Abstract
2e learners are complex and can present educationally as gifted underachievers, average learners, or learning-challenged students. Educators often struggle to find ways to guide the educational success of such learners due to a lack of tools and a guiding framework. This chapter introduces Nest!LE2e, a visually guided thinking, planning, and mapping framework and tool for schools, teachers, and parents when evaluating curriculum, instruction, and differentiation for twice-exceptional learners within local constraints. Visuals help to highlight and convey hard-to-integrate, complex interactions. Nest!LE2e allows for visual mapping of interactions amongst the 2e learner, the educator, contextual, and relational factors and creates a holistic synthesis of a 2e learner's educational profile that identifies areas for intervention and allows visual data to be tracked over time.
TopIntroduction
Educators, researchers, and parents are puzzled by high-ability learners who struggle with traditional education (Baum & Owen, 1988; Emerick, 1992; Park et al., 2018; Reis & McCoach, 2000). Twice-exceptional (2e) learners comprise a portion of these learners, leading to perceptions of them as lazy or unmotivated (Baum et al., 2017). Educating 2e learners presents significant challenges within education due to difficulties in identification. 2e learners comprise three subgroups: gifts and disabilities cancel and mask each other, gifts compensate disabilities, or disability overshadows gifts (Reis et al., 2014).
This chapter introduces Nest!LE2e, is a visually guided thinking, planning, and mapping framework and tool for schools, teachers, and parents when evaluating curriculum, instruction, and differentiation for 2e learners within local constraints. Nest!LE2e uses the N.E.S.T! perspective (Lim, 2022) and applies it to a visual mapping and guiding framework within the 2e learner-education system to support 2e learner success. N.E.S.T! perspective is the acronym for the interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas, concepts, and approaches below:
Visuals help to highlight and convey hard-to-integrate, complex interactions that educational stakeholders might need help to grasp, understand, and remember. It is necessary to consider the learner holistically, which traditional ways of presenting information through unintegrated segmented tables and written reports on individual areas do not.
Nest!LE2e builds on Bronfenbrenner and colleagues’ (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998, 2006) work of paying attention to the person (2e learner) and environmental interactions through the application of dynamic systems (DS) approach as a contemporary approach to foster 2e learner success regardless of formal identification. Nest!LE2e comprises the 2e learner system, the educator system, a contextual field (system), and a relationship field (system). The Nest!LE2e contextual nodes present different entry points and opportunities, empowering educators to apply their local knowledge and experiences in flexible ways.
TopBackground
The Complexity of 2e Learners
The literature shows three subgroups of 2e learners: those whose gifts and disabilities mask and cancel each other; those whose gifts compensate for disability/complex challenges; and bright learners identified for special education services only (disability/complex challenges overshadow gifts) (Baum et al., 2017; Brody & Mills, 1997; Reis et al., 2014). Conservative estimates of 2e students in kindergarten through 12th-grade U.S. public schools range from 360,000 (National Education Association, 2006) to almost 610,000 (Barnard-Brak et al., 2015), depending on the definition criteria.
Baum et al. (2017) used a color metaphor to describe the complexity of 2e learners. In the model, yellow represents areas of strength (high abilities/potential) and blue color complex challenges/disabilities. 2e learners are at the intersection of the two colors, shades of green reflecting the dynamic interaction between strengths and challenges that manifest educationally. 2e learners are always different shades of green and requires educational strategies that is considerate of concurrent high and low abilities.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Visual Mapping: Visual mapping is a graphical organization method used to present complex information visually to aid better understanding.
Dual Differentiation: Dual differentiation refers to the individualized synthesis of strategies, programming, and curriculum that considers the simultaneous gifted and disability needs of twice-exceptional learners.
Twice-Exceptional Learners: Twice-exceptional learners refer to learners who possess at least one or more areas of high ability while also possessing at least one or more areas of challenges caused by larger than expected discrepancies between high and low abilities. Twice-exceptional learners are always a dynamic synthesis of high and low abilities interacting with contextual and human developmental factors.
Embodied Agency: Embodiment agency refers to the dynamic multi-direction relationships between our body, mind and brain to make sense of our world and take actions.
Emergent Property: Emergent property refers to property that emerges at a system level that does not exist within parts that make up a system. When parts of a system interact, the interactions create properties that cannot be observed when parts of a system are studied separately. Emergence is a property of all dynamic systems approaches to studying complex phenomena.
Translational Neuroscience: Translational neuroscience refers to acts of careful evaluation and conversion of laboratory and research findings related to the nervous system and brain structure or functions into real-world applications that produce desired outcomes.
Dynamic Systems Approach: The dynamic systems (DS) approach refers to an umbrella group of theoretical approaches used to study complex phenomena (e.g., twice-exceptional learners). DS approach began from mathematics, physics, and computational fields. The assumptions of non-linearity in the outcome, probabilistic and emergent qualities of the phenomena are common to all dynamic systems approaches. DS approaches also highlight the relational importance of components within a system.
Contextual Node: A contextual node refers to one environmental (outside of the learner) factor that interacts with the learner with a resulting externally observable behavior and/or output that can vary when we only consider the learner alone.
N.E.S.T! Perspective: N.E.S.T! perspective represents the lens through which all phenomena are considered. It is theoretically informed by a dynamic systems approach and an acronym for applying DS to the interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas and concepts from neuroscience, embodied agency, strength-based, and technology. N.E.S.T! perspective provides a holistic way to consider human development across the lifespan.