Curriculum vitae
Brief Curriculum Vitae
Kurt A. Heller (born 1931) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Founding Director of the International MA Study Program “Psychology of Excellence” at the University of Munich (Germany). He has received degrees in education, special education and psychology and his PhD at the University of Heidelberg. He is on the Editorial Boards of nine national and international journals and book series as well as being on the Advisory Board of DAAD (1994-2001), on the Scientific Advisory Board of the OECD-projects PISA I-III and DESI (1998-2006), the Hector Foundation (since 2000), amongst others. Heller is the author of approx. 550 books, psychological tests, chapters and articles in the fields of psychological assessment and evaluation, intelligence, (technical) creativity, development of giftedness/talent and expertise. He has won several awards, most recently the Choice (USA) Award for the second edition of the International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (1993, 2nd ed. 2000, revised reprint 2002), and the 2003 National (Bavarian) Prize in Educational Sciences. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Humboldt Society of Science and Arts (Academy Council), and many (national and international) learned societies, e.g., New York Academy of Sciences (Section Psychology), German Society for Psychology, German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences, Humboldt-Society for Science and Education. Honorary member of Singapore Psychological Society, Spanish Society for Giftedness Research, German Society for the Gifted Child e.V., etc.
Curriculum Vitae
Kurt A. Heller (born 1931) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Director of the Center for the Study of Giftedness at the University of Munich. He has received degrees in education, special education, and psychology, and his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg. After teaching posts in high and special schools (for the deaf and speech disordered) and a Professor in Psychology for Special Education at the Teachers College/University of Heidelberg, he became a Full Professor of Psychology (Chair) at the University of Bonn (1971). In 1976, he moved to the University of Cologne and, in 1982, to the University of Munich (LMU), where he retired end of 1999 – but continuing several research projects.
Memberships: APA, GJSSS, IAAP, ISSBD, NAGC, ECHA, WCGT, the German-Japanese Society for Social Research, the Humboldt Society of Science and Arts (Fellow of the Academy Council), the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), Honorary Member of the Spanish Society for the Study of Giftedness (SEES). Furthermore, since 1968 Heller is a Member of the German Society of Psychology (GSP) and the GSP-Sections Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology (Executive Committee Member 1985-91), Psychological Assessment and Differential Psychology, etc.
Since 1984, Heller is on the Advisory Board of LMU Vice President’s Advisory Council (Study Abroad and Foreign Students), ABI’s Research Board of Advisors, and 1993-2001 member of the DAAD-panel for the selection of scholars-lecturers, going to USA and Canada, for the selection of DAAD-scholarships, etc. Since 1998, he is on the Scientific Advisory Board to the national project manager of the OECD-projects PISA I (1998-2001), PISA II (2002-2005), PISA III (2005-2008), DESI, and the Hector Foundation (since 2000), etc.
Heller has held editorial positions for ten national and international journals and book series: Education and Rehabilitation of Visually Handicapped (Co-Editor 1970-76), The visually handicapped – International Scientific Archives (Co-Editor 1972-76), Zeitschrift für Empirische Pädagogik [Journal of Educational Sciences] (Co-Editor 1977), Jahrbuch der Empirischen Erziehungswissenschaft [Yearbook of Educational Sciences] (Co-Editor 1977-83). DIFF-Fernstudienlehrgang „Ausbildung zum Beratungslehrer” [DIFF-Distance/Correspondence Course “School Counselor”] (1977, 2nd ed. 1985), Monographien zur Pädagogischen Psychologie, Neue Folge, Vol. 1-7 [Monographs of Educational Psychology, New Series] (Co-Editor 1978-81), GSP-journal Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht [Psychology in Education and Instruction] – Editor-in-Chief (1978-96), High Ability Studies (Co-Editor since 1996), Ideacción: Magazine on Giftedness (since 1996), SPS-journal (international editor for the SPS-editorial board since 2005).
Heller is Reviewer for the International Review of Applied Psychology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS Associate), German Journal of Educational Psychology, Psychology in Education and Instruction, Gifted Child Quarterly, Gifted and Talented International, Roeper Review, etc.
Publications: Heller has written or (co-)edited 60 books and 15 tests. He is the author or co-author of over 500 book chapters and (peer reviewed) journal articles in the field of psychology and (special) education: 360 of the publications are in German, 160 in English, 22 in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, and Thai. For the complete publication list see his homepage!
Research: In the last two decades, Heller’s major research areas were giftedness and talent, high ability, expertise and performance excellence, (technical) creativity, gender specific differences in math, natural sciences and technology, attributional retraining, and gifted program evaluation. Heller is best known for his Munich Model of Giftedness (developed with Ernst A. Hany and Christoph Perleth), the Attributional Retraining Model (developed with Albert Ziegler et al.) designed to promote talented (female) underachievers in math and the sciences, the German Cognitive Abilities Tests (KFT 4 R and KFT 5-12+R, 3rd ed. 2000) as well as the recent Munich High Ability Test-Battery (MHBT-P and MHBT-S) including KFT-HB, developed with Christoph Perleth (2001, 2003, 2007), among others. For that Heller has received over DM 10 million (1984-2001) as well as EUR 3.5 million (since 2002) in foundation and governmental grants.
Among other things, in 1985 Heller initiated the Munich Longitudinal Study of Giftedness (with two follow-ups in the 90s), quasi-experiments on metacognition, motivation and attributional retraining, large scale investigations into leisure time activities of gifted and talented youth, gifted education and counseling, cross-cultural and gender studies. 1995-1998, Heller was the German project leader of the international ALFA-project “Self-Concept and Competence”: Exchange and Cooperation between Universities of the European Union and Universities of Latin America (Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Cuba, England, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Peru, Venezuela) – supported by the EU in Brussels.
Recently, he conducted a ten year longitudinal study (1992-2002) on gifted development at the German Gymnasium (in Baden-Württemberg), a nation-wide retrospective evaluation study on supporting very able university students in Germany (1995-1997), several DFG-studies (together with Albert Ziegler) on self-related cognitions detrimental to motivation and self-concept (1995-2003), the German part of the International Academic Olympiad Studies (principle investigators and research teams from USA, Germany, Finland, Romania, Taiwan, China, and Korea) since 1995 [see http://www.olympiadprojects.com] and the Bavarian study on gifted education at primary school level (2001-2003).
Current longitudinal studies are the program evaluation study of the STEM/MINT-courses “Hector Seminar” (for nurturing talents in Mathematics, Information Computer science, Natural sciences, and Technology), supported by the Hector Foundation: EUR 3.5 million (2001-2009); a follow-up study on the German finalists and prefinalists (1977-1997) of the International Academic Olympiads in Math, Physics, and Chemistry (since 2004), etc.
Heller has won several scientific awards. Among them, there are an Academy Scholarship from the Volkswagen Foundation for the academic year 1989/90, the Distinguished Leadership Award 1996 from ABI, and – most recently – the 2003 National (Bavarian) Prize in Educational Sciences, and the CHOICE (USA) Award for the second edition of the International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (1993, 2nd ed. 2000, revised reprint 2002), which he shared with the co-editors F.J. Mönks (KUN), R.J. Sternberg (Yale) & R.F. Subotnik (APA).
Furthermore, Heller is the founding director of the International MA Study Program „Psychology of Excellence in Business and Education” at the University (LMU) of Munich, which started in 1998. At present, 80 students from over 30 nations are registered. See http://www.psy.lmu.de/excellence.
Legend:
ABI = American Biographical Institute
ALFA = Amérique Latine Formation Académique
APA = American Psychological Association
BMBF = German Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Bonn
DAAD = German Academic Exchange Service in Bonn
DESI = Deutsch-Englisch-Schulleistungen International
DIFF = German Institute for Distance Study Courses (Deutsches Fernstudieninstitut) at the University of Tübingen
ECHA = European Council for High Ability
GJSSS = German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences
GSP = German Society of Psychology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie)
IAAP = International Association of Applied Psychology
ISSBD = International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development
LMU = Ludwig Maximilians University at Munich
NAGC = National (US) Association for Gifted Children
NYAS = New York Academy of Sciences
PISA = Programme for International Student Assessment
SEES = Spanish Society for the Study of Giftedness
SPS = Singapore Psychological Society
WCGT = World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (German Delegate 1989-1999)