AEG Blog

Children who are both gifted and learning disabled (known as 2e or twice exceptional) face unique challenges as do their parents and teachers.  Correctly identifying 2e students is the first step in meeting their specific academic, personal and social needs.  The 2e Newsletter offers a helpful overview in Twice-exceptional Students: Who Are They and What Do They Need? by Micaela Bracamonte.

Specifically identifying students has become somewhat easier as researchers have uncovered some distinct tendencies among 2e children.  Bracamonte writes:

By analyzing the records of students currently in 2e programs, researchers have developed a profile of twice exceptionality. 2e students typically perform at very high levels on some, but not all, of the gifted screening tests used by public schools. On the other hand, they tend to simultaneously perform very poorly on one or more of the local, state, or national standardized assessments used to measure individual student progress. One of the hallmarks of twice- exceptionality, then, is inconsistency in performance and, in particular, in test results.

Bracomonte provides four profiles of "typical" 2e students. These short overviews give a glimpse of the complexity of identifying 2e students in the school setting. She then offers five strategies for working with twice exceptional students:

• Play to their strengths
• Address social and emotional needs
• Incorporate counseling support
• Provide organizational guidance and one-on-one tutoring opportunities
• Integrate technology

Bracomonte clearly recognizes the need to provide these twice exceptional students with an appropriate education.  She writes in closing:

The ideal classroom environment for the twice-exceptional student is very far from what exists... With a handful of exceptions, highly promising, creative students with learning differences continue to be systematically denied what they need in school – a flexible combination of acceleration, remediation, and social/emotional supports – whether the context is general, gifted or special education.

To meet the needs of these children, there must be a paradigm shift from a remediation or deficit model to a strength-based model of education. This is particularly true as a growing body of research demonstrates that learning disabilities also appear to afford and coexist with unique learning strengths. These children need programs and schools that transform the research on twice exceptionality into a daily commitment to combine academic rigor with individualized accommodations and adaptations.

One million of our nation’s most promising, most innovative thinkers – bright children who learn differently, not “deficiently” – constitute a neglected national resource. Twice-exceptional children need an education that fits, and it’s in all of our interests to give it to them.