Estudantes Superdotados e Underachievers: Prevalência, Características, Interesses e Estilos de Aprendizagem

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the underachievement phenomenon in gifted students, defined as the discrepancy between the potential (ability) and the performance, particularly in the school context. The purposes were to identify the prevalence of the low performance condition among 96 students who attended a specialized educational service for the gifted, as well as to describe the profile of gifted (n=53) and gifted underachiever students (n=43) with respect to demographic variables, abilities, preferences, interests, motivation, personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships, academic performance, and learning styles. A set of instruments, such as analysis of documents, demographic questionnaire, and scales of characteristics, interests and learning styles were used to collect the data. The results indicated that there are underachievers among gifted students and that giftedness is characterized by heterogeneous personal and school characteristics.