Consensus on the Competencies for a Classroom Teacher to Support Gifted Students in the Regular Classroom: A Delphi Study

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to seek and reach a consensus on the competencies for classroom teachers to support gifted students in the regular classrooms. The Delphi Technique was used to achieve this purpose. The panel was carried out in three following rounds. Participants of the panel were thirty-six panelists including fifteen academicians holding PhD degrees and actively teaching in special or elementary education departments, and twenty-one in-service classroom teachers. Three sequential Delphi questionnaires that were included competencies in which panelists were asked to evaluate each competency on a seven point likert scale used during the panel. Calculated reliability coefficients of these questionnaires were .97, .93 and .94, respectively. One more competency was added after the analysis of first Delphi questionnaire. The three-round Delphi panel has showed that there was a consensus among experts on all thirty-five competencies. Competencies were discussed with regard to previous research and a number of suggestions for future research and implementation were developed.