Promise unfulfilled: academic underachievement in children of high intellectual potential

As little Australian research exists on intellectually gifted children, or their achievement levels, the researcher aimed to identify and quantify underachievement in an Australian 'gifted' population. A further aim was to discover whether underachievers could be categorised by either particular learning behaviours, attitudes to schooling, family characteristics or by their own self-perceptions. An analysis of the interplay of factors which impacted upon achievement may lead to understanding some of the reasons why children who have an extraordinary potential to achieve scholastically do not; or why students who may espouse a love of learning might become disaffected by school. The research utilised a performance discrepancy formula for underachievement, asserting a student underachieved if their score on an achievement measure fell two or more stanines below the stanine of the student's IQ score. Participants were children (N = 50) who had been previously tested on the Stanford-Binet (L-M) Intelligence Scale, (Terman & Merrill, 1973). The children had recorded IQ scores between 125 and 200 on the Stanford-Binet (L-M) (MIQ_ 142, SD = 14.1). All children were recruited from the Melbourne Metropolitan area, were aged between 9 and 14 years and were currently attending school as on-campus students. Children completed a battery of testing which included the Progressive Achievement Tests in Reading Comprehension (ACER, 1985) and in Mathematics (ACER, 1997); The Learning Process Questionnaire; Mathematics Competency Test (Vernon, Millar & Izard, 1996); Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (Coopersmith, 1981); Quality of School Life Scale (Ainley, Reed & Miller, 1986); Learning Process Questionnaire (Biggs, 1987) and two questionnaires designed by the researcher. Parents completed Behavioural Academic Self-Esteem (Coopersmith & Gilberts, 1981) and a parent demographic questionnaire. Both children and their parents completed The Family Environment Scale, (Moos & Moos, 3rd edition, 1994). The incidence of underachievement in the intellectually gifted population was found to be 38%. Year 7 students were statistically more likely to underachieve than any other year leveL Possible reasons for this were hypothesised in areas such as school structures, curriculum levels and student variables. Underachievers were found to utilise more Surface Approaches to learning and appeared to have failed to make the connection that personal effort equated to scholastic outcome. Underachievers' parents, in comparison to the parents of achievers, reported their children as taking less care and being disinterested in reading. Families of gifted children, regardless of achievement level, recorded high levels of distress as measured by the Incongruence Scale on the FES. Families of achievers, more than underachievers, operated in an intellectual-cultural orientation. Children of high intellectual potential displayed higher levels of self-esteem and more school satisfaction than did children in the (normative) general population. Significant gender differences were noted with gifted boys experiencing school and their giftedness far more positively than gifted girls.