Teachers’ expertise in education for the gifted works as one of the most important factors in discriminating and selecting the gifted, instructing gifted students and developing educational programs for the gifted. As teachers play an important role... Teachers’ expertise in education for the gifted works as one of the most important factors in discriminating and selecting the gifted, instructing gifted students and developing educational programs for the gifted. As teachers play an important role in discovering students with superior talents and guiding them to sufficiently express their talents, it is necessary to investigate how professionally they are aware of the behavioral characteristics of the gifted. Besides, as no one can make a good teacher in a day, as a preparation course to be a teacher, the pre-service teacher period can be regarded as an important period to enhance their expertise in education for the gifted. Therefore, this study comparatively compared how much in-service teachers and pre-service teachers are aware of the behavioral characteristics of the gifted, what factor they perceive most as giftedness, and what behavioral characteristic of the gifted they have the lowest fit awareness of respectively, and it would be meaningful and necessary in improving the way of selecting the gifted and developing curricula and programs for the gifted as well as establishing a direction for the improvement of teachers’ expertise in education for the gifted in the future. Thus, this study intends to investigate how much fit awareness in-service teachers and pre-service teachers show toward the behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, whether they have differences in general characteristics, and whether there are differences in their fit awareness between the two groups. For the necessity and purpose of this study, three research questions were established as below. Firstly, do in-service teachers show a different fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on their general characteristics? Secondly, do pre-service teachers show a different fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on their general characteristics? Thirdly, are there any differences in the fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted between in-service teachers and pre-service teachers? To verify the research questions above, this study selected 200 in-service teachers from 7 elementary schools in Changwon and Gimhae, Gyeongnam Province, and 200 students from the College of education at K University in Changwon, Gyeongnam Province as research subjects and conducted a survey. The questionnaire for this study was provided by adjusting the order of questions and the score scale of K-SRBCSS, which Jin Hyeon-jeong (2010) translated and modified SRBCSS (Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students) developed by Renzulli et al. (2002). Out of all the collected 370 copies of the questionnaire, this study used 368 copies (180 ones from in-service teachers and 188 ones from pre-service teachers) for analysis, except 2 copies with unfaithful responses, and conducted a frequency analysis, descriptive statistic analyses (average and standard deviation), independent sample t-test, and One-way ANOVA. This study examined in-service teachers’ different fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on their general characteristic variables, and the results of this examination can be summarized as below. Firstly, teachers who had experience of leading education for the gifted perceived creative and motivative behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than those who did not. Secondly, teachers who completed the training of education for the gifted perceived creative and leadership behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than those who did not. Thirdly, female teachers perceived scientific behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than those who male teachers. Fourthly, there was no statistically significant difference in their fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on in-service teachers’ age, teaching career and final education background. This study examined pre-service teachers’ different fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on their general characteristic variables, and the results of this examination can be summarized as below. Firstly, teachers who took a class related to education for the gifted showed a high level of fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than those who did not, and perceived learning, creative, motivative, mathematic and scientific behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than those who did not. Secondly, female pre-service teachers perceived motivative behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than male ones. Thirdly, senior pre-service teachers perceived scientific behavioral characteristics much fitter as typical behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted than sophomore ones. Fourthly, there was no statistically significant difference in their fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, depending on in-service teachers’ majors and experiences of education for the gifted when they were in their elementary, middle and high schools. Lastly, this study analyzed in-service and pre-service teachers’ fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted, and the results of this analysis can be summarized as below. Firstly, in-service teachers’ fit awareness of the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted and all the sub-factors was higher than pre-service teachers’. Secondly, both in-service and pre-service teachers showed relatively high levels of fit for mathematic and scientific behavioral characteristics toward the overall behavioral characteristics of the mathematically and scientifically gifted and all the sub-factor, but showed relatively low levels of fit for leadership and creative behavioral characteristics. The results of this study imply that we should put more effort to enhance in-service and pre-service teachers’ expertise in behavioral characteristics of the gifted. Therefore, it is necessary to provide more chances of training-lecture-class related to education for the gifted, diversify training programs for the gifted and share data through a network related to education for the gifted.
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