Motivational goal orientations of intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving students in the United Arab Emirates

The results also show that intellectually gifted underachieving students were oriented toward grades and verbal feedback offered by teachers and parents when dealing with their school work. They were also socially dependent on peer relations in helping them to accomplish their academic responsibilities. This result challenges the notion that social goals would contribute to academic achievement because they induce students to adopt their teachers' values and pursue academic tasks they would otherwise avoid (Wentzel, 1999). Reliance on such performance and social goals will not guarantee success for students in school or in their pursuit of academic improvement; and hence they may become underachievers. These results are consistent with Whitmore's (1980) view that suggested that underachievers do not find academic pursuits rewarding, and that these students therefore avoid them, redirecting their energy to more rewarding behaviors such as social or athletic activities. Subsequent discriminant analysis indicated that Effort, Task, and Competition were the most powerful factors that distinguish intellectually gifted achieving students from their underachieving peers. In addition, the combination of the motivational goal orientation factors allowed us to correctly classify nearly 78% of the sample as either intellectually gifted achieving or underachieving learners. Intellectually gifted achieving students appeared to possess a great willingness to put a considerable effort into their school work, engaging solely in active task orientation, and adapting competitive activities to maintain their superior performance compared with the intellectually gifted underachieving students. These results are similar to those reported by Ford (1993), Vlahovic-Stetic et al. (1999), and Lau and Chan (2001), who reported that motivational factors were important variables in distinguishing gifted achievers from gifted underachievers. It is clear that when students value a task, they will be more likely to engage in it, expend more effort on it, and do better at it, and hence they are more likely to be achievers (Wigfield, 1994). Believing in the importance of the task therefore increases students' efforts toward achievement goal orientation and motivation.

Findings with these patterns would lend support to the claim that motivational goal orientations are important factors contributing to the underachievement of intellectually gifted students. Therefore, such factors should be the focus of any intervention programs directed to reversing the academic underachievement pattern among gifted students.

Previous intervention programs have placed a considerable emphasis on modifying self-concept, recognizing students' strengths, reinforcing students' efforts, and valuing their interests in dealing with the phenomenon of underachievement (Baum, Renzuli, & Herbert, 1995; Hishinuma, 1996; Wilson, 1986). Future intervention programs for gifted underachieving students should, therefore, focus on helping students to work on mastery goal setting, set up realistic expectations, build up their self-confidence, understand their potentialities, and should encourage them to work hard and make greater effort, participate in rewarded competition, and accept responsibility for learning and achievement outcomes. Once gifted underachieving students are encouraged and motivated, they may succeed in reversing this underachievement. It is important that educators and policy makers identify gifted underachieving students and use appropriate programs and strategies to help them reverse the underachievement pattern.