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4 Twice-Exceptionality Research in Brazil: What do we know?
Twice exceptionality is a topic that is still unknown to many educators, psychologists, and parents as many are not aware that giftedness and disabilities can co-exist. This results in potential issues in identifying these students, who might be identified as gifted (not very common), as having a disability (more common), or end up not having their strengths or disabilities recognized due the masking effect. This difficulty in identifying twice-exceptional students can be explained by the limited number of studies on the topic (Guimarães & Alencar, 2012; Alves & Nakano, 2015). This study was a systematic review of the Brazilian literature examining twice exceptionality, specifically gifted students with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goal was to search broadly for all published studies by Brazilian researchers affiliated with educational institutions in Brazil and to report on areas commonly addressed in the literature and those needing further attention. Databases and search engines used in this study were the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Electronic Psychology Journals (Periodicos Eletronicos em Psicologia, PePSIC), and Google Scholar with no limitations as to the publication year. The studies were categorized as to (a) the number of studies published in a given year, (b) type of study, (c) research methods, (d) geographical region, (e) field of research, (f) type of co-existing disability. Since the search resulted in a limited number of studies (n =13), we will provide a summary of the research objectives and main results for each study so as to paint a picture of the state of research on twice-exceptionality in Brazil. Results showed that twice-exceptionality has only recently been addressed in Brazilian research, with the first study in 2009 and seven studies published between 2015 and 2016. Seven of the 13 studies were published in scholarly journals and despite the need for research on twice-exceptionality, most (n =5) of the published studies were literature reviews. Most of the studies were conducted by psychology (n =7) researchers in the Southeast (n =7) region of Brazil. The type of co-existing disability most commonly addressed in the studies was ASD. Clearly, there is a need for additional research on twice-exceptionality in Brazil. We hope that additional research on this important topic will help educators and health professionals become more aware of the needs of this population and lead to improvement in the identification of and services provided to twice-exceptional individuals.