Dr Susen Smith

Dr Susen R. Smith is GERRIC Senior Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Gifted and Special Education at the School of Education, GERRIC, University of NSW, Australia, where she teaches into the Masters in gifted education program. Her previous roles were as a Sessional Lecturer in Special Education at the University of Newcastle, where she completed her PhD, Lecturer in Learning, Teaching, & Gifted Education at the University of New England (UNE) and Associate Professor for a project at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. 

Susen has four decades of leadership, teaching, and research experience from Pre-K to Tertiary. She has a diverse teaching background having worked across Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary, Gifted and Special Education, Education for Sustainability, TESOL and Aboriginal Studies. Dr Smith's research interests include: Differentiating curriculum and pedagogy for diverse student needs in multi-disciplinary contexts, Gifted underachievement, Twice-exceptionalities, Social-emotional learning, Academic engagement, Enrichment, and Community outreach programs.  

Susen is published internationally and is on the editorial boards of the Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, and the Australasian Journal of Gifted Education.  She has been a visiting scholar to Columbia University, Imperial College London, CUNY, National Taipei University of Education, and the Hong Kong Institute of Education, has acquired many competitive research grants and awards, is widely published, and has keynoted at national and international conferences.  She has been an academic adviser for educational departmental policies and programs for decades in addition to having on-going advisory board and association memberships.  

Susen chaired the inaugural national GERRIC Gifted Futures Forum for Talent Enhancement in Australia and has organised regional, national, and world conferences and many gifted education outreach enrichment programs across several Australian universities and internationally, such as the TalentEd program and the 2eMPower project.  She has successfully supervised many postgraduate PhD, Masters, and Honours students’ research projects to timely completion. Some research topics focussed on Differentiation, Effective Pedegogy in Inclusive education, Acceleration & Grouping, Metacognition & Critical Literacy, Underachievement, Bibliotherapy, Creativity for at-risk gifted children, Visual-spatial learners, Twice-Exceptionality, Giftedness & English Language learners, Identification and Dabrowski in gifted education and special education. Dr Smith created the Model of Dynamic Differentiation (MoDD) for supporting student diversity across the learning continuum, provides professional learning across Australia and internationally, and is editor of the first ever Giftedness & Talent Development in the Asia-Pacific Springer International Educational Handbook.