From the editor's desk.

Welcome to volume 26, issue 1 of the Roeper Review. In this issue, we continue our tradition of publishing scholarly studies, practical advice, and important observations of gifted children. This issue also represents the final direct effort of celebrating the journal's first 25 years. To that end we lead off this issue with an interview of Annemarie Roeper. Annemarie, with her husband George, was one of the founders of the Roeper Schools, out of which this journal emerged more than 25 years ago. She has led an extraordinary life and has contributed in significant ways to the lives of gifted children. The interview, conducted by Michele Kane, covers a great deal of ground, from Annemarie's early days to research she is currently working on. The interview is both thought-provoking and touching.

Drs. Jim Delisle and Rena Subotnik, well known experts in gifted education, carry on our Point/Counterpoint tradition in this issue. Their essays address the question of whether giftedness is "being" or "doing"? They provide elegant and thoughtful responses to this very important question. We can all learn from their insightful viewpoints.

David White takes a look at philosophical foundations of our field in his article "Philosophy and Theory in the Study of Gifted Children." His treatise is that philosophy can be an important tool for furthering the conceptualization of gifted education. More specifically he examines two positions held by diverse philosophers--the ancient Stoics and the contemporary moral and political philosopher John Rawls. White uses this disagreement concerning the way children develop morally to illustrate the value of philosophy in moving concepts forward.

The challenges to gifted children in school are not always positive ones. Lannie Kanevsky and Tacey Keighley, in their article "To Produce or Not to Produce? Understanding Boredom and the Honor in Underachievement," examine a phenomenon many parents know about but that is little recognized in research. Their research draws on multiple case studies to portray the experiences of some gifted students as constantly bored. So bored in fact that they grow to feel indignant about their education. Kanevsky and Keighley found that "learning is the opposite of boredom" and that "learning is the antidote to boredom." Within this finding are five c's that are important to creating positive learning environments for gifted middle and high school students. The five c's provide a good template for teachers of gifted students to use.

Ability grouping has received a "bad rap" over the years, one that many gifted education researchers would like to dispel. Carol Tieso describes various ability grouping arrangements and the research about them in her article "Ability Grouping Is Not Just Tracking Anymore." She contributes to the literature by being one of few in the field who can see a potential benefit for gifted students with the new No Child Left Behind legislation. She makes the connection by pointing out that NCLB purports to encourage research-based best practices and that ability grouping clearly falls into this category. For our children's sake, I hope she is right.

The population of students who have simultaneous gifts and learning disabilities has been receiving attention in gifted education research. Betty Shevitz, Rich Weinfeld, Sue Jeweler, and Linda Barnes-Robinson describe a program that has put this research into action in their article "Mentoring Empowers Gifted/Learning Disabled Students to Soar!" The success of Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools' Wings Mentor Program offers hope to educators by enabling them to "provide additional support to students with gifts who also have learning disabilities (G/LD) and highly able students who were not succeeding in the classroom."

We look in on research with young gifted children in the article "Pretend Play and Maternal Scaffolding: Comparisons of Toddlers With Advanced Development, Typical Development, and Hearing Impairment" by Martha Morelock, Margaret Brown and Anne-Marie Morrissey. Important differences were found among the groups in both play development and characteristics of mother-child interactions. While the behaviors of gifted students demonstrated more elaborated pretend play, the question of the degree of the role of nature and nurture cannot be answered by this piece. It does shed light on the important role of the caregiver in teaching and modeling pretend play.

In this issue of the journal we are shining a spotlight on a gifted child. Thanks to his parents, we have a fascinating description of how a 4-year-old gifted child does math. I am quite sure that you will be impressed and informed by the mind of this gifted child. Perhaps his approach to math can be used to help others develop similar skills.

A new department begins/returns with this volume: Judith Margison is the new section editor for "Recent Dissertation Research in Gifted Studies." Larry Geffen's regular review of dissertation abstracts was an ongoing part of the Roeper Review for several years. We are bringing it back with some updating. It will provide the readership with brief accounts of research pertaining to gifted children. Please see the renewed department for how to contact Judith.

In the Book Review department, Dr. Claire Hughes enlisted the help of two professionals to review for the journal. Robin Schader reviews T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley Greenspan's book The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish, and Amy Swanson reviews Barbara Kerr and Sanford Cohn's book Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, and the Search for Meaning.

I hope you find this issue of the journal as interesting as I have. Should you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to forward them to me at the address below. Fascinating articles and interviews are in the works, so stay tuned to the next 25 years of the Roeper Review.

Dr. Tracy L. Cross, Editor Roeper Review Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities Ball State University Muncie, Indiana 47306 [e-mail]