Symposium Speakers

Prof. Albert Ziegler	Albert Ziegler, PhD, is the Secretary General of the International Research Association for Talent Development and Excellence (IRATDE). He is Full Professor for Psychology at the University of Ulm, Germany where he is head of Educational Psychology at the Institute of Psychology and Education. He is also Founding Director of the “State-wide Counseling and Research Centre for the Gifted”. He has published approx. 300 books, chapters and articles in the fields of talent development, excellence, educational psychology and cognitive psychology. He is Editor-in-Chief of Talent Development and Excellence and serves as a member of numerous boards of scientific journals and associations. His main interests in the field of talent development and excellence are the development of exceptional performances, and the Actiotope Model of Giftedness and motivational training programs.
Prof. Heidrun Stoeger	Heidrun Stoeger, PhD, is Full Professor for Education at Regensburg University, Germany. She holds the chair for School Research, School Development, and Evaluation. She has published books, chapters and articles in the fields of talent development, educational psychology and education. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal High Ability Studies and member of the editorial board of the German Journal of Talent Development. She is Vice President of the International Research Association for Talent Development and Excellence (IRATDE). Her main research interests in the field of talent development are underachievement, teacher training, the Actiotope Model of Giftedness, and learning and motivational training programs.
Prof. Jiannong Shi	Professor Jiannong Shi is working at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and he is also a professor of Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He worked in University of Munich, University of Michigan, Yale University, University of Adelaide, and Regensburg University as a visiting scholar respectively. He focuses his research in the field of giftedness and creativity theoretically and practically. He and his team conducted a series cognitive and neuropsychological experiments on cognitive development and brain function of gifted children. Meanwhile, he developed a bio-socio-psycho- model to guide gifted education and creativity cultivation in kindergarten, primary, and secondary schools in China. He authored (or co-authored) 11 books in the field of child development and gifted education, as well as more than 130 journal articles and book chapters since 1990. He is serving as the president of Asia-Pacific Federation of WCGTC and the director of Center for Supernormal (G/T) Children  at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a committee member of the International Research Association for Talent Development and Excellence and serves as an editor-in-chief of Talent Development and Excellence.
Prof. Marion Porath	Dr. Marion Porath is Full Professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests encompass different forms of giftedness, particularly artistic, literary, and social giftedness; highly able learners’ epistemic beliefs; young children’s social development; instructional applications of neo-Piagetian developmental theory, particularly as they pertain to social understanding; problem-based learning; the qualities that contribute to excellence in teaching; and arts-based approaches to researching and understanding giftedness. Dr. Porath is a recipient of the Killam Prize for teaching excellence awarded by The University of British Columbia.
Prof. Aljoscha C. Neubauer	Aljoscha C. Neubauer, born 1960 in Kassel, grew up in Germany (Kiel, Frankfurt) studied psychology and sociology at the University of Graz (Austria), where he received his Ph.D. in 1986. After a short period of work in applied psychology (traffic psychology) he became assistant professor in Graz and habilitated (venia docendi) in 1994 on ‘Intelligence and speed of information processing’ (Springer). In 1995/96 he was teaching as a visiting professor at the J. W. Goethe-University in Frankfurt/M. In 1997 he received the William Stern Award for outstanding contributions to Differential Psychology (awarded by the German Society of Psychology). Since 1998 he is professor of Differential Psychology at the department of psychology of the University of Graz and was head of department from 2007 to 2009. He has published around 100 scientific articles (mostly in international peer-reviewed journals), about 20 book chapters, two intelligence tests, two monographs and many reports in the media. He is most known by his research related to the field of neuropsychology. They are: intelligence and underlying neurophysiological and elementary cognitive processes, the neurophysiology of creativity, measurement approaches to emotional intelligence/competence, high ability/giftedness, leadership potential. He is associate editor/on the editorial board of several journals devoted to the study of individual differences such as Intelligence, Journal of Individual Differences and others. Currently he is the president of International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID) for the period 2009-2011.
Dr. Rosemary Callingham	Rosemary Callingham is Associate Professor in mathematics education at the University of Tasmania. She has an extensive background in mathematics education in Australia, at school, system and tertiary levels. Her experience includes classroom teaching, mathematics curriculum development and implementation, large-scale testing and pre-service teacher education within two universities. She has worked on projects in Hong Kong and North Korea as well as studies in many parts of Australia. Her research interests include statistical literacy, mental computation and assessment of mathematics and numeracy, and teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge.
Prof. Wilma Vialle	Wilma Vialle is currently a professor at the University of Wollongong. She teaches subjects on psychological foundations of education, specialising in gifted education. Her interests are predominantly in the nature of intelligence and creativity, with a particular focus on giftedness. She has published nine books, 15 book chapters, over 30 journal articles, and over 70 national and international conference papers on topics related to giftedness and children’s learning. She is the chief editor of the ‘Australasian Journal of Gifted Education’ and is on the editorial board of the international journals, ‘High Ability Studies’ and ‘Evaluation and Research in Education’. Wilma is on the Executive Board of IRATDE.
Dr. Man Tak Yuen	Mantak Yuen (Ph.D.) is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. He was trained as an educational psychologist at the University College London. His professional interests are in school guidance and counselling, gifted education, social-emotive learning, and life career development. He is the co-convenor of the Special Interest Group for Gifted Education, Creativity, and Talent Development at the Centre for Advancement in Special Education, HKU. Since August 2001 he has been leader of a research team examining life-skills development and connectedness among children and youth in relation to school guidance programmes.
Miss Ricci Fong	Ricci W. Fong (M. Ed.) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hong Kong. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology, linguistics and philosophy, a postgraduate diploma in English language teaching, and a master’s degree in special education from the University of Hong Kong. She has experience in both secondary and elementary education. Her research interests are in perfectionism, school counseling and gifted education.
Prof. Dennis McInerney	Dennis McInerney is Chair Professor of Educational Psychology and Associate Vice President (Research and Development) at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Prior to this he was Research Professor and Associate Dean (Education Research) at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore having served for a period as Vice-Dean (Research and Methodology) within the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice. Previous to this Professor McInerney was Research Professor and Associate Director of the Self Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.
Dr. Rebecca Cheng	Dr. Rebecca Cheng joined The Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007 and is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Studies. She obtained her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Hong Kong in 2005. Her research is focused on educational psychology, specifically on student achievement motivation. She has been working on research projects on goal orientation, academic self-concept, social comparison processes in school settings, project-based learning, and cross-cultural comparison. She has been teaching educational psychology and research methods in the Institute. She is the reviewer for a number of journals including British Journal of Educational Psychology, International Journal of Psychology, Journal of Psychology in Chinese Societies, Educational Psychology, Educational Research and Evaluation and Asia Pacific Education Review.
Dr. Stephen Tommis	Dr. Stephen Tommis is the founding Executive Director of The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE), a post he took up in February 2008. The HKAGE is an initiative to ensure that appropriate provision is made for teachers, parents as well as all gifted students. Between 2003-8 Dr. Tommis was the Director of The National Association for Gifted Education (NAGC) in the UK. Most of Dr. Tommis’ career has been in education, with over 23 years experience as a teacher, head of department, Deputy Head and Headmaster in three secondary schools in the UK. He is a graduate of the Universities of Dundee, Jesus College, Oxford, and London.
Dr. Kevin Yuen	Dr. Yuen Chi Pun, Kevin is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education and Counselling (SEC). He recently joined SEC in July 2010. Dr. Yuen is a qualified audiologist and a speech-language therapist. He received his undergraduate degree in speech and hearing sciences and master’s degree in audiology from the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He received his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Before joining SEC, Dr Yuen worked in different tertiary institutions including the Division of Speech & Hearing Sciences, HKU; the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery, CUHK; and Language Information Sciences Research Centre, City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Yuen has a strong research interest in the sound perception and speech recognition of normal hearing and hearing-impaired individuals particularly infants and children. Dr. Yuen developed the Cantonese Lexical Neighborhood Test, the Computerized Cantonese Disyllabic-word Lexical Tone Identification Test in Noise, and the Computerized Mandarin Pediatric Lexical tone & Disyllabic-word Picture identification test in Noise to serve the Cantonese- and Mandarin- speaking populations in Hong Kong and Mainland China. One of his key future research areas is to identify and remediate young individuals with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and to investigate the impact of APD on speech and language development, learning, and academic performance.
Dr. Shane N. Phillipson	Dr. Shane N. Phillipson is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education and Counselling at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. After working for many years as a mathematics and science teacher Dr. Phillipson obtained a PhD from Flinders University (Australia) with his thesis being awarded the International Award (1999–2000) for best PhD thesis by the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) in the UK. He has been awarded a number of research grants, resulting in research publications in many international peer-reviewed journals, including High Ability Studies and Educational Psychology, and he is also a reviewer of research articles for these two journals. His edited books include Learning diversity in the Chinese classroom: Contexts and practice for students with special needs (2007), and Conceptions of giftedness: Socio-cultural perspectives (with M. McCann, 2007). Shane is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children and the European Council for High Ability.
Dr. Sivanes Phillipson	Sivanes Phillipson is Assistant Professor at the Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University in the area of educational psychology. Sivanes is also an Honorary Associate of the School of Education, University of Tasmania. Sivanes teaches a number of educational psychology and teacher education courses. Her research interests include context of achievement in relation to Chinese learners and their parents, and the context of innovative learning and assessment. Sivanes has a special interest in Rasch Measurement, Structural Equation Modeling and Mediation Analysis, and widely uses these methods in her own research. She has published internationally in books and journals in the wider field of education and specifically in educational psychology.

Workshop Speakers

* The Organizing Committee reserves the right to replace speakers without prior notice.