Who are the Twice Exceptional students?
Intellectually gifted individuals with specific learning disabilities are the most misjudged, misunderstood, and neglected segment of the student population and the community. Teachers, school counselors, and others often overlook signs of intellectual giftedness and focus attention on such deficits as poor spelling, reading, and writing (Davis & Rimm, 2003. pg. 204)
Students with twice exceptionalities (2E) are “students of superior intellectual ability who exhibit a significant discrepancy in their level of performance in a particular academic area such as reading, mathematics, spelling or written expression” (Reis and Ruban). · 2E students are grouped and identified by their learning disabilities instead of their giftedness. · Many academically talented students with learning disabilities are identified later in school because their learning disability becomes the main focus in elementary school. · Twice exceptional (2E) students feel like their teachers see where they struggle or what they cannot do, rather than their giftedness and where they can excel. 2E students are not alike, each one is unique with their learning disability and their gifts, making it more challenging to correctly identify these students. Common reported problems include poor reading and math skills, problems in spelling and handwriting, difficulties with expressive language, lack of organizational skills, inability to focus and sustain attention and limited capacity for social interventions and poor self-efficacy (P.L. 94-142,1981;Reis, Neu & McGuire, 1995). As teachers when we see these characteristics, we see a learning disability. Traditional gifted students are confident in their gifts and talents, students with learning disabilities lose their confidence in their ability to succeed. 2E students are usually classified as the smart students with behavioral problems. As educators we learn how to identify gifted children, but we also need to keep an eye out for the twice exceptional students. These students have characteristics which hamper their identification as a gifted child
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Davis, G. A., & Rimm, S. B. (2003). Education of the gifted and talented.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.