Identifying additional selection criteria for training teachers of the gifted

Abstract

This study seeks to identify personality characteristics including intellectual inclination, personality and creative-thinking ability of a group of graduate student teachers who, on their own volition, opted to take an initialization course in Gifted Education as one of the electives leading to a Postgraduate Diploma in Education-Secondary (PGDE-S) at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. The control group consisted of PGDE-S student teachers who chose another elective. Personality attributes of the subjects, like extraversion-introversion, sensing-thinking, thinking-feeling and judgment-perception, were captured using the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Form G)", while the degree of creative thinking was assessed using the "How Do You Think?" inventory. Results of two independent tests indicated that the mean creative thinking score and the mean overall results for the experimental group were significantly higher than the controls. Also, more subjects in the experimental group were extraverted, intuitive and thinking. This study serves as a prototype for the systematic identification of graduate student teachers to teach the academically gifted in Singapore.