TalentTiles: A New Descriptive Talent Identification Instrument Based on Teachers' Ratings

Talent identification based on multiple criteria is a common way of considering students for gifted education services. As part of a nationwide talent identification program led by UNK (New Generation Centre, Hungary of Talents Program, 2016-2020), we developed an online rating tool with which teachers could indicate the talent areas of their 5th grade students. Through several iterations-involving the translation, application, and analysis of Renzulli's Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students questionnaire and a custom-made normative questionnaire-we developed a matrix-style competency rating instrument called TalentTiles. The primary aim of the instrument is to collect more realistic and reliable teacher-ratings on students. The instrument takes a very short time-less than 2 minutes per student-to complete, focuses on the behavioral characteristics, measures school-related areas, addresses general competencies (e.g., ability, motivation) in a domain-specific way and has low average inter-item correlations. After the first pilot test TalentTiles seems to be an innovative and user friendly way of collecting teachers' opinions about school-related gifted behavior.