Underachievement in gifted and talented children Essay - 1

Underachievement in gifted and talented children - Essay Example s that relate to academic motivation and the special needs that may correlate to students’ challenges that may be inconspicuous to many classroom educators. In this regard, this paper aims at forming a critical analysis of the factors that underlie underachievement in talented students with a view of presenting some precise interventions to address the issue. Underachievement can be defined as the demonstration of a severe discrepancy between the anticipated achievements or results and the actual achievements in talented or gifted children or students. In this regard, the expected results are measured by intellectual or cognitive ability evaluations or some standardized achievement test scores. On the other hand, the actual results are measured by teacher evaluations or class scores in the classroom set-up. In order for a child to be regarded as an underachiever, the difference between the projected and the observed accomplishment need not be the unswerving outcome of an identified learning infirmity. Therefore, talented underachievers often exhibit superior scores on assessments of expected achievement (Mc Coach, 2000: p. 157). Majority of the recent research studies that have investigated the characteristics of underachieving children have placed much focus on the clinical, qualitative, and single-subject research methodology. The studies, such as Sousa (2009), Cassady (2010), and Callahan and Davis (2012), have documented several causes of underachievement in gifted children. According to these studies, the most common factors associated with underachievement in talented children include the following; The determination on why some high potential students exhibit low levels of achievement is often challenging since underachievement is precipitated by varying reasons (Callahan, & Davis, 2012). Nevertheless, practitioners and scholars have to explore the causes of underachievement in order o come with succinct solutions. Firstly, it is important to understand