Empowering of the teacher’s identity crisis for supporting quality young gifted education

Abstract

To support good education for young gifted children, needed teachers who have a strong character, in terms of principles, professionalism, and identity. If the teachers who teach these gifted children have weak characters, either because of internal or external factors, then the resulting education is not optimal. One of the important factors that must be considered is the teacher's identity. The topic of empowering teacher's identity in young gifted education has less attention from researchers even though this theme is essential to study. This study aims to determine the problems faced by private school teachers in young gifted education, how it impacts their professional identity crisis, and what strategies proposed to strengthen their identity crisis? Research conducted a qualitative approach. Data were collected through open questionaries distributed to 45 teachers. After data analyzed qualitatively, the researcher goes to choosing 16 teachers involved in the Focus Discussion Group (FGD) for deepening the theme and data validity. This study revealed that teachers of private elementary schools face many problems, which in turn losing their teacher's professional identity. Three types of teachers concerning identity crisis were founded. Most of them vulnerable to change their teacher's professional identity. Strategies to empower their identity crisis as professional teachers proposed.