Characteristics of teacher quality in the perception of students with high ability/giftedness

Abstract

This paper presents a research focused on the perception of students with high ability/giftedness, regarding the characteristics of teachers that contribute to the success of the process of teaching and learning in the classroom. Thus, this study has as its general objective to contribute to the practice of teachers who work with students with high ability/giftedness. Moreover, the specific objective of this work is to investigate, according to the perception of students with high abilities/giftedness, what are the teaching characteristics that contribute to the success of their learning. 40 students with high ability/gifted from the 8th and 9th grade of Elementary School from an social institute’s project in a city in São Paulo state participated in this research. As a methodological tool for the data collection was created a questionnaire which consists of five open-ended questions. For the analysis of the responses of these participants was used the content analysis constructs by Bardin (2011). The results of this research show that, in the perception of the majority of the participating students, the main teaching characteristics that contribute to the success of their learning are related to the good didactic/good didactic work of the teacher. Although less frequently, good relationships, good sense of humor and a willingness to learn were also mentioned as quality characteristics. In addition, the characteristics obtained in the presented research are necessary to all teachers and beneficial not only to the students with high ability/giftedness but to all of them.