The role of a social pedagogue in work with gifted pupils in primary school

Due to their characteristics and peculiarity, gifted pupils are classified in the group of children with special needs. To satisfy their and society's goals, and to develop their own skills, these children need special teaching and educational activities. In order to accomplish this, it is mandatory in the first place to thoroughly understand the talent and be familiar with the numerous characteristics that can manifest in gifted pupils as this is invaluable in discovering and identifying them. In all this, family and school have an important role, while a successful collaboration between the two has a positive influence on the development of the child and his scholastic success. As one of the professional profiles in the scholastic counsel, the social pedagogue can be a part of the educational-teaching process of gifted pupils. The central goal of the whole degree was to research how work with gifted pupils is dealt with within the work role of the social pedagogue. The results of this research on the existing state of work with gifted pupils on Slovenian primary schools, which was carried out on the sample of twenty-six social pedagogues who work there, show that only half of the social teachers work with gifted pupils, and in doing so their role extends from coordination of work among pupils, teachers, and parents, verification and identification of gifted pupils, writing of individualized programmes and evaluation of work, to direct collaboration with the gifted pupil, which includes different forms of counseling activities and execution of numerous additional activities. Although the schools already perform different activities to face the problem of gifted pupils, the social pedagogues agree that more activities should be implemented. And how well prepared are the social pedagogues to face this kind of work? Based on their judgment, they are relatively well equipped with competences to work with gifted pupils, which they have mostly acquired through experience at their place of work, reading technical literature, and taking part in additional trainings. Nonetheless, most of them express the desire or need to acquire additional knowledge in this area