Being Gifted in School: An Introduction to Development, Guidance, and Teaching

In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Being Gifted in School: An Introduction to Development, Guidance, and Teaching reviews the past developments within the field of gifted education and identifies the current trends, issues, and beliefs in the field.

This book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the field of gifted education available. The authors, who are nationally recognized leaders in the field, discuss definitions and models of giftedness, identification of the gifted, teaching methods and best practices, creativity, counseling and guidance, administrative arrangements, and program prototypes and evaluation.

The book is geared toward educators with questions regarding curricular and instructional implementation, administrators facing program planning, parents with an interest in their child's educational opportunities, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students curious about trends within gifted education.

By recognizing both typical and atypical gifted students, the authors enourage readers to defy traditional assumptions about gifted children and their education.

Laurence J. Coleman was a teacher who became a professor, both of which enabled him to be a perpetual student. In the course of his professional career, he was a student, a counselor, a teacher of children with varying special education labels, a professor of special education, a developer of programs, an advocate, an editor, a researcher, and an administrator. He was fortunate to have grown up in a time when he could do things that he valued. The professional activities of which Dr. Coleman was most proud was creating with colleagues from three different fields an innovative teacher preparation program made on the model of teaching as a talent; building the Summer Institute for Gifted Children in 1980, which has been "taken over" by the original students who attended it; writing a few papers that were new contributions to his field; and continuing to be excited by his work.

Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D., holds an endowed chair, Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education, and is the executive director of the Center for Gifted Education and the Institute for Research on the Suicide of Gifted Students at William & Mary.