WebIn this lesson, you will learn about the emotional and environmental causes of underachievement in gifted students, as well as strategies to help gifted students Perceived factors influencing the academic underachievement of talented students of Puerto Rican descent. Schunk, D. H. (1998, November). Schweitzgebel (1965) alluded to this phenomenon when he observed that underachievers, in contrast to slower learners, may in fact learn rapidly and well, but what they learn may not coincide with the content of our examinations (p. 486). WebStudents who are both gifted and have LD exhibit remarkable talents in some areas and disabling weaknesses in others (Baum, 1990). A more recent study of peer influence on students adjustment to school (Berndt, 1999) measured students grades and behavior in the fall and spring of one academic year. Gowan, J. C. (1957). Perhaps the family discord is a result of rather than a cause of, the childs underachievement. However, the criteria needed to identify giftedness vary from state to state and from district to district. Clasen, D. R., & Brown, B. This phenomenon of deliberate underachievement has been found to be particularly evident among gifted adolescent females, as a response to perceived sex-role expectations, and among African American gifted students involved in the process of adolescent impression management, as an attempt to control the perceptions other Ford, D. Y. Underachieving gifted males: Are we missing the boat? Certain responses to these questions may lead to the conclusion that underachievement does not exist or is not a problem that adults should remedy. In other words, one can stipulate with 95% confidence that this students IQ places him or her in the top 5% of the population on this measure. Such a method may provide more insight into the nature of the childs achievement since children are repeatedly compared to the same norm group. However, an interesting, though less studied, line of research involves comparing gifted underachievers to other students who are at the same achievement level as measured by GPA, achievement test scores, and so forth, regardless of their measured mental ability. Gifted underachievers are especially prone to developing a poor self The first method involves using a large random sample of subjects in order to dilute the effects of criterion heterogeneity. In a recent study, researchers used self-selected Type III enrichment projects as a systematic intervention for underachieving gifted students. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Counseling interventions for passive-aggressive underachievers are most effective when the student seeks counseling or at least participates willingly in the counseling process. Neither study utilized a true longitudinal design, and neither researcher was able to fully track the progress of the students once they left the elementary school. By Ingrid Wickelgren on November 2, 2012. WebThis is a professional development presentation to help teachers recognize and teach gifted underachievers. Too often, for no apparent reason, students who show great academic promise fail to perform at a level commensurate with their previously documented abilities, frustrating both parents and teachers (Whitmore, 1986). If a student spends much of his or her free time reading about world religions or volunteering at the local hospital, but fails to complete mundane homework assignments, does that represent underachievement or a personal decision reflecting a wise use of time? The plethora of definitions and identification methods contribute to the difficulty in studying the characteristics of this population. A second, smaller number of authors define underachievement as a discrepancy between predicted achievement and actual achievement. B., Goldberg, M. L., & Passow, A. H. (1966). In general, these students display high verbal expressive ability and good conceptual understanding concurrent with significant academic underachievement and frustration or a lack of motivation (Crawford & Snart 1994). Colangelo, N., Kerr, B., Christensen, P., & Maxey, J. Whitmore, J. R. (1980). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Fehrenbach, C. R. (1993). Rather, a. continuum of strategies and services may be necessary if we are to systematically address this problem. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Two methods can help reduce heterogeneity of the criterion variable (Raph et al., 1966). Her qualitative research study examined the patterns of underachievement and subsequent achievement of 10 young adults. Bright childpoor grades: The psychology of underachievement. Do we help or hurt a child when we ask him or her to assimilate into the majority culture? In M. Kornrich (Ed. Oxford: Pergamon. This attitude-achievement paradox makes understanding and reversing their underachievement difficult to those unfamiliar with the phenomenon (Mickelson, 1990). Often, the lists of common personality traits contradict one another. These parents do not set high standards or expect their children to reach them. Gifted Child Quarterly, 32, 267-272. Renzulli, J. S., & Reis, S. R. (1997). Gifted Child Quarterly, 31, 180-185. Kaph, J. In other words, if we predict that students will not succeed, and then they fail, they have not performed below our initial expectations. Gallagher, J. J. High school underachievers: What do they achieve as adults? For example, a student who is clinically depressed or has other emotional or drug-related problems may experience a sudden decline in school grades. Holland, V. (1998). (1965). 44, No. In reality, the standardization of classroom grades may be neither feasible nor meaningful. Rimm (1995) emphasized the importance of parenting styles and parental influence on the development of childrens achievement and underachievement behaviors and found that inconsistent parenting techniques appeared to occur more frequently in the homes of underachieving children (Rimm & Lowe, 1988). Broad, inclusive definitions of gifted underachievement allow more flexibility in the identification of gifted underachievers. An underachievement epidemic. Baymur, F., & Patterson, C. H. (1965). Since the identification of gifted underachievers depends on defining both underachievement and giftedness, discussing criteria for identification is no less complicated. Frasier, M. M., & Passow, A. H. (1994). The third theme, presented in Table 3, views underachievement as a failure to develop or utilize latent potential without reference to other external criteria. WebGifted underachievement, at first g l a n c e , seems like an o x y m o r o n . Such approaches would differentiate among different types of underachievement, incorporating both proactive and preventative counseling and innovative instructional interventions. This raises several important issues. Emerick (1992) investigated the reasons that some students are able to reverse their academic underachievement without the assistance of formal interventions. Pendarvis, E. D., Howley, A. 149-195). There are a variety of ability areas that may be assessed, including general intellect, creativity, leadership abilities, and specific subjects, such as math. Recently, Reis (1998) suggested that gifted students who are not challenged in school may actually demonstrate integrity and courage when they choose not to do required work that is below their intellectual level. Could do better. Dropping out among Hispanic youth. Whitmore (1980) designed and implemented a full-time elementary program for gifted underachievers. Whitmore (1989) identified three broad causes for underachievement in gifted children: Lack of motivation to apply themselves in school Environments that do Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Counseling families. The authors also include suggestions for those interested in pursuing potentially promising new lines of research and inquiry in this area. Unfortunately, what is viewed as achievement in a poor school may be viewed as underachievement by a more competitive school or by society at large. Unmotivated underachievers may see no compelling reasons for becoming better students. ), Handbook of gifted education (2nd ed., pp. The issues surrounding the identification of culturally diverse gifted students have received greater attention in recent years, and several points seem clear. The authors believe that creativity may be connected to this underachievement. They suggest that highly creative students have a hard time conforming to a more rigid traditional environment. Academic underachievement among the gifted: Students perceptions of factors that reverse the pattern. Underachievers are a diverse population, and lists or descriptions of their traits that may be hypothesized and/or researchedcommon personality traits abound. Academic underachievement, attention deficits, and aggression: Comorbidity and implications for intervention, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60, 893-903. Certain treatments aimed at combating underachievement combine counseling and school-centered interventions. Although this may be a suitable method for identifying underachievers from the general school population, such an age/performance discrepancy may only identify the most severely underachieving gifted students. Khatena, J. The results of this research suggest that flexible student-centered enrichment approaches may help reverse underachievement in gifted students. These interventions should be considered in view of the populations that were involved in the studies. Students grades decreased between fall and spring if their friends had lower grades in the fall. Gifted Child Quarterly, 34, 72-75. Educational Psychologist, 33, 45-63. M. (1995). The concepts of over and underachievement. Finally, researchers and practitioners must translate knowledge and insights about causes and correlates of underachievement into models and strategies that educators can use to develop more effective prevention and intervention programs. Parents of high-achieving students seem to utilize an authoritative parenting style more often than parents of low-achieving students (Taylor, 1994). Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut, National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented. Underachievement occurs when a child's performance is below what is expected based on the child's ability. Academic underachievement and behavior disorders, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59, 189-194. Although this may be a suitable method for identifying underachievers from the general school population, such an age/performance discrepancy may only identify the most severely underachieving gifted students. New York: Teachers College Press. We will not post comments that are considered soliciting, mention illicit topics, or share highly personal information. Students who seem to be unmotivated may have attention deficits. Because different school systems use different criteria to label a student gifted, the populations of students who are identified as gifted vary; and, in some cases, they are not comparable. Synthesizing the hypothesized characteristics of gifted underachievers becomes a nearly impossible task, and legitimate questions exist regarding the utility of such a list. Underachievement: A common fallacy. Three of these paradigms are compared and contrasted in Table 6. See also Needs of Gifted Talented Children Lack of Motivation The results of the four-year longitudinal study with gifted high school students who either achieved or underachieved in high school suggested that boredom with the regular curriculum in elementary and middle school often contributes to underachievement in high school. Students who seem unmotivated may have attention deficits (Busch & Nuttall, 1995) or hidden learning disabilities. Author Lesley Sword provides strategies for parents to help their. A teacher may believe that reading Huckleberry Finn is more worthwhile than mastering a new video game, but a child may not. Therefore, future researchers in this field should posit coherent, complete models of gifted underachievement and design interventions in accordance with their proposed models. B. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. However, research on effective intervention models for this population remains scarce. A longitudinal test of a model of academic success for at-risk high school students. Model-based interventions provide an internal consistency between diagnostic and prescriptive elements. Motivation and self-regulation among gifted learners. High-ability students can have learning problems (Barton & Starnes, 1988; Baum, Owen, & Dixon, 1991; Bireley, 1995) or attention deficits (Baum, Olenchak, & Owen, 1998) of various types that affect or cause underachievement. Toward explaining differences in educational achievement among Mexican American language minority students. (1992). When a person scores at one extreme of the testing continuum on one testing occasion, he or she is more likely to score closer to the mean on the next testing occasion. 45-74). Recent research indicates that many twice-exceptional students underachieve in school. Reis, S. M., Burns, D. E., & Renzulli, J. S. (1992). - planning into the future Minority students are often underrepresented in programs for the gifted and talented (Ford, 1996; Tomlinson, Callahan, & Leili, 1997). In other words, if a student were to take the same IQ test again, there is a 90% probability that his or her score would fall between 124 and 134. Educational Psychologist, 34, 15-28. Criteria for identifying gifted underachievers should include a method for determining observable discrepancies between ability and achievement. Sociology of Education, 71, 68-93. However, identifying underachieving gifted students by locating discrepancies between ability and achievement as measured by standardized achievement tests may lead to the underidentification of this population. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 21, 169-186. Butler-Por, N. (1987). Jeon, K. (1990, August). Due to the difficulty in defining underachievement, it appears that the concept of underachievement maybe regarded as a subjective, rather than an objective, classification. If the criterion is academic achievement defined in terms of course grades, it is impossible to compare grades across subject areas or even across students because of the variability in content and presentation. General, social, and academic self-concepts of gifted adolescents. It explores some of the problems of identifying these students. (1983). Baum, S. M., Renzulli, J. S., & Hebert, T. P. (1995b). Publisher: National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) By contrast, families of underachieving students may tend to be more restrictive and punishment-oriented (Clark, 1983). Gifted Education International, 9, 115-119. Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. The literature also presents a variety of other classroom designs, such as self-contained classrooms, and home and school partnerships. Underachieving students frequently report peer influence as the strongest force impeding their achievement (Clasen & Clasen, 1995). New York: Viking Penguin. Many early attempts to improve underachievers academic achievement through counseling treatments were unsuccessful (Baymur & Patterson, 1965; Broedel, Ohlsen, Profit, & Southard, 1965). This article reviews and analyzes three decades of research on the underachievement of gifted students in an attempt to clarify the present state of research. Whether gifted students actually require interventions that are qualitatively different from nongifted underachievers has yet to be determined. WebUnderachievement Syndrome: A Psychological Defensive Pattern. (1988). Eleven of the 17 participants showed improved achievement; 13 of the 17 students appeared to exert more effort within their classes; and 4 of the 17 students showed marked improvement in their classroom behavior. (1990). ), Self-regulation of learning and practice (pp. If a student performs more poorly on measures of achievement than one would expect based on measures of ability, then he or she is underachieving. Counselors and therapists can help underachievers strengthen deficient reward systems, modify passive-aggressive propensities, and alleviate emotional deficits; educators can help students fill educational gaps and alleviate or compensate for cognitive handicaps. More recent studies (e.g., Anderson & Keith, 1997) report correlations as high as .67 between measures of ability and achievement. 514-528). 87-101). Underachievement of highly able students and the peer society. Family, school, and individual factors all seem to contribute to the emergence of underachievement behaviors (Baker, Bridger, & Evans, 1998). Research identifies various external factors that may lead to Pirozzo, R. (1982). Columbus, OH: Merrill. As educators, we may or may not be able to change the external factors that contribute to the underachievement of certain gifted students. Rimm and Lowe studied the family environments of 22 underachieving gifted students. Despite this interest, the underachievement of gifted students remains an enigma. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. In contrast, students who underachieved had developed neither a strong belief in self nor the resilience to overcome negative experiences with their families, their schools, and their communities.
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