Excerpt: Furthering a Shift in the Twice-Exceptional Paradigm — Understanding the Sociocultural Milieu of Gifted Student Development

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, identity development, and academic development represent a complex, composite system when encountered in educational applications and viewed in terms of their interconnected convergence. Complex exchange processes of ecological, cultural, and social constructs can impact the quality of education for gifted students with learning and other deficit-perceived exceptionalities. This, we contend, can lead to issues of equity and access as these gifted students are underidentified, underrepresented, and underserved. As such, a shift and expanded view for the traditional twice–exceptional (2e) paradigm is warranted.

Twice-exceptionality considers the intersectionality of giftedness and other learning exceptionalities, including but not limited to Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities, attention hyperactivity deficit disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dysgraphia, and so on (Montgomery, 2017). Typically, the learning exceptionalities are addressed through an individual education plan (IEP) developed for students’ academic success per special education regulations. However, for accountability’s sake, schools must address exceptionalities through a broader, more inclusive and culturally responsive lens — one that first recognizes all exceptionalities, including giftedness, as social constructs, which are termed by unobjective, comparative human interaction. Utilizing a multicultural lens, Collins (in-press) introduced a thrice–exceptional (3e) model that illustrates the intersectionality of giftedness, other learning exceptionalities, and cultural exceptionalities. Here we will share the theoretical frameworks in this area of development that informed Collins’ conceptualized 3e model.