The determination of gifted students' level of number sense

Number sense has a highly important role in learning mathematics in meaningful way from early ages, making knowledge permanent and enabling conceptual learning. Even though most of the literature conclude that the number sense of the typically developed children is inadequate, some studies reveal that the level of number sense is high in the groups of individually different students. When these investigations are predicated, it is presumed that the sense number of gifted individual is high. In this study, it is aimed to determine the number sense of the gifted indviduals and to reveal differences - if available- in comparison with the number sense levels of the typically developed students. As both qualitative and quantative datas are collected together, the convergent parallel mixed method design, from mixed research methods, has been used in the research. 99 typically developed and 50 gifted students participated in the qualitative level of the study. In order to measure the number sense levels of the students, the number sense scale with 17 questions, developed by Kayhan Altay and Umay(2013) has been utilized. The questions within the number sense scale have been analyzed for both accuracy and the solution strategy (number-sense strategy/ rule-based approach) and number sense points have been calculated for the participants. In the study, the students' answers to number sense questions have been investigated through qualitative analysing method and the qualitative level has been completed. In the result of data analysis, it has been found that the number sense level of the gifted students is better than the the typically developed students from statistical perspective, in meaningful level. When the solution ways have been scoped, it has been identified that the gifted students prefer to use the number sense strategies more while the typically developed students prefer the rule-based approaches. Also the high positive correlation between mathmatics performance of the gifted students in the number sense scale and their number sense performances has been obtained.