This book reviews past developments within the field of gifted education and identifies the current trends, issues, and beliefs to be faced in the 21st century. The book is organized to provide a framework for those who are responsible for nurturing the development of gifts and talents in the home, school, and community. Specific chapters address: (1) definitions and models of giftedness; (2) the lives of gifted persons, career choices, and predictors of adult accomplishment; (3) identifying the gifted, procedural concerns, measurement, and special issues in identification; (4) guidance considerations for families and talking with parents; (5) coping with giftedness and counseling considerations, problems of special groups, and strategies used in the process of managing identity; (6) creativity, the creative process and development, and teaching for creativity; (7) administrative arrangements, program prototypes and the teacher, evaluation programs, and selecting personnel; (8) curriculum theory and practice, differentiated curriculum, and models used for curriculum building; (9) instructional theory, principles of instruction, and general teaching methods; and (10) best practices, teaching nonmodal gifted children, useful techniques or settings in most situations, and instructional materials and media. (Contains more than 600 references.) (CR)