**Preface to "Gifted Education, Creativity and Leadership Development"**

This ebook, *Gifted Education, Creativity and Leadership Development*, provides new perspectives on gifted education, with contributions from international authors from Australia, Canada, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. These perspectives provide a foundation on which to build an understanding of the complex nature of gifted students. One author, Donald Ambrose, in his article "Interdisciplinary and international exploration to strengthen creativity, giftedness and leadership", set the bar for the book, championing a wider interdisciplinary and international exploration of gifted education, with a wider exploration than just special education.

#### **Beyond Transformation**

Robert Sternberg and his co-authors advocate in their article, "Beyond transformation", that gifted students develop gifts that are self- and other forms of transformative. This involves going beyond transformation, combining personal transformation and other forms of transformation. Sternberg and his co-authors describe transformational giftedness as a giftedness that can be employed to make a positive change in the world at some level of analysis. Individuals with transformational giftedness seek to make the world a better place. Sternberg and his co-authors stress that students need to find their purpose and know and understand the inherent oneness that underlies humanity.

#### **Shift in Education and extension of the concept of giftedness**

June Maker suggests a shift in education in her article.

She calls for a focus on the identified workplace skills of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and communication. She stresses the complexity of gifted students' profile of abilities and challenges, and the need to consider the impact of culture, ethnicity, gender, linguistic perspective, and learning expectations on giftedness.

Roya Klinger extends the concept of giftedness with a discussion of twice-exceptional students and their complex nature in her article, "Twice-exceptional children and their challenges in dealing with normalcy". She defines twice-exceptional (2E) students as being gifted but having difficulties in learning. These children are gifted, but they need to learn how to cope with their difficulties with learning. She uses animal-assisted therapy, art therapy and solution-oriented therapy.

#### **Training and professional development to support differentiation of diverse gifted students**

The key issue of identifying and providing engaging activities to diverse gifted students is discussed by Gillian Eriksson and Sandra Kaplan, and both support the differentiation of the curriculum for diverse students. Kaplan, in her article "Factors affecting the perceptions and practices of differentiated curriculum and pedagogies for gifted and talented students", identified the factors affecting these perceptions and practices.

One factor is that teachers view a differentiated curriculum as being specific to gifted students and not generalizable to other students. As a result, Kaplan said there is little transfer of training in the teaching of a differentiated curriculum. She strongly advocates that training should be immersive, with multiple strategies being demonstrated to teachers. Finally, Kaplan said that teachers need to be engaged in modifying their own curriculum, rather than thinking that they will develop and use an entirely new curriculum. Kaplan sees this modification in training as a way to increase teachers' ownership of the curriculum and encourage the use of a differentiated curriculum in their classes.

Gillian Eriksson, in her article, "Pretense or Belief: Creating meaningful scenarios and simulations for authentic learning about underserved gifted", discusses the need to use meaningful scenarios and simulations in teacher training. This training helps teachers learn more about underserved diverse students, and how to develop strength-based differentiated learning experiences for these students.

> **Dorothy Sisk** *Editor*
