A faculty member at Ashland University since 1988, Jane Piirto directs AU's Talent Development Education (TDE) program. Piirto teaches graduate courses in the M.Ed., teaches qualitative research in the Ed.D., and teaches undergraduates in educational psychology and creativity. She is a consultant, teacher, and speaker throughout the United States and abroad, and has been a teacher and school administrator in Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, and in New York City, where she was the principal of the Hunter College Campus Schools. Piirto has over a hundred publications of scholarly articles, poems, short stories, and essays. She has published a novel, The Three Week Trance Diet, which won the Carpenter Press First Novel Award. Her scholarly books include Understanding Those Who Create (Gifted Psychology Press) and Talented Children and Adults: Their Development and Education (Merrill/Prentice Hall). Poems, stories, and essays were collected in A Location in the Upper Peninsula (Sampo Publishing). She has also published several chapbooks of poetry. Piirto has received Individual Artist Fellowships in both poetry and fiction from the Ohio Arts Council and is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Hays grant for a study tour to Argentina, where she wrote a cycle of poems. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Northern Michigan University, a Master of Arts degree in English from Kent State University, a Master of Education degree in counseling from South Dakota State University, and a Ph.D. in educational administration and supervision from Bowling Green State University. She becomes the University's fourth Trustees' Professor, an academic rank awarded by the Board of Trustees to a professor who is recognized as an outstanding educator.
Creativity
How Parents and Teachers Can Enhance Creativity in Children, Fostering Creativity in Children, K-8: Theory and Practice (2000)
Gifted/Talented
Depth Psychology and Giftedness: Bringing Soul to the Field of Talent Development Education (with F Christopher Reynolds), Roeper Review (2005)
Values of Talented Adolescents Before and After 9/11/2001, Gifted 2003: A Celebration Downunder. Conference Proceedings (2003)
My Poems
Qualitative Research
The Question of Quality and Qualifications: Writing Inferior Poems as Qualitative Research, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (2002)
Alternative forms of data representation have been widely recommended, including the writing of poems as...