Positive Peers = Positive Change
A school can also help reverse underachievement by surrounding gifted students with peers that value learning and achievement more than being social and cool. Schools cannot pick the friends of students or monitor who each student hangs out with on a daily basis, but a school does have the ability to control those peers that are in a classroom together. This control over a classroom population can help underachievers start becoming achievers once more. If underachievers are placed in classrooms with students that value achievement and accomplishments in school, then underachieving gifted students may become motivated once again. In a report done by Siegle and McCoach (2009) it was found that “academically gifted students should maintain high academic self-concepts because their academic abilities compare favorably to those of their fellow students” (p. 145); therefore, if students of the same ability are kept together in a classroom they should motivate each other to stay high achievers because they are all on the same level. As underachieving gifted students are put into more and more classes with high achieving gifted students, the end result should be more peers that value education and, therefore, create an achieving gifted student. The more a school can work to create opportunities for underachievers to be placed with high achievers and appropriate teacher, the more likely it is that the school will be able to reverse the underachievement of a gifted student (VanTassel-Baska, J, & Stambaugh, T., 2006).
[untitled image above] Retrieved June 24, 2013, from: http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/1384/GATEpix.jpg.
[untitled image above] Retrieved June 24, 2013, from: http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/1384/GATEpix.jpg.