The profile of professionals of Unit for the Family in the Core of Activities for High Abilities/Giftedness

Abstract

This research meant to define the profile of professionals in the NAAH/S – a Support Unit for the Family in the Core of Activities for High Abilities/Giftedness, identifying their original graduation and qualification courses to support the families and students with high abilities/giftedness, as well their needs and difficulty on the jobs. As there this theme was not very often on the literature this study was defined as a Survey. Eleven NAAH/S, represented by their unit coordinators, were researched. The instrument of data collection comprehend an electronic questionnaire sent to the all cores by e-mail, and it was elaborated with the aid of two sources: the guiding document and data from interviews with researchers from area. The data were treated qualitatively and quantitatively, that is, the objective questions were submitted to descriptive statistics and subjective questions were grouped in categories of analysis according to their contents and treated as content analysis. Main results evidenced that most professionals were pedagogues and psychologists, other professionals were graduates from secondary or technical schools or from other type of higher education. Even though, the most have qualification courses a few of them had specific qualification for the services of assisting families of students with high abilities/giftedness. Among the difficulties experienced, there are a lack of qualification to support the families, materials and financial restrictions, and lack of partnership with higher education institutions.