Teacher Nomination of Gifted and Talented Children: A Study of Basic and Senior High Schools in the Central Region of Ghana

Abstract

This study sought to establish the level of relationship between teachers’ nomination of gifted and talented children and their demographic variables; (gender, age, qualification, teaching experience and type of school). Four hundred teachers made up of 215 males and 185 females were selected from the Senior High and the Basic schools from the Central Region of Ghana through a multistage simple random sampling method. An Adapted and simplified version with a Chronbach reliability coefficient of .86 for the Scale for Rating Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students (SRBCSS) was the instrument used for data collection. Multiple Regression analysis was utilized to analyze the research questions. The results revealed that the teachers’ demographic variables such as gender, age, type of school, qualification and teaching experience were not good predictors of their nomination skills. It is recommended that teachers learn more about the characteristics of the gifted and talented through in-service education to enable them develop skills in recognizing these children.

Key words: gifted, talented, children,  nomination , basic schools, senior high schools