This study is primarily aimed at developing the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children, based on the demands of early childhood teachers and verifying enhancement of teaching efficacy after teacher education program. In order to achieve these objectives, relevant references and precedent studies are reviewed to gather views and opinions on the integrated curriculum for gifted children and general children, which leads to an investigation of the demands of early childhood teachers. 380 early childhood teachers responded to the questionnaire regarding the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children. Frequency analysis for these collected questionnaires is conducted using SPSS 20.0.
Next, programs are developed based on the results of demands for the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children. Contents and implementation suitability of the teacher education program are reviewed, revised and complemented through consultation with a gifted and talented education (GATE) specialist, an early childhood teacher, a professor from a department of early childhood education and five doctoral students, which results in finalizing the teacher education program. Subject of this study include early childhood teachers who are currently engaged in early childhood education and are willing to voluntarily participate in the teacher education program.
The teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children are provided for 20 teachers. Lee Bun-ryeo’s method is the one used for this study. In addition, for measuring teacher’s sense of efficacy, the efficacy scale translated by Bae Jae-jung (2005) is used after modifying and supplementing this scale accordingly. These tools are evaluated and determined by themselves on a five-point scale. In terms of data analysis, SPSS win 20.0 program is used to identify teacher’s sense of efficacy, while conducing frequency analysis to process materials for categories of general matters. A Paired Sample t-test is also conducted to verify research problems. The impacts of reflective journal writing on the enhancement of teacher’s sense of efficacy are contextually analyzed.
Results of this study are as follows:
First, after studying demands for the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children, the result is that creative training is required for the program, within the behavior guidance methods as integrative training programs and desirable integrated training programs. Also, support for gifted and talented education specialists is most required as a type of support for the program. As the main agents of the program, administrative authorities are required to play a central role in supporting the strengthening of teachers’ abilities, decreasing teachers’ workload, decreasing teachers’ working hours, decreasing the number of young children, education and training opportunities, and special allowances.
Second, the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children are developed based on results of demand research and reference research. The objectives of the program lie in the development of potential abilities, understanding and implementing teaching-learning methods of the integrated curriculum for gifted and normal infants, qualitative improvement of the integrative training programs to understand the necessity of integrated training programs, and the environment for the integrative training and communicating with parents, based on understanding definition and characteristics of gifted infants. Teacher training contents consist of integrative training courses, based on analyses of Nuri educational courses and teacher training courses at gifted and talented education centers. Lectures, discussions and debates, presentations, workshops, videos, team-based learning and reflective journal writing are selected as teaching methods in the programs.
Third, after verifying the effects of the teacher education program for inclusive education of gifted children and general children, the result is that teaching efficacy has increased overall. Sub-areas of teaching efficacy, including general teaching efficacy, individual teaching efficacy and integrative teaching efficacy have all increased. The contextual analyses of reflective journal writing consist of the characteristics of gifted infants, teaching-learning methods of integrative training for teachers of gifted and normal infants, and training for teachers of gifted infants. Based on understanding and positive awareness of gifted infants, and understanding of teaching-learning methods, positive changes are made in regard to application to the integrated curriculum, teachers’ perceived prejudice, teachers’ beliefs and improvement of self-confidence, and teacher’s roles and attitudes. Likewise, reflective journal writing is greatly conducive to an increase in teaching efficacy.
The teacher education program developed in this study is proven to be effective in improving teaching efficacy for integrated training. Therefore, the integrated curriculum teacher training programs for gifted and normal infants that are developed in this study can be applied in the future.