Abstract:

It has been recently given importance that programs are prepared in consideration of individual differences of children with the need for special education. Even if it is especially thought that children with the need for special education are just physically or mentally disabled, one should recognize children whom we can actually call 'gifted' for them to be able to adapt to the classroom environment. Provided that the first-, second- and third-grade students are nominated by the classroom teachers as of the academic year of 2016-2017, they will be able to receive education at Science-Art Centers. Therefore, classroom teachers undertake an important task for identifying gifted children. Can teachers having such a great responsibility be trained to have that competence? The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent the subject 'gifted students' is included in the teaching plan during the eight-term education of pre-service classroom teachers. For this purpose, the websites of 193 universities registered to the Council of Higher Education were identified to examine 70 universities with a classroom teaching program. According to the findings, there is a course called 'special education' that handles the topics related to the gifted in 68 of those 70 universities, and in the rest, there is no course titled either 'special education' or 'gifted'. When the special education course is investigated, it is seen that objectives concerning the gifted take the last places and the contents addressing the gifted takes the third place. According to the learning acquisitions of the special education course, 'knowing about the characteristics of gifted children and educational applications for them' comes across as one of the least addressed topics.

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