Perspectives of Members of a State Organization for Gifted and Talented Education in a Western State toward the Identification of Twice-Exceptional Students

Abstract

Twice-exceptionality is the phenomenon of a student who presents both a disability and gifted/talented characteristics. One of the most challenging aspects of this phenomenon is how a disability can mask or hide gifted/talented characteristics; how gifted/talented characteristics might mask a disability; or how both might mask each other. Given the paradoxical nature of twice-exceptionality, it is understandable how twice-exceptional students can easily be overlooked in the demanding day-to-day reality of school, even if teachers have knowledge of twice-exceptionality. The purpose of this study was to examine if teachers, parents, and other professionals could identify twice-exceptionality given specific clues. For this pilot study, the author surveyed professionals in the field of gifted/talented to measure their ability to recognize twice-exceptional characteristics after reading fictional scenarios that represented possible real-life situations. All participants were members of the Colorado Association of Gifted and Talented (CAGT) in Colorado USA. A total of 107 respondents responded to an electronic survey with the highest response rate for any one question of 78. The results indicated that professionals failed to recognize twice-exceptionality because of how well the characteristics were masked. The findings indicated that more needs to be done to inform educators of the phenomenon of twice-exceptionality.