Custom term paper on Gifted students with a learning disability

There are important issues that need to be considered when developing a method for identifying gifted or talented students: gifted students will exhibit their talents not only in a certain domain but also within a specific area of interest. A student may perform well on classroom activities but with independent study, may show a deeper level of theoretical understanding within the same subject. Giftedness is a dynamic concept. A test score may not represent how a child’s gifts may be developed into talents, especially for students who do not have the opportunity for out-of-school activities. Talents are shown by students who have disabilities, or who come from different ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds and finally, early identification has proven important in developing gifts into talents (Johnsen 2009).
In order to avoid the scantiness of test assessments, Ford suggests that assessment should include answers to the following questions (Ford, 2010):
 Are the measures “valid and reliable for the specific culturally different students and group?”
 How can educators remove the bias in the measurements they use or “must adopt for evaluation and gifted education decisions?”
 Have the students had the opportunity to be assessed in ways that are “compatible with how they learn and communicate?”
 Finally, do the students have the opportunity to be evaluated via more authentic assessments; skits, presentations, speeches, research, and other models of their learning?
Moreover, concerning broadening the spectrum oh approaches to students, Ford (2010) suggests in her article, Culturally Responsive Classrooms: Affirming Culturally Different Gifted Students the use of the “culturally responsive classroom” which is characterized by five components. The five components include; teachers’ philosophy, learning environment, curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Ford believes that when teachers become more “self-reflective”, are able to recognize cultural differences amongst students and themselves, and create classrooms that are more culturally responsive, they can “decrease cultural misunderstandings and miscommunication with CLED students” (Ford, 2010).
For gifted students with learning disabilities, the masking concept creates problems for school psychologists, they can not possibly test all students who are performing at an average level to look for disguised learning disabilities. Until these students exhibit underachievement, there are not clear suggestions or empirical research to help identify these students. Teachers and specialists focus on the students’ disabilities, so therefore the strengths and talents of the student go ignored. The teacher’s and/or specialist’s attention is focused on the disability so “little or no attention is given to the students’ gifts or talents” (Baum, 2001). The techniques that are used for the disability may very well “lack the characteristics gifted students require for successful learning” and thus inhibit the attempt of that technique. Baum suggests that using instructional strategies that provide balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the gifted/learning disabled will contribute to an “authentic, challenging curriculum” (Baum, 2001).
The pragmatic problem concerning twice-exceptional learners is identifying these children like those that are gifted/ LD. This agrees with the case that many children who are gifted go unidentified by the use of standard IQ tests, and currently, many of the current diagnostic measures are less than perfect form many ADHD children (Leroux & Levitt-Perlman, 2000).custom term paper
Leroux & Levitt-Perlman (2000) promote that the “skills and talents within individuals must be expanded to include and acknowledge the strengths of the gifted/ADHD child” and go on to comment on Maker, Neilson, and Rogers (1994) approach that combines Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and a “matrix of problem types to design ways to identify and serve the diversity and skills in students” (Leroux & Levitt-Perlman, 2000). They surmise that students who were identified through this method made “equal or greater gains in enrichment programs as those identified by traditional methods” (Leroux & Levitt-Perlman, 2000).
McCoach suggests that identification of students with learning disabilities “should parallel the identification of all other students with learning disabilities” (McCoach, 2001). According to McCoach, the process must comply with both federal and state special education regulations while utilizing both ability and achievement testing. McCoach (2001) suggests that authentic assessment (portfolio with works of the student, written works, informal reading inventories) should be used in correlation with standardized methods of achievement.
Conclusion
The problem of identification and assessment of nontraditional gifted student is one of the important educational issues. Review and analysis of relevant research have shown that the so-called nontraditional gifted students may be divided into three groups: gifted students missed due to imperfection and limited nature of current testing system, gifted learners with learning disabilities and twice-exceptional learners. Methods of identification and assessment for the three groups differ from each other. Major finding and suggestions for the problem are: developing authentic assessments aimed at addressing various types of skills and eligible for discovering different talents, creating a culturally responsive classroom and providing necessary background to the teachers, using instructional strategies in order to provide balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the gifted and learning disabled learners and addressing multiple types of intelligence via creating different problem types to design ways to identify and serve the diversity and skills in students.

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