Gifted Education and the Deskilling of Classroom Teachers

Regular classroom teachers were interviewed about their perceptions of the development of a pullout gifted program in their district. Teachers’ satisfaction with the selection process, their interactions with parents about the gifted program, and the ways in which the gifted program affected their conceptions of giftedness and of their own classrooms were examined. The article explores the extent to which the labeling process required teachers to accept, interpret, and justify a largely externally- made decision that affected teachers’ classrooms. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which discrete gifted programs and teacher education programs that prepare gifted teachers may contribute to the deskilling of regular classroom teachers and a diminished sense of their ability and responsibility for meeting the educational needs of all children within heterogeneous classrooms.