Current status and future prospects of Saudi gifted education: A macro-systemic perspective

ABSTRACT

Gifted education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has developed significantly since its tentative beginnings in 1969. Increasingly, however, there are concerns that gifted education is not meeting its objectives. Based on the Ziegler-Balestrini-Stoegerian framework, we evaluate Saudi gifted education from a macro-systemic perspective, including the identification of the ten important exogenous and endogenous capitals and the six principles (law of the minimum, continuity, developmental level, support systems, control system and external management). Using information obtained from 25 source documents, we conduct an automated content analysis using Leximancer to find information related to each of the ten capitals and six principles. Our finding that the absence of a clearly articulated set of objectives and expected outcomes impact the system on many levels, and that, at best, Saudi gifted education is best described as a proto-system.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• gifted education
• macro-systemic
• Saudi Arabia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Both of the two organizations are likely to have conducted their own research to meet their own agendas but this work remains inaccessible to a broader audience.

2. Note that Ziegler et al. (2018) preferred to use the term capitals, considering the term resources too restrictive.

3. Al Qarni’s (2010) research was published in a password protected format, hence the removal of extraneous material was not possible.

4. Our search of the Saudi Gazette is summarized by the following link. https://www.saudigazette.com.sa/search/gifted%20students

Additional information

Funding

The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this work through research group No [RG- 1441-542].