PREDICTING (UNDER)ACHIEVEMENT OF GIFTED CHILDREN

Gifted children may perform worse or achieve much less than expected: how can this happen and how can such underachievement be prevented? To answer this question it is theorized that personal variables (e.g. identity, cognitive and motivational factors) and environmental variables (e.g. home and school) influence or interact with each other. The environmental variables may occur at different levels, e.g., the individual level or the group level Mutual influences or interactions between variables at different levels can be integrated within an interactional multilevel theory. A first example of such a theory is constructed with the aid of four consecutive developmental models. With a child's increasing age the number of variables in a model increases because of the child's growth in cognitive complexity and the accumulating differentiation in meaningful environmental levels and situations. With these models it is possible to explain a gifted child's underachievement in certain situations and its simultaneous high achievement in others. It is also possible to predict that by changing certain environmental characteristics underachievement can be turned into high achievement.