From teacher to psychologist: in BSPU future teachers are taught to work with gifted children

The ability to work with gifted children at the Belarusian State Pedagogical University named after Maxim Tank is taught to all future teachers - from kindergarten teachers to psychologists. New disciplines appeared in the curriculum only two or three years ago. This was told by the head of the Center for organizational and methodological support of educational activities of the BSPU Irina Turchenko.

BSPU conducts training of pedagogical personnel for all levels of education. Therefore, the issue of organizing work with gifted children is included in the content of training in all specialties: a teacher of a preschool education institution, and a subject teacher, and a social teacher, and a teacher-psychologist.

- Future educators within the discipline “Organization of work with gifted children” learn to design and implement educational routes for pupils of early and preschool age with different types of giftedness. Primary school teachers and subject teachers master the discipline “Working with gifted students,” said Irina Turchenko.

In the curricula of a number of specialties, a whole module of several disciplines on the design of individual educational trajectories is additionally included.

- It is not only about how to work with a child, but also about how to create an individual educational trajectory, learn how to design a path for the development of a particular child.

Subject teachers module reveals different directions: profile training in physics, mathematics, geography, chemistry. For social educators and psychologists, the basic principle is how to organize support for children with special educational needs, help them realize opportunities and adapt to the real world.

- These disciplines are new. They were introduced in 2023, when the development of new educational standards and the transition to new specialties began. Just then we started talking about the fact that it is necessary: there are such children, they need to be identified, they need to be worked with, they need to be directed, added Irina Turchenko.