Municipal Awareness of Gifted and Talented Children in Finland Swedish Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland

An including and egalitarian early childhood education and care requires individualized practices, differentiation and an awareness and acceptance of gifted and talented children. In the Act of Early Childhood Education and Care, gifted and talented children are not mentioned as a group of children in need of support or in need of individual goals, whereas they to some extent are noticed in the national core curriculum for basic education.
The purpose of this chapter is to present and compare Finnish bilingual municipalities that offers early childhood education and care, pre-primary education and basic education, to show if and how the municipalities approaches gifted and talented children. This cross-sectional study was conducted based on a questionnaire aimed at Directors of Education and on characteristics of the bilingual municipalities in Finland. Based on the municipal characteristics the education providers have different attitudes and actions for organizing teaching for gifted and talented children. The results show that there is a discrepancy in the characteristics of the municipalities in this study, however, despite municipal size, budget, and the socio-economic background of its citizens, there is an awareness of giftedness even if the characteristics does not impact the tendency to consider the concept of giftedness. however, the year group size seems to influence the existence of an action plan for the teaching of gifted students, and the arrangements thereof.