Abstract:

It is important for pre-school and primary school teachers to be able to empathize on students’ life and to look at problems in the eyes of gifted and talented students and to know their thinking styles, problem solving methods, general and personal characteristics. For this purpose, it is very important to contribute to the field by, putting forth pre-school and primary school teachers’ metaphorical perceptions about gifted and talented students and  determining the teachers’ views about the characteristics of these pupils, their diagnosis and education processes, and the activities in the classroom environment that they can do. A total of 17 teachers, including 6 classroom teachers and 11 pre-school teachers who work at different institutions, participated in this qualitative study, phenomenology. Metaphorical perceptions of teachers' about gifted and talented concepts and their views on the characteristics, diagnosis and education of these students were taken individually by giving 50 minutes for each other in writing. Views are analyzed by using content analysis technique and categories and themes created via Nvivo 8.1. Some conclusions are as follows. Teachers stated that gifted and talented students have many different features in cognitive, affective and psychomotor field. In-service teacher trainings and instruction activities which should be arranged by taking into consideration the students' intelligence and ability areas, are necessities. Participant teachers produced ten metaphors in seven different categories related to gifted students and a total of ten metaphors in six different categories related to talented students.

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