Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to detect the factors affecting Turkish preservice elementary school teachers’ gifted referral decisions through eleven profiles (hypothetical scenarios) originally created by five American experts in the field of gifted education. The original profiles were translated from English to Turkish and adapted so that they were more relevant to Turkish culture. The profiles varied based on the characteristics embedded in each profile. The study participants were 204 Turkish pre-service elementary school teachers attending two colleges of Education at Gaziantep University. The pre-service teachers were asked to indicate, on a four-point Likert scale, whether they would include each profile’s hypothetical student in a gifted education program. The results of factorial ANOVAs indicated that Turkish pre-service elementary school teachers’ referral decisions were influenced by the following factors: pre-service teachers’ gender, students’ gender, students’ ability areas, students’ personality traits, words describing the students, and students’ length of passion.

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