Education for the gifted/talented in Thailand

Abstract

Suffering of the underachievers and misdiagnosed cases brought a group of educators at Srinakharinwirot University to start a pilot project in 1980. This project led to the discovery of many issues on identification, programming, and school evaluation among experts. Questions raised from parents and teachers were in need of the right answers. Thus, many attempts have been made under the limitation of support and understanding on the needs and problems of the gifted. Rights of the gifted in education were assured for the first time by the Educational Act in 1999. Many pieces of research, fieldworks, and handbooks have been developed to enhance teachers and parents of the gifted after 1980. Although special programs and special schools have been established across the country for decades, a lot of work is still required in order to blend a supportive system into the formal education effectively: identification instruments, personnel training, research and development, including the integration of traditional wisdom into formal education. © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.