Who are they? How do we help?
Underachievers

 Underachievers are students who exhibit a severe
discrepancy between expected achievement and actual
achievement. The discrepancy must not be the result of
a diagnosed learning disability and must persist over an
extended period of time. Gifted underachievers score
high to superior on measures of expected achievement
(Reis & McCoach, 2000)
2

 Speculation ranges from 10% to more
than 50% of the gifted population are
underachievers.
-McCoach and Seigle (2008)
Causes of
Underachievement

 Environmental
 Chronically, slowmoving classroom
experiences
 Peer pressure to
conform to be “like”
everyone else
 Loneliness, isolation
from classmates
 Family dynamics
 Individual
 Unrecognized learning
deficits that interfere
with learning
 Deficits in selfregulation: impulsivity,
disorganization
 Internalizing issues:
anxiety, perfectionism,
low self-esteem
 Externalizing issues:
Rebelliousness,
nonconformity, anger
Heacox’s Up From
Underachievement
 Gifted Achiever
 Pride in own work and
effort
 Resilience when things
go wrong
 Practice risk taking
 Self-disciplined
 Goal-oriented --set out
plan for own work and
follow through

 Gifted Underachiever
 Poor academic selfconcept, poor
organisation
 External locus of control
 Perfectionism, so
unlikely to take risks
 Independent --insist on
doing only what they
want to do
 Discrepancy between
oral and written work
Pressures Gifted Underachievers
Internalize





Pressure to be the smartest
Pressure to be different
Pressure to be popular
Pressure to be loyal
Family Issues

 Do students underachieve because they come from
families in conflict?
 Does the underachievement of the child create problems
in family dynamics?
 Is there an interaction between the underachiever and
the family?
7
School Issues

 Regardless of exam performance, students who were
believed to have tried harder were better rewarded than
those who appeared not to have tried.
 Hyperactivity may be due to environmental issues: the
school environment demands students to be docile, neat,
quiet for extended periods of time, and interested in
what the teacher is interested in.
 Teachers perceive eager students are motivated and
unreceptive students are unmotivated
 Both students may be motivated; one to achieve a goal that
requires study and the other to avoid it.
Turn and Talk….

If during the first five or six years of
school, a child earns good grades and
high praise without having to make
much effort, what are all the things he
doesn’t learn that most children learn
by third grade?
Underachievement
Framework
(S. Rimm)

1. High achievers who see that when
they work hard, they get good
grades. The curriculum is probably
just beyond their grasp (eg
challenging/rigor) and requires
effort
EFFORT +
RESULTS +
3. Low achievers who do not need to
work hard to get good grades. The
curriculum is too easy and requires
little to no effort
EFFORT –
RESULTS +
2. Struggling students who work
hard, but do not get good grades. The
curriculum needs modifications to
allow for success
EFFORT +
RESULTS 4. Classic underachievers who put
forth no effort and results are
negative. They could come from
either quadrant 2 or 3
EFFORT RESULTS 10
Quadrant 1

High Effort, High Outcomes
 Feel bright, creative, and approved of by parents
and teachers
 Motivated to learn
 Extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction
 Set realistic high goals, work hard, and persevere
“Children will continue to achieve if they
usually see the relationship between the
learning process and its outcomes.”

Quadrant 2

 High Effort, low outcomes
 Set goals too high, may be in competitive environment
 Sometimes parents set goals too high
 Learning disabled children or those with unusual
learning styles fit here
 Feel dumb

Quadrant 3

 Low Effort, High Outcomes
 Most typical dilemma for gifted
 Not sufficiently challenged so being smart means
doing things easily
 Hit brick wall when faced with real challenge
 Remedies: challenging work, accerlerated or enriched
curriculum, homogeneous grouping, differentiation

Quadrant 4

 Low Effort, Low Outcomes
 Advanced stage of underachievement – happens for
children in Quadrants 2 or 3 over time
 Given up reasonable goal setting
 Parents and teachers begin to doubt abilities
 Difficult to reverse and may be therapeutic help
Attribution Theory

 Students attribute success or failure to different causes:
 Danny got a C- on the science test. He attributes his
grade to the test being too hard.
 Pedro also got a C-. He had studied a lot and thought
that he was lucky to get that grade.
 Lamar received an A. He thinks his ability earned his
grade.
 Chou also got an A. He thinks the teacher likes him.
19
Attribution Theory:
4 areas

Ability
Effort
Task Difficulty
Luck
20

I find the harder I work, the
more luck I seem to have.
-Thomas Jefferson
Achievement-Orientation
Model
Expects to Succeed / be Supported
(Environmental Perception)
Possesses
Adequate
Skills to
Perform
the Task
Motivation
Values the Task
or Outcome
(Meaningfulness /
Goal Valuation)
Teachers
Confident in One’s
Ability to
Perform the Task
Sets Realistic
Expectations and
Implements
Appropriate
Strategies to
Successfully
Complete Goals
(Self-Regulation)
Task
Engagement
and
Achievement
(Self-Efficacy)
Peers
Family
Siegle,
2009
Each of the four elements of the model (Meaningfulness, Self-Efficacy, Environmental Perception, and Self-Regulation) is usually present in individuals who
achieve at a level commensurate with their abilities. Some of these factors may be stronger than others, but overall, achievement-oriented individuals display a
combination of all four traits. Remediation can be based on diagnosing which element or elements are deficit and addressing them. Two individuals might have
very different remediation programs based on their achievement-orientation profiles.
Rimm’s Laws

1.
2.
3.
Children are more likely to be achievers if their
parents join together to give the same clear and
positive message about school effort and
expectations.
Children can learn appropriate behaviors more
easily if they have models to imitate.
Communication about a child between adults
(referential speaking) within the child’s hearing
dramatically affects children’s behaviors and selfperception.

4. Overreaction by parents to children’s successes and
failures leads them to feel either intense pressure to
succeed, or despair and discouragement in dealing
with failure.
5. Children feel more tension when they are worrying
about their work than when they are doing that
work.
6. Children develop self-confidence through struggle.

7. Deprivation and excess frequently exhibit the same
symptoms.
8. Children develop confidence and an internal sense of
control if power is given to them in gradually
increasing increments as they show maturity and
responsibility.

9. Children become oppositional if one adult allies with
them against a parent or a teacher, making them
more powerful than the adult.
10. Adults should avoid confrontations with children
unless they are sure they can control the outcomes.

11. Children will become achievers only if they learn to
function in competition.
12. Children will continue to achieve if they usually see
the relationship between the learning process and its
outcomes.
Rimm (2004)
Influences: Family

 Inconsistent parenting techniques
 In 95% of families, one parent emerged as the
disciplinarian and the other acted as a protector.
 Parents tend to be overly lenient or overly strict – or
may vacillate between the two,
 Bestowing adult status on a child at too young of an
age may contribute.
Influences: Peers

High-achieving peers have a positive
influence on gifted students who begin to
underachieve. The reverse is true as well.
One study showed that 66% of high ability
students named peer pressure as the primary
force against getting good grades.
Studies show that friends’ grades are very
similar by the end of the year.
Reversing
Underachievement

 Opportunities to explore interests
 Relationship with teacher
 Use of self regulation strategies
 Opportunity to work in preferred learning modality
 Time to interact with appropriate peers
 Opportunities to connect content with area of interests
 Development of goals associated with effort
 Out of school experiences
 Smaller teacher-student ratio
30
Achievement-Orientation
Model
Expects to Succeed / be Supported
(Environmental Perception)
Possesses
Adequate
Skills to
Perform
the Task
Motivation
Values the Task
or Outcome
(Meaningfulness /
Goal Valuation)
Teachers
Confident in One’s
Ability to
Perform the Task
Sets Realistic
Expectations and
Implements
Appropriate
Strategies to
Successfully
Complete Goals
(Self-Regulation)
Task
Engagement
and
Achievement
(Self-Efficacy)
Peers
Family
Siegle,
2009
Each of the four elements of the model (Meaningfulness, Self-Efficacy, Environmental Perception, and Self-Regulation) is usually present in individuals who
achieve at a level commensurate with their abilities. Some of these factors may be stronger than others, but overall, achievement-oriented individuals display a
combination of all four traits. Remediation can be based on diagnosing which element or elements are deficit and addressing them. Two individuals might have
very different remediation programs based on their achievement-orientation profiles.

The surest way to make it difficult
for children is to make it easy for
them
-Eleanor Roosevelt