Educating the parents of gifted children :|a needs analysis

Abstract

Parents education programs constitute one of the most popular subjects in family education. One of the parental education fields is the education of parents of gifted that is aimed to know how to meet needs of their children with differences and sensitivities from other peers. This study aims to identify the educational needs of parents of primary school age gifted children. To accomplish this, both focus group and in-depth interviews were used in order to gather thematic qualitative data from thirteen parents(F=13). The design of research is an exploratory design in order to deepen the understanding of each participant’s lived experiences. Using this design, the followings research questions were investigated: (a) What do parents need to learn after their primary school age children are identified as gifted? (b) What is the educational support program that should be provided for the parents? In order to reach to the answers of these questions, a semi-structured interview with open-ended questions was applied to the mothers of primary school age gifted children. Descriptive coding and the thematic analysis for qualitative data were used to analyze the data. According to the analysis of this study, four master educational themes were reached, these are theory & practices and out of school activities, before and after identification, personal development and twice exceptional. Despite the limitations of the study, it contributes to the field in terms of understanding educational needs of parents whose primary school age children identified as gifted.