Twice-exceptional+Students

The article I found is located here: http://rpazusa.apu.edu/ebsco-web/ehost/detail?vid=6&hid=10&sid=caebee85-d8af-4141-80f8-766090775fdf%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=16805888

This article discusses a small group of students who are gifted/talented AND suffer from learning disabilities. These students are at serious risk of being underidentified and not receiving the special attention they require. Often with these students one of their specialties outweighs the other; either their talents will mask their disabilities, or vice versa.

The first major problem is identification. When researchers look at the identification of both gifted students and student with learning disabilities, BOTH populations of students suffer identification issues. Then, when you add them together, having a gifted student who has one particular learning disability, proper identification becomes that much tougher. One of the major problems with identification is that there are no universally accepted definitions for gifted or learning disabled students. Because of this fact, identification qualifications vary from state-to-state, and school-to-school.

Assuming proper identification does occur for gifted or LD (learning disabled) students, they are often in a program that promotes their strengths and demotes their weaknesses. Again, this lends itself to not properly identifying those twice-exceptional students who are both gifted and LD.

Educators need to be better trained for identifying both gifted and LD students if there is any hope of properly identifying and serving this population of students. As a P.E. teacher, I may not be in the same position as a classroom teacher when trying to adapt my lessons to these students. However, I will need to identify areas of strength for all of my students and try to reinforce those areas whenever possible. When possible, I may be able to identify particular students who seem to have difficulty following verbal directions, which may be an indicator of a verbal LD. In such cases, I would be responsible for making my observations known to my administration so they could try to identify any LDs that student may have.

Thanks, Ryan George

PS - This is the link to a second, SIMILAR article, since the first one seems to be a bad link! http://rpazusa.apu.edu/ebsco-web/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=17&sid=c7de42f3-b9b9-4c5c-a0f4-4d8350ee6bfa%40sessionmgr13&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mnh&AN=9146095