Impact on Teaching: Consistent Knowledge Development, Reflection and Practice

Abstract

Application of professional knowledge is developed and practiced through teacher experiences and reflection. If we want to understand the practices of teachers of the gifted in classroom, we need to know how teachers of the gifted develop their professional knowledge as active practitioners and what diverse factors lead to their own professional knowledge in their unique situations. The teacher is one of the most important factors in providing high quality of education. Gifted education is no exception. Teachers of gifted students should know how to work with diverse student populations and students with special needs. This research is a case study of two earlier career teachers in gifted education participating in professional development. We focused on how teachers’ needs combine with practicum experience result in individual unique professional knowledge. The results are as follows. The first, even though they are both beginning teachers of the gifted, their development phases as teachers of the gifted were different depending on their previous experience. The second, there different previous experience and practicum experience determined the direction and degree of the development of professional knowledge. The third, unique contexts are different from regular teacher, especially, isolation was a big barrier for their development. The last, their development was different due to their passion about teaching gifted students and continuous reflection on their practice and students reaction were strong motives for the development of their professional knowledge.