Gifted Students with Learning Disabilities: a Current Review of the Literature

Students who are both gifted, and learning disabled, face challenges that most of their peers do not. Their disabilities and their strengths are often overlooked. Teachers may only focus on a student’s weakness and fail to see high intelligence, or the giftedness may mask the disability and cause the child to appear average. Even when they are correctly identified, gifted and learning disabled students’ social, emotional, and intellectual needs are often overlooked in the effort to remediate their disability. These students must be correctly identified as being gifted and having a learning disability in order for their needs to be adequately met. Effective programming for gifted and learning disabled students also includes social and emotional support, as well as interventions which focus on strengths, rather than weaknesses. These students will meet their potential only when their needs are appropriately met.