ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on children who are both gifted and simultaneously feel challenged in science education. ‘Twice exceptionality’ (henceforth referred to as 2E) is used to refer to the phenomenon of gifted or talented individuals who simultaneously have learning difficulties or disabilities (Buttriss and Callander, 2005). Illingworth and Illingworth (1966) analysed 450 eminent adults’ childhoods and found that several were underachievers in a specific subject or had learning difficulties. Kumagai (2015) studied Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Alva Edison, Soseki Natsume and Albert Einstein, finding several common characteristics such as ‘lonely boyhood’; ‘psychological properties similar to autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’; and ‘mismatch with school education’. Kumagai noted that such innovative geniuses needed to create their own worlds not equivalent to those of laypersons, which might have engendered characteristics in them similar to those of people with autism or ADHD. This chapter introduces these two sides of the gifted and identifying 2E children in science.
