The 12th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftednesswas held on July 14th-18th, 2012 atInternational Conventions and Exhibitions Centre in Dubai, Unite Arab Emirates (UAE). The conference was hosted by Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Distinguished Performance, strategic partners including Ministry of Education and Institute of Applied Technology of UAE. Professor Jiannong Shi, the director of Research Center for Supernormal Children, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with another four members in the research center attended the conference.

The theme of the conference was “nurturing talent, growing potential”. It followed the already established tradition of presenting a multi-featured event focused on assessing and evaluating the global and regional progress of gifted and talented educational programs and initiatives. With a content-rich conference with over 300 papers to be issued, a youth summit full of intellectual & physical activities for students, comprehensive workshops to gain strategic guidelines and a trade fair for the 12th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness aims at heightening the importance and significance of gifted education within our educational, social and professional communities.

The agenda of the conference on giftedness in 2012 included plenary sessions, children & youth summit, posters, school visits and workshops focusing on a diverse range of topics that included but not limited to the following: identification & assessment, curriculum & instruction, creativity & creative thinking, social & emotional needs, teacher development, learning environment.

At the beginning of the conference, the Minister of Education – United Arab Emirates, Humaid Mohamed Obaid Al Qutami expressed his bless to the success of the conference. Professor Jiannong Shi, the president of Asia-Pacific Federation on Giftedness, delivered the opening ceremony speech. During the 5 days’ conference agenda, more than 2500 attendance and 500 students coming from 42 different countries/regions participated the conference and the youth summit, including ministers of social development and education from different countries, children psychologist, gifted and talented educators and parents. There were more than 300 special reports. The keynote speakers included Howard Gardner from Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School, the first lady of Malaysia, H.E. Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, Professor Albert Ziegler from Educational Psychology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Dr.Ali bin Abdul Khaliq Al-Qarni from Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States, Professor David Lohman from University of Iowa, Professor June Maker from University of Virginia, Professor Jiannong Shi, the Present of APFG, from Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Wu-Tien Wu from Taiwan Normal University, Professor Joyce Van Tassel-Baska from College of William and Mary. Tongran Liu and Ting Tao in Research Center for Supernormal Children, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences made two oral presentations on “Intelligence and Cognition-Emotion Regulation Abilities” and “Sustained Attention in Intellectually Gifted Children” respectively during the conference.

The general election for the APFG was also held in the evening of July 15th. Professor Kyungbin Park from Gachon University in South Korea was selected as the next chairperson of APFG (2012-2014).

On the closing ceremony, Professor Jiannong Shi, as the current president of APFG (2010-2012) and the director of Research Center for Supernormal Children, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivered the closing speech. After that, Professor Shi showed a moving video for promotion of the 13th APFG conference which will be held in Beijing on behalf of the Institute of Psychology, and the Center for International Scientific Exchanges, Chinese Academy of Sciences, inviting everyone to get together again in Beijing two years later.

The 13th APFG Conference will be held in Beijing, China from August 3rd-6th 2014.

 

Professor Shi as a keynote speaker

Assistant Prof. Tongran Liu is making her presentation

 

Doctor candidate Ting Tao is making her presentation

 

Some attendance from Institute of Psychology, CAS and Beijing Yucai School