PRESCHOOL TEACHERS OPINIONS ABOUT GIFTED CHILDREN

Preschool education institutions which are the first part of the formal education process is the process where numerous children with various developmental characteristics being present at the same environment. Early identification of the gifted children in these institutionsis important in informing the institutions and families, improving the talent of the children andpreventing declination. Definitely, this duty belongs to the pre-school teacher. Since, pre-schoolteachers are the first specialist educationalists that the children and their families face. That’swhy the duty of pre-school teachers identifying gifted children cannot be rejected. This researchhas been done to identify the opinions of pre-school teachers about children who are giftedand have special abilities. The study group of the research consists of 60 pre-school teachersin Kastamonu. The data collection for the research was done with (a) “Personal InformationForm”, (b) “Interview Form”. Besides using descriptive analysis which is one of the qualitativemethods the percentage of the teachers’ answers were expressed in numbers and interpreted.As a result of the research analysis a large part of the pre-school teachers have partiallyinformation about gifted children, they defined these children by their different characteristics,and contributed to the identification of them. Furthermore, they have noted that gifted childrenshould go through a different education procedure than their peers. As a result of the study, ithas appeared that the level of the knowledge of pre-school teachers about gifted children has toimprove and various in-service education seminars should be done.