Breaking down stereotypes on High-IQ students
A review by Lou-Andréa Savidan and Mathilde Lemarié
Guez, A., Peyre, H., le Cam, M., Gauvrit, N., & Ramus, F. (2018). Are high-IQ students more at risk of school failure ? Intelligence, 71, 32‑40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2018.09.003
Introduction
“Obvious sampling biases are inherent to clinical practice and may have contributed to spreading stereotypes regarding school failure but also psychological difficulties in gifted children”
(Guez et al., 2018, p. 39)
Within current beliefs, many people, including clinicians, believe that a child’s high intellectual potential is a factor in social, emotional and motivational suffering. Because of these difficulties in self-efficacy and motivation, gifted children are said to be bored at school, leading to academic failure. Thus, based on these popular opinions, these researchers, experts in the fields of cognition, education and child development, have thought this article to examine whether there is a link between gifted students and academic difficulties or even academic failure.
Summary
The article begins with a review of American studies that show that, on the contrary to widespread representations, high-IQ students do not necessarily face particular difficulties at school. These studies even show that they perform better than their peers. However, the authors point out a limitation to these studies. Indeed, their samples are not representative of the population and most of them were conducted in the USA. Therefore, the authors aims to generalize these results to a French population.
Through a longitudinal study, they conducted their survey on a sample of 30,489 French students from 6th to 9th grade. They assessed fluid intelligence in 6th grade and other measures in 9th grade (results from the Diplome National du Brevet, children’s grades in all subjects, and school orientation in high school). They also assessed self-efficacy and motivation. Thus, they underline the differences in academic performance between gifted and non-gifted students in France.
Using descriptive analyses and regressions, they demonstrated that high IQ students perform better academically than non-gifted students and drop out less often in high school.
Thus, they break down stereotypes about the academic failure of high-IQ students that they believe come from a lack of representative research in the literature, particularly of the French population. They insist that there are inter-individual differences and that these results do not mean that there are no educational needs to be filled. These results solely show that there are no main problems among these students.
Critical evaluation
This article provides a good assessment of preconceived ideas about children with high intellectual potential. Indeed, this subject is particularly fashionable nowadays, generating several stereotypes and prejudices. However, scientific research in this field shows that it is hard to establish a consensus among researchers. The results of this research can therefore help clinicians to find the best way to support individuals with these particularities. Indeed, clinicians must consider several factors that can influence a person’s skills, such as their individuality, motivation, environment… rather than considering high potential as the cause of academic failure.
Furthermore, this study chose to evaluate the academic skills of children with high academic potential from underprivileged neighborhoods. This choice is relevant and very interesting since many studies focus on populations with high intellectual potential, such as MENSA for instance, through which individuals share similarities and common needs. However, it is important to consider the evolution of the academic skills of children coming from all school domains in order to make the samples closer to the general population.
In our opinion, there are a few limitations to this article too. Firstly, the term “gifted”, often used by the media, does not seem appropriate to us. Indeed, it assumes that the child is talented or has received a gift. Whereas, some children experience this very uneasily because of the representations of excellence in their environment that can be hard to bear. The term high intellectual potential seems to us more appropriate.
Secondly, as the authors noted, they evaluated only the non-verbal intelligence, otherwise called fluid intelligence. However, it refers to only one form of intelligence. Thus, it is not representative of the adolescent’s global intellectual capacities. They could have also assessed verbal intelligence, for instance.
Moreover, the sample was chosen according to school results, but high potential cannot be defined in this way. Neuropsychological assessments (for example a Weschler intelligence scale) are necessary to determine whether the student has skills above average for young people of their age. This choice of the sample may therefore bias the results of this study.
Conclusion
Finally, we have seen that widespread representations about children with high intellectual potential aren’t fair. This article breaks down the stereotype that high-IQ students are failing at school. As professionals, it is important to keep that in mind for the good of welfare practice. Such false representations can be experienced badly by children, and we must consider them for who they are than for what we hear. It could be interesting to recreate this study with students identified as high intellectual potential.
Keywords
- “Stake” (p.39) : enjeu
- “Heightened” (p.32) : réhausser
- “Thresholds” (p.35) : seuils
- “Odds” (p.35) : chances
- “Tackle” (p.39) : aborder, lutter contre