Adaptation of Teachers' Competency for Meeting the Instructional Needs of Gifted Students Scale and Investigation of Some Variables

Abstract

Teachers' pedagogical competencies are vital in meeting the special education needs of gifted students effectively. In this context, the aim of this study is to adapt the scale developed by Jarrah and Almarashdi (2019) to the Turkish language in order to examine the pedagogical competencies of teachers teaching in different branches necessary for the education of gifted students and to investigate the competencies of teachers in different branches using the adapted scale. For this purpose, firstly, the scale investigating teachers' pedagogical competencies was adapted into Turkish, and then how this competency differs according to different variables was examined with the relational survey method. The original scale has two sub-dimensions: teacher competence (9 items) and school support (10 items). As a result of the validity analyses, the adapted scale includes 8 items for teacher competence and 4 items for school support. As a result of the reliability analysis of the adapted scale, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be 0.92. According to the findings obtained after the application of the scale, it was seen that teachers' competence in meeting the special education needs of gifted students was at a low level. In the face of the findings, this study emphasizes that teachers should receive professional training based on pre-service and in-service practice in order to increase their competencies.