Best Practices in Gifted Education: An Evidence-Based Guide »

Ann Robinson is professor of education and founding director of the Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is a former editor of Gifted Child Quarterly, serves on the board of directors for the National Association for Gifted Children as the finance secretary, and has received the Early Leader and the Early Scholar Awards from the association. In 2004, she and coauthor Sidney Moon received the Gifted Child Quarterly Paper of the Year Award for “The National Study of State and Local Advocacy in Gifted Education.” With Shore, Cornell, and Ward, Robinson coauthored Recommended Practices in Gifted Education: A Critical Analysis, identified as one of the 50 most influential works in gifted education by a division of the National Association for Gifted Children. She was a charter board member of the Special Interest Group on Giftedness and Talent of the American Educational Research Association. In 2000, Robinson was recognized as the Purdue University Alumna of Distinction for the College of Education. Her own institution honored her with the University Award for Public Service in 2001. Robinson is the president of the Arkansans for Gifted and Talented Education, the immediate past president of the Arkansas Association of Gifted Education Administrators, and is active in advocacy at the state and national levels. In 2006 she received the NAGC Distinguished Service Award.

Bruce M. Shore is professor of educational psychology in the Faculty of Education at McGill University in Montreal, where he also has served as chair of the department and dean of students. His research has addressed the ways in which giftedstudents think and learn differently from other students, how the development of giftedness parallels that of expertise, and understanding learning processes in inquiry-driven environments. He and his graduate students currently are focused on such topics as interprofessional education and practice, inquiry in teacher education and undergraduate science education, how research ideas arise, and the identification and evaluation of the outcomes of inquiry-based teaching and learning. He has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and chemistry (with psychology), a teaching diploma in secondary mathematics and science, a master’s degree in education from McGill University, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from The University of Calgary.

Donna Enersen is a long-time educator of children, parents, and teachers. She spent 25 years as a classroom teacher and elementary school reading and curriculum specialist in Pennsylvania and Florida, and the last 17 years as a teacher educator at Purdue University in Indiana. She was one of the first gifted education specialists in Pinellas County, FL, where she also created parent classes and led professional development for teachers.

She has taught gifted education certification courses at Purdue University’s Gifted Education Resource Institute (GERI), and initiated parent education courses at GERI and throughout the central-Indiana area. She has consulted with school districts as they evaluated and developed their services to gifted children. Enersen has been an advocate for students and their families in the schools, designing appropriate education plans for them. She also is focused on the qualitative research paradigm and its use in education. Through the volunteer organization Partners for the Americas, Enersen has worked in southern Brazil, teaching and consulting in the schools and universities.

Best Practices in Gifted Education provides concise, up-to-date, research-based advice to educators, administrators, and parents of gifted and talented youth.