AMBIENT TEACHING – LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR GIFTED STUDENTS IN CHEMISTRY

Abstract

Establishing a learning environment for gifted students is of great importance since it should encompass the development of their interpersonal skills, social responsibility and enable effective delivery of teaching instructions (Miedijensky, 2018). Contrary to traditional school learning through the adoption of final products of scientific research, ambient teaching is offering high degree of adoption of a scientific way of thinking and engagement of students, starting from observational procedures, to extracting and collection of materials (Lehrer, & Schauble, 2006). Our study aimed to explore the gifted students’ perceptions regarding the ambient teaching as a model for learning environment. 24 gifted students from elementary schools in Kragujevac attended at the workshop in the laboratory at the Faculty of Science. The workshop was dedicated to the basic principles and laboratory operations and equipment, while problems were carefully designed to meet the cognitive needs of gifted students. Interview was used as instrument for delineation of the gifted students’ perceptions regarding the ambient teaching. According to the results, majority of the students confirmed the significance and suitability of the ambient teaching for the learning chemistry as school subject, as well as they considered this way of learning more interesting than traditional method used in schools.