18th World Conference on Gifted & Talented Children was held in Vancouver, Canada between 3-7 August, 2009. This was my first participation and I found Vancouver so beautiful. However, I was surprised by the fact that fewer people than I expected attended to the conference. Although this conference was not as large as NAGC (even though the latter is organized every year) one can see gifted researchers from every corner of the globe.
As a Turkish couple, it was surprising for us to see a lot of researchers and educators from Turkey where I got my M.A. degree. This is promising for the education of gifted and creative people in Turkey because this has been considered as luxury rather than need in there. Namely, Ankara Bilsem and scholars from Istanbul University were some of them.
Below, you will see the abstract of my research about family profiles of the children with giftedness in leadership in the context of Turkey.
SUMMARY
This research aims to reveal family environments of gifted children in leadership. Based on a new definition of giftedness in leadership, the top 10% to 20% of the children in Raven SPM Plus group intelligence test and Roets Rating Scale for Leadership were analyzed. The variables for the analysis consisted of the mother’s and father’s level of education, number of siblings, and birth order. The results showed that gifted children in leadership tend to have highly educated parents who, mostly, have more than one child. They also tend to be first-born children. The results were analyzed with the support of related literature.
