Finnish Teachers’ Conceptions of Giftedness

Abstract

This article presents two independent studies of Finnish teachers' conceptions of giftedness and considers whether it is a malleable or fixed quality. The first qualitative study examined elementary school teachers' (N = 212) conceptions via inductiveoriented content analysis, whereas the second study measured teachers' (elementary n = 184, secondary n = 279) conceptions with a quantitative approach. According to teachers' open-ended definitions, giftedness was seen to be multidimensional and a characteristic that differentiates the person from others. Giftedness was also described via cognitive, creative, and motivational features of the gifted. Furthermore, the two independent studies suggest quite different views on how Finnish teachers understand the developmental nature of giftedness: The first indicates that the developmental nature of giftedness was not frequently mentioned, whereas the second found that a malleable view of giftedness (i.e., a growth mindset) was dominant. Thus, this article highlights a need for in-depth and mixed-methods research designs to study how teachers see the developing nature of giftedness.

The implications of teachers’ implicit theories for moral education: A case study from Finland

“…In day-to-day work, the promotional and the restrictive seem to be regularly intertwined (Kärkkäinen, 2011). Studies of Finnish teachers' implicit theories show that teachers mainly have an incremental theory of giftedness (Laine, Kuusisto, & Tirri, 2016). Furthermore, Finnish teachers seem to regard the academic competence of poorly achieving students as malleable, but have more fixed views of the stability of high-achievers' competence (Kärkkäinen, 2011;Kärkkäinen & Räty, 2010).…”

“…These four teachers were chosen from a survey measuring Finnish teachers' (N = 463) implicit theories using Carol Dweck's mindset inventory (Dweck, 2000(Dweck, , 2006Laine et al, 2016). The sample item for the scale was 'Your giftedness is something very basic about you that you can't change very much. '…”

How Do School Children and Adolescents Perceive the Nature of Talent Development? A Case Study from Finland

“…Still, there has been little research on implicit beliefs about giftedness (cf. [23,24]) compared to implicit beliefs about intelligence. The intriguing questions are whether the nature of these concepts is seen in a similar way and whether these views have similar effects on achievement.…”

“…This indicates that giftedness might be seen as more fixed in nature than intelligence. In their study, Laine et al [24] examined Finnish teachers' implicit beliefs about giftedness. The results indicated that most of the teachers ( = 463) had a growth mindset about giftedness (54%), one-third (30%) had a fixed mindset, and the rest (16%) had a mixed mindset.…”

“…In Finnish the word intelligence is often used traditionally referring to IQ, in other words, to logical-mathematical and linguistic competencies. Whereas the concept giftedness is used in more broaden manner, capturing all the other areas of giftedness as well [24,26]. One study that contrasted implicit beliefs about intelligence and giftedness was made among high achieving American students.…”