A study of gifted education in Saudi Arabia: Teachers' and administrators' attitudes and the impact of the Gifted Identification Training Program

The purposes of this study were to understand Saudi educators' attitudes toward gifted education and to evaluate the effectiveness of a program to train teachers in identifying gifted students. The study was divided into two phases. In phase one, 409 educators responded to a questionnaire that explored their attitudes toward gifted education. Their responses were analyzed according to the following demographic variables: age, educational level, experience, and subject matter. Younger, less experienced educators were found to have more positive attitudes toward gifted education in certain sections of the questionnaire.; In phase two of the study, 44 teachers were asked to respond to the same questionnaire used in phase one; moreover, they were asked to nominate gifted students from their own classrooms. Half of these subjects had received training in gifted education and identification of gifted students, while half of them had not. The results from this phase of the study suggested that the training program did not seem to influence teachers' attitudes towards gifted education, and it seemed to have limited success in increasing accuracy of identification.; Based on these results, recommendations are presented for the implementation of a gifted education program in Saudi Arabia. These recommendations include suggestions at various levels of the current system, including autonomy of the Ministry of Education within the government, changing the methods for training teachers so that they are adequately prepared for involvement in gifted education, providing teachers and educators with a greater voice in the decision-making process, and developing a Saudi-based definition of giftedness along with appropriate tools for identifying that giftedness in students.