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Motivational goal orientations of intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving students in the United Arab Emirates
Social Behavior and Personality, 2003 by Albaili, Mohamed A
The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving secondary school students on certain motivational goal orientations such as effort, task, competition, power, praise, feedback, token, social concern, and social dependency. A total of 144 selected United Arab Emirates secondary school male students (15-19 years of age) participated in the investigation. Participants were classified into the following two intellectually gifted groups: achieving students (n= 98) and underachieving students (n= 46). The Inventory of School Motivation was used as a measure of the motivational goal orientations. Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated significant differences between the two intellectually gifted groups on Effort, Task, Competition, Feedback, and Social Dependency scales. Further discriminant analysis revealed that Effort, Task, and Competition were the most discriminating variables that separate the intellectually gifted achieving students from their underachieving peers.
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The academic underachievement of gifted students is a serious problem that has puzzled educators and researchers for more than five decades. This problem usually begins during the late elementary school years and becomes more evident by secondary and high school (Butler-Por, 1987; McCall, Evahan, & Kratzer, 1992; Peterson & Colangelo, 1996). The gifted underachiever has been viewed as a potential loss and waste to a society. In addition to the social cost, there are personal loss and waste. The underachieving gifted student may perceive himself or herself as inadequate in various kinds of learning experiences, and may develop a negative attitude toward self, school, and learning. Despite widespread interest in and concern about this area, researchers have achieved only limited understanding of this phenomenon (Reis & McCoach, 2000).
Academic underachievement is generally defined as a discrepancy between ability and grades, or between ability and achievement (Butler-Por, 1987; McCall, et al., 1992; Peterson & Colangelo, 1996; Reis & McCoach, 2000; Rimm, 1997; Whitmore, 1980). For the purpose of this study, gifted underachieving students are defined as students who exhibit a significant discrepancy between their potential ability (as measured by a standardized intellectual ability assessment) and achievement performance (as measured by school achievement scores). Additionally, this discrepancy may not be attributed to either learning disabilities or emotional problems. Gifted underachieving students, therefore, are those students who are not performing according to their potential ability in school.
Considerable research has been devoted to exploring personal factors that contribute to academic underachievement among gifted students. It has been suggested that lack of motivation to learn and do well in school is one of the major causes of underachievement in gifted students (Whitmore, 1980). This notion leads us to speculate that gifted underachieving students may experience various forms of motivational problems during their school life.
The importance of motivation in the field of giftedness is well documented. Motivation serves as a vehicle in the definition of giftedness for many theorists. For example, motivation is considered as a catalyst in Gagne's (1995) definition of giftedness and talent, and as one of the six resources in Steinberg and Lubart's (1993) multivariate theory of creative giftedness. Similarly, Feldhusen (1986) included achievement motivation in his conceptualization of giftedness. Task commitment (motivation) was also considered as one of the three components in Renzulli's (1986) three-ring model of giftedness. Further, Clinkenbeard (1994) stated that "motivation is clearly important when considering how to narrow the gap between potential and performance" (p. 187).
In the field of giftedness, researchers have examined various aspects of academic motivation in order to determine their relationships to academic underachievement. One group of researchers focused on the differences in motivational characteristics of gifted and nongifted students. For instance, OlszewskiKubilius, Kulieke, and Krasney (1988) reviewed several studies showing that elementary gifted students generally scored significantly higher on internal locus of control than did the students with whom they were compared. High IQ students tended to score higher on intrinsic motivation and autonomy than did average IQ students, and were more likely to demonstrate positive attributions for success and failure. Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen (1993), in a longitudinal study, found that intellectually talented students showed superior intrinsic motivation for reading, thinking, and solitude when compared with average students. Vallerand, Gagne, Senecal, and Pelletier (1994) compared the intrinsic motivation and school competence of gifted and regular elementary school students, and found that gifted students perceived themselves as being more competent and more highly intrinsically motivated toward school activities than did their regular peers. Similarly, Chan (1996) studied the motivational orientation of intellectually gifted students and found that, when compared with average-- achieving students, gifted students had greater confidence in their own personal control over successes or failures in school tasks.
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