ALTAS HABILIDADES/SUPERDOTACIÓN EN URUGUAY

The paper presents a descriptive study of the Uruguayan educational reality related to gifted students from an educational, historical, and critical view. Methodologically, a documental analysis of national educational regulations, documents and websites published by national governmental and international agencies, press news and the report on the statements of gifted persons identified by our Grupo de Investigación en Altas Habilidades/Superdotación (GIAHSD), linked to the School of Educational Sciences of Universidad de la Empresa (UDE), their families and teachers, analyzed by the Content Analysis technique (Bardin, 2016). The results show an almost complete absence of educational regulations considering High Ability/Giftedness (HA/GT), scientific publications on the topic, and teachers' training to identify gifted persons. It was also found a poorly representative advocating movement and an important incidence of myths and popular beliefs that keep this population invisible. On the other side, the interference of healthcare professionals having no specific knowledge of HA/GT and use to confound this behavior with pathologies and disturbances, wrongly diagnosing it is concerning, and causes an increasing medicalization inevitably extended to the educational field, which feels not capable of identifying and served these students. As positive actions, we should outline the 255-hour training course offered to 250 Uruguayan teachers by the General Agency of Initial and Elementary Education, dictated by members of GIAHSD, and the first Mastership program in High Ability/Gifted Education within the region offered by UDE.