Dr Minh Nguyen-Hoan

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."

Goethe, 1749-1832

Minh has extensive experience assessing gifted children, adolescents and adults, ranging from the age of three to twenty-five years. He also works in a counselling capacity with gifted children and adolescents and their parents, addressing parenting and personal issues to do with intensity and sensitivity. Minh specialises in working individually with highly and exceptionally gifted children as well. He conducts professional development seminars and workshops with Fiona Smith in the independent, public and catholic school systems. 

Minh completed his Bachelor in Psychology with Honours in 2003. He was awarded his PhD in Psychology in 2008. He is a full member of the Australian Psychological Society Ltd.

Minh spent many years at the Gifted Education Research Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC) at the University of New South Wales. During his time at GERRIC, Minh had a variety of roles including;

• Workshop assistant in the Poppyseeds, Small Poppies, Junior Scientia and Scientia school holiday programs for gifted primary and secondary school students.
• Psychology panellist at the GERRIC Careers Day
• Test supervisor at the University of New South Wales for the Australian Primary Talent Search (APTS) and the Australian Secondary Schools educational Talent Search (ASSETS).
• Residential Leader for the GERRIC Residential Programs for APTS and ASSETS students. This involved working with individual students one-on-one as well as supervising and helping meet the social and emotional needs of the adolescents attending the camps.
• Residential Leader for the GERRIC Scientia Residential Programs for Year 7 - 10. As above, plus group work involving self esteem, confidence and motivation building activities.

Minh has spent several years mentoring and tutoring many gifted children and adolescents on a one-on-one basis and is continuing to do this at the Gifted Minds practice. He has also worked as a trainer on curriculum workshops for the JASON Project, an organisation that strives to engage and motivate the scientific minds of students in Years 5 - 8.

During his PhD candidature, Minh was a tutor for second and third year university classes in cognitive psychology, visual perception and psycholinguistics.  

Conference papers and talks include:

• Presentation for GATCA WA titled "Gifted children and adolescents: Where the wild things live, learn and play"
• Presentation for Catholic Education Office titled "Grouping exceptionally gifted boys for extension and socialisation"
• Presentation at the European Council for High Ability (ECHA) Conference in July 2010 titled "Like minds: Similarities and differences in intellectual ability between gifted siblings"