The Duke Gifted Letter, which always has interesting information (be sure to subscribe to their e-mail list), recently published an article titled, "Teaching Gifted Children: National Guidelines and State Requirements." A brief summary follows:

 

Requirements for teachers to have had training in working with gifted students vary from state to state, district to district, and sometimes school to school, heading off in many different—sometimes contradictory—directions.

 

Frequently, regular classroom teachers have had no instruction in understanding or working with gifted students. Only six states (Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, New York, Oregon, and Washington) mandate that classroom teachers receive any training in gifted education.

 

Shockingly, even teachers of gifted programs may not be required to have specialized training.

 

Requirements for teacher training and ongoing professional development are very uneven. There are no national certification requirements, and only 34 states require that gifted students be identified. Only 29 states require that gifted services be provided.

 

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), and its division, The Association for the Gifted (TAG), recently completed a three-year collaborative project to develop a set of research-based standards for educators: The Teacher Knowledge and Skill Standards for Gifted and Talented. Joyce VanTassel-Baska and Susan Johnson, who served on the standards task force, recommend that the regulations overseeing the administration of gifted education programs in every state involve teacher training in conjunction with the new standards, and that the standards be linked to state-based university programs in gifted teacher education.

 

While a summary of the standards are included in the Duke Gifted Letter, you can see a more detailed list here.

 

Briefly, the ten standards include teacher knowledge and understanding of the following: