Teachers' perceptions about gifted students: relations with previous education and experience

Currently, gifted students seem not to be adequately identified or cared for in schools, being aggravated by poor teacher education. The aim of this research was to analyze the relationship between teacher education and high capacity experience with teachers' knowledge about this type of students. For these reasons, a survey study was followed with Spanish teachers of Secondary Education (n = 637), who completed the Teacher Perception about Gifted Students Questionnaire. The most outstanding results indicated that 57.35% of the participants who had received training on specific educational support needs stated that they knew the main needs of gifted students, meanwhile those who had not previously trained only answered affirmatively the 19.16% (phi = .391; sig. = .000). 61.97% of teachers who had previous experience in this area and 66.82% of those who did not it indicated that they need to have more specific training in this regard (V = .263; sig. = .000). The results of this study highlight the need to improve training on this topic in the initial and continuous teacher education.