Exploring Teacher Biases When Nominating Students for Gifted Programs

The purpose of this study was to identify student characteristics that might influence teachers in referring students for gifted programs. We developed a series of 12 student profiles to measure teacher bias and asked teachers to indicate how strongly they believed the students in the profiles should or should not be recommended for their district gifted program. We found the ability to do mental computations overshadowed completion of schoolwork, and the esoteric nature of student interest appeared to be equivalent to completion of schoolwork. We found that completing schoolwork was not a factor when students possessed a large storehouse of information. We also learned that classroom teachers may be more inclined than gifted specialists to focus on student weaknesses, rather than student strengths.