The perception of the parents about having a gifted child: Labelling

In this study, the perceptions of the parents about their child's intelligence and having a "gifted" child were analyzed within the framework of labeling. Three studies were conducted within the scope of the mixed research methods. In Study 1, the ways in which the parents reflect the perception of having a "gifted" child were examined through a focus group interview with the perspective of teachers, education administrators and psychological counselors working with these parents. In Study 2 and 3, it was studied with three different parent groups. These are the parents whose children are labeled as gifted, the parents whose children are gifted but not labeled, and parents who have "normally" developing children. These parents were reached through 8 different institutions. In Study 2, The Perception of the Parents About Intelligence of their Children Scale was developed within the framework of the themes determined in the Study 1, and quantitative analysis were conducted on the parent groups mentioned above. In Study 3, the parents' perceptions of being parent of a gifted child, the ways of perceiving of the child's intelligence as well as the perception of the child and the parent's psychosocial position were examined through semi-structured face-to-face interviews with the parents from each of the three groups determined according to the results of the developed scale. In the results of qualitative studies (Study 1 and Study 3), both the education experts and the parents stated commonly three main themes regarding the effects of the label and the perception of indicators and sources of giftedness as well as the market/sector of giftedness. The first main theme, effects of label, contains the themes such as the label as an identity, the effect of superiority bias, the effect on the social field, emotional and cognitive effects, non-labeling, and label-other interaction. In Study 2, it was determined that there were significant differences among the parents according to the label groups in terms of the perception of their child's intelligence. It was revealed that the parents whose children has gifted label were exposed to the label effect at a higher degree compared to the other two groups. The label effect and the market/sector create an opportunity to create hierarchies, reproduce hierarchies and thus contribute to the economic cycle by establishing a holistic structure that builds each other, in the widespread of superiority perception as a pleasure. This situation seems to lead to the normalization of the system in which parents and children are instrumentalized. Keywords: Giftedness, labelling, superiority bias, parents, mixed design