Implicit theories of intelligence represent one’s beliefs about intelligence which can have a significant impact on one’s attitudes and behaviour toward gifted students and gifted education. This relationship seems important in education of future teachers, since educators can play an important role as role models in shaping their student’s attitudes toward giftedness and gifted education. Emotional intelligence, as one of the key competencies of future teachers and educational experts, plays a significant role in the development of these attitudes as well.
The aim of the present study is to explore the relationship between attitudes toward the gifted and gifted education, emotional intelligence and some aspects of the implicit theories of intelligence in the sample of Croatian and Slovenian students. Attitudes of students toward the gifted are being assessed with the 20-item questionnaire Opinion about the Gifted and Their Education, consisting of four subscales: support, elitism, acceleration, and self-perceptions. Emotional intelligence of students is being measured with the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (UEK-27), consisting of three subscales: perceiving and understanding emotions, expressing and labelling emotions, and managing and regulating of emotions. To explore students’ beliefs about intelligence, some items of the Implicit Theories Questionnaire (ITI-VIII) and a three-item questionnaire for implicit theories are being used.
Preliminary analyses on the sample of 80 students, future teachers, have shown that students, who support the gifted education, do not perceive giftedness as a sign of elitism and that students, who perceive giftedness as elitism, are not in favour of acceleration. Surprisingly, Croatian students that perceive themselves or their family members as gifted perceive gifted education as elitist. Students’ attitudes toward the gifted and gifted education are neither related to emotional intelligence of students nor to their implicit beliefs about intelligence. Differences between attitudes of Croatian and Slovenian students are discussed.

Author(s): Polona Gradišek, (Faculty of Education University of Ljubljana, Slovenia),   Barbara Rončević-Zubković, (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rijeka,   Croatia), Sanja Bradić, (Gimnazija Eugena Kumičića  Opatija, Secondary school, Croatia)