Detecting Talent from the Perspectives of Students, Parents, and Teachers

The terms “gifted” or “gifted and talented” are bestowed on students, who display a variety of characteristics, including high performance capabilities in an intellectual, creative, or artistic area. Although certain characteristics can be generalized, some gifted students may not possess the same characteristics as other gifted individuals, and they may not appear to have the same observable differences. Depending on how their giftedness has been dealt with previously, they may even appear to be relatively “ungifted”. Many gifted students resist routine and exhibit nonconformist behavior. Others may withdraw; doing only a minimum of what is required. These students may have developed undesirable behavior due to a lack of challenges in school, and their intellectual development may have been arrested. So, it is important to identify these students as early as possible in order to secure a positive schooling experience. Checklists for identifying “the upper”, 5% of students were distributed to 150 gifted and talented students, and to their parents and teachers, as well as to 188 “ordinary” students and their parents and teachers, in order to determine the probability of giftedness. The results reveal the probability of giftedness from the perspectives of the students, parents, and teachers, respectively.