The Selection of Teachers to Work With The Gifted

Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to discover whether there were any quantifiable differences between a group of teachers identified by their principals as the strongest available candidates for special training in gifted education and the group of teachers who had not been identified as strong candidates by these principals. Three elementary school principals completed the Staff Selection Tasks, an instrument which asked them to identify teachers who possessed the following traits associated with successful teaching of the gifted: a superior ability for asking probing questions; a high degree of self-confidence; a wide range of interests; flexible, imaginative, creative; highly motivated, professional; a sense of responsibility for developing the potential of each student; excellent critical thinking skills; and innovative. The principals were asked, as the final task, to select a teacher at each grade level as the nominee for special training in gifted education.

Forty-four elementary school teachers completed the following instruments: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory, the Teacher Form of the Learning Styles Inventory, the I.G. Set Scale, The Cornell Critical Thinking Test, and a Literature Task which required the development of discussion questions for students labeled "intellectually gifted" and "average."

Discriminant analyses were run on the groups generated by each part of the Staff Selection Tasks. Significant differences were found in each discriminant analysis. In the major study, the nominated group was principally distinguished by a factor (Disciplined Imagination) which is claimed to reflect the degree to which a person is energetic, persistent, thorough, industrious, imaginative, adventurous, and likely to attempt difficult tasks and to prefer complex tasks.

The quantitative differences found in the ten discriminant analyses in this study do not provide clear grounds for any final conclusion about the overall superiority of the nominated faculty group. The results suggest that it may be important to specify whether teachers are to work with intellectually gifted or creatively gifted students in any future studies.