What Do Motivated Teachers of Highly Able Students Know About Teaching for Talent Development?

Balanced research and practice

Teachers of gifted students received scholarships to attend university led Professional Learning on Developing Gifted Potential. This study aimed to explore teachers of gifted students’ perceptions, motivations, and strategies for identifying and teaching highly able students for talent development in their classrooms. It also aimed to evaluate relationships between personality traits, motivation, and creativity in teachers working with highly able students in Victoria, Australia. In this mixed-methods case study (Yin, 2009), 14/25 teachers completed an online survey which consisted of a number of validated instruments. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse data from open-ended questions. Sixteen themes emerged. Secondly, a mixture of methods was utilized to collect and analyse data; quantitative analyses using Spearman’s nonparametric correlation coefficients due to the small sample size were applied. It was found that, motivation related highly with Openness to Experience, moderately with Agreeableness, and Extraversion. Other findings, explanations and implications will be shared.