4.3.11 Tales from Norwegian Gifted Youngsters

Internationally giftedness is under the umbrella of Special Needs Education, but how these students are cared for varies greatly from both country to country and within different countries as well. Methods for differentiating may be acceleration or enrichment in various forms (Mönks & Pflüger, 2005; Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011). In Norway, giftedness is still a new concept. The Directorate for Education and Training have confirmed that in their view, gifted students cannot receive special needs education for their needs of a differentiated and advanced curriculum, but they can and should receive adapted education (Church, Education and Research department, 1998; The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2014).

Since this topic is new in Norway, we want to know how the gifted students are experiencing school. Do they feel they get the needed accommodation, are the teachers differentiating and adapting the curriculum for them? They do not qualify for special needs education, so the adaption has to be within the limits of the ordinary class. What kind of adaption are these students experiencing?

This study is of value both to Norwegian and to international research. There are no specific pullout programs or segregated classes for gifted, the teachers are free to choose their own methods; this means that there might be big differences in how the students experience school, based on where they go to school and whom their teacher is. Although this sample is too small to generalize, the study will provide us with interesting results to explore further. There are no national criteria for defining giftedness. This makes Norway an interesting case.

This proposal presents preliminary findings from a qualitative study about Norwegian gifted students in secondary school. The sample consist of seventeen students, both male and female, from different parts of Norway. The students are 12 to 15 years. They were tested with WISC-IV prior to the interview to establish an objective criterion for giftedness. All subjects scored above the 95 percentile in one or more index at the WISC-IV. The interviewer used a semi-structured interview guide for structure.

The transcript are analyzed using thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The preliminary findings indicate five themes. These themes are: "Boredom", "Group-work and project-work", "Differentiated education for all", "Bullying" and "Differences between elementary and secondary school". Results are, among other, discussed in relation to Gagnè (1995), Renzulli and Renzulli (2010) and Subotnik et al. (2011)

Author(s):