Underachievement is widely regarded as one of the most pervasive problems affecting above average ability learners today (Reis & Renzulli, 2004); moreover, those students at the greatest risk of learning the least are those at the very top range of ability (Winebrenner, 2000). Likewise, according to Assouline and Colangelo (2006), there is a direct relationship between inappropriate or unchallenging content in elementary school and underachievement in middle or high school, suggesting that the beginnings of underachievement are in classes of varying abilities in the elementary panel and, if not addressed, have the potential to spill over into the secondary classrooms. A summary of longitudinal case study research produced by a task force of psychologists and educational researchers associated with the National
Association for Gifted Children and the National Research Centre on the Gifted and Talented indicate that gifted and talented students are a very diverse group of individuals who despite having advanced abilities in certain domains, require changes in the school environment, instructional curriculum, and teacher behaviours in order to combat underachievement due to boredom from inappropriate programming (Winebrenner, 2000). As one of the few studies with a conceptual framework exploring the social-emotional well-being of gifted adolescents and the roles of the teacher mentors and guidance counsellors, albeit twenty-four years vintage, Leroux (1989) found through case studies that gifted learners were struggling in school socially and cognitively at the time of her study, and yet we continue to face the same difficulty today, nearly three decades later: “They plead for something more ‘challenging,’ more flexible, more self-directed. They seek to apply concepts, so as to increase their personal
competence and become independent thinkers” (p. 126). Gifted students who rarely undergo challenging learning experiences are at-risk of losing confidence in their ability to perform well on demanding tasks, debunking the myth that gifted students will “make it on their own without much assistance” (Winebrenner, 2000). What is more, if students generally value learning, they may become turned off by teacher-assigned, rote tasks that are perceived as busywork or hoop-jumping that may be beneath their cognitive levels (Patrick, Gentry, & Owen, 2006), which will negatively impact their motivation and perhaps their performance.
Similar to achievement, it is often easy to assume that high-ability learners will always be successful in school because with high intelligence must come strong self-regulatory skills or innate motivation or desire to achieve well academically. This statement is fractionally correct in that motivation plays a critical role in success (Robinson, Zigler, & Gallagher, 2000, in Patrick et al., 2006), but motivation is complex and is often misinterpreted by educators. Patrick et al. (2006) shed light on the common misunderstanding of the two students sitting in the back of the room—one dozing off and the other staring out the window—as being
unmotivated, as humans are consistently motivated for some type of outcome, albeit not always the outcome the teacher, administrator, or parent is looking for. Moreover, Patrick et al. (2006) suggest the more effective and productive question to ask would be, “What the student is motivated for?” rather than asking, “Why is the student not motivated?” (p. 166).
To better-understand how multidimensional motivation truly is, Patrick et al. (2006) suggested separating the “Can I succeed?” from the “Do I want to succeed?” as a first step, as
all-too-often educators equate motivation with willingness, failing to pay homage to students’ self-perception of their own abilities that may impact their performance. Patrick et al. (2006) examine both self-efficacy and self-concept as they relate to motivation in education—the “Can I succeed?”—specifically how self-efficacy refers to specific skills attained, behaviours, and situations, whereas self-concept involves a broad evaluation of one’s competence. With regards to self-efficacy, when students feel confident that they can learn, they tend to show greater effort and persistence, as well as experiencing less stress and anxiety (Pajares, 1996, in Patrick et al., 2006); likewise, one’s self-concept is often a product of self-evaluation of
abilities and competence, which helps to shape one’s entrenched understanding of
motivation. With regards to the “Do I want to succeed?” Eccles (1983, in Patrick et al., 2006) identified four types of value beliefs that influence individual success: importance, referring to the attainment of values or personal significance of the task at hand; intrinsic value, which is the enjoyment and interest experienced during the activity; utility value, referring to the usefulness of the activity with respect to future goals; and cost, which would refer to negative aspects of one’s involvement in the activity, which all impact students’ metaphoric cost- benefit ratio or weighing of the options of motivation for a task.
Aimed at exploring the gifted teachers’ and guidance counsellors’ roles in gifted
students’ social-emotional development, Assouline and Colangelo (2006) found that students’ motivation to perform was closely related to their self-perception of their own
exceptionality—their own giftedness. In a previous study by Assouline and Colangelo (1995, in Assouline & Colangelo, 2006) researchers investigated the self-concept of 563 gifted students
ranging from Grades 3 to 11. Like Patrick et al. (2006), Assouline and Colangelo (2006) found that self-concept, like motivation, is multidimensional in nature. More specifically, researchers found that the general overall self-concept of participants was positive, but the self-concept of high school students was the lowest, particularly with female students who experienced a drop in self-concept. Furthermore, as gifted students progressed in school they became more anxious and felt more isolated from peers; the lowest scores of the participants were found in the domains of interpersonal skills and skill-satisfaction; and the highest scores were in the domains of intellectual and school status. These findings suggest that students’ self-concept of being gifted impacts their lives. As Coleman and Cross (2001) share, the “stigma of
giftedness” (in Assouline & Colangelo, 2006, p. 73) can have a profound impact on the perception of themselves, which may impact not only their academic performance,
achievement, and motivational behaviours, but also their social-emotional development and social relations with peers. Motivation, then, is highly complex and cannot be equated with willingness alone, suggesting that performance and achievement are related to one’s
motivation, but that in order to inspire the gifted student to want to engage in the material or activity, one must consider not only the value from the student’s perspective, but also the student’s self-perception of his/her ability to work through the task.
Lastly, Assouline and Colangelo (2006) cite a study by the Belin-Blank Center where over 1400 gifted adolescents participated in summer residential academic programs from 2000-2003, wherein survey results indicated that gifted students’ self-perception was low, as they generally recognized their giftedness and were happy about it both on a personal level as
well as on a familial level. However, it was a different story when it came to peers, 41.5% of gifted students indicated that their giftedness was not important to their friends and another 24% indicated that they did not know how their friends felt about their academic ability (Assouline & Colangelo, 2006). This disconnect between individual self-perceptions of gifted learners and perceived attitudes of peers and family members may contribute to confusion and perhaps apprehension when applying their abilities. As a result, a narrative inquiry was conducted to provide student and teacher participants with the opportunity to share their stories about boredom, motivation, their social-emotional development, as well as academic achievement and perceived success, which provided more recent context relating to this discrepancy and shed light on potential strategies to support this need.