A Review of The Teaching Transgender Toolkit: A Facilitator's Guide to Increasing Knowledge,Decreasing Prejudice & Building Skills

This is a review of the book The Teaching Transgender Toolkit by Eli R. Green and Luca Maurer (2015 Green, E. R., &; Maurer, L. (2015). The teaching transgender toolkit: A facilitator's guide to increasing knowledge, decreasing prejudice &; building skills. Ithaca, NY: Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes. [Google Scholar]). Overall, the book is an extremely helpful guide for facilitators of varying skill levels and gender identities implementing educational interventions. The authors' familiarity with the range of participant/learner responses led them to include several helpful components. With helpful sections on how to use the book, how to compile lessons to conduct one's own trainings, and resources for further reading, the authors effectively give educators the tools they need to educate various populations about transgender identities. Limitations include the ever-changing language around gender identities and the lack of specific focus on workplace discrimination. The authors do include an online, frequently updated resource for changing terminology. This is a recommended resource for those who educate about gender and gender identity.     

30 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living Through Critical Thinking,Revised & Expanded: A Guide for Improving Every Aspect of Your Life. Elder,L., & Paul,R. (2013)

The recognition of patterns and creativity are two characteristics associated with mathematical talent. In this study, we analyzed these characteristics in a group of 37 mathematically talented students. The students were asked to find the pattern the Braille code had been built upon and reinvent it with the aim of making its mathematical language become more functional. Initially, the students were unable to identify the formation pattern of Braille, but after experiencing the difficulties that blind people face when reading it, they recognized the generating element and the regularity. The results were in contrast with those of a control group, and it is noted that the students with mathematical talent were more effective in using visualization to identify the regularity of the pattern and their invention proposals were more sophisticated and used less conventional mathematical content.     

Paradigms of Gifted Education: A Guide to Theory-Based,Practice-Focused Research. Dai,D. Y., & Chen,F. (2014)

Discrepancies exist between the research literature on the social competence of gifted children and educators’ subjective experience of their students’ social problems. Five alternative hypotheses are examined which may account for discrepancies in these perspectives. To resolve these discrepancies between experience and experiment, five areas of change are suggested to improve research on the social competence of gifted children.