High-ability perspectives from a prominent investigator and gatekeeper: an interview with Tracy L. Cross.

Dr. Tracy L. Cross, George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Gifted Studies, is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Research and Assessment for Teachers College at Ball State University (BSU). For 9 years he served BSU as the Executive Director of the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities, a public residential school for academically gifted adolescents. He received his graduate degrees in Educational Psychology from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Cross has published 70+ articles and book chapters, a coauthored textbook, Being Gifted in School: An Introduction to Development, Guidance and Teaching, and a supplemental book entitled On the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Children, both in their second editions. He is the editor of the Journal for the Education of the Gifted and editor emeritus of the Roeper Review, Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, Research Briefs, and others. In 2004 he was given the Outstanding Research Award for Ball State University. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) honored him with the Early Leader Award in 1996 and the Early Scholar Award in 1997. He served as president of The Association for the Gifted (TAG) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and is on the Executive Committee and the Board of NAGC. He is the father of four gifted children and the husband of Jennifer Riedl Cross.

Henshon: What led you to the field of gifted education?

Cross: I think that I was actually grabbed by the field when I was very young. I met my best friend when we were 4-years-old and his older brother was a brilliant kid. I was amazed at what his brother could do and what he chose to do with his time. I watched him develop into an extraordinary student, then later a very successful attorney. Additionally, from about age 6 until I graduated from high school my parents both ran and owned an art gallery. I was immersed in an artistic community for a number of years. The artists were very interesting and colorful people to be around. I spent a lot of time in this community, came to know them well, and saw their interactions in society. During high school I met my future wife. In her family were five identified gifted children and virtually the same was true in my own family. My mother was a brilliant person who grew up on a tiny farm in the mountains of East Tennessee. For my first 18 years, I was constantly among people with varying types of giftedness.

Because I have always been an observant person, I started paying attention to the experiences in society of the different gifted people I knew. My observations created questions in my mind about the role of context in the development of talent. I became especially interested in the experiences of and social interactions among gifted people. In general, the seeds of my longstanding interest in the psychology of people with gifts and talents were sown when I was very young. And, in one way or another I have always have been surrounded by gifted people. What a treat, indeed.

Henshon: What were the most important lessons that you learned (from a mentor)?

Cross: I have learned many lessons from many people. I've had three long-standing mentors--one for 23 years now, Larry Coleman; my major professor during my doctoral program at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Schuyler Huck (Sky); and my wife, Jennifer, my most prized relationship that is going strong after almost 32 years. Sky looked after me for about 4 years during my doctoral program, teaching me an attitude about research--that one needs to be versatile in being able to both consume and conduct research, utilizing multiple approaches from differing paradigms. For example, Sky supported me during my traditional PhD program in educational psychology by taking me to meetings where he was called in as an expert methodologist. These opportunities to see him in action behind the scenes at a major research university were invaluable. He supported me throughout my doctoral training as I took all the courses and practica in both the Educational Psychology as well as the School Psychology doctoral program, and when I spent about 2 years learning how to do phenomenology and other approaches to qualitative research. By the time I left the University of Tennessee, I felt well prepared to conduct many different kinds of research. Later in life I became a journal editor, so it was critical to be able to understand a multitude of differing types of research approaches.

Larry Coleman has been so critical to my development that it is hard to overestimate how important he has been in my life. One thing he taught me is that when you listen to people talk about their thoughts, often what you hear is rhetoric. To understand them better, you have to understand their behavior and experiences. To that end, we have conducted hundreds of interviews, not about thinking about issues, but rather trying to get at gifted students' lived experiences. This also allows us to understand context. These elements that make up the mosaic of the lives of gifted students come together in ways you don't anticipate. That life lesson was important.

I also want to add Jim Gallagher to my list. Jim has become one of my two role models in the field--the other being Larry Coleman. I aspire to be like them. I have watched Jim over the past 15 years or so. His graciousness, kindness, and stalwart nature about equity and fairness have been very helpful in my development. I have watched Jim engage people on topics they might not have wanted to be involved in. He also provides meaningful analysis of complex policy matters that provide incredible clarity. For example, Jim's metaphor of gifted education often providing a nontherapeutic dose was quite insightful.

I am fortunate to have many friends in gifted education like Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Rena Subotnik, Paula Olszewski-Kihilius, Mary Ruth Coleman, Lannie Kanevsky, Susan Johnsen, Margie Kitano, Don Ambrose and I have learned from all of them. Rena Subotnik has been an influential person in my life because she is so forthcoming. My introversion is reflected in my ponderous nature. Quite often you can't behave that way and be effective. I have seen Rena speak to important matters in the moment and it has influenced my behavior. I need some of her qualities to be helpful to people. I have never seen a person who is more impressive than Joyce in her capacity to immediately analyze and synthesize complicated, multifaceted ideas. All of these examples I have provided reveal the fact that bright people vary so considerably, and when you add on personality qualities, they are even more diverse. I have learned that with an open mind you can enjoy them and learn from all of them. Hopefully over time I will become more like them. Those are a few of the lessons I have learned over the years.

Of course the most influential of these people has been my wife. I will not attempt to list all the important things that I have learned from her. Suffice it to say that virtually all of the fortune I have had has come from her wisdom, support, and so forth.

Henshon: If you had to name individuals both in the field and maybe even outside the field who have had the greatest effect on your thinking, who would they be?

Cross: Outside the field Albert Bandura and Edmund Husserl in phenomenology have influenced my thinking a great deal. I read quite a bit in the field and there are so many folks whose work has been influential in my thinking, including individual gifted children who I have interviewed over the years. Their insights are just amazing, and I still enjoy looking at interview transcripts.

Jim Gallagher has always been great about taking complicated matters and sizing them up with insightful metaphors and analogies. Larry's writing and some less well-known people in psychology have also been critical to me. David Feldman's work has been instrumental in my thinking. Jim Borland's take on the field is quite provocative and thoughtful. I imagine that I could keep going with this list adding another 50 to 100 people.

Henshon: What other areas have held your interest over the years and how have they evolved?

Cross: I am quite passionate about things of a psychological nature. In addition, Larry and I have collaborated on numerous studies to create a touchstone of gifted students' experience and that led to an increasing interest in understanding context. An area of research that I was drafted into, that I never planned on studying, is suicidal behavior among gifted students. That has become quite an interest of mine. I have spent a great deal of time working on this topic, even though it is hard research to do: hard methodologically and hard on the person engaged in the research. I have published several papers on this topic (e.g., Cassady & Cross, 2006; Cross, Cassady, & Miller, 2006; Cross, Cook, & Dixon, 1996; Cross, Gust-Brey, & Ball, 2002; Cross, in press).

Experience issues, contextual issues, and psychological issues are just as exciting to me as they were 24 years ago when I first started writing about them. As I have gotten older, I have broadened my level of understanding, which is more multifaceted and nuanced than it once was. These topics will consume my energies for many years to come. I have gathered so much data over the past 10 years that we are expanding our role at Ball State University by adding an institute on the psychology of gifted students. We are engaged in increasingly more sophisticated work in these areas, so my interests are not waning.

Henshon: Are there parts of those areas of interest that you just mentioned that are radically different in terms of your thinking about them now versus 15 years ago?

Cross: I will say that I understand them more completely and in a more nuanced manner. When I first started doing research in suicidal behavior, I looked at completed suicides, then at prevalence rates. I learned very quickly that there is not enough data to make confident statements about prevalence rates. Consequently, I looked beyond--to attempts, failures, and completions. I have come to understand that it is beyond only psychology. Psychology is a critical tool to use, but not the only tool to use. For example, I was contacted by a parent whose son had killed himself. She wanted to do what a group of us at Ball State had done--a psychological autopsy, I formed a research team to study her son's life and death and worked on the project for 4 years. Our article on this study was well received (Cross, Gust-Brey, & Ball, 2002).

We learned so many things that are not knowable unless you conduct this type of in-depth case study research. The nature of the evidence includes school records, medical history, what the person read and wrote, and even the music he or she listened to. The researchers are trying to capture the nature and experiences of the person. Using a multitude of psychological theories was essential but could not serve as the only tool. Right now I am working on a book on suicidal behavior and students with gifts and talents. Hopefully it will capture where my thinking is at this point in my development and help me move forward in the process.

I have learned that suicidal behavior is very political for some people. I have also noticed that professionals in our field are often asked to speculate about this topic without data. Given the seriousness of this topic, the fact that it allows very little tolerance for being mistaken, and the fact that little data actually exists on it, I have become quite dedicated to providing rigorous study of it. After working in this area for 15 years or so, I have learned a lot and feel good about my efforts to inform the field by bringing a multitude of research approaches to studying the phenomenon. However, much more work must be done.

Henshon: What is some of the other research that you're working on currently?

Cross: One of the things I am enjoying at this time in my life is collaborating with younger scholars in the field and in other forms of psychology. I am working with Jennifer Cross, Kristie Speirs Neumeister, Jerrell Cassady, Mary Ann Swiatek, Holmes Finch, and, of course, Larry Coleman (who is young at heart). I am also collaborating with a very talented doctoral student (Dawn Frazier) on a study of gifted African American males. I have several things in press right now--looking at gifted kids relative to personality. I have a good many things going--all of a psychological nature at this point. I am also studying perfectionism, suicide ideation, and a handful of other psychological aspects of gifted individuals. My studies' subjects (or co-participants) range in age from 6 years to 21 years. My developmental orientation underpins my planning to try to understand students with gifts and talents from preschool to the college level. Being associated with so many talented people is an absolute joy.

Henshon: You have taken some steps to shed more light on the conceptual foundations for the field (theory development, philosophical foundations, importing interdisciplinary ideas). Can you elaborate on this aspect of gifted education?

Cross: It is an exciting time for an academic person in the field because of the wonderful ideas that are being expressed in different forms. The book, Rethinking Gifted Education, edited by James Borland, has many good ideas throughout. Also Steinberg and Davidson's recent book Conceptions of Giftedness (2nd edition) is excellent. I have a piece in the former and Larry and I have a chapter in the latter (Cross, 2005; Cross & Coleman, 2005). Larry and I have also written different manuscripts for journals on this topic as well (Coleman & Cross, 1997; Cross 1994).

My interest in this area can be traced back to my training at the University of Tennessee. Why do we know certain things and not other things? You see patterns and repetitions of certain topics, but little empirical evidence to support those ideas. Then there are the politics of knowledge formation in general and in our field more specifically that play out. For example, when our field was distilling its research base into a representative knowledge base on which our new professional standards could rest, some patterns emerged that are fascinating. Some ideas have existed in the intellectual market for some time now, with little to no actual evidence to support them. Other things, such as the machine behind the idea rather than the quality or empirical support of the idea, seem to keep the ideas around. It is very important to understand the way society creates knowledge. It is very important that we have processes and procedures in place that are likely to help create meaningful and efficacious knowledge rather than being hamstrung by politics, poor research, convention, and so forth. It is an exciting time but it can be difficult because we have so little agreement in the field as to what giftedness is, which makes for fascinating research but can make being an administrator in school very difficult.

Twenty years experience of editing seven journals (five dealing specifically with gifted education) has been such a privileged and unique window through which to view and understand our field. To see early drafts of manuscripts long before they ever appear in press, and to know what was actually involved in improving them and making them publishable, in addition to seeing things as they just hit the scene, has been quite an exciting ride for me. I am very proud of the opportunities I have had to work with young or beginning authors who have since gone on to set the world on fire. I have also been humbled by the quality of some authors' work and the poor quality of others. This behind the scenes view of our field over the past 20 years or so is a very privileged place to be indeed. I am most proud of the fact that a good many individuals from outside the field published in the journals during my editorships and that qualitative research was nurtured and became mainstream during this time as well. In essence, a broader, more multifaceted literature base has been built over the past 20 years.

Henshon: Others have mentioned your concerns about the moral dimensions of gifted education. Please elaborate.

Cross: Let me approach this question from the heart. So much of my career has benefited from serendipity. One example was being asked to serve for a semester as the Executive Director of the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, one of only 10 public residential academies of its kind in the nation, and staying for almost 9 years. Looking after 300 academically gifted students from all over the state of Indiana, you get to know the kids quite well and see their relationships with others, and the environments and experiences they bring with them. My understanding about gifted students has been dramatically affected by this opportunity. My academic training and research background was very helpful to the responsibility of overseeing the school, but nothing short of having this kind of sustained responsibility that kept me in very close proximity for 10 months a year with the gifted students could have informed my thinking so much. I wish that everyone in the field could have such a learning opportunity. Rollo May once wrote about the difference between knowing about something and knowing something. In his case, as his last rites were being given, he said that he knew what facing death was. Before that time, he knew about death. After nearly a decade with the students from the Academy, I feel that I now know gifted students and gifted education. Before, I knew about them.

My experiences with The Association for the Gifted (TAG) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) have had a profound effect on my life. That group has such a longstanding and deep commitment to diversity that my thinking has been crystallized as a consequence of working with them for the past 20 years. I have come to believe that our field has to make an enormous commitment to making diversity front and center, otherwise we leave so many children without the education they need. There is a colossal underdevelopment of talent because children are not found and serviced. I believe that we have a moral imperative to do as much as we possibly can to identify all gifted kids and service them appropriately. That might mean moving away from psychometric conceptions of giftedness to diversity-based definitions. Otherwise, we end up coming up with new ways to ameliorate performance differences when the elephant in the room is poverty and we have known for decades that poverty can prevent children from being identified. The moral imperative is there.

One thing that makes America great is that if you work hard enough, you can earn opportunities. But I have come to realize the role that chance and poverty play in the development of children. These issues create a glass ceiling for all kids (including gifted kids). If you look at the career trajectory of our best-known politicians at the national level for example, there are certain benefits they have had in common. Many of them went to expensive private schools and colleges. That fact is common to our political class at the federal level. So many people who would make good leaders do not have opportunities to do so. Said more directly, the belief that America is a meritocracy for able but disadvantaged students is only true if you hold the bar of outcomes very low. For example, I witnessed for 9 years how the Academy's very best students--the best in the state of Indiana--were regularly denied admission to a specific group of the best known private universities in the US: those that are most often mentioned when our political class is discussed (especially our presidents). The rationale given to me when I inquired over and over was the candidates "were not interesting enough." I found that to be code, meaning that they cannot contribute to the school's endowment while being students; they are not from politically prominent families; and they are not legacies. In my opinion, only 5% or less of those students who should have been admitted were. Steve Martin has a joke about how to make a million dollars. First step, he says, is to get a million dollars. The meritocracy does not exist equally and poor gifted kids, no matter how outstanding, have a far smaller chance of earning appropriate opportunities than do others. There are a few universities that regularly offered admissions to the students who should be admitted without regard to whether or not they already had "a million dollars." Examples are MIT and Cal Tech. These schools want the very best students. Good for them. Our country needs this talent developed. Multibillion-dollar endowments are not as important to the future of our country as is developing the talent of all students in an appropriate manner.

We cannot let the one-in-a-million example of the impoverished student who earns his or her way through one of these universities be used as evidence that a meritocracy truly exists.

Henshon: You recently collaborated with Laurence Coleman on a book, "Being Gifted in School: An Introduction to Development, Guidance and Teaching." Could you share some insights about this experience?

Cross: A version of the book existed at one point in a form that Larry created. Later, I felt the book had never really had the appropriate sort of consideration it should have received. We talked about it, and we agreed to rework it (I twisted his arm), and we reworked it for a few years. The first edition came out in 2000, and we updated the book about 5 years later in the second edition. We worked on and off on the book over a period of 8 years at least. Whenever I work with Larry I always learn from him. It is just a wonderful experience. I'm proud of the book, and I'm pleased that people use it. Hopefully it will make a contribution over time.

Henshon: If you had to give someone advice on the things not to do in their research, what might some of that advice be?

Cross: I would encourage people to create a specialty for themselves. Our field is quite small and we get drafted into trying to represent many aspects of the field. That creates problems for us in that many ideas gain conventional understanding at a pedestrian level rather than becoming in-depth and nuanced as would happen if we forwarded empirically validated information. We have to develop professionals who are experts on focused topics. I encourage new researchers to establish parameters for what they will become expert in, but not to work on every conceivable topic.

A second suggestion is to really hone your tools and develop your approaches to research. I also encourage new researchers not to rely exclusively on convenience samples. We use convenience samples so often that issues associated with diversity, for example, are merely being recapitulated. There is a joke that the field of psychology is actually the study of the college sophomore. If we are not careful, our field actually will be known as the study of upper-middle-class-white kids from convenience samples.

Do the best quality work they can, go in depth, reach out to people in the field, just call people if you have an interest in their work or want to collaborate. Larry and I have had numerous people replicate our studies in Canada and Australia and it is such an honor. We have all these resources. People are happy to guide and provide insights. I have seen an easily discernable pattern of people in our field conducting a study, offering a fairly superficial account, and then moving on. I would encourage people to become the world expert on a subject. Our field certainly needs that, and I think in time it will come.

Henshon: What do you see as the most important questions that those types of studies could address? What would gifted kids look like if we identified all of them in one year?

Cross: I think that a lot would depend on what conception of giftedness one used to decide who could be gifted. Our tools are not up to par if we maintain only psychometric notions of giftedness. I hope we can come up with a conception of giftedness that makes diversity the basis, rather than trying to ameliorate those differences witnessed among various subgroups within our society. A lot of progress has been made, but we are nowhere near that point. So in a simple answer, a successful criterion for success is, "Do the gifted students identified look like those making up their schools?" It sounds simple, but the conceptions and identification processes we use have not been able to transcend issues of poverty and other important considerations.

The second question is not quite as broad but is complicated because it considers the interaction of the nature of the person and her or his talent, the differing arcs of the various domain in which talent is developed, such as math versus philosophy, and the differing contexts in which talent is developed. We must become increasingly sophisticated about contexts and support those that are successful in maximizing the potential of gifted students. For example, my 12-year-old daughter is a volleyball player. She attends Burris Laboratory School, located in Muncie, Indiana: a K-12 school with about 500 total Students. It has a dominant female high-school-volleyball program that has won 10 consecutive state titles and has won four national championships in open league competition. That means that this tiny high school of 160 students continuously beats the 5,000 student high schools throughout the US. How in the world does Burris consistently beat these gigantic schools? Burris has a talent development program that is very impressive and comprehensive. It exists within a larger volleyball community that is now spawning state and national championships as well. If we truly desire the academic equivalent, we will need to create the circumstances that support that sort of talent development.

If we start with diversity and we look at different contexts and how they play out, questions can be addressed in increasingly more sophisticated ways. I would encourage people to have less allegiance to their definition of giftedness and the way they study it. We have to remind ourselves that our conceptions of giftedness are in fact hypothetical constructs and, as such, subject to all sorts of political influences. It is important for all of us to become as knowledgeable as possible about all of the conceptions of giftedness so we can understand their strengths and weaknesses more fully. We are advocates for gifted kids, and we must remind ourselves that sometimes what we are doing is so fraught with assumptions that some of What is knowable will never reveal itself. I have worked hard to be open to different forms of giftedness without holding allegiance to any of them.

Henshon: Is there any noteworthy research being conducted on any of these topics and issues that you've just mentioned in the field of gifted education?

Cross: There are some wonderful scholars such as Margie Kitano writing about diversity. I think that she is one of our great thinkers on this subject. I have seen little written about assumptions of research and knowledge creation in our field. Don Ambrose has done some very interesting work on this topic. Disciplining oneself to be able to study things from differing vantage points is important. Some of my colleagues do that, but it is almost impossible to do so completely. It is hard to become good at even one thing and very hard to get good at several things. Julian Stanley is an excellent example of someone who engaged in an area, stayed with it for decades, and produced both seminal work and longitudinal findings of merit.

Henshon: What's happened as far as research in the field of gifted education that you think should receive more attention than it has?

Cross: I think some of the early research dealing with psychological issues is not getting the attention I hoped it would. I also think that Larry Coleman's early work that lead to stigma theory (Coleman & Cross, 1988) along with his and my work on social cognition and social coping strategies (e.g., Cross, Coleman, & Terhaar-Yonkers, 1991) and on the experience of being gifted (Coleman & Cross, 2000) hold some promise in helping academics more fully understand a number of other psychological constructs. David Feldman's work on nonuniversal development is critical in terms of putting together the different arcs of development in specific talent domains. Lanny Kanevsky's work on Vygotskian theory and dynamic assessment holds great potential for more accurately understanding the actual abilities of students and the relationship to maximizing the development of their talent.

Henshon: What are some areas within the field that you think may have been misinterpreted as far as the research goes?

Cross: I think going back between 5 to 15 years, I saw a focus on self-concept as a topic that was very interesting. As a journal editor, I saw manuscripts that seemed to rely on cursory reviews of the literature, seemingly using only electronic searches. Some of what was presented and published I found to be rather superficial; sometimes reflecting the lack of depth of knowledge that I talked about earlier. There was some substantial research on this topic then and now by Michael Pyryt and Sal Mendaglio and a few others, however. In essence, pursuits of this topic were not based on a thorough understanding of the basic construct, what had been published on the topic before, other important related constructs, and so forth. I think to do justice to understanding the psychology of students with gifts and talents, we will need to bring together issues of self-concept, social cognition, agency, mastery, and identity formation. It can be a career path to thoroughly explore any of those topics.

At this time in my career, I am uncertain about the construct of emotional intelligence. In my opinion, influence on the lived experiences of gifted students seems to rest more in the social experiences than those of an emotional kind. Of course, I may be proven wrong. I look forward to the research to be conducted on this topic. A very interesting piece was just published on the topic by Seon-Yong and Paula in the Journal for the Education of the Gifted (Lee & Olszewski-Kubilius, 2006).

This public hand wringing on my part is representative of my ponderous nature and my "quiet but thundering enthusiasm for what I do" (my father's description of what I am like as a person). I am very fortunate to be working as an academic in a field so chock full of fascinating people.

REFERENCES

Borland, J. H. (Ed.). (2003). Rethinking Gifted Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Cassady, J. C., & Cross, T. L. (2006). A factoral representation of gifted adolescent suicide. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 29, 290-304.

Coleman, L. J., & Cross, T. L. (1988). Is being gifted a social handicap? Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 11, 41-56.

Coleman, L. J., & Cross, T. L. (2000). Social-emotional development and personal experience of giftedness. In F. Monks, K. Keller, R. Sternberg, & R. Subotnik (Eds.), International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (2nd ed., pp. 203-212). Oxford, England: Elsevier Science.

Coleman, L. J., & Cross, T. L. (2005). Being Gifted in School: An Introduction to Development, Guidance and Teaching (2nd ed.). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.

Coleman, L. J., Sanders, M., & Cross, T. L. (1997). Debates and tacit assumptions in the education of the gifted. Gifted Child Quarterly 41, 105-111.

Cross, T. L. (1994). Alternative inquiry and its contributions to gifted education: A commentary. Roeper Review, 16, 284-285.

Cross, T. L. (2003). Rethinking gifted education: A phenomenological critique of the politics and assumptions of the empiric-analytic mode of inquiry. In J. Borland (Ed.), Rethinking Gifted Education (pp. 72-79). New York: Teachers College Press.

Cross, T. L. (in press). The suicidal behavior of students with gifts and talents. In C. Callahan & J. Plucker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Gifted Education. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.

Cross, T. L., Cassady, J. C., & Miller, K. A. (in press). Suicide ideation and personality characteristics among gifted adolescents. Gifted Child Quarterly.

Cross, T. L., & Coleman, L. J. (2005). A school-based conception of giftedness. In R. Sternberg & J. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of Giftedness (2nd ed., pp. 52-63). London: Cambridge University Press.

Cross, T. L., Coleman, L. J., & Terhaar-Yonkers, M. (1991). The social cognition of gifted adolescents in schools: Managing the stigma of giftedness. Journal for the Education of the Gifted 15, 44-55.

Cross, T. L., Cook, R. S., & Dixon, D. N. (1996). Psychological autopsies of three academically talented adolescents who committed suicide. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 7, 403-409.

Cross, T. L., Gust-Brey, K., & Bell, B. (2002). A psychological autopsy of an academically gifted student's suicide: Researchers' and parents' perspectives. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46, 247-264 . Lee, S. Y., & Olszewski-Kubilius, P. (2006). Emotional Intelligence, Moral Judgment, and the Leadership of Academically Gifted Adolescents. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 30, 29-67.

Sternberg, R. J., & Davidson, J. E. (2005). Conceptions of Giftedness (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Suzanna E. Henshon graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2005, and now teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University. Her first novel for gifted readers, Mildew on the Wall, was published by Royal Fireworks Publishing Company in 2004. E-mail: [e-mail]