Recently, gifted education has become an arena of much debate. Contradictions and disagreements surround how we define and select gifted students into special programming. Conventional tools and models are all grounded in the West. When applied in gifted programming, IQ-based models fail to identify diverse students' talents. The area of giftedness is under-researched and not well understood from an African perspective. This research endeavour broke new ground by tapping sociocultural conceptions to inform gifted education from an African perspective, espoused in Shona culture of Zimbabwe. While Zimbabwe's stone sculptors transformed Shona traditional sculpture into an envied world class art, it was not clear how they derive the inspiration and vision that propel their art. Data were analyzed in two studies informed by questionnaire responses from Zimbabwean professors, and interviews with 20 Shona stone sculptors. The analysis should help professionals in gifted education and the art field, and should be especially useful in marketing Zimbabwean stone sculpture. In addition, anyone seeking to understand alternative conceptions of giftedness and creativity can be enriched.

Teaching is a richly multifaceted endeavor. It isn't always easy to know just where we should focus our thinking and our dialogue. In Speaking of Teaching, six educators talk about their inner selves. They bring the inside out for their own self-exploration. And they bring the inside out for us to view and learn from. They also question the boundaries between the inner and the outer and whether existence can be dichotomized in this way. Gary Poole, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia, 3M Teaching Fellow. The authors of this collection explore the many ways to remain present in the midst of the trifling but perpetual swirl of events, thoughts, distractions, and how they, as they are at, what T. S. Eliot called, the still point of the turning world, find profound meaning in their work as educators. A deeply moving collection that allowed me too, while reading it, to rediscover that still point without which there would be no dance, and there is only the dance. Gerda Wever, PhD, editor and publisher, The Write Room Press

Teaching is a richly multifaceted endeavor. It isn't always easy to know just where we should focus our thinking and our dialogue. In Speaking of Teaching, six educators talk about their inner selves. They bring the inside out for their own self-exploration. And they bring the inside out for us to view and learn from. They also question the boundaries between the inner and the outer and whether existence can be dichotomized in this way. Gary Poole, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia, 3M Teaching Fellow. The authors of this collection explore the many ways to remain present in the midst of the trifling but perpetual swirl of events, thoughts, distractions, and how they, as they are at, what T. S. Eliot called, the still point of the turning world, find profound meaning in their work as educators. A deeply moving collection that allowed me too, while reading it, to rediscover that still point without which there would be no dance, and there is only the dance. Gerda Wever, PhD, editor and publisher, The Write Room Press