The Importance Of Giftedness In Education

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Most people have some idea of learning disabilities, typically dyslexia, and most people know about giftedness, or “geniuses”. The public tends to dissociate the two, thinking that brilliant people never really have trouble learning and that people with learning disabilities have lower intellectual ability. While these can be true to an extent, they are stereotypes, pure and simple. A learning disability and giftedness can most definitely exist in the same individual. These individuals are called twice-exceptional, or 2e, meaning that they have two exceptionalities: giftedness and a learning disability . 2e individuals are quite unique and may require different learning strategies from their peers with only one exceptionality. Different social …show more content…

They are incredibly brilliant yet typically are not able to perform at the level of which they are capable. Thus, these learners often require a set of learning strategies specifically targeted to them that address both their giftedness and their learning disability. However, not much research has been done in this area, and even less research has been done that takes students’ perspectives on learning strategies into account (Willard-Holt et al., 2013). This study seeks to explore the idea of effective learning strategies for twice-exceptional students from the students’ perspectives. The researchers surveyed and interviewed a group of fourteen students in grades five through college who had been identified as both gifted and with some sort of disability by their Ontario schools. The main questions to be answered by this study are as …show more content…

Students with learning difficulties often have problems with social interactions. Their impaired social skills can lead to social isolation, which may lead to lower self-concept and self-perception (Lerner & Johns, 2015). Gifted students often have similar problems with self-perception and social interaction, as they perceive themselves to be significantly different from others and tend to be too hard on themselves (Barber & Mueller, 2011). The authors proposed that the adverse social effects of learning disabilities and giftedness may be compounded in twice-exceptional individuals. Their study sought to explore how 2e students’ social and self-perceptions differ from students with only one exceptionality (giftedness or a learning disability) and students without exceptionalities, how in-school and parent relationships are related to self-perceptions in all four groups, and how social perceptions and self-concept interact with each other (Barber & Mueller,

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