Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D., is a specialist in intelligence assessment and individualized interpretations and guidance for both gifted children and adults. Her research, writing, and speaking focuses on school and educational issues as well as related social and emotional adjustments for gifted children particularly those at the highest levels of giftedness.
Early Childhood Screening for Giftedness Even when a gifted program isn’t available, it makes sense to screen anyway.All students in the classroom benefit from an approach that identifies and addresses
How smart you are is relative. It depends on who else is there. I show you three examples from my own life about how confused many people can get when
Who is gifted? And what does it mean to be gifted? Did you know that there are at least two very different ways of seeing giftedness? The most popular way,
What the heck is neurodiversity? … and how does it fit into the picture of giftedness? The word “neurodiversity” seems to come up a lot these days. Is the condition
Dr. Ruf was recognized by Minnesota Educators of the Gifted and Talented (MEGT) and was presented with the 2023 Friend of the Gifted award at the January, 2024 MEGT conference
Dr. Ruf was a guest on the Positive Disintegration podcast in January, 2024. In the episode, Chris and Emma talked with Dr. Deborah Ruf, author of the award-winning book 5
Unlocking the Mysteries of Giftedness: An Interview with Julia Krysztofiak-Szopa of Dzieci Zdolne Gifted children are often misunderstood and overlooked in traditional educational systems, leading to feelings of boredom, frustration,
When very young children demonstrate precocious behaviors, such as seeming to understand words and adult conversations that are beyond their years, or strong interest in things and topics that generally
Deborah Ruf, PhD ©2022 Gifted programming generally isn’t available for the youngest gifted children. But that doesn’t mean that the classroom teacher or parents can’t provide appropriate instruction and social
When I think of giftedness, I sometimes think about why we want to know about it and how it affects people. To start with, I see high intelligence and giftedness
The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up is a detailed follow-up to Dr. Deborah Ruf’s previous book, 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options. In this book, Dr. Ruf explores how background…. Read More
Dr. Delisle “I’ve finally read through the “5 Levels” update…and it is a monumental work. The amount of detail and insight you provide is unlike anything I have seen published elsewhere, and the respect you show to your 64 subjects is evident throughout. I won’t lie: I didn’t read through every one of the excerpts in each of the chapters. Instead, I read through a variety of them and then headed straight to the Summary and Conclusions portion of each chapter. It was in each of those that your synthesis of your respondents’ responses came most to life for me. Too, the Afterword was a great way to tie together the many conclusions that you reached, as well as additional questions that remain….Read More