The Beliefs Were Already Right

What the research found

A twice-exceptional child, often written as “2e”, is gifted and also has a diagnosed disability. The two traits can mask each other. A bright reader with dyslexia may look merely average. A gifted child with ADHD may look inattentive rather than able. Teachers sit at the point where this masking is either noticed or missed, so their beliefs matter. This study asked a direct question: what do teachers actually believe about these children, and can a short course change those beliefs?

The researchers surveyed 53 general education teachers of Grade 3 across 16 US schools. They used a semi-randomised design. Twenty-eight teachers were assigned to an experimental group and 25 to a control group. The experimental teachers received two days of on-site professional learning, roughly 14 hours in total, alongside a mathematics unit called “If Aliens Taught Algebra”. The training covered how gifted ability is identified in twice-exceptional children and in culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse pupils. Beliefs were measured before and after using a 22-item questionnaire on a six-point scale, split into two parts: one on the characteristics and behaviours of 2e children, and one on how they should be taught.

The headline result was that beliefs were already accurate before any training took place. In the authors’ words, “all teachers consistently reported accurate and positive beliefs about the characteristics and needs of these populations, both prior to and after participation”. The teachers correctly recognised how twice-exceptional children present, and they held favourable views about including under-represented pupils in gifted programmes. There was little room left to improve.

The training did not close a gap, because there was no gap to close. On the characteristics scale, the experimental group did score higher than the control group, with means of 57.86 against 53.54, and this difference was statistically reliable, F(1,51) = 7.44, p = 0.009. But the authors are careful here. That difference reflects a pre-existing split between the two groups, not a change produced by the course. When they examined the interaction terms, the part of the analysis that isolates whether the training itself moved the trained teachers, they concluded that “the professional learning opportunities did not specifically increase questionnaire scores for teachers in the experimental condition”. The overall verdict was that teachers “did not demonstrate a significant change in beliefs due to this study’s intervention”.

There was one narrower signal. On the teaching-practice scale, post-course scores edged up over pre-course scores, from 51.64 to 53.00, F(1,51) = 4.18, p = 0.046, with a significant time-by-condition interaction. This hints that thinking about how to teach these children may be more movable than beliefs about who they are. But the effect was small, and it sat inside a study whose central message was that the beliefs were sound from the start.

What it means for you and your child

Read carefully, this is reassuring news wrapped around a hard limit. The reassurance is that Grade 3 teachers, at least these 53, understood twice-exceptional children well. They knew the profile. They held positive views about including able pupils from diverse and under-served backgrounds. If you have worried that your child’s teacher simply does not grasp what a gifted child with a disability looks like, this study offers modest comfort that such understanding may already be present.

The hard limit is that knowing is not the same as doing. This study measured beliefs on a questionnaire. It did not watch classrooms. The authors name this plainly as a limitation: the work relied only on self-reported attitudes, and “these attitudes were not observed alongside classroom behavior”. A teacher can hold an accurate belief and still, under the pressure of a full class, miss the quiet dyslexic child who reads at grade level by working twice as hard. Correct beliefs are necessary. They are not sufficient. For your family, the practical question is not “does the teacher understand 2e children in the abstract” but “is my specific child being seen, identified, and stretched”. Those are different questions, and this study only answers the first.

Be cautious about the training conclusion too. The finding that two days of professional learning did not shift beliefs does not mean teacher training is useless. It means that in this setting, where beliefs began high, there was almost nothing to add. The authors themselves suggest the two-day format “may have been too short”, and they flag that teachers answering a non-anonymous survey may have given the answers they felt were expected. A ceiling effect and a touch of social desirability can together produce exactly this picture. So do not read this as evidence that schools need not invest in training. Read it as evidence that, for well-informed teachers, the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

A single study of 53 teachers in one grade, with imperfect randomisation, cannot settle much on its own. It cannot tell us whether teachers of older children hold the same accurate beliefs, whether beliefs translate into identification, or whether a longer course would help where knowledge is genuinely thin. It is one careful data point, not a conclusion. What it does establish is worth holding onto: among these teachers, the ideas were already right, and the real work of serving a twice-exceptional child begins after the beliefs are in place. If your child is twice-exceptional, the most useful thing you can do is keep the conversation concrete. Bring evidence of the strength. Bring evidence of the difficulty. Ask how both will be addressed at once. Good beliefs, this study suggests, are the starting line, not the finish.