Identifying Gifted Students: A Practical Guide

Identifying Gifted Students: A Practical Guide offers up-to-date information for building an effective, defensible identification process. It acts as a hands-on, research-based guide for identifying gifted and talented children. Designed for practicing professionals such as teachers, counselors, psychologists, and administrators who must make decisions daily about identifying and serving gifted and talented students, this book acts as a handbook for establishing procedures that are effective in identifying gifted and talented students from diverse backgrounds. Topics include:definitions, models, and characteristics of gifted students; qualitative and quantitative approaches to assessment; culturally fair and nonbiased assessment; a complete summary of all major assessment instruments, including scoring information, reliability, norming information, and validity; making decisions about placement; and evaluating the effectiveness of identification procedures. This book should be very helpful to practitioners in establishing procedures that are effective in identifying gifted and talented students.

Susan K. Johnsen, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Baylor University. She directs the Ph.D. program, and programs related to gifted and talented education. She is past-president of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented. She has written more than 100 articles, monographs, technical reports, and books related to gifted education. She is a frequent presenter at international, national, and state conferences.

She is editor of Gifted Child Today and serves on the editorial boards of Gifted Child Quarterly and Journal of Advanced Academics. She also coauthored the Independent Study Program and three tests that are used in identifying gifted students: Test of Mathematical Abilities for Gifted Students (TOMAGS), Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-3), and Screening Assessment for Gifted Students (SAGES-2).