About the Book
In this updated 3rd edition of Being Smart the authors provide current views on gifted education and on nurturing children's and adolescents' abilities. They discuss equity and diversity, creativity, assessments, homeschooling, neural plasticity, social-emotional issues, and more. Drs. Matthews and Foster address questions and concerns, and share resources. This book is for parents, grandparents, and teachers who want to foster high-level development and meaningful learning opportunities. BEING SMART ABOUT GIFTED LEARNING, the third edition of this book, emerges out of our decades of personal and professional experiences with giftedness, and also from a shared sense of the joys, challenges, and uniqueness of every child. In this book, we discuss ways to nurture children's learning and well-being across many dimensions of their lives.
About the Author :
Dona Matthews, Ph.D. was the Executive Director of the Millennium Dialogue for Early Child Development at the University of Toronto, and the founding director of the Hunter College Center for Gifted Education and Development, City University of New York. Joanne Foster holds a Doctoral degree in Human Development and Applied Psychology, and a Master's degree in Special Education and Adaptive Instruction, both from the University of Toronto. She has worked in the field of gifted education for 30 years, focusing on ways to encourage and support high-ability learners.
Review :
"Dona Matthews and Joanne Foster understand that each learner is unique. They discuss child development and education, paying attention to factors such as resilience, play, motivation, creativity, and supportive relationships. Being Smart about Gifted Learning is about finding and embracing opportunities to encourage children's strengths, and nurture their well-being."
-Katie Hurley
"Drs. Matthews and Foster understand developmental processes and appreciate how mind, body, heart, and spirit work in harmony to empower children and teens. This 3rd edition of Being Smart enlightens, and speaks clearly to the importance of family dynamics, engaging learning experiences, creativity, and core values. The authors provide guidance for nurturing well-being, motivation, and capacities across domains. I recommend this book highly!
Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., Developmental Psychologist, Roots of Action
"This comprehensive, thorough and all-encompassing resource dives DEEPLY into deconstructing the multiple facets of what the term "gifted" or "advanced learner" can mean in such specific, reassuring, practical and helpful ways. It's clear right from the introduction that understanding, nourishing and encouraging children's unique sets of learning strengths and challenges is the key to accommodating them in their individual educational journeys.
Reading this book is a must for anyone who works with children whose focus is optimally developing their capabilities.
Seeing my music referenced in Being Smart About Gifted Learning as a developmentally enriching resource is an honour.
-Nancy Kopman, Composer/Performer, Children's Educational Music www.nancykopman.com
"This tremendous book describes how gifted education resources can be applied to nurturing talent broadly and inclusively across the population. The Optimal Match approach demystifies understandings of giftedness, and brings common sense to conceptions of meaningful learning at home, school, and elsewhere."
-Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, Columbia University
"By presenting exciting new work on mindsets, as well as recent research findings on expertise and cognitive neuroscience, these authors show the importance of habits of mind in cognitive development. This book will prompt re-examination of many long-held beliefs!"
-Carol S. Dweck, PhD, Stanford University
"Rich with examples, this book highlights the importance of an optimal match between challenging and engaging school and home experiences and opportunities to develop gifts and talents! A practical, thoughtful contribution by two leading experts!"
-Sally M. Reis, Ph.D., University of Connecticut
Being Smart about Gifted Learning is a brilliant book that empowers and enlightens parents with essential information about optimizing their child's educational, social, and emotional experiences. Drs. Foster and Matthews provide a plethora of tips and strategies that lead to a winning formula: helping children and teens discover the right combination of safety and challenge to support life-long resilience and creativity.
-Mona Delahooke
Drawing on clinical research and real-life examples, and also addressing underrepresented populations, the authors deftly demonstrate how each gifted student is best supported through an individualized Optimal Match educational framework addressing the five "R's" (being resourceful, reasonable, receptive, respectful, and responsive). And as we watch gifted classes increasingly being minimized and even eliminated, while aware that the pandemic itself has contributed to an already growing crisis in mental health, the authors provide us with powerful tools to help advocate for and outline opportunities to best support these students, even if such support comes outside traditional schools. This updated edition will be a welcome resource that should be in the hands of all parents and educators alike.
-Marianne Kuzujanakis, M.D., M.P.H.
Drs. Matthews and Foster have given us not only a comprehensive, intelligently designed and brilliantly crafted book but one written with extraordinary understanding and compassion. Readers of all kinds - parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors - will recognize that the authors have "been there" and will be grateful for how smart about gifted learning they have become from reading their work.
-Felice Kaufmann, PhD
Gifted individuals are neuro-unique learners. Being Smart About Gifted Learning is the new generation gifted education guide for parents, educators, policy makers, and anyone that desires a deep understanding into giftedness. Dona Matthews, Ph.D. and Joanne Foster, Ed.D. have created a compassionate and comprehensive resource by sharing their expertise in the field of gifted education and personal experience raising their gifted families. This foundational book helps readers nurture exceptional thinkers to maximize learning using the Optimal Match approach.
--Nicole A. Tetreault, Ph.D., neuroscientist and author of Insight into a Bright Mind
Mathews and Foster dive into the most common puzzles within gifted education using straightforward language, equally appropriate for family members and educators new to the field. They provide no-nonsense advice based on decades of research. Their Optimal Match approach cuts to the heart of what is essential for all gifted learners--having a curriculum that meets their needs on a variety of levels. This book addresses some of the critiques of gifted education in a rational, fair way grounded in psychology and pedagogy. The chapters on testing demystify the vocabulary and the process, the benefits and pitfalls, in a clear and concise way. The use of scenarios throughout the text enhances the layperson's understanding of the nuances of giftedness and education of those who require a differentiated curriculum.
-Colleen Willard Holt
Telra Institute illustrates Matthews & Foster's Optimal Match in practice, recognizing that learning is fluid and requires ongoing re-evaluation and appropriate levels of challenge. Our differentiated, rigorous, and accelerated approach will benefit all advanced learners, while instilling in them the practices and values of curiosity, tenacity, initiative, and passion for learning.
Michael S. Matthews, PhD, & Ronak Bhatt, PhD, University of North Carolina and Telra Institute
The premise of an education that is appropriate for the individual student is applicable to all students across the full range of achievement outcomes, although this premise is seldom applied to students classified as gifted and talented...Matthews and Foster highlight the importance of an appropriate education for gifted and talented students that provides optimal match between students and their learning environments. The notion of optimal match is not only in keeping with the talent development approach, now the dominant paradigm in gifted education, but also the idea that giftedness is based on an interaction of person and context. The ideas in this book represent an important conceptual framing that will help gifted and talented programs serve broader and more diverse populations of students.
-Frank Worrell, PhD, U of California, Berkeley
