Kindergarten and first grade: A time for developing and nurturing gifted behaviors in young children

Exploring the Nature of Giftedness in Preschool Children

“…While generally effective at rating kindergarten children's current abilities, with ratings predictive of performance over 3 years later (Stevenson, Parker, Wilkinson, Hegion, & Fish, 1976), teachers of young children are less effective at identifying giftedness than the children's parents or teachers of older children (Ciha et al, 1974;Jacobs, 1971). Reasons for this could include a teacher tendency to focus on weaknesses despite accompanying advanced behaviors (Delahanty, 1984), lack of teacher training in gifted education (Gear, 1978), and subscription to myths about gifted children (Whitmore, 1982), as well as lack of opportunity for children in an un challenging or lock-step curriculum to reveal abilities (Chance, 1990;Leyden, 1985;Roedell et al, 1980). Observation by teachers can, however, be a useful and sensitive identification tool (Borland & Wright, 1994), especially when training alerts teachers to critical characteristics and the need to observe and document regularly and systematically (Shaklee, 1992).…”