Best Practices in Counseling the Gifted in Schools: What’s Really Happening?

Abstract

School counselors play a vital role in meeting the needs of gifted students in their buildings. However, because there is a lack of structured, standardized, and empirically tested best practices for counseling gifted students, school counselors may not know how best to serve this unique population. The purpose of this study was to investigate gifted and talented adolescents’ experiences with the counseling techniques, strategies, and approaches most frequently cited in the gifted education literature in order to determine if any of these best practices were actually occurring. Few of these best practices were experienced by gifted and talented adolescents surveyed. School counselor preparation programs should consider providing training curriculum that addresses issues unique to the learning and development of gifted students. Putting the research to use School counselors play an integral role in supporting the talent development of gifted students. While there is an abundance of suggested best practices in counseling the gifted in the literature, there are few studies which ascertain if the suggested best practices are being provided by school counselors or the relationship between the gifted student and their counselor. This study was designed to enlighten both the fields of school counseling and gifted education as to what students are experiencing with their school counselors, what if any best practices are being delivered, and what programmatic options gifted students would like to see in their high schools. Findings indicate that few of the best practices are being experienced by high school students. Hence, while future research is needed to further explore this disconnect, the critical issue is the need for school counselors to have more exposure to these best practices in their preparation programs and beyond.