Cultural considerations for twice-exceptional children from Asian families

ABSTRACT

Since the term twice-exceptional has been entered to the field of gifted education, many studies have investigated the population of students who possess both giftedness and disabilities. It has been shown that there are some challenges to recognizing twice-exceptional children due to current screening and identification process. For this reason, the exact picture of what this population looks like has not yet been drawn, and further studies will be necessary to determine the precise racial/ethnic configuration. This has been a barrier to investigating how to approach twice-exceptional children from culturally diverse backgrounds. This article reviewed the previous research on twice-exceptional children with cultural considerations for the students from Asian American families. Several suggestions are provided: more understanding of Asian parenting styles and parenting stress; parents as advocates for their twice-exceptional children; and interdisciplinary collaboration. Directions for future research are suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian American
• Asian parents
• gifted with disabilities
• twice-exceptional children

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Soeun Park

Soeun Park, MA, is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Iowa and is interested in ethnic, racial, and cultural issues in psychology and parenting children with special needs.