Inequality in Educational Opportunities of Gifted and Talented Children in Turkiye

Abstract

Gifted and talented children are the ones that should have great importance and they should be given great attention in terms of social, emotional, cognitive adequateness, interests and abilities. For that reason, the education they took is one of the priorities for their developmental needs so as to provide them the opportunities they need in educational environments. Moreover, the education should be seen as a critical processes consisting of identification, assessment and guidance. Gifted education in Turkey, is taken into consideration for the students needing special education and for normal developed children and this issue has been recently an issue for educational environments and decisions. Due to the fact that most of the gifted and talented students in Turkey spend their time in regular school environments with other normal developed children, the opportunities they can benefit or not is a critical point in that sense. Hence, the purpose of this study is to handle educational opportunities of gifted and talented children in Turkey and to discuss inequality in these opportunities. The opportunities are analyzed and criticized as in terms of having qualified teachers, strategy usage of differentiation. Additionally, depending upon these inequality educational opportunities, some possible solutions are given as a general frame suitable for the cultural and social structure of Turkey. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.