1) Introduction
“There remain widespread beliefs that gifted students experience difficulties at school and are particularly at risk of school failure.” (Guez et al., 2018) This article aims to demonstrate that gifted students are not more vulnerable to dropping out of school than other students. Indeed, these popular misconceptions are also believed by a lot of people including the National Association for Gifted Children which says that gifted children “may be at greater risk for specific kinds of social-emotional difficulties if their needs are not met”.
The authors wanted to contribute to moving research forward because they work in this field. For example, Peyre is a child’s psychiatrist, Gauvrit is a developmental psychologist and Le Cam works at the Ministry of National Education. They collected data from 30,489 French middle school students coming from the 2007’s DEPP (Direction de l’Evaluation, de la Prospective et de la Performance) Panel to carry out their experiment. To achieve this goal, the authors conducted a longitudinal study in which children were followed from their entrance in the first year of French middle school (grade 6) to the second year of high school (grade 11).
2) Summary
The authors formulated some hypotheses about the results of this study :
– H1 : High-IQ students show better academic achievement than other students.
– H2 : They drop out less frequently from middle school.
– H3 : High-IQ students show higher scores in measures of self-efficacy and motivation.
– H4 : There is a positive relationship between IQ in 6th grade and achievement in 9th grade.
– H5 : This relationship holds equally in high-IQ students and in the general population.
Several measures such as fluid intelligence, academic achievement and orientation, perceived self-efficacy and motivation have been done.
Fluid intelligence was evaluated in grade 6 and grade 9 with the Chartier’s Reasoning Test on Playing Cards to measure the children’s non-verbal logical reasoning skills.
Academic achievement has been measured through three different results. First, grades of the three subjects of the Diplôme National du Brevet (DNB) were gathered : this includes French, Mathematics, History and Geography tests. Moreover, grades in the continuous monitoring and the final DNB grade were also collected.
Academic success is also evaluated thanks to orientation decisions at the end of middle school and at the end of the first year of high school. For example, at the end of grade 9, students can decide to go to general and technological high school, to vocational high school, or to the preparation of a vocational diploma.
Students had to answer the Children’s Perceived Self-Efficacy scales (Bandura, 1990) in grade 9 to measure their perceived self-efficacy. This scale evaluates three different types of self-efficacy which are perceived academic self-efficacy, perceived social self-efficacy and perceived self-regulatory efficacy.
Students’ academic motivation was assessed in grade 9 with questions derived from the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) (Ryan & Connell, 1989). The 12 items of this questionnaire allow us to highlight individual differences in motivational styles such as intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and finally motivation.
Results about academic achievement corroborate the first hypothesis because high-IQ students had on average statistically significantly higher scores than others in all DNB subjects (their final grade was higher by 2.6 points out of 20; p < .0001). Moreover, a higher proportion of high-IQ students continue to general and technological high school compared to others (89.49% versus 61.76%; p < .0001).
The second hypothesis emphasized that gifted children drop out less frequently from middle school than non-gifted students.
Results shows that gifted-children have a significantly higher level of intrinsic (d = 0.25; p < .0001) and extrinsic motivation (d = 0.19; p < .0001) and a lower level of amotivation (d = −0.18; p < .0001) as announce in the third hypothesis. Also, gifted-children have statistically significantly higher levels of perceived academic self-efficacy (d = 0.36; p < .0001) and perceived self-regulation (d = 0.20; p < .0001) than other students. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is not totally validated because gifted children have a slightly lower level of social self-efficacy than other children (d = −0.08; p = .0317).
The last two hypotheses were validated by the study results. Indeed, results at the DNB in grade 9 are significantly predicted by fluid intelligence measured in grade 6. So there would be a positive relationship between IQ in 6th grade and achievement in 9th grade no matter what the IQ is.
3) Critical evaluation
This research helps to advance knowledge in this field because of its large French national sample. Indeed, this allowed to generalize the results of previous studies to the French population. The objective of this study, which was to break down stereotypes of high-IQ students, was achieved. The findings highlight the fact that gifted students get “higher academic results than other students and drop out less” (p.38).
The authors point out various limitations. First of all, intelligence was measured with only one test, which means that high potential was only observed from the perspective of non-verbal intelligence.
Secondly, the results of the IQ test may have been biased because there was a lack of challenge and motivation for the students, especially since the test was administered last. Finally, the DNB scores were harmonized, which may have an impact on the difference between the two groups.
Even if these conclusions lead us to think that gifted children are successful in the French school system, this may raise new issues. Indeed, this does not mean that children with high potential do not have special needs. Personally, we think that it could have been interesting to put forward concrete perspectives to help these children to blossom in the school field.
4) Conclusion
To conclude, even if we found this article a little too theoretical, its clear and effective content seems to be accessible to everyone (parents, students, teachers, psychologists…). Our main disappointment with this article is the lack of concrete recommendations for our future practice as psychologists. To deepen our knowledge on this subject, we have found a book written by one of the authors entitled “Psychologie du haut potentiel: Comprendre identifier accompagner” (Clobert & Gauvrit, 2021) that proposes tools that we can use with high-potential children.
We would find it interesting to extend the study to different school cycles to see if the results are generalizable to all students. In addition, we could ask whether the results on the different variables between the two groups of students decrease or increase depending on the grade level.
Key terms : gifted children, school failure, academic success, motivation, self-efficacy, fluid intelligence
Words we have learned :
– threshold (p. 33) = seuil
– to drop-out (p.33) = abandonner
– skewness (p. 34) = asymétrie
– skewed (p.34) = biaisé
Bibliography :
-Clobert, N., & Gauvrit, N. (2021). Psychologie du haut potentiel : Comprendre identifier accompagner. De Boeck Supérieur
-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