Students with Both Gifts and Learning Disabilities

Robert J. Sternberg is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology and Education at Tufts University as well as Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Prior to coming to Tufts, he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and Professor of Management at Yale University. Sternberg is President of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology and President-Elect of the Federation of Associations of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Sternberg's PhD is from Stanford, and he has 11 honorary degrees. He is the author of about 1,200 publications and has held more than $20 million in grants. He is the recipient of approximately two dozen professional awards.

We were motivated to edit this book when we began to hear stories of exceptional students who were struggling with reading, writing, or math, but who could solve seemingly any problem with computers, or build the most intricate structures with Legos, or could draw beautiful pictures, or could tell the most creative stories but ended up in tears when asked to write it out. How is it possible to have so much talent in some areas and yet to appear to have a disability in another? What resources are available for these students? How can we ensure that these students' abilities are nurtured and developed? Our goal in this book is to provide ideas and possibly even tentative answers for educators and to stimulate more questions to be answered by researchers. We have ourselves been addressing related questions for some time. Our group at the PACE Center at Yale has explored the developmentof abilities, competencies and expertise that allow people to be successful in life. Through this work, we have collaborated with school districts and other educators and researchers across the country to expand the notion ofwhat is traditionally thought ofas intelligence. We use the conceptofsuccessful intelligence to allow for the possibility that the skills traditionally taught in school are not the only ones, and often not even the most important ones, that allow people to be successful in the world.

1. Learning Disabilities, Giftedness, and Gifted/LD.- 2. The Identification of Gifted Students with Learning Disabilities: Challenges, Controversies, and Promising Practices.- 3. Unraveling the Mysteries of GLD: Toward the Application of Cognitive Theory to Assessment.- 4. Linking Assessment and Diagnosis to Intervention for Gifted Students with Learning Disabilities.- 5. Dyslexia and Visual Spatial Talents: Are They Connected?.- 6. To Read but Not to Read: Identifying and Understanding the Nature of Poor Reading Comprehension in Children.- 7. Gifted Adults with Learning Disabilities in Postsecondary Settings.- 8. Compensation Strategies Used by High Ability Students with Learning Disabilities.- 9. Summoning Up the Spirits from the Vast Deep: LD and Giftedness in Historic Persons.- 10. Interventions Work, But We Need More!.