Exploring Teachers’ Perceptions of Mathematically Highly Gifted Students through Analysis of Teacher Recommendation Letters

Key Points

• Teachers primarily recognize problem-solving ability and cognitive traits in recommendation letters, indicating their importance in assessment.
• Analysis of 205 recommendation letters identified key themes like learning strategies and logical thinking, with 6,614 sentences analyzed.
• Text network analysis and topic modeling methods were used to reveal the structure of teachers’ assessments of gifted students.
• Findings highlight the linguistic structure of educational assessments, suggesting a basis for future evaluation criteria and tools.