Exploring the Needs and Profiles of Gifted Children: An Analysis of WISC-R Results and Test Administrators' Recommendations

Gifted individuals play a significant and indispensable role in the development of any society. It is vital that gifted individuals are identified and provided with appropriate educational opportunities so that their capabilities can be channeled into productivity and their well-being is supported accordingly. Their education, however, bears certain challenges, including accurately determining and exploring their needs. In that sense, the current study was conducted to contribute to the literature and diagnosis process by analyzing Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (Wisc-R) profiles, commonly used in diagnosing gifted children, and recommendations by test administrators. The current study employed a concurrent parallel research design, one of the mixed methods approaches. Within the scope of the study, 99 gifted children's WISC-R intelligence test results were analyzed. Descriptive statistics and dependent and independent t-tests were used in the quantitative part, while content analysis was used in the qualitative part. The quantitative findings indicate that gifted children's intelligence scores show a heterogeneous distribution; their performance scores are relatively higher than their verbal scores, and there is a significant difference between their verbal scores and performance scores. The qualitative findings regarding test administrators' reports are also documented under three main themes: children's characteristics, information and recommendations for the family, and information and recommendations for the school. The test administrators focused more on cognitive, emotional, personal, and social characteristics, while their reflections were quite limited about the children's physical properties and the twice-exceptionality condition.