Einblicke in Schulwelten intelligenter Grenzgänger : Fallstudien über hochbegabte Underachiever

Gifted students standing out because of their serious problems of performance are classified as underachievers by research literature. Established knowledge on interrelations of the reasons for these problems has hardly been available so far except a few studies that are able to supply some indications. Qualtitative-empirical individual case studies on highly gifted underachievers based on a long-term phase of data collection cannot be found in German language or U. S. American literature.
The theoretical part of this study supplies basic information on concepts of intelligence, giftedness, high giftedness and underachievement as well as multidimensional models of giftedness. The theoretical basis is amplified by various perspectives on the problem field of highly gifted underachievers: Discrepancy between giftedness and performance, especially factors of personality and type formation, difficulties of learning and performance and classroom problems, aspects of special pedagogics, education, refusal of performance and behavioral disorders.
The study is focused on the development of a child and an adolescent person within a period of one and a half and two years respectively. The methodical framework results from the qualitative-empirical research approach and the quality criteria. The data collection for the two cases is based on the problem exploring interview as a kind of a qualitative conversation and on a participant observation. The data evaluation was performed by means of a modified form of analysis of contents according to Mayring resulting in systems of categories related to the case types. Thus portraits were created containing dense descriptions that are based on the perspective of the two boys.
The essential result is that the two highly gifted boys are handling and interpreting their school problems quite differently, and that they also have something in common as far as problems of learning and performance are concerned. They are not only faced with problems of performance but also with serious difficulties of learning, achievement and classroom conditions.
In the case of Kai self-doubt arises due to his giftedness as in his opinion gifted students also have to be high achievers. He thinks that skipping the third grade at school was the reason for his difficulties. Giftedness creates two kinds of otherness at once – he perceives himself as abnormal in the circle of highly gifted students. In the circle of his classmates he also perceives himself as abnormal because of his frequent failures at school. The classroom difficulties are accompanied by a high emotional instability. His school experience is connected with the pressure to perform, the perception of suffering, self-doubts, pursuit of perfection, helplessness and powerlessness, resignation, fear of self-worth degradation and problem rejection. School is evolving into an unmanageable problem.
In contrast to the case of Kai Marc is looking upon his giftedness quite positively. In his opinion special reasoning powers are a central accessory of gifted persons. He considers himself to be more self-assured and more suitable to manage everyday life than others. Thus he also perceives an otherness but without any negative connotation. Just as Kai he thinks that the determining conditions at school are an obstacle for his classroom progress and also for his personal development. He had’ nt established any systematic study and work habits and the constant underchallenge eventually turned out to be an overchallenge. Classroom difficulties arose in foreign languages, orthography and at the advanced level in comprehending very abstract contents of mathematics and natural sciences. However, his critical disposition and his complex way of thinking figure out to be his main problem. They are responsible for classroom difficulties whenever he tries to deal with the contents more intensively and critically. In spite of his unfortunate situation Marc characterizes himself as an optimist and he describes himself as a “minimalist” and a “borderline runner”, who succeeded in passing through the school system following his attitude as long as being faced with clear boundaries.
In both cases school as a system is edging closer to the middle. As a consequence there is a need of a school pedagogical perspective on the field of research on highly gifted underachievers on the one hand and of qualitative-empirical individual case studies on the other hand, that offer the possibility of documenting behavior patterns and mind-sets of the concerned persons in order to be able to compare them with established knowledge of research on highly gifted persons afterwards. Thus it is not only a matter of the obvious problems of performance but above all of the determining conditions of the school system. That is why it can be concluded that school pedagogical research on highly gifted underachievers is just at the beginning.