Interventions for academically underachieving students: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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Students’ academic underachievement, defined as discrepancies between ability and academic performance, is a widespread problem leading to many negative consequences. Our study examines high school students’ math underachievement, its motivational antecedents, and its impact on future math achievement, college attendance, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) interest. Using data from the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study, we identified students who exhibited a math ability–achievement discrepancy between their standardized math scores at the beginning of ninth grade and their final math grade in fall of ninth grade. We then conducted generalized structural equation modeling to identify direct effects of math motivation on math underachievement along with the direct effects of math underachievement on future STEM and college outcomes. Informed by expectancy-value theory, we found that math motivation, as measured by value and expectancy beliefs was significantly associated with math underachievement. We also found that math underachievement was associated with a number of outcomes in the high school to college transition with evidence of moderation by high math ability. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Expectancy-Value Approach to Math Underachievement: Examining High School Achievement, College Attendance, and STEM Interest

Fong

Kremer

2019

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“…Therefore, meta-analyses may be especially useful for clarifying the effects of underachievement intervention. Our literature survey revealed an ongoing meta-analysis involving 53 studies of underachievement intervention (i.e., Snyder, Fong, et al, 2019). This meta-analysis found that interventions were moderately effective in improving achievement and psychosocial outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effectiveness of Current Interventions to Reverse the Underachievement of Gifted Students: Findings of a Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Steenbergen‐Hu

Olszewski‐Kubilius

Calvert

2020

Underachievement of gifted students has been a great concern for the field of gifted education. The current study reviewed 14 recent empirical studies concerning the effectiveness of underachievement interventions on gifted students’ achievement outcomes and psychosocial outcomes. Overall, there was no evidence that underachievement interventions significantly improved academic performance of gifted underachievers ( g = .09, p = .387), especially in terms of course grades. Gifted underachievers receiving interventions significantly outscored their comparison peers on psychosocial outcomes ( g = 0.22, p = .001), which consisted of a variety of measures on self-efficacy, goal valuation, environmental perceptions, self-regulation/motivation, and psychosocial functioning. Qualitative studies generally reported that gifted underachievers benefited from the interventions in terms of increased motivation for learning, improved self-regulation, and finding school more meaningful. Findings need to be viewed in light of the relatively low quality of the evidence from recent research on underachievement interventions.

“…Steenbergen-Hu et al (2020) approach this question using both a meta-analysis and systematic review of interventions to alleviate underachievement in the past 20 years, combining insights from metaanalytic and narrative review approaches and complementing Reis and McCoach's (2000) classic work. Fit alongside, the broader meta-analytic reviews of interventions to alleviate underachievement in gifted and typical populations conducted in the past decade (Rubenstein et al, 2012;Snyder, Fong, et al, 2019), this focused meta-analysis suggests room for improvement between relatively weak intervention effects on academic achievement and what the authors characterize as low-quality evidence. Echoing the call for increasingly higher standards in intervention implementation, assessment, and heterogeneity analyses in education research more broadly (e.g., Murrah et al, 2016;Weiss et al, 2017), the authors of this article challenge researchers to consider how, when, and for whom underachievement interventions may be effective.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Gifted Underachievement and Achievement Motivation: The Promise of Breaking Silos

Snyder

Wormington

2020

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Academic underachievement has fascinated and frustrated those in gifted education for decades, capturing the attention of educators, researchers, and policy makers alike (McCoach & Siegle, 2003). A topic of interest in education as far back as the 1950s (Gowan, 1955), underachievement is often framed in terms of lost personal and societal potential. It has been 20 years since the publication of Reis and McCoach's (2000) seminal piece in Gifted Child Quarterly on academic underachievement in gifted education, in which they grappled with conceptual and operational definitions, causes and correlates, and review of educational techniques. To date, that article has been cited roughly 800 times, a clear indicator that this question remains timely and relevant. Research into gifted underachievement has remained fairly siloed from research on achievement motivation over the years (c.f. Borkowski & Thorpe, 1994; Preckel et al., 2006). For example, achievement motivation researchers frequently use the term "underachievement" without careful attention to how it is conceptualized and operationalized as an ability-achievement distinction (e.g., Paunesku et al., 2015). Additionally, it is not uncommon to hear gifted underachieving students described as "lacking" motivation (e.g., Whitmore, 1986). In a way, this mirrors the oft-repeated misconceptions that all gifted students are motivated, and that motivation is static as students move through K-12 schooling and beyond (Muenks et al., 2018; Snyder & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2013). Over time, the slow integration of work on underachievement and motivation proved insightful (e.g., Clinkenbeard, 2012; Garn et al., 2010; Preckel et al., 2006) and ultimately led to the creation of this special issue on Underachievement and Achievement Motivation. The authors of articles in this special issue study gifted underachievement and achievement motivation using a variety of analytic methods, theoretical lenses, developmental periods, and learning contexts. Including a range of conceptual and methodological approaches was intentional on our part, through our hope that probing a topic from multiple angles would lead to a richer understanding of the phenomenon and potential means to decrease it in the future. It is our hope as coeditors of this special issue that this collection of articles is only the beginning of more focused inquiry, fruitful collaborations across traditional silos, and insights into the developmental roots, differential trajectories, contextual influences, and development of techniques used to alleviate underachievement.