Causes of Underachievement
The underachievement of bright students occurs for one of three basic reasons:
1. An apparent underachievement problem masks more serious physical, cognitive, or emotional issues such as learning disabilities, attention deficits, emotional disturbances, psychological disorders, or other health impairments. In this case, the treatment of academic underachievement should be secondary to the treatment of the primary disorder.
2. The underachievement is symptomatic of a mismatch between the student and his or her school environment .
3. The underachievement results from a personal characteristic such as low self-motivation, low self-regulation, or low self-efficacy .
Personal Characteristics Associated With Underachievement
Here we focus on underachievement resulting from the personal characteristics of the student. However, we acknowledge that academic underachievement can sometimes be indicative of a more serious physical, mental, or emotional issue.
The results of an analysis suggested that gifted underachievers differed from achievers on four factors: attitudes toward teachers, attitudes toward school, goal valuation, and motivation/self-regulation. The results of a multidimensional scaling analysis suggested two separate profiles of gifted underachievers: One set of underachievers valued school goals and displayed near-average self-reported motivation/self-regulation, but reported negative attitudes toward teachers and school, while another set displayed positive attitudes toward teachers and school, but did not value school goals and reported low motivation/self-regulation.
Personal Characteristics Associated With Achievement: An Avenue for Intervention
Knowing that the factors listed above differentiate gifted underachievers from gifted achievers and underachievers from each other provides researchers with a possible new line of inquiry: designing interventions to change students' attitudes and perceptions in the hope of reversing their patterns of underachievement. Guidance for the design of such interventions comes from research in the field of educational psychology on four characteristics of achievers: self-efficacy, environmental perceptions, goal orientation, and self-regulation. Generally, achievers are self-efficacious. They have high academic self-perceptions and they believe that they have the ability to perform well . Second, they trust their academic environment and expect that they can succeed in it. They expect that this environment is conducive to their performance of academic tasks and they have positive attitudes toward their teachers and school. Third, they find school meaningful . They enjoy school or believe that what they are doing in school will produce beneficial outcomes for them. Finally, they implement self-regulating strategies where they set realistic expectations and implement appropriate strategies to complete their goals successfully.
Self-Efficacy
Students develop confidence in many ways, and those who are confident about their skills are more likely to engage in a variety of activities. The perceptions students have about their skills influence the types of activities they select, how much they challenge themselves at those activities, and the persistence they exhibit once they are involved . This is true for activities ranging from participation in sports and music, to school achievement.
For those who suffer from low self-confidence, suggested the following strategies to increase self-efficacy. Students who have been successful in the past are more likely to believe they will be successful in the future. The adage "Success breeds success" generally holds true for self-efficacy. To develop self-efficacy in students, educators and parents can help them recognize their successes and growth in specific areas. Rewards can also increase students' self-efficacy when they are tied to specific accomplishments . When teachers give students opportunities to revise their work, they promote efficacious behavior.
Teacher compliments should be specific to the skills students are acquiring. A specific compliment, such as, "You really know how to calculate area," provides more information to a student than a general comment, such as, "Good job." Feedback linking successes with ability is more effective if the feedback is provided early in the students' performance.
Teachers must continually raise the academic hurdle for students who have shown mastery of specific skills or content. Again, gifted students are often repeatedly forced to show mastery of the same concepts and skills, and this constant repetition may sabotage a bright student's self-efficacy. Teachers who help promote self-efficacious learners consistently provide students with challenging assignments, offer specific praise for students accomplishments, and grant opportunities for students to revise their work.
Environmental Perception
We hypothesize that students' perceptions of their environment play an important role in their achievement motivation. Students who view their environment as friendly and reinforcing may be more likely to demonstrate achievement-oriented behaviors. Phrases such as, "My teacher doesn't like me," or, "I can't learn this way," may be indicators that students do not view their learning environment as friendly or that they have developed a belief that their efforts do not affect outcomes.
Our belief in the importance of environmental perceptions is inspired by current states of knowledge in a variety of educational arenas. Underachievers appear to display negative attitudes toward school; achievers, on the other hand, tend to be interested in learning and to have positive attitudes toward school.
In order to be successful within a system or organization, a student must possess certain prerequisite skills. First, the student must understand the system; second, he or she must fit into the system; finally, he or she must master the system.
A second area of concern is how teachers relate to gifted students in their classes. Rather than appreciating the special gifts and talents these students exhibit, some teachers are threatened by the presence of gifted students in their classroom. Therefore, in some situations, underachievement may represent a coping strategy whereby students strive to adapt to an anti-intellectual school environment.
Goals
Children's goals and achievement values affect their self-regulation and motivation because goals influence how children approach, engage in, and respond to achievement tasks . When students value the goals of the school, they will be more likely to engage in academics, expend more effort on their schoolwork, and become achievers.
Attainment value is the importance students attach to the task as it relates to their conception of their identity and ideals. Providing students with role models who value academic achievement may be one way to increase attainment value.
Utility value is how the task relates to future goals. While students may not enjoy an activity, they may value a later reward or outcome it produces. The activity must be integral to their vision of their future.
This approach specifically targeted student strengths and interests and helped reverse academic underachievement in over half of the sample. Emerick also found that gifted underachievers responded well to interventions that focused on individual strengths and interests.
Self-Regulation
Self-regulation describes students' organization skills and attitude in executing tasks. For self-regulation to occur, a student must have both choice and control. Often, gifted students are not given the control over their own learning that would enable them to demonstrate their capability for self-regulatory processes.
Self-regulatory skills are more likely to be internalized when they are needed to solve the problem at hand. An obvious solution to the problem is to provide gifted students with an academically challenging curriculum early and throughout their school careers.
When teachers incorporate formal and informal preassessments into the classroom, gifted students benefit in several ways. First, students have the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of content and skills before they are taught and work at a more appropriate level, creating a need for the student to use more self-regulatory strategies in order to be successful. Second, students learn to assess what they know and do not know, which helps to develop their self-monitoring skills. Finally, the students become more actively engaged in the learning process as they begin to see the connection between classroom activities and skill development.
In summary, using programs to develop gifted students' self-regulatory skills will be more successful when the students can show mastery of prior learning and practice developing self-regulatory skills in the context of new learning.
Conclusion
No single intervention will work with all gifted underachievers. Just as gifted underachievers differ from gifted achievers, gifted underachievers differ from each other. Discovering how the personal factors discussed in this paper interact with each other and the extent to which they influence the achievement of gifted students will provide fertile areas for future research. Research and pedagogy within the fields of educational psychology and gifted education can enhance our efforts to create positive achievement environments for gifted children.
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