Gifted Children’s Education and a Glance to Turkey

Özet

ABTRACT:The paper provides a critical overview about teaching children in regular classrooms, designing and
enriching curricula for gifted children and using multiple intelligence theory as teaching mathematics by giving
several examples. Teaching mathematics or science to gifted children doesn’t seem easy because every student is
different than each other. In order to eliminate the expected problems the curriculum should focus on many things
like their interests, abilities and their needs. Thus differentiation in terms of content, product and environment is the
key concept to prevent some challenges in regular classrooms. Also, the paper attempts to look at enriching curricula
for gifted children by providing different strategies to teachers as implementing programs such as designing
education plan to see their learning styles, characteristics and interests in different areas or using computer
technology such as expecting project preparation with individual or small group work. This approach is related with
multiple intelligence theory as well which will be used as a benchmark for the last part of this study. Thus, the study
focuses on the alternative methods and strategies. Also in Turkey throughout history, education of gifted students has
been conducted by Arts and Science Centers (as called BILSEM)and study of some institutions and associations.
However, parliamentary questions suggested in 2011 and strategy plan established in 2013 have shed light on
necessity of support of gifted and talented students.
Keywords: Gifted students’ educations, giftedness education approaches, curriculum enrichment, a case of Turkey