In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, “It ain’t easy being green.”
Susan Baum, a longtime advocate for twice-exceptional children, uses the analogy that disabilities and challenges are blue, strengths and talents are yellow, and twice-exceptional children are green—which is both a combination and yet its own unique color (Baum, Schader, & Owen, 2017; see Figure 1).
Although there are isolated programs for twice-exceptional children around the country—including private schools, such as Bridges Academy in California or Franklin Academy in Connecticut, and scattered public school programs, such as those in Albuquerque, NM, and Montgomery County, MD—most families are left searching for “Shangri-La” (Postma, 2015), where teachers not only understand and work with twice-exceptional children, but also have professional development and administrative support regarding this unique population.
Too often, gifted children sit through classes where they already understand most of the information. They need novelty and new information (Clark, 2001). In contrast, children with disabilities often need material repeated or reviewed in a different manner before they can understand it (Kirk, Gallagher, & Coleman, 2015). When children are twice-exceptional, teachers and parents are often challenged with trying to determine what can be done with these difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-teach children. One strategy that is often cited in both special education and gifted education differentiation literature (Tomlinson, 2017) is “tiering,” in which students who have different academic needs work with the same or similar content using varied strategies depending on their abilities and level of proficiency in the content being addressed. Tiered lessons should be constructed using a format of ALL students WILL do the most essential concepts/MOST students SHOULD do what is considered grade-level appropriate/SOME students COULD do more than what is required by state standards (see Figure 2).
This article will follow a similar format. Part I covers “basic” information about WHAT a 2e learner is that all readers should know. Topics will include a definition and characteristics. Readers who already know this information can skip on to Part II, which addresses the question: SO WHAT? Why is it important to understand different viewpoints of special education and gifted education in order to understand twice-exceptional students’ educational experiences? Those with training and backgrounds in gifted education and special education or who have a deeper understanding of twice-exceptional students can skip on to Part III that addresses the question: NOW WHAT can we do with this information? This section focuses on application and the construction of an environment that provides supports while developing abilities. This article also models the tiers with the What/So What/Now What model of reflection (Borton, 1970), and provides an example of how a teacher can provide instructional modifications for 2e students.
Part I: WHAT IS “Twice-Exceptional”?
The Twice-Exceptional National Community of Practice (2eNCoP), a collaboration of individuals representing numerous organizations, including the National Association for Gifted Children and the Council for Exceptional Children, provided a definition of twice-exceptional students:
Twice-exceptional (2e) individuals evidence exceptional ability and disability, which results in a unique set of circumstances. Their exceptional ability may dominate, hiding their disability; their disability may dominate, hiding their exceptional ability; each may mask the other so that neither is recognized or addressed.
Twice-exceptional students, who may perform below, at or above grade level, require the following:
• Specialized methods of identification that consider the possible interaction of the exceptionalities
• Enriched/advanced educational opportunities that develop the child’s interests, gifts and talents while also meeting the child’s learning needs
• Simultaneous supports that ensure the child’s academic success and social-emotional well-being, such as accommodations, therapeutic interventions, and specialized instruction.
Working successfully with this unique population requires specialized academic training and ongoing professional development.
(Baldwin, Baum, Pereles, & Hughes, 2015, p. 218)
But what do these students LOOK like in a classroom? They are often the “mountain-top” students with low scores in specific skill areas and strong higher level thinking scores (Ottone-Cross et al., 2017). They can frustrate teachers because they are often “hidden in plain sight” (Ng, Hill, & Rawlinson, 2016), due to the fact that their talents often abate the full impact of their disabilities, and their disabilities obscure the full expression of their talents. Baum et al. (2017) described them as children who exemplify the characteristics of both gifted children and children with learning disabilities, but often qualify for neither. Like many children with disabilities, 2e children often have social challenges and difficulties with executive functioning (Neumann, 2012); however, a profile of a “typical” 2e child is nonexistent because so much depends on the ways in which these children demonstrate their talents and challenges. They are often called “paradox” children because their strengths and challenges are so dependent upon the context, as can be seen in Table 1.
It is very important to understand that there is no single “profile” of 2e children, just as there are no single profile of students with disabilities or gifted students. Twice-exceptional children are rare among rarities.
Determining how many twice-exceptional children there are is a challenge. They often go underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed (Webb et al., 2016), and the “counting” is complicated by the differing definitions of disability and giftedness from state to state. However, a rough estimate can be made that 10% of any population could be considered “gifted” or “high achieving” and approximately 10%–15% of a population can be considered as having special needs. Thus, the number of twice-exceptional children is estimated to be:
.1 × .1 = .01 or 1%
Conservatively, in theory, 1 in 100 students in any given school should be twice-exceptional. This population of students is definitely small and unique, but much larger in number than is served (Baldwin et al., 2015). The problem is identifying these students, understanding the viewpoints of other educational entities in order to serve these students, and finding appropriate ways to teach them.
Part II: SO WHAT Does This Mean? Why Is This Important?
Because there are so few people trained to work with students who are twice-exceptional, the research on this population is scattered. A recent review found that most of the literature on twice-exceptional students is found within gifted literature, and much of the research is within the educational psychology realm (Hughes & Troxclair, 2018). A teacher or a parent who is concerned about a twice-exceptional child must collaborate with gifted professionals and special educators. Although gifted education is based on what a child CAN do, special education is defined by what a child CAN’T do. These fundamental differences lead to both similarities and differences in viewpoints and values. To work with gifted education and special education collaboratively, it is useful to understand each group in terms of its history, its assumptions, and the “battles” it fights on a regular basis with the larger culture, community, and schools (Spielhagen, Brown, & Hughes, 2015).
Special education has a long history of being excluded. As a result, its primary battle has been for inclusion. In the not-so-distant past, special education was another way of saying “commitment” or “institutionalization” and children were regularly locked away from their peers. Beginning with the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, a child’s right to be educated with their peers was considered a fundamental right (Kirk et al., 2015). Coupled with the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, special education advocacy efforts culminated with the passage of P.L. 94-142, which was amended in 1997 and again in 2004 to become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The series of ongoing laws and court cases that have ensued have provided progressive steps toward the inclusion of students with special needs into general education classrooms. Human rights undergird special education’s frameworks and belief structures. As an example, one principle of IDEA is “Zero Reject,” which states that schools must educate every child, no matter the severity of a disability. Special educators notice slights, they advocate for fair treatment, and they particularly fight for access—to traditional curriculum, classrooms, and activities.
It is important to note that special education is based on a deficit model. Students are identified by what they cannot do. The educational focus is on including them in the typical education model and programs such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which describes ways that typical curriculum can be “normalized” so that disabilities are not as impactful (Novak, 2019). The social model of disability suggests that disability is really a definition of functioning within a context (Barnes & Mercer, 2004). If one adapts the context, the impairment remains, but the disability goes away. For example, someone in a wheelchair may be able to access a building on a ramp, but is disabled if there are only stairs. Special education’s entire focus is on reducing the impact of physical, emotional, or cognitive differences through adaptation and design of the environment, materials, activities, or goals in order to provide access to key concepts. Thus, although it is a deficit model of identification, it is an adaptive model of education.
Gifted education has a long history of very different issues. It is often considered a bonus and expendable. In today’s Texas 2019 budget, funding support for gifted education is considered by some legislators as worthy of cutting (Austin, 2019), as it is in President Trump’s suggested federal budget (NAGC, 2019). When budgets are tight, “extras” or things that are considered superfluous are cut. Gifted education has struggled for relevancy and sympathy. Gifted education has had to fight the stereotype that it is a means of ensuring that those students who are already ahead stay ahead. Gifted education has been often tainted as a “rich White kid” education. As a result, gifted educators have fought long and hard for educational opportunities beyond the typical classroom that provide services to underserved populations. Gifted education’s focus is often defined by curriculum advancements and extensions.
Whereas special education focuses on adaptation of general education materials and activities, gifted education focuses on extending learning experiences beyond the limitations that the typical curriculum presents for bright students. The term differentiation actually began in gifted education with the work of Tomlinson (1999), who wrote about the need for teachers to not only focus on struggling learners, but also address the needs of advanced learners. Although gifted education is considered a “surplus” model of identification, the educational focus is on extension and expansion.
Despite some very significant differences, gifted education and special education share a number of characteristics. Both suffer from a lack of respect and value of the services that each brings. Both have a long history of conflict and being overlooked by general education. Both also focus on the growth of the individual, rather than the whole group. Perhaps most importantly, both fields understand that curriculum and instruction must be adjusted to meet the needs of the individual, rather than adjusting the individual to meet the demands of the curriculum. Advocates understand that the development of the child is highly dependent upon a reflective and understanding teacher who is willing to change the environment and the task demands to meet the child’s needs. Finding common ground and common understanding is critical. Table 2 provides examples of statements that gifted education and special education teachers do and do not want to hear from each other or others.
Part III: NOW WHAT Do We Do?
Teaching a 2e child requires an understanding of both special education and gifted education strategies. Luckily, these two areas of focus do not conflict in their goals and can be integrated with each other. Because of their differing histories, gifted education often focuses on the content, the process, and the product (VanTassel-Baska & Little, 2017), while special education provides access and adaptation (Novak, 2019). This blending of two different mindsets about curriculum and instruction can be called double differentiation, as seen in Figure 3.
Following the guidelines of an effective practice often used in diverse classrooms with multiple levels of academic proficiency, a teacher can provide for a twice-exceptional student by first examining the content and determining the “tiers” or levels of content that will be taught—what is critical to know, what is suggested, and what is extended. Both gifted education and special education educators are experts in expanding and focusing on curricular standards. Determining the level at which a child engages with content must be determined from assessment information, not labels.
Teachers can consider strategies from Universal Design for Learning that are useful for providing access and removing roadblocks to learning (Novak, 2019). Special educators often have significant training in these processes of access and adaptation; gifted child educators can use the same concepts for advancement purposes as well (Hughes, 2019). Through UDL, teachers examine how they are involving their students through multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression, and by providing options from which students may choose to demonstrate their knowledge. Acquiring the attention of students, demonstrating how new information is connected to previously learned information, and allowing students to share their new knowledge is a matter of using multiple and novel strategies, as well as including graphic organizers, visuals, multimedia, and multisensory formats.
The last step, and one that gifted education can inform, attends to the components of critical and creative thinking and conceptual design. Gifted educators understand ways to infuse task demands and products that require students to think critically and creatively, connecting knowledge to large overarching concepts. For example, guiding students in comparing and contrasting the phonics system to a governmental system or the respiratory system can help students understand the process of decoding reading through phonics. Connecting these extensive and expanded thinking demands to multiple ways of adapting a lesson can allow 2e children access to understanding and enrich their thinking in areas that may be challenging to them.
If a teacher is provided the option of teaching a class of gifted students in which there is a child with learning difficulties, a strategy of nested differentiation can be implemented, as seen in Figure 4.
In the case of 2e children, their need for repetition can be combined with their need for novelty so that they can be presented with information that is “nested” within enriched or accelerated material, making the content more understandable. For example, one teacher of self-contained third- and fourth-grade twice-exceptional students provided in-depth phonics instruction that was combined with a history of the alphabet. Students learned the history of “A” from its logographic history of “aleph” for a bull. The new knowledge was then related to the alphagraphic Phoenician roots, to Greek, to Latin, to the Great Vowel Shift of English during the Middle Ages, and to why “A” says four sounds that can be found in father, man, mare, and take. This unit included a fascinating study of history while requiring the teacher to use resources and materials that are not normally used in third grade. Not only did the students learn intricate and fascinating history; but also they truly understood why letters make certain sounds and their knowledge of phonics increased. One is an example of a low-level skill, while the other is an example of enrichment.
Woven throughout the need to identify and teach twice-exceptional children is the need to reflect. Twice-exceptional children challenge our assumptions, understandings, and patience. Working with them requires an understanding of the “other side” in order to find this element of “green” that is a blending of two different aspects, but is wholly unique.
Although this article follows the “What/So What/Now What” model (Borton, 1970), there are many other models available to explore. Teachers, parents, and students can examine a variety of both special education and gifted education strategies to reflect on the degree to which current practice is or is not meeting the needs of the child. Understanding multiple vantage points can provide a blended “whole” learning experience that is as “green” as the students.
References
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Claire E. Hughes, Ph.D., is an associate professor and Chair of Education and Teacher Preparation at the College of Coastal Georgia. Previously, she was Faculty Director of the Special Needs and Inclusion program at Canterbury Christ Church University in England, and a Fulbright Scholar to Greece. She is active in the National Association for Gifted Children and The Association for the Gifted (CEC-TAG) and Teacher Education Divisions (CEC-TED) of the Council for Exceptional Children. She is author of numerous books and chapters, and her research areas include twice-exceptional children—particularly gifted children with autism spectrum disorders—positivistic views of exceptionality, and international education.
