The Main Findings and the Contributions of this Study

study to answer the research questions. A number of issues have emerged from the discussion of the data. The findings of the current study have sixteen themes which were explained in details in Chapter 6. The themes are: 1. attitudes to science in general; 2. more opportunity for students to give their opinions; 3. flexibility; 4.

presenting subjects in attractive ways; 5. emotional needs and cultural and social issues; 6. the learning objectives that reflect the level of the activities; 7. level of thinking skills; 8. individual needs; 9. different types of skills: research, personal, scientific and critical thinking skills; 10. the role of teachers in developing skills and abilities; 11. content of knowledge; 12. environmental awareness; 13. resources and advanced technology; 14. experimental activities; 15. teaching methods; and 16. evaluation.

One of the most important shortcomings identified in the current textbook is that it does not give enough space for learners to express their opinions and share their views with others (peers or teachers) in order to develop positive attitudes to science.

Therefore, the PEP should give students plenty of opportunities to increase their self- confidence, to collaborate with others and to suggest new topics. Moreover, teachers‟ views emphasised that the goals and learning objectives, should be planned and formulated very carefully if they are to help to develop the learning outcomes and encourage positive attitudes to science in the PEP.

To help our gifted students to further develop positive attitudes to science in their science curriculum and the PEP, there is an urgent need for the following intensive work:

First, the PEP should have flexible learning objectives, have an interesting design and build its learning objectives in accordance with cultural issues. Second, Saudi science teachers need more training in teaching gifted students to meet the needs of the gifted students. Third, the 6th grade ST requires urgent modification to develop the level of thinking through the learning objectives, and to provide increased levels of challenge: it is hoped that this will be achieved in the PEP.

Another important issue is the need to develop the use of advanced technology and resources, especially in the field of science and technology, in order to equip students for their lives in this era of advanced communication.

To overcome the shortcomings of the ST in meeting gifted students‟ needs in terms of developing thinking skills, the PEP should provide adequate opportunities to

increase all basic thinking skills, including higher levels of thinking, for all students, gifted or non-gifted. Because the ST does not pay special attention to the diversity of learners or individual needs, the PEP should provide appropriate materials to bridge the gap between the ST and the different needs of gifted students.

The findings of this research study showed agreement across all instruments regarding the weakness of the activities in the 6th grade science textbook. Thus, it is necessary to develop the contents and activities in the ST to meet gifted students‟ needs to think in broadly and deeply.

The findings of this study showed that the contents and activities of the ST are weak because they have been built to meet the first three levels of thinking skills of Bloom‟s taxonomy (i.e. remembering, understanding, and applying). Thus, the PEP should be based on two important factors: advanced scientific content knowledge and a

variety of higher order thinking skills (Yoon , 2009: 205). Therefore, this study

considers that in order to enable gifted students to fulfil their potential when teaching science in the regular classroom, it is necessary to provide further contents and activities that require high levels of thinking, as provided by the PEP.

The gifted students believe that the PEP should include more content about the students‟ environment in order to meet their needs in these areas, because they believe that the ST does not fully enable them to be more aware of these issues. Thus, the PEP should contain activities that come from real life and reflect the interests of gifted students, and should give them opportunities to deal with problems that they might face during daily life or are likely to encounter in the future.

Furthermore, the findings from gifted students and teachers in this study showed a demand to improve the contents and activities in the science curriculum via the PEP to reflect daily life that may include local problems and the environment in Saudi Arabia.

There was agreement among the interviewees and gifted students in this study about the lack of challenge in the activities in the 6th grade ST. The findings in this study clearly showed that there is a need for more challenge to stimulate gifted learners to learn.

There was concurrence among the findings from the qualitative analysis of the ST and the interviews with gifted students, teachers and supervisors about the ST‟s

inability to develop the use of resources or technology. It could be said that this weakness is caused by a lack of teacher training in this area and a shortage of science teachers who are qualified in this regard (Tomlinson, 2009).

The findings from teachers and supervisors also showed that students are not given opportunities to use science labs, because some schools do not have labs and others are not fully equipped. Moreover, many teachers believe that the students are not qualified to conduct experiments. For example, one teacher said ―I know some schools where

there is no lab that can operate the scientific experiments in the lessons. Unfortunately, we have had to use the school's kitchen for our scientific experiments‖ (T5).

Finally, the majority of the evaluation elements in both units 5 and 6 of the ST are limited to the lowest level of Bloom‟s taxonomy (i.e. remembering, understanding, and applying). There are no evaluation questions to meet the higher levels of Bloom‟s Taxonomy (e.g. analysing and creating).

These findings suggest that the PEP should give gifted students opportunities to evaluate their learning processes and outcomes, participate in evaluating the textbook and contribute to the evaluation of the enrichment programme.