Abstract

Considering all areas of development in education is a key to fulfill the needs of gifted students. This study which was based on qualitative[LM1]  methods aimed to find out the emotional and social needs of the adolescents who attended the Antalya Science and Arts Center (Bilim ve Sanat Egitim Merkezi - BILSEM[LM2] ) to develop new ways to help these students. The study was held with the student and teacher interviews to get deeper understanding on these adolescents' experiences. 7 students of grade 6,7, and 8 and 8 teachers including the school counselor who were chosen randomly, and who accetped to join the research volunteerly formed the particippants. After analyzing the interviews via between coders aggreement and testing the reliability by theme matching method, 14 main themes and 111 subthemes in two dimensions were identified (8 main themes and 54 subthemes about being gifted and about experiences in educational settings, and 6 main themes and 57 subthemes about the gifted students' needs and about the BILSEM applications). Between coders Kappa value was .80 for student interviews themes and was .873 for teacher interviews themes. The emerging themes from the findings were discussed under three broad headings: 1) The social-emotional states of the gifted students, 2) The problems they experienced related to being gifted in social and educational settings, 3) Suggestions to implement to fulfill the needs of the gifted adolescents in the educational settings. Comments were represented to give ideas to the educators and counselors in practice, the researchers and parents.

Key words: Gifted education, adolescents, emotional - social needs, counseling gifted.