gifted education 

Teachers are essential to gifted education and their attitudes toward giftedness and to adjustments in teaching may impact how well they cater to the needs of gifted students. While teachers' attitudes toward the gifted have been studied for several decades internationally, research in the Swedish context is scarce. Allodi Westling and Rydelius (2008) conducted a pilot study on experienced teachers’ attitudes toward giftedness and Ivarsson (2023) has explored principals' attitudes toward the gifted and their education. The authors emphasize that further examination of Swedish teachers' attitudes toward giftedness is needed. 

This poster presentation focuses on the first study in my doctoral project in which I aim to answer the following research question; What are Swedish teachers’ attitudes toward the gifted and their education? A questionnaire will be used to gather data from Swedish teachers working in preschools and schools in 18 different municipalities in Sweden. Knowing more about teachers’ attitudes on the topic of gifted education is a good starting point for consideration of educational provision. This study also investigates teachers’ perceptions of their knowledge about teaching gifted students which may generate valuable implications for future teacher education.

My ambition with the presentation is to give the audience an overview of what research on attitudes toward giftedness and gifted education shows so far and to present my research design and methods. 

References

Allodi Westling, M., & Rydelius, P.-A. (2008). The needs of gifted children in context: A study of Swedish teachers’ knowledge and attitudes [konferenspresentation]. The European Council for High Ability (ECHA), Prague, Czech Republic.

 Ivarsson, L. (2023). Principals’ perceptions of gifted students and their education. Social Sciences and Humanities, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2023.100400