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Twice-Exceptional Students: Students with Special Needs and a High Mathematical Potential

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Mathematical Creativity and Mathematical Giftedness

Part of the book series: ICME-13 Monographs ((ICME13Mo))

Abstract

Twice-exceptional students are students with both a high potential for mathematical abilities and educational special needs. They are particularly at risk for neither their potential nor their disabilities being recognized. Students who work below their potential are called underachievers. This chapter discusses whether the special learning conditions of twice-exceptional students need a differentiated approach than what is usually applied for underachievement. Furthermore, by means of examples of affected students, the implications for learning processes are illustrated. The focus is put on mathematical giftedness occurring together with learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit disorders (ADD), attention deficit disorders with hyperactivity (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The terms disabilities and disorders are not always used as equivalent; however, in this article, they are. As a more general term to describe different kinds of deficits, the term weakness is used in this article.

  2. 2.

    PriMa is an abbreviation of “Primary grade students on different ways towards mathematics.” It is a cooperation project started in 1999 by the Hamburger Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung, the William Stern Society (Hamburg) and the University of Hamburg.

  3. 3.

    Since 2010 we have extended the program up to Grade 7.

  4. 4.

    PR is an abbreviation of percentile rank. It indicates the percent of cases that are at or below a score in tests.

  5. 5.

    Assouline et al. (2012) refer to studies, which underline the importance of visual spatial skills for mathematical abilities.

  6. 6.

    The stumbling words test measures understanding while reading. Students must identify words that are useless to various sentences. The test requires automatically reading at a high speed.

  7. 7.

    Leon participated in the project PriMa during Grades 3–6.

  8. 8.

    Timo did not participate in the PriMa project. Here the results of a case study are described (Nolte 2016).

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  1. Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Marianne Nolte

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  1. Faculty of Letters and Science, Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, Ploiești, Romania

    Florence Mihaela Singer

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Nolte, M. (2018). Twice-Exceptional Students: Students with Special Needs and a High Mathematical Potential. In: Singer, F. (eds) Mathematical Creativity and Mathematical Giftedness. ICME-13 Monographs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73156-8_8

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