Micropolitics of School and EFL Teachers’ Professional Interests: The Case of Schools for Gifted Students in Iran

This qualitative study delved into 15 Iranian middle school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ perceptions, practices, and challenges of differentiation for gifted students. To this end, a set of data sources including interviews, observation notes, and documents were used. Results of interview transcriptions exhibited that the rural EFL teachers primarily held negative or indifferent views of differentiating instruction for gifted students, and that their actual differentiation practices for gifted students left far more to be desired. In addition, a host of barriers to differentiation practices were cited by the teachers, including time, energy, and class size as the most impactful.

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Teaching gifted students through authentic instruction: Reflections from the EFL teachers

Journal of Human Sciences ◽

10.14687/jhs.v14i4.4998 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 3663

Author(s):

Gülçin Mutlu

Keyword(s):

Language Learners ◽

Meaning Making ◽

Gifted Students ◽

Authentic Instruction ◽

Authentic Pedagogy ◽

Gifted Learners ◽

Higher Level Thinking ◽

Depth Analysis ◽

Efl Teachers ◽

Phenomenological Design

The review of literature highlighted that gifted students may gain a lot from authentic instruction in that this methodology may serve well to their needs for inquiry, meaning-making and higher level thinking. Therefore, this qualitative study realized in a phenomenological design aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the EFL teachers’ ways of integrating authentic pedagogy into their teaching situations with gifted students. Thus, part of the aim of this study is to investigate how foreign language teaching and gifted education could be linked to one another and in this way it also aims to propose an interdisciplinary focus of research. The participants were six EFL teachers that were sampled from those teaching gifted language learners at Science and Arts Centers (BILSEMs) in one geographical region of Turkey and asked to share their experiences about the implementation of authentic instruction in their gifted classrooms. The results showed that the EFL teachers mostly followed the firmly established standards of the authentic instruction in the literature and they believed that authentic instructional practices enhance gifted learners’ learning and intellectual capacities. However, there were some problems or barriers such as class size and time constraints against the better implementation of authentic instruction in their gifted EFL classrooms as reported by these teachers.

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Evaluation of a Summer-School Program for Highly Gifted Secondary-School Students: The German Pupils Academy

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027//1015-5759.18.3.214 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 214-228 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Heinz Neber ◽

Kurt A. Heller

Keyword(s):

Secondary School ◽

Summer School ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Gifted Students ◽

School Program ◽

School Students ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Regulatory Strategies ◽

Cognitive Framework

Summary The German Pupils Academy (Deutsche Schüler-Akademie) is a summer-school program for highly gifted secondary-school students. Three types of program evaluation were conducted. Input evaluation confirmed the participants as intellectually highly gifted students who are intrinsically motivated and interested to attend the courses offered at the summer school. Process evaluation focused on the courses attended by the participants as the most important component of the program. Accordingly, the instructional approaches meet the needs of highly gifted students for self-regulated and discovery oriented learning. The product or impact evaluation was based on a multivariate social-cognitive framework. The findings indicate that the program contributes to promoting motivational and cognitive prerequisites for transforming giftedness into excellent performances. To some extent, the positive effects on students' self-efficacy and self-regulatory strategies are due to qualities of the learning environments established by the courses.

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