Abstract

Frequently gifted students have had a teacher who has had a significant influence on their lives (Kronborg, 2010; Shavinina, 2009), because they have been influential, encouraging or inspirational. These experiences have had positive consequences to these students contributing to the development of their talents. This constructivist grounded theory study aims to understand the interaction between those teachers who have had an important role in their gifted students’ academic life, to develop a middle range theory, because there is no theory which explain this particular interaction. There are different studies which have exemplary teachers for gifted students as a central element, but few of these studies have student nomination on their bases (Gentry, Steenbergen-Hu & Choi, 2011). Participating students, from a select entry high school, specialised high school, or a high school with SEAL programs in Melbourne, are invited to nominate up to three teachers who have been important for their academic life. Teachers with the most frequent nomination will be invited to participate in this study, conducting an in-depth interview, and a class observation. Data analysis will be conducted following the guidelines given by Kate Charmaz (2006, 2014), and using NVivo 11 as a software to manage the data (Bryant & Charmaz, 2010; Charmaz, 2000). Findings from this study are expected to contribute to the field of gifted education in terms of policy making, educational psychology, leadership, and teaching and learning process.