engleski

Some characteristics and diagnostic value of different instruments in the identification of gifted pre-school children

Giftedness could be defined as a cluster of characteristics that enable an individual to consequently achieve scores beyond average in one or in a few activities performed. Different measuring instruments for estimating giftedness are often used, but their validity and discrimination characteristics are rarely examined. That was the main purpose of this research. Data have been collected by using the following instruments: List for Observing Behavior Characteristic of Gifted Children, Child’ s Drawing Talent, Child’ s Musicality, &laquo ; Approximate&raquo ; Estimation of Child’ s Giftedness, the test Colored Progressive Matrix (Raven), Urban – Jellen’ s Creativity Test, Questionnaire for Teachers about Gifted Children. Subjects in research were occasional sample of pre-school age children from the Kindergarten &raquo ; Maslacak&raquo ; in Zapresic (N=61), 35 boys and 26 girls. Attitudes about gifted children are examined in 8 teachers in the children’ s groups. The results showed that gifted children were best discriminated by the variables with lower average estimations, in all measuring instruments used in the research. Low standard deviations of the results and low discriminative results show the fact that teachers tend to “ equalize” all children as “ average” in some instruments. In most of the measuring instruments, the majority of the items correlate positively and significantly, what can indicate construct validity of these instruments. In the Urban-Jelenn’ s Creativity Test, the number of variables could be reduced. In the Questionnaire for Teachers about Gifted Children, three types of teachers could be classified. It could be concluded that most of the sum results in different measuring instruments highly positively and statistically significantly correlated. Probably they measure a unique characteristic: giftedness.

giftedness; measuring instruments; pre-school children; discrimination

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