Curriculum for Gifted and Talented Students

This ready reference offers decision makers the tools they need to shape a successful and enriching curriculum for gifted students.

Joyce VanTassel-Baska is The Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Education and Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary in Virginia where she has developed a graduate program and a research and development center in gifted education. Formerly she initiated and directed the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. She has also served as the state director of gifted programs for Illinois, as a regional director of a gifted service center in the Chicago area, as coordinator of gifted programs for the Toledo, Ohio, public school system, and as a teacher of gifted high school students in English and Latin. She has worked as a consultant on gifted educa-tion in all 50 states and for key national groups, including the U.S. Department of Education, National Association of Secondary School Principals, and American Association of School Administrators. She has consulted internation-ally in Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Jordan, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. She is past president of The Association for the Gifted of the Council for Exceptional Children, and the Northwestern University Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa. She is currently president-elect of the National Association for Gifted Children. Dr. VanTassel-Baska has published widely including 15 books and over 275 refereed journal articles, book chapters, and scholarly reports. Recent books include: Designing and Utilizing Evaluation for Gifted Program Improvement (in press) (with Annie Feng), Content-based Curriculum for Gifted Learners (2003) (with Catherine Little) and Curriculum Planning and Instructional Design for Gifted Learners (2003). She also serves as the editor of Gifted and Talented International, a publication of the World Council on Gifted and Talented. Dr. VanTassel-Baska has received numerous awards for her work, including the National Association for Gifted Children's Early Leader Award in 1986, the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award in 1993, the Phi Beta Kappa faculty award in 1995, and the National Association of Gifted Children's Distinguished Scholar Award in 1997. She has received awards from five states - Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, South Carolina, and Illinois - for her contribution to the field of gifted education in those states. She was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand in 2000 and a visiting scholar to Cambridge University in England in 1993. Her major research interests are on the talent development process and effective curricular interventions with the gifted. She holds B.A., M.A., M. Ed., and Ed.D. degrees from the University of Toledo.

Sally M. Reis is a professor and the department head of the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Connecticut where she also serves as principal investigator of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. She was a teacher for 15 years, 11 of which were spent working with gifted students on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. She has authored more than 130 articles, 9 books, 40 book chapters, and numerous monographs and technical reports. Her research interests are related to special populations of gifted and tal-ented students, including: students with learning disabilities, gifted females and diverse groups of talented students. She is also interested in extensions of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model for both gifted and talented students and as a way to expand offerings and provide general enrichment to identify talents and potentials in students who have not been previously identified as gifted. She has traveled extensively conducting workshops and providing profes-sional development for school districts on gifted education, enrichment programs, and talent development programs. She is co-author of The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, The Secondary Triad Model, Dilemmas in Talent Development in the Middle Years, and a book published in 1998 about women's talent development titled Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Females. Sally serves on several editorial boards, including the Gifted Child Quarterly, and is a past president of the National Association for Gifted Children.