The Effect of Differentiated Social Studies Curriculum on Secondary School Gifted Students’ Verbal Creativity in İstanbul

Abstract

The principal aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of a differentiated social studies course curriculum on gifted students’ verbal creativity. This study is important in terms of developing verbal creativity in gifted students through the social sciences curriculum. It is important in terms of being the first study to develop verbal creativity through a differentiation study in the field of social studies for gifted students. Differentiation in social studies was carried out by considering the Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM). For this, the study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design with pretest–post-test experimental and control groups. The sample consisted of 24 gifted students, 12 in the experimental group and 12 in the control group, selected from secondary schools in Istanbul. While the experimental group received this curriculum-oriented training to develop their verbal creativity skills, the control group received a standard social studies curriculum. In the study, the verbal creativity skills of gifted students were tested using the “Torrance Test of Creative Thinking-Verbal” (TTCT-V) before and after the interventions. In addition, a demographic information form was used to describe the demographic characteristics of the participants. Then, the data were analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. The findings showed that differentiated activities and instructions showed a significant positive effect on the gifted students’ verbal creativity skills. Therefore, it was concluded that the differentiated social studies curriculum developed for gifted students contributed to students’ verbal creativity skills.