Underachieving Gifted Kids
Class, Teacher, and Student Roles in Motivating Improved Performance
Aug 11, 2008
Interventions targeted to gifted underachievers often achieve limited results. Researcher Linda J. Emerick focused on gifted and talented students who reversed patterns of underachievement and achieved academic success without apparent intervention, retroactively determining factors in their successes.
Critical Factors in Motivating Gifted Underachievers
Emerick compiled data on ten underachieving gifted students using academic records, questionnaires, and interviews with gifted children, teachers, and their parents. Gifted youth selected for study experienced sustained academic under-performance lasting two years or more followed by high academic achievement of more than one year as evidenced by grades and academic honors.
While Emerick identified out-of-school interests and parent attitudes as the strongest influences on improved performance, classes, teachers, personal goals, and student mindset also play crucial roles in motivation and academic success. What characteristics of underachieving gifted students, schools, and teachers inspire accomplishments on par with abilities?
The School’s Role in Motivating Gifted Underachievers -- Classes and Teachers
All the gifted children in Emerick’s study identified characteristics of classes and teachers having a role in improved academic performance. Students with a prior history of underachievement described classes reversing underachievement as:
- Skipping basic content previously mastered
- Relating to areas of independent interest
- Including interesting and relevant class discussion
- Requiring hands-on application of skills and content
- Focusing on learning process, minimizing traditional grading stressing final products
Gifted and talented children described challenging courses allowing students to progress through material at a rapid pace as “fun.” Gifted students perceived teachers of successful courses as:
- Demonstrating caring and concern for individual students
- Communicating with gifted students as peers
- Expressing enthusiasm and knowledge for the subject with a personal interest for growth
- Allowing high levels of student participation with creative and flexible instruction methodologies
- Maintaining high but realistic academic expectations for the underachieving student
An individual teacher with a personal interest in a gifted underachiever, high academic standards, and a love of learning can play a profound role in getting an under-performing gifted student back on track.
Gifted Underachiever’s Personal Goals and Self-concept Motivate Academic Performance
Extrinsic motivators such as grades proved insignificant to gifted students before, during, and after their periods of underachievement. Development of personal goals requiring academic success provided motivation for academic success. For some gifted and talented students this involved selection of a field of study, a desire to gain entrance into a specific university, or deeper personal goals reflecting a newly defined purpose such as “break(ing) the stereotype of the Black teenage male who can’t make good grades.”
While students did not define a change in self-concept as the most critical aspect in reversing patterns of underachievement, all the gifted students experienced a change in self-concept and attitude they believed essential to academic success. Gifted kids developed:
- Improved self-confidence
- A sense of personal responsibility
- Intrinsic motivation for performance
- An understanding of factors contributing to underachievement
Gifted students described an increase of self-confidence stemming from two sources: achieving small successes and overcoming perfectionist tendencies. Academic performance improved as gifted underachievers developed a greater sense of personal responsibility for their school failings and focused on the personal satisfaction of academic success rather than grades or pleasing others. Parents and teachers played a strong role in placing responsibility for academic improvement squarely on the shoulders of gifted underachievers.
Gifted and talented children could not articulate how they achieved awareness of factors influencing underachievement, but said they were better equipped to solve the problem once they understood the “whole picture.” A critical component seems to be acceptance of the student’s role in academic difficulties, rather than placing blame on boring classes or bad teachers. Part of this shift may come with increased maturity, but activities and experiences that directly contribute to development of a growth mindset have an essential role in reversing underachievement in gifted students.
Helping an Underachieving Gifted Kid
Parents and teachers need a strong understanding of factors that can reverse underachievement in gifted kids. Student self-concept and school environment are critical components, but out-of-school interests and parent responses to underachievement play an even larger role. All the gifted students in the study evidenced these factors influencing their turnarounds.
A companion article entitled “Motivating Gifted Underachievers” discusses Emerick’s conclusions about student activities and family involvement in solving the dilemma of an under-performing gifted student.
References:
Emerick, Linda J. “Academic Underachievement Among the Gifted: Students’ Perceptions of Factors that Reverse the Pattern.” National Association for Gifted Children, Gifted Child Quarterly Summer 1992, Vol. 36:3 p.140-146.
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