While all students bring unique strengths and perspectives to their academic trajectory, some face complex challenges that require deeper understanding and tailored support from both families and educators to truly thrive. This is especially true for twice-exceptional (or 2E) students—children who are both intellectually gifted and have one or more disabilities, such as hearing loss, autism, ADHD, a specific learning disability, or generalized anxiety disorder.
Teaching and supporting these students can be more complicated for various reasons, including that their giftedness may downplay their disability, or vice versa: their disability may hide their giftedness, causing their talents to go unnoticed.
Assessment Considerations for Gifted Students with Hearing Loss
With students who are deaf or hard of hearing, identifying their gifted intellectual profile can be more complicated. However, a good place to start is with the WISC-V (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, fifth edition) IQ test, which is considered the gold standard for evaluating school-age students.
Broken down, the WISC-V yields five scores, summarizing abilities in verbal comprehension, visual spatial understanding, fluid reasoning, working memory and processing speed. The “full-scale” IQ score is the average of these five scores.
A full-scale IQ score above 130 (or in some programs, 145) is one common benchmark for identifying giftedness. However, this single number can be misleading unless a student shows similar performance levels across all five cognitive domains being tested.
"A full-scale IQ score does not adequately capture the complex intellectual abilities of gifted students, given the unique variations in their cognitive profiles."
Children who are gifted often excel in some areas while scoring lower in others—especially those who are highly gifted, who speak multiple languages, have a disability, or come from cultural backgrounds not represented in the test design. This means their overall score might not tell the whole story.
“For students who are deaf or hard of hearing, it’s best practice to provide those five scores individually,” says Linda Findlay, MED, Mainstream Outreach Coordinator at Clarke.
When schools rely on a full-scale IQ, they risk denying services to gifted children who truly need them. A better approach is to look at the detailed scores across different areas of the WISC-V test. This gives us a clearer picture of each child’s strengths and potential.
This broader view is particularly important for students who are both gifted and have disabilities. Understanding their specific strengths and weaknesses helps schools provide both the advanced learning opportunities and support services these students need to thrive.
Supporting Twice-Exceptional Students
According to Linda, twice-exceptional students with hearing loss can thrive with standard gifted education strategies when proper accommodations for their hearing loss are in place.
“In addition to providing high-quality instruction for all students, supporting gifted students with hearing loss will include ensuring the appropriate accommodations are in place, with more emphasis where needed—on the development of vocabulary and higher order concepts, for example—and how the hearing loss impacts learning,” she says.
When supporting a student with hearing loss who is twice-exceptional, educators and families should consider the following best practices:
Obtain Support from a Teacher of the Deaf
Students with hearing loss benefit from instruction and support provided by teachers of the deaf who have a strong understanding of their learning needs. Teachers of the deaf are also an essential support to general education teachers, from preschool through high school.
“There has to be a teacher of the deaf on the student’s support team,” says Linda. “It’s about the student’s need for accommodations related to their hearing loss, not their grades.”
Teachers of the deaf can support in many ways, including:
- Helping to adapt teaching materials and methods to make them accessible for students who are deaf or hard of hearing
- Guide general education teachers on effective teaching strategies and classroom acoustics
- Provide real-time support during lessons through co-teaching or consultation
- Guide teachers in distinguishing between language-related challenges and content understanding
- Support peer relationships and class participation
(Learn more about Clarke’s suite of Mainstream Services, which includes teacher of the deaf support, as well as the Comprehensive Educational Evaluation (CEE) Program, or request more information here.)
Document Giftedness on IEP/504
It is important that a student’s cognitive profile is acknowledged and documented on the student’s 504/IEP. “For good reason, those plans tend to be disability-focused, but it’s important to include their giftedness even if there are no accommodations tied directly to it. You don’t want to stop challenging a gifted student just because they have accommodations for hearing loss,” she says.
Establish Regular Communications Among Support Team Members
It is essential that general educators have open lines of communication with caregivers and the teacher of the deaf who can help identify if the student is having challenges that are directly related to their hearing loss as opposed to difficulty with higher-level work.
Consider the Universal Advantages
Linda also points out how most accommodations for hearing loss—including providing listening breaks, pausing to get attention, writing new vocabulary where all students can see it—benefit all the students in a classroom. And these should be recognized as strong teaching practices.
Meet Will, Twice-Exceptional Clarke Alum
Tracy Boland’s son Will is considered twice-exceptional—academically gifted and deaf. He has used bilateral cochlear implants since he was a toddler. Now 20, Will is majoring in environmental studies in college, managing his own accommodations and supports, and has joined a club at his school for students with disabilities.
Tracy recalls that when Will was younger, his schools were very supportive in providing accommodations. In fact, Will often felt he didn’t need to use all the accommodations he was entitled to.
“When they’re doing so well in school, it can be easy for the child and the people around them to forget [the child is] deaf,” Tracy says, noting that he often opted out of things like taking listening breaks or using his Hearing Assistive Technology (HAT). “Our teacher of the deaf was good at making sure he knew this is about getting a level playing field. You don’t know what you’re missing, especially in bigger classrooms.”
Another issue Tracy ran into was during IEP meetings — Will’s testing and evaluation scores were so strong that at times someone would suggest he didn’t have any reason to need accommodations. “You have to explain: He doesn’t seem like a kid who needs support, but that’s because the supports work so well,” Tracy says.
Tracy says other occasional issues cropped up: Teachers mistaking listening fatigue for inattention, or people getting frustrated when he couldn’t hear them in a noisy gym. “But he’s always been a great advocate for himself which helps,” she adds.
Identifying Students with Hearing Loss as Gifted
Are you wondering if your student with hearing loss is gifted? Here are some potential characteristics of a student with a disability who may also have exceptional abilities:
- Advanced problem-solving abilities in conjunction with organizational challenges
- Strong abstract reasoning skills while having difficulty with simpler or sequential tasks
- Exceptional creativity paired with executive function struggles
- Deep and complex knowledge in subjects of interest despite inconsistent performance overall
- Remarkable memory for topics of interest while seeming forgetful or disorganized in daily tasks
- Intense frustration when unable to complete tasks perfectly or with ease
- High engagement in challenging discussions despite appearing inattentive in routine work
- Strong leadership qualities (e.g., generating ideas, taking initiative) alongside social skill challenges
That ability to self-advocate is something he picked up largely from his time working with his Clarke TOD. “Katie [Jennings, formerly a teacher of the deaf at Clarke] has always been invaluably helpful in getting me the assistance I required as a young deaf student and in training me to make the best of my situation,” says Will. “Her help has been essential to my academic career.”
Soaring as a Twice-Exceptional Student
The twice-exceptional student with hearing loss and a gifted intellectual profile generally won’t know many—if any—peers in the same situation.
But Tracy feels that doesn’t have to be a negative. “We leveraged all of the strengths Will has and acknowledged that while deafness isn’t a weakness, it can have drawbacks,” she says. Over time, those messages built Will’s inner confidence.
She also advises parents of younger or newly diagnosed children that “there is absolutely no reason your child’s life has to look different than it would if they had typical hearing. It’s brought a lot to our family—teaching us about empathy and difference.”
That’s a message Will echoes: “To my fellow hearing-impaired students, I would say to not let difficulties presented by your unique situations discourage you, and to always just work as well as you can with your existing options.”
1 Comment
What an awesome article. How lucky Will was to have had such outstanding experiences with this school!
How proud and happy we all are in his many accomplishments.
His Great Aunt Peg