MATHEMATICALLY GIFTED STUDENTS: THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND UNIQUE NEEDS

The present study deals with the unique needs of mathematically gifted students. This topic is important because of the need to understand to depth the unique needs of these students, the learning characteristics tailored to them, as well as their preferences regarding learning and their relationships with other students and with their teachers. The main purpose of this study, as mentioned earlier, is to identify the unique needs of mathematics gifted students, measure their specific preferences in various aspects of learning, as well as about their relationships with their teachers and other students. This, in order to establish a broad and deep background to enable a unique reference to the population of gifted students and allow the construction of appropriate educational programs, care and interventions tailored to their needs, while integrating the educational staff at the school. The present study is a combined one, with a quantitative and qualitative measures, and has two hypotheses: gifted students' perceptions of the teachers will be different from the non-gifted students; differences will be found in the needs of gifted students compared to non-gifted students in unique learning programs at school. To examine the hypotheses 100 students were sampled, 50 gifted and 50 non-gifted students. The instruments included a questionnaire used before in this area of research, as well as an interview built for the purpose of the present study. The results showed that indeed there are differences between gifted students and non-gifted students in many ways and preferences, such as learning pace preference, preference for collaborative learning, curriculum content preference, preference for complexity and preference for type of interaction with the teacher. The findings are compatible with previous studies in the field and emphasize the importance of the reference for gifted students in a unique way