What does it really mean to be gifted and how can schools or other institutions identify, teach, and evaluate the performance of gifted children? Gifted education is a crucial aspect of schooling in the United States and abroad. Most countries around the world have at least some form of gifted education. With the first edition becoming a major work in the field of giftedness, the second edition of Conceptions of Giftedness aims to describe the major conceptions of what it means to be gifted, and how these conceptions apply to identification, instruction, and assessment of the gifted. It will provide specialists with a critical evaluation of various theories of giftedness, give practical advice to teachers and administrators on how to put theories of gifted education into practice, and to enable the major researchers in the field to compare and contrast the strengths of their theoretical models.