Being Twice Exceptional: Gifted Students with Learning Disabilities

Gifted students with learning disabilities are a heterogeneous group of children, often described as twice exceptional students. They exhibit puzzling patterns of behavior, higher-level intellectual abilities, advanced vocabulary, and exceptional comprehension of abstract ideas and concepts intertwined with poor reading and writing skills, and poor phonemic awareness. Current identification procedures fail on certain children because of the “masking” effect (due to the compensation process). Some controversial issues regarding identification of gifted students with learning disabilities are discussed, as well as some common intervention strategies.