Underachievement: Contexts and Complexities

Conceptually, an academic underachiever is a student who performs more poorly in school, typically as measured by grade average, than one would predict based on his or her mental or educational ability, often measured by IQ, aptitude or educational achievement tests (McCall, 1994, p. 15).

The OECD (1998) presented a different perspective on underachievement, noting that reasons behind student failure to achieve fall into three categories, psychological, social and institutional. The authors have located academic

underachievement within the territory of educational failure, extending beyond the individual student, something that may impact on or be caused by teachers, schools and systems. As such, underachievement is presented as a very complex issue as “failure at school is the product of the interaction of many variables” (OECD, 1998, p.11).

The OECD (1998) argued for a less-stigmatising term, exploring some of the complexities behind the historical concepts and policies surrounding

underachieving students and individual and institutional failure. It was highlighted that there was an increased prevalence of academic underachievement occurring in the transition from primary to the junior years of secondary school. Additionally, underachievement and low achievement were viewed as terms that apply to students “whose academic performance is significantly below the average for their age group” (OECD, 1998, p.10). A further term was identified as applying to

which subjects he or she intends to achieve within, based on interest, teacher, or a variety of other issues that stem from the individual student’s personal views and circumstances.

Historically, how underachievement has been defined and viewed tends to be dependent on the perspective of the writer or group and to reflect the purpose of the writer or group. Thus, the term has appeared student-centred, focusing on the difficulties of the individual student and their personal wellbeing (Fuller, 1998; Krause & Krause, 1981), or institutionally or group-centred, where the focus is to review or critique a system, a philosophy, a school or schooling, ineffective teachers or educational system (Gorard & Smith, 2004; OECD, 1998). McCall’s (1994)

definition does not restrict academic underachievement to failure to meet year or grade level outcomes nor is underachievement necessarily viewed as low

achievement. Within McCall’s definition, underachievement occurs when the student does not meet predicted or expected outcomes, which may be based on a variety of criteria and conditions. Common signs of underachievers listed by McCall include the following:

these students do not try, they appear lazy, they seem immature (for example, getting upset if they do not get their way), act up, appear very shy, blame others for their failure, dismiss the whole enterprise as

“stupid” or “boring”, or lack self-confidence, or are rebellious (as cited by Griffin, 1988, p.30).

In the description cited above, McCall described behaviours and tendencies of students who are underachieving in the classroom, noting how these behaviours are often connected to or result in underachievement. The signs listed by McCall

appear to link underachievement to disengagement and perhaps could be

described more accurately as signs of the disengaged student in general. However, as outlined in Chapter 1, disengagement and underachievement are terms where the meaning is not synonymous. They may commonly appear together as factors in models of underachievement or of disengagement. Furthermore, the presence of one may lead to or correlate with the presence of the other (Thomas, 2013). However, there is a significant difference in meaning between these two phenomena and they are not used interchangeably within this study.

Griffin (1988), in a seminal study on underachievement, maintained that there was no consistent agreement on the definition for ‘underachievers’ in education. This claim continues to be made by many other educators, who

highlight the complexities that lie beneath the seemingly innocuous term (Gorard & Smith, 2004; McCall, Evahn, & Kratzer, 1992; OECD, 1998; Reis & McCoach, 2000; Smith, 2005). As Reis and McCoach (2000) and McCall et al., (1992) have noted, conceptual definitions of underachievement are complicated by the differences in groups represented within each definition, while operational definitions are complicated by an inconsistency across the board in what underachievement is measuring. Griffin (1988) wrote that Dowdall and Colangelo, for example, utilised 15 different definitions for underachievement related to gifted students. Thus, the term appears complex and many-layered, with different meanings in different contexts. There can be a lack of clarity in the research as to exactly who the underachievers might be (Smith, 2010). Additionally, underachievement often forms a subsidiary part of other fields in education as opposed to an independent topic on its own (Reis & McCoach, 2000).

Underachievement has been linked with low achievement (Gorard & Smith, 2004; Smith, 2005), poor self-esteem, and psychological concerns (Krause & Krause, 1981) as well as physiological, cultural, socio-economical and learning barriers. Underachievement may be related to gifted and talented students (Van Tassel-Baska, 2005), boys in education (Jha & Kelleher, 2006), social emotional issues, social-economic or language and cultural barriers, students at risk, and learning difficulties and barriers (Louden et al., 2000). It may also include groups from different or minority cultures and Indigenous students (Colker, 2011). Underachievement may appear alongside and be equated with disengagement, an equally multi-faceted term and concept (McMahon & Zyngier, 2009; Thomas, 2013), but one with qualitative differences in what it denotes (Thomas, 2013). Furthermore, there may be confusion between the definition of low-achievement versus underachievement. As with disengagement, the terms low achievement and underachievement may also be conflated, leading to further ambiguities and complexities, especially prevalent in government policies and programs (Gorard & Smith, 2004; Moreau, 2011; Smith, 2010). Griffin (1998) highlighted the need for caution and rigour in both the identification of underachievers or low achievers. Who is deciding that the student is an underachiever? What are the criteria for underachievement? Griffin’s response was to review how we define achievement and high achievers and to keep this in mind, when looking at underachievement.