International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education Vol.10, Issue 1, 2020, 85-97 RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN: 2146-0329 Correspondic Author E-mail: bahi@kastamonu.edu.tr How is the Environment in the Mind of the Gifted Elementary School Student? A Phenomenology Study İbrahim AKAR Kastamonu University, Kastamonu, TURKEY Berat AHİ* Kastamonu University, Kastamonu, TURKEY Introduction “Now we're almost at the end of my talk, and this is where people usually start talking about hope, solar panels, wind power, circular economy, and so on, but I'm not going to do that. We've had 30 years of pep-talking and selling positive ideas. And I'm sorry, but it doesn't work. Because if it would have, the emissions would have gone down by now. They haven't. And yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.” (15 years old environmentalist) Gifted students represent a group of students who are at least as important as the other groups of students needing special education. Being gifted has been difficult for researchers and scientists to define. Thus, according to Anderson (2000) stating that the concept has more than 300 definitions, these definitions can be examined within two groups; traditional and innovative. Traditional definitions focus on a single criterion, such as the intelligence quotient (IQ) score (Terman, 1925) or placement in the upper percentile, but limit the giftedness to small percentiles. Innovative definitions on the other hand adopt a comprehensive approach to giftedness and associate it with different criteria such as exceptional field-specific performance (Matthews and Foster, 2005; Witty, 1958), leadership (Marland, 1971), creativity and productivity (Marland, 1971; Renzulli, 1986; Sternberg and Zhang, 1995), positive self-thinking and motivation for success (Feldhusen, 2005), exceptional field-specific reasoning (Brody Abstract The purpose of this phenomenology study is to elicit and understand the gifted elementary school students’ opinions about environment. A total of three gifted elementary school students selected by means of the homogenous sampling technique participated in the current study conducted in line with the phenomenology design of quantitative research. The data were collected through the Draw-An- Environment Test and Rubric and one-to-one interviews conducted with the students. In the analysis of the collected data, textural and structural descriptions were used. In light of the findings of the current study, it can be said that the gifted students mainly used biotic elements in their drawings. In addition to this, the findings obtained from the drawings and interviews have revealed that the gifted students have a limited and anthropocentric perception of the environment. On the basis of the findings of the current study, it can be suggested that the number of environment-centred studies including gifted students as their participants should be increased and the environmental education to be given to gifted students should be focused on the inculcation of ecocentric conception of the environment in these students. Keywords: Giftedness, gifted student, environment, phenomenology