The paper presents findings of an explorative research undertaken on an intentional sample consisting of 112 master students of pedagogy in Serbia, assumed to be potentially gifted and to have manifested academic giftedness, since their average mark during their studies was above 9.00. The intention was to examine the influence of didactic strategies and methods on competencies of gifted students and thus verify the hypothesis on the significance of certain didactic strategies and methods for contribution of higher education teaching to encouragement of intellectual autonomy of learning in the case of gifted university students.
The method of systematic non-experimental observation was used as well as an assessment scale used by students to estimate the level of presence of the enlisted strategies, methods or procedures during studies and to what an extent learning and teaching strategies used in lectures, exercises, seminars, consultations addressed their needs and contributed to competencies development. When making a choice between didactic strategies, methods and procedures special attention was paid for the offered 52 methods to include 30 of those which refer to problem learning, creative approaches to learning, critical autonomy..., and for the list of 35 competencies to consist of 30 of those referring to independent thinking and are elements of critical thinking and indicators of, before all, approach to learning of gifted students.
Basic finding refers to the following: according to gifted students, the least used didactic strategies are heuristic strategies, problem presentation and problem learning, interactive learning according to method of dispute... encouraging search for new procedures, gaining insights into distant relations, leading to change of principles, creation of new ideas and relations, reshaping, discovery...; as a consequence the competencies they most expected were least developed, like, e.g.: • natural-scientific thinking;
•    systematic, methodological thinking;
•    networked, complex and systematic thinking;
•    self-reflexive and metacognitive thinking
•    critical thinking