Underachievement in Gifted and Talented Students with Special Needs - Research Proposal Example

This is because the efforts to address these needs only focus on the remediation of their problems. However, no efforts are focusing on the exploration and subsequent development of areas of strengths and talent. Educationalists must distinguish between concerns connected to academic motivation and individual needs linked to students’ disabilities that are unrecognized by a range of classroom teachers. Accordingly, many talented special needs students have failed to realize their potentials.

The underachievement of talented and gifted students has troubled both educators and parents.Frequently, special need students who demonstrate great academic potential fail to perform at a level commensurate with their capabilities. The underachieving special needs students lack self-efficacy, self-regulation skills, and goal-directedness (Siege, & McCoach, 2001). In addition, some students that achieve less suffer from hidden or obvious disabilities. Moreover, others may underachieve in reaction to inappropriate educational conditions and environments.

The number of underachieving special needs student presently remains unknown besides the academic gap between the number of such students with hidden talents and abilities. Subsequently, it is time for further study and inquiry in this topic so that special needs students that are underachieving can receive shifted focus and programmatic interventions. Also, it is mandatory to explore several reasons for high ability students’ underachievement if the educators are serious in assisting to combat underachievement amongst the special needs students.

There is a need for intensive investigation by practitioners to determine whether a student’s underachievement stems from; (1) A mismatch between the student and his school environment; (2) A personal characteristic such as low self-motivation, low self-efficacy, and low self-regulation; (3) More serious physical, emotional or cognitive issues. Accordingly, educators need to design appropriate intervention mechanisms that address the particular area of need depicted by the individual special needs students.

Educators must recognize the need to distinguish the interventions to meet the needs of the underachievers as this will to a greater extent combat the challenges of underachievement within the school setting.