Learning Disabilities of Gifted and Talented Children - Research Paper Example

Learning Disabilities of Gifted and Talented Children Being gifted and yet having a learning disability is just as contradictory as it sounds. Historically, gifted children have been expected to display high performance on the conventional standards of judgment. Since the time of Terman (1925 cited in Brody and Mills, 1997), the gifted children have been stereotyped to show high performance both in the school and the intelligence tests uniformly. The consideration of a child that has learning problems and can be considered to have a learning disability as a gifted child is quite debatable. This paper identifies the types and common traits of the gifted children with learning disabilities and also suggests suitable ways of intervention for the teachers to improve the performance of the dual exceptionality children. In 1981, the Johns Hopkins University arranged a tutorial in which experts belonging to both the fields of the giftedness and learning disabilities were called together to consider this issue from various aspects (Brody and Mills, 1997). That was the time when the educationalists expressed interest in addressing the concerns of the gifted children as well as others with the learning disabilities, but the students with both the traits had not received sufficient recognition. The participants of the tutorial mutually consented upon the existence of the students with both the traits and also the fact that they are overlooked because of the conventional trend of assessing the students either for learning disabilities or for giftedness. The dual exceptionality has been defined as “emerging within the context of moral concern for the civil right of all children to have an appropriate public school education that will help them fully develop their potential for life satisfaction and contribution to society” (Maker cited in Lovett and Lewandowski, 2006, p. 516). Children who are gifted and also have learning disability can be characterized into three main subgroups. The first kind is of those students who are known for their giftedness but they experience difficulties in the school. These children are perceived to be underachievers. Their underachievement is attributed to their lack of motivation, subjectivity of self-perception and laziness. For a major part of their educational tenure, their learning disabilities remain unidentified. As the level of difficulty of the studies increases, things become so difficult for these students that they fall considerably behind their class fellows and thus, they become prominent as students with learning disabilities. The second kind of these students is that in which the students’ learning disabilities are known but their giftedness is unrealized. So this kind is the opposite of the first kind. The population of this kind of students with dual exceptionality is larger than that of the first kind. Baum (1985 cited in Brody and Mills, 1997) conducted a research and found this kind of students to be 33 per cent of the total number of students with learning disabilities. The intellectual abilities of these students are underestimated because of their poor performance in the IQ tests or inadequate assessment of the teachers. These students are not fortunate enough to be referred for the gifted services because their giftedness is never realized. The third kind of students with dual exceptionality is the largest in population. These are the students whose abilities and disabilities cover each other. The students of this kind are educated in the general classrooms and are deemed unsuitable for the services prescribed to the students with learning disabilities or giftedness. These students are thought to possess average abilities. Despite the fact that the magnitude of performance of these students is considerably lower than it can potentially be, they perform good enough to pass and are hence promoted. However, as the level of difficulty of the education increases, these students start to be recognized for their learning disability, though the recognition for the giftedness is often a rare case. Experts have conventionally defined and interpreted the learning disabilities in different ways. Most experts have approved of the possibility of the co-occurrence of learning disabilities and the giftedness since no ultimate level of either of the two has been benchmarked in the past. The issues of defining the learning disabilities can be understood well with the review of the operational definitions made by Swanson (1991 cited in Brody and Mills, 1997). In his review, Swanson has discussed the issues including but not limited to specificity, discrepancy and exclusion. Specificity is a kind of learning disability that is restricted to a particular amount of cognitive or academic domains. Discrepancy is a learning disability which causes a child’s achievement to lag behind his/her potential, whereas exclusion is a learning disability that is easily distinguishable from the general handicapping conditions. Three principles of learning have been identified by the National Research Council (2005 cited in Coleman, 2006, p. 28) which are as follows: Teachers should adjust their style in accordance with the students’ knowledge. When the students come to the class, they come with certain presumptions about the educational system. They may not be able to learn new concepts if their original understanding is not gauged. They may temporarily learn the contents of the test but have a huge tendency to get back to the presumptions outside the classroom. “Teachers of the gifted who work with students who are twice exceptional must facilitate the collaboration process throughout the year to ensure positive outcomes” (Kennedy, Higgins, and Pierce, 2002, p. 41). To be able to become more competent in a particular area of inquiry, it is imperative that the students have a solid base of factual education. This would allow the students to perceive and comprehend the ideas and facts under a conceptual framework that enables them to organize the knowledge in a way that makes it easier for them to retrieve it and apply in the practical situations. Teachers should adopt a metacognitive approach for the delivery of education which enables the students to establish milestones for themselves in the course of learning and make their progress conform to the intended profile. In the research carried out by Reis, Neu and McGuire, it was found that “academically talented students with LD who succeeded in a challenging academic university setting emphasized the benefits of having learned to successfully increase their persistence, despite encountering difficult and challenging experiences in elementary and secondary school” (Reis and Ruban, n.d., p. 150). The students should also take certain measures to enhance their performance. In order to help the gifted students with learning disabilities succeed, it is imperative that teachers and parents make a mutual effort to develop self-knowledge, self-regulation and self-control in them. To achieve this, the teachers should equip these students with compensation strategies and a will to progress and teach them particular techniques to gain reasonable objectives. Educators need to realize that the gifted students with learning disabilities do not have permanent impairment to high performance in the studies. Therefore, they must help the students as well as their parents understand that compensatory strategies can be implemented to counter these personal attributes. The teacher can improve the strategies by consulting other teachers who face similar challenges of teaching the students with the dual exceptionality. Some teachers tend to allow the gifted students with learning disabilities extended time to grab the concepts or do the work than the amount of time normal students are allowed. This is not a helpful strategy as the dual exceptionality students are quite likely to alter the correct answers for the worse in the extended time allowed. The teachers should just allow enough time for the test or the same time that the other students are allowed. References: Brody, L. E., and Mills, C. J. (1997). Gifted Children with Learning Disabilities: A Review of the Issues. Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/5914/. Coleman, M. R. (2006). Academic Strategies That Work for Gifted Students With Learning Disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children. 38(1): 28-32. Kennedy, K. Y., Higgins, K., and Pierce, T. (2002, Sep.). Collaborative partnerships among teachers of students who are gifted and have learning disabilities. Intervention in School and Clinic. 38(1): 36-49. Lovett, B. J., and Lewandowski, L. J. (2006). Gifted Students With Learning Disabilities: Who Are They? Journal of Learning Disabilities. 39(6): 515-527. Reis, S. M., and Ruban, L. (n.d.). Services and Programs for Academically Talented Students with Learning Disabilities. Theory into Practice. 44(2): 148-159. Read More