GIFTED, LINGUISTICALLY DISABLED STUDENTS

GIFTED, LINGUISTICALLY DISABLED STUDENTS: ARE THEY WELL SERVED?

Commonly, gifted students with some type of disabling condition are referred to as "twice-exceptional;" (see: Kiessa, 2000). One subset of the twice-exceptional population consists of students who are gifted but who have linguistic disabilities such as hearing or speech impediments (Fetzer,, 2000). This paper presents a review of the relevant literature in an attempt to answer the question: Are otherwise gifted students with linguistic disabilities such as hearing or speech impediments overlooked by teachers for nomination to gifted programs? Answering this question is important because in order for this group of students to reach their full potential, the educational system must recognize their intellectual strengths and nurture these while simultaneously making appropriate accommodations for their disabilities (Miller, 2000).

Regarding whether gifted students with linguistic disabilities are often not nominated by their teachers for gifted programs, Cline and Schwartz (1999) feels that this happens frequently. Specifically, the authors note that gifted students with a variety of disabling conditions are both under-served and under-stimulated. Cline and Schwartz attribute these failures to the fact that teachers and administrators focus so strongly on making accommodations for these students' disabilities that they simply fail to sufficiently recognize the need for

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children due to the difficulties associated with locating sufficient numbers of this population for inclusion in normative populations. Further, even if there were such norms, they would probably be insufficient because what is needed is an idea of the performance of gifted students with specific disabilities as the nature of the disability can affect performance in specific ways. For example, a gifted child with a hearing disability might perform quite differently than a gifted child with dyslexia, even though both children could be equally gifted. In addition, gifted children with disabilities often use their intelligence to try to circumvent the disability. This may cause both exceptionalities to appear less extreme: the disability may appear less severe because the child is using the intellect to cope, while the efforts expended in that area may hinder other expressions of giftedness. Thus, in many instances teachers do not nominate gifted linguistically disabled children to gifted programs simply because they have failed to recognize that they are gifted, and this can happen even when teachers provided these children with standardized testing specifically to determine whether giftedness is present! Regarding accommodation

Category: Psychology - G