Motivating the gifted and talented: Lessons from research and practice

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52 The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2)
5 The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2)
Motivating the gifted and talented: Lessons from research and
practice
Andrew J. Martin
University of Western Sydney
Introduction
The issue of motivation is relevant to all students
(Martin, 2001, 2002, in press). However, for some
specific groups of students, not only are the
fundamental principles of motivation relevant, but
there are some additional principles or issues that
need to be considered or refined. One case in
point is the gifted and talented student, and in
particular, the underachieving gifted and talented
student. The purpose of this paper is to review the
key motivational issues relevant to gifted and
talented students, and more specifically, the
refinements or adaptations of these issues that are
required to more effectively target these students.
Following from this, a variety of pedagogical
strategies are proposed which educators can use to
enhance or sustain gifted and talented students.
Identifying giftedness and the relevance of
motivation
In defining and identifying giftedness, motivation
often emerges as a core element of gifted
students’ performance. For example, Renzulli’s
(1978) three-ring conception of giftedness
identifies task commitment (reflecting motivation)
as one of the three components of giftedness (the
other two being above-average ability and
creativity). Additionally, in describing the process
by which giftedness is translated into talent,
Gagné identified a group of catalytic factors
including motivation (Gagné, 1995; see also Gross,
2002). This paper examines motivation in detail.
Specifically, it identifies nine key issues in
motivation, which are relevant to gifted and
talented students, be they underachievers or
students whose strengths need to be sustained.
These issues relate to students’:
• Beliefs about ‘smartness’;
• Views of effort and the perceived risks
of trying hard;
• Implicit theories;
• Perceptions of control;
• Fear of failure;
• Fear of success (and the related
Impostor Phenomenon);
• Drive for perfection;
• Need to achieve balance between
challenge and skill; and
• Approach to competition.
Identifying these key facets of motivation provides
guidance for practitioners to more effectively work
with the gifted and talented. Given this, the paper
also outlines in some detail a variety of useful
strategies educators can use to address these
facets of motivation.
Students’ beliefs about ‘smartness’
Students’ views of what ‘smartness’ means can
hold implications for their motivation. It is not
uncommon for gifted and talented students to
have experienced success without a great deal of
effort, preparation, organisation, or study. The
difficulties surrounding effortless success arise
when students conclude that to be smart an
individual needs to do things easily and without
effort, preparation, or organisation (Winebrenner,
2001). Indeed, the ‘logic’ surrounding this
conclusion can be supported by parents and
teachers who provide more marked approval,
endorsement, and praise for the fact that the child
succeeded with little or no effort (McNabb, 1997).
The potential problems surrounding this view of
‘smartness’ are multifold.
If students believe that ‘smartness’ involves
success with little or no effort, they can be quite
unsettled when they need to do work that is
challenging or requires some level of struggle. This
is because they may draw the conclusion that their
experience of challenge or difficulty implies they
lack ability. As Covington (1992, 1998) and Martin
and colleagues (Martin & Marsh, in press; Martin,
Marsh, & Debus, 2001a, 2001b, in press) have
shown, some students’ priority is to avoid being
seen to lack ability or intelligence. This is because
ability can be translated into self-worth and so
students who lack ability may conclude that they
also lack worth (Covington, 1992, 1998). Directly
linking their worth with how they perform can be
risky because assessment and evaluation in the
school context become tests of their worth as
much as they are tests of their knowledge and
skill. This is fertile terrain for the development of
a fear of failure and consequent avoidance
strategies that are described below (Martin, 2001,
2002, in press).

The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2) 53
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The fact that gifted and talented students’ views
of ‘smartness’ can impact on their level of
motivation, engagement, and achievement, holds
implications for what we do as educators when
addressing this problematic approach to their
studies. One strategy is to place greater focus on
skill development, improvement, and personal
bests. This communicates to the student that the
process is very much under focus and that
outcomes reflect more on the process than on
them as a person or their ability. Another way to
direct students’ focus towards the process more
than the outcomes is to allow them to submit
interim reports or drafts on some of their major
work (Clinkenbeard, 1994). Again, this shows the
student that the task at hand is the priority and
that the grade or mark informs the student about
how they attended to the task. This strategy is
consistent with a mastery or learning focus
described by Nicholls and colleagues (Duda &
Nicholls, 1992; Nicholls, 1989) and is consistently
associated with more effective strategy, greater
enjoyment of schoolwork, and enhanced
achievement (see also Martin 2001, in press;
Middleton & Midgley, 1997).
The perceived risks of effort
Thus far, I have argued that a focus on effort
rather than ability has positive implications for the
motivation of gifted and talented students.
However, you will note that I have also implied
that how hard a student tries can hold implications
for their sense of intelligence and as Nicholls
(1989) and Covington (1992, 1998) have discussed,
simply trying harder is not necessarily a panacea
for motivation.
Some students can see effort as a risky commodity
because it can imply (in their minds) that they lack
ability. In fact, research has demonstrated that
students who succeed with less or little effort are
viewed by others as more competent than students
who invest relatively greater effort (Covington,
1992, 1998). This view of effort can place students
in quite a bind because teachers value expenditure
of effort while students see it as a potential threat
to their ability and consequent worth (Covington,
1992, 1998). This view of effort is not such a
problem in students’ early years at school, but
certainly becomes more prevalent as students
move through high school (Nicholls, 1989).
The double-edged properties of effort hold
significant implications for the effort-related
advice and instruction that educators provide to
students — particularly those who reside in the
aforementioned unhelpful effort-ability bind.
Specifically, asking a student to try harder may in
fact be unhelpful and lead the student to conclude
that he or she lacks ability or is seen by the
teacher to lack ability. Moreover, the extension of
this is that if the student does not perform highly
after expending effort, it further damns the
perceived level of ability.
This is not to suggest that educators should
diminish the value of effort. Effort is a valuable
educational property because it is clearly a very
important aspect of schoolwork over which
students have most control. The attribution
research is quite clear that control is an important
foundation for students’ effective management
and approach to their studies (Martin, 2001, 2002;
Patrick, Skinner, & Connell, 1993; Skinner, 1996;
Skinner, Wellborn, & Connell, 1990; Weiner, 1985).
Educators can also communicate directly to
students that effort expenditure does not
necessarily reflect on their ability (Winebrenner,
2001). Elite performers in any domain — business,
sport, science, and music — require extensive
study, training, practice, and/or experience to
perform at the levels they do. There is little
evidence that people performing at elite levels or
people who succeed do so with little or no effort
(Carling & Heller, 1995; FitzSimons, 2002;
Macqueen & Hitchcock, 2001; McGregor, 2000).
Research also suggests that focusing on the quality
of effort more than the quantity of effort can be a
way of assisting students who view effort
expenditure as a risky business (Covington, 1998;
McNabb, 1997). It seems that students are less
inclined to see that the quality of their effort
reflects on their ability (McNabb, 1997). This is an
important direction for educational support
because it suggests that encouraging students to
work on their study skills, time management,
prioritising, and the like, is less likely to threaten
their ability than encouraging them simply to do
more work. Having noted this, it is nonetheless
important to recognise that students would be
better placed if they increased both the quantity
and quality of their effort. Notwithstanding this, if
the student links the quantity of study with their
ability, then it may be prudent to focus more on
the quality of that study and schoolwork.
Students’ implicit theories
Implicit theories refer to the beliefs students hold
about the nature of intelligence. These implicit
theories can impact on their motivation. In the
most general form, students can see intelligence
as something that is a fixed and immutable entity
or as an incremental dimension that can be
changed or improved upon (Dweck, 1991). Gifted
and talented students can define themselves in
terms of their intelligence, and because this is the
case, their implicit theories about intelligence are
particularly relevant to our discussion of
motivation. Many come to learn that their success

54 The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2)
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can be achieved by dint of natural ability alone. By
implication, they do not need to develop more
effective skills or extend themselves much beyond
what their ability enables them to achieve. These
can be the seeds of an entity view of intelligence
(McNabb, 1997). This entity view can become
further entrenched when they do not experience
sufficient opportunities to extend themselves or to
succeed at tasks they find challenging
(Clinkenbeard, 1994). In contrast, more
mainstream students experience many
opportunities to wrestle with difficulty and
challenge. This requires them to develop new skills
and the development of new skills is direct
evidence that intelligence can be improved upon
(Clinkenbeard, 1994).
Students’ implicit theories about intelligence can
also render their self-worth vulnerable,
particularly under conditions of evaluation in
which there is the possibility of negative
judgements about one’s performance. According
to Dweck and Leggett (1988):
Within an entity theory individuals
are not simply judging a momentary
level of ability. Rather, they may be
judging what they perceive to be an
important and personal attribute.
Thus an entity theory may place
one’s intelligence on the line in
evaluative situations, magnifying the
meaning and impact of negative
judgements. (p. 263)
The implicit theory that students adopt also has
implications for their tendency to engage in
protective behaviour. Incremental theorists tend
to adopt learning goals and embrace tasks that
involve the possibility of making errors, are
difficult, and which, therefore, involve some
possibility of ‘failure’. Entity theorists, on the
other hand, tend to choose tasks in which success
is assured, do not provide challenges, minimise the
risk of failure, and protect them from threats to
their competence image (Dweck & Bempechat,
1983; see also Clark & Tollefson, 1991). Indeed, it
is entity theorists’ emphasis on ability that renders
them vulnerable to self-worth protection. Because
they are dominated by the “conviction that ability
alone is a necessary condition for success and that
lack of ability is a sufficient explanation for
failure” (Covington, 1992, p. 82), any performance
demands are directly relevant to their ability
image and consequent self-worth. In the face of
this, it is proposed that entity theorists are most
inclined to engage in self-protection (see also
Covington 1984).
To foster incremental views of intelligence, it is
important to communicate to students that
intelligence can be developed further.
Importantly, however, students need to test this
proposition. It is best tested when they seek out
tasks and activities that are challenging but
achievable and they develop the skills needed to
meet these challenges. When they meet these
challenges successfully and there is evidence of
skill development, it is then important for them to
reflect on the lesson learnt — namely, that
intelligence can be further developed (McNabb,
1997).
Students’ perceptions of control
The preceding discussion suggests that one
consequence of an entity view of intelligence is
that students’ sense of control is diminished. It
necessarily follows that if one cannot improve
upon one’s sense of control then the development
of new skill and capacity to overcome challenge is
seen to be unlikely. When a student believes there
is little or nothing he or she can do to avoid
possible future failure or repeat previous success,
the sense of control is reduced. Underachieving
gifted and talented students tend to have a low
sense of control (Rimm, 1995).
Another reason why gifted and talented can have a
low sense of control is because of the way they
view the causes of their successes and failures.
The way students see the causes of their success
and failure affects how much control they perceive
in relation to future schoolwork. The perceived
causes of success and failure are central to
attribution theory (Weiner, 1985). Gifted and
talented students who underachieve tend to have
a problematic attributional pattern: they attribute
the causes of failure to their lack of ability and
they attribute success to factors outside their
control such as luck or grading lenience (Rimm,
1997). Essentially, these students take no credit
for their success and blame their poor
performance on their lack of intelligence. In doing
so, they give themselves little reason to feel good
about themselves and more reason to abandon
hope (Weiner, 1985). Indeed, research has shown
that this is the most common attributional profile
underpinning learned helplessness (Davis & Rimm,
1998), which in the classroom is reflected in
disengagement and withdrawal of effort and
participation.
To enhance students’ sense of control, it is
important to guide their focus towards the more
controllable factors in their life and to develop
more of an incremental view of intelligence.
Factors clearly within students’ control include the
quantity and quality of study, their level of
preparation, how they present their work, how
they manage their time, and the extent to which
they prioritise work and manage deadlines.

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As discussed above, it is also important to provide
clear task-based feedback on students’ work. This
entails focusing on the work itself and not so much
on the student or his or her ability. It also requires
educators to identify ways students can extend
from where they are at — thus launching them
forward to improvement and perhaps a new
personal best. Related to this is the importance of
administering feedback that is directly contingent
on what students do. For example, inconsistent
reward contingencies can create confusion and
uncertainty in students’ minds as to what they did
to receive that reward (Thompson, 1994).
Uncertainty and confusion are not conducive to a
student’s sense of control.
Another way to enhance students’ sense of control
is by giving them greater input into decisions that
affect them. Choice and input can encompass
students contributing to content, methods by
which that content is delivered, and indeed the
methods and criteria for (authentic) assessment.
This not only increases their sense of control, it
also provides them with a greater sense of
responsibility and empowerment and develops
their critical thinking and decision-making skills —
skills vital beyond the classroom and school.
The development of students’ meta-cognitive
strategies can also enhance their sense of control.
One way to develop such skills is to encourage
students to evaluate their own work and to view
this work analytically (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994;
Martin, 2001, 2002, in press; Miller, Greene,
Montalvo, Ravindran, & Nichols, 1996). This is an
important skill because it develops students’
ability to monitor their progress and to make
appropriate adjustments when required. The
teacher may then evaluate the student’s work and
both teacher and student can compare their
analyses. Throughout the process, it is important
to make it clear that the work is being evaluated,
not the student (Winebrenner, 2001). If the child
receives a sense that he or she or his or her
intelligence is being evaluated there is the risk
that the motivation shifts from one that may have
been task-based and success-oriented to one that
is primarily performance-based and failure
avoidant, reflecting a fear of failure (Martin &
Marsh, in press).
Fear of failure
Fear of failure can be a particular problem for
gifted and talented students. The identity and
self-concepts of these students can be founded on
their ability and their capacity to demonstrate
that ability (McNabb, 1997). When students’ sense
of worth is primarily based on their ability to
achieve, any performance or evaluative situation
can threaten their worth and this can evoke a fear
of failure. It can also lead them to avoid challenge
or to develop failure avoidance strategies. Three
such strategies are overstriving, defensive
pessimism, and self-sabotage.
Overstriving refers to students who work
diligently, expend a great deal of effort in study
and practice, and try extremely hard. Importantly,
however, they do so primarily to avoid failing,
disappointing teachers or parents, or being seen to
be ‘dumb’. That is, they avoid failure by
succeeding (Covington, 1992; Covington &
Omelich, 1991; Martin & Marsh, in press; Martin et
al, 2001a, 2001b, in press). Although overstriving
can lead to high levels of achievement, it is also
often accompanied by anxiety and self-doubt,
thereby rendering the educational process a
somewhat unpleasant one (Martin & Marsh, in
press).
Defensive pessimists are students who set
unrealistically low expectations leading up to a
performance or evaluative situation (Norem &
Cantor, 1986a, 1986b; Norem & Illingworth, 1993;
Martin & Marsh, in press, Martin et al 2001a,
2001b, in press). In doing so, they lower the
standard for satisfactory performance, thereby
reducing the chances of failure against this lower
standard. They also reduce the disappointment of
poor performance should it occur and so have
prepared themselves (and others) for this poor
performance – cushioning its blow. In a similar way
to defensive pessimists, gifted and talented
students have been found to strategically regulate
their expectations to reduce the likelihood of
failure (Davis & Rimm, 1998; Rimm, 1997).
Students who self-sabotage tend to put obstacles
in their path to success (Rhodewalt & Davison,
1986). Classic school-related examples are
procrastination, wasting time, not studying or
preparing for tests and exams, and clowning
around or disrupting others (Martin et al, 2001a,
2001b, in press; Rhodewalt & Davison, 1986; Tice
& Baumeister, 1990). Research suggests these
students do this so as to establish an alibi in the
event of poor performance. They are then able to
deflect the cause of their poor performance away
from a possible lack of ability (one of students’
priorities is to avoid being seen to lack ability —
Covington, 1992, 1998) and onto something that
does not reflect poorly on their ability such as
effort or circumstance (Covington, 1992, 1998;
Martin, 2001, 2002, in press; Martin & Marsh, in
press; Martin et al, 2001a, 2001b, in press).
There are three effective ways to address
students’ fear of failure. The first relates to how
mistakes, poor performance, and even failure are
positioned and approached in the classroom. In
classrooms where fear of failure is low, students
tend to view mistakes as important diagnostic
information about how to improve next time

56 The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2)
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(Covington, 1998; Winebrenner, 2001). They tend
not to see mistakes as reflecting on them as a
person nor do they believe that failure necessarily
predicts further failure (Martin, 2001, 2002, in
press; Martin & Marsh, in press). In effect, this
interpretation of failure greatly diminishes its
sting. By diminishing its sting, students do not live
in fear of it. Importantly, this in no way implies
that students are unconcerned about making
mistakes. These students certainly are concerned,
but their concern is played out through taking the
lessons to be learnt and using these lessons as a
possible launch pad to future improvement or
success.
Another way to couch mistakes in less threatening
terms is to occasionally encourage students to
sacrifice some accuracy for some risk-taking
(McNabb, 1997). This first communicates to these
students that mistakes are a possible part of any
process where they seek to make gains or progress.
Often to move to another level of performance
there is the need for risk, some creativity, or some
level of innovation. Risk, creativity, and innovation
carry with them the potential for mistakes. When
students view mistakes in this way, they come to
learn that aiming to improve and develop one’s
skills are of primary importance and that some
mistakes along the way are acceptable if such
gains are to be made.
Fear of failure can also be tackled by reducing the
link between students’ achievement and their
worth as a person (Covington, 1992; Martin, 2001,
2002, in press; Martin et al, 2001a, 2001b, in
press; Thompson, 1994). When students feel
worthwhile and accepted only to the extent that
they achieve, this markedly raises the stakes of
every form of assessment. It is important for
educators to clearly communicate to children that
their worth as a person is not to be confused with
their achievement. Their worth as a person is not
conditional upon achieving highly. Indeed, the
more educators’ reactions to students’
achievement can be confined to students’
behaviour, strategy, and effort, the less students
will feel that their worth is under threat. Students
are then more likely to be receptive to the effort-
and behaviour-based feedback they are receiving
primarily because there is less motivation to react
in a defensive way aimed at redeeming or
protecting their sense of self and worth (Martin &
Marsh, in press).
Fear of success and the Impostor Phenomenon
There are many aspects of fear of success that are
relevant to the gifted and talented. For some
students, success sets them up for failure next
time. For these students, a good performance
means that the only place to go from there is
downward. Success can also position students as
different from their peers. In the context of
adolescents’ oftentimes-intense need to conform,
such success can be feared. Similarly, success
usually means the student has outperformed
others in the class and this can evoke concerns
that this will make them unpopular in some way
(Gilligan, 1982; Sassen, 1980; Winebrenner, 2001).
Moreover, success can arouse concerns in some
students’ minds that one day they will be ‘found
out’ and that their lack of ability will be exposed.
This phenomenon (the Impostor Phenomenon)
evokes thoughts and feelings in some students that
they are impostors masquerading as capable
students (Fried-Buchalter, 1992; Winebrenner,
2001).
Interestingly, what seems to underpin much of
these success-related fears is actually a fear of
failure. It is a fear of failure in relation to being
exposed as incapable, not attaining a particular
level of performance in the future, or undermining
peer relations. What underpins these fears is low
self-esteem (Davis & Rimm, 1998). According to
these students, they do not deserve success, they
will not be liked if they outperform other students,
and they do not take credit for their success –
rather, every success is another instance that they
managed to ‘get away with it’.
In the main, there are two particularly effective
ways to enhance most students’ self-esteem: (a)
building more success into their academic lives and
(b) challenging their negative thinking and
developing more positive self-talk (Martin, 2001,
2002, in press). The former — building more
success into students’ academic lives — is not
necessarily the most helpful in this situation
primarily because a lack of success is not a
problem. The latter — challenging negative
thinking and developing more positive self-talk —
is proposed here to be more effective for the
success fearers. Addressing students’ beliefs about
themselves primarily involves challenging their
negative thinking and showing them how to
develop more positive self-talk. Practitioners can
help them do this by encouraging them to observe
their automatic thoughts when they receive a mark
or are assigned schoolwork, look for the evidence
that challenges their potentially automatic
negative thinking, and challenge their negative
thoughts with this evidence (Alford & Beck, 1997;
Beck, 1976).
Perfectionism
Because gifted and talented students’ ability to
excel can be such a part of their identity (McNabb,
1997), they may go to excessive lengths to avoid
submitting schoolwork that falls short of
excellence. One way they attempt to attain
excellence is by striving for perfection. In doing
so, they hope to better guarantee that they will

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excel. In fact, because these students can garner a
great deal of praise and approval for excelling and
even perfecting, they may believe that failing to
perfect a task risks a reduction in praise and
approval. Indeed, perfectionists appear to be
driven by feelings of conditional self-acceptance
and are strongly motivated to fulfil the perceived
desires of significant others (Greenspon, 2000).
The difficulty with perfectionism is that it is not
necessarily easy to attain or it can be at the
expense of other school subjects or schoolwork.
For these reasons, researchers generally view
perfectionism as largely dysfunctional (Blatt, 1995;
Greenspon, 2000; Hewitt & Flett, 1991; Sorotzkin,
1998).
For some gifted and talented students,
perfectionism can also be a failure avoidance
strategy (Adderholdt-Elliot, 1989). For example,
their perfectionistic standards can be the excuse
for their relatively poorer performance (Davis &
Rimm, 1998; Rimm, 1997): it is not unreasonable
to have fallen short of the excessively high
standard they had set leading up to the exam.
Perfectionism can also be a means of justifying
procrastination or a lack of study: it is not
unreasonable to hold off working towards such a
high standard. Covington (1992, 1998) discusses
how the goals students set for themselves can in
fact be a form of self-sabotage in that the failure
lies in the selection of excessively high goals and
not necessarily one’s lack of ability.
When addressing perfectionism amongst students,
it is important to clearly recognise and
communicate the difference between excellence
and perfection. Many motivated students recognise
this difference and are satisfied with the former.
This means that they can tackle and complete
other assignments and study and do well across
many or all subjects. It may also be important to
set strict time limits, reading limits, writing limits,
or double-checking limits for some students, ask
students to articulate these parameters, and
encourage them to adhere to these parameters.
Another way to tackle perfectionism is to
encourage students to aim to be academic all-
rounders. For example, they might aim to become
good in many facets of schoolwork rather than
being perfect in just one or two.
Attaining an appropriate balance between
challenge and skill
Research suggests that students are most engaged
in what they do when their level of skill
appropriately matches the level of challenge.
Vygotsky (1978), for example, identified this as the
‘zone of proximal development’ and
Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi, 1982, 1985,
1990; Jackson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1999) has
identified this as ‘flow’. According to
psychologists, when individuals are in a flow state
they are absorbed by the task and are less inclined
to worry about how they compare with others or
how they will be evaluated.
It is suggested here that these concepts have
significant implications for gifted and talented
students who may not be engaged or absorbed by
the task and who may be excessively concerned
with how they will be evaluated. Flow
psychologists have outlined a framework for
conceptualising flow as well as the outcomes that
result where there is not sufficient balance
between challenge and skill (Csikszentmihalyi,
1982, 1985, 1990; Jackson & Csikszentmihalyi,
1999). As noted above, students are in flow and
totally absorbed and interested when the level of
challenge matches their level of skill. When the
level of challenge markedly exceeds their level of
skill, they feel anxious. When their level of skill is
low and the challenge is low, they are apathetic
(they believe they are not capable of doing it, and
in any case, it is not worth doing). Where the skill
level exceeds the challenge level, students may
first be relaxed but are soon bored. Indeed, the
latter student parallels many a disengaged gifted
student.
As the framework suggests, it is fundamental that
these students are presented with challenges that
are appropriately matched to their skill. Jackson
and Csikszentmihalyi (1999) also propose that in
addition to a balance between challenge and skill,
individuals must also have a sound self-belief and
sense of control. When a student is equipped with
the belief in his or her ability to succeed, the
sense of control over how to attain that success,
and the presence of a challenge that is worth
wrestling with, he or she is in an ideal position to
effectively engage with the task.
The way students view competition
The final motivation issue to address in relation to
gifted and talented students relates to
competition. Competition, for many
underachieving gifted and talented students, is
feared. Covington (1992) termed competition a
zero-sum game: for some students to win others
must lose. Losing for underachieving gifted and
talented students can reflect poorly on their core
identity (being able) and sense of worth
(Clinkenbeard, 1994). Indeed, gifted and talented
students who have a high fear of failure often
avoid competition unless they are likely to win
(Davis & Rimm, 1998). Because competition is part
and parcel of the high school system, students
must learn to effectively cope in a competitive
system. This is not to suggest that students or
classrooms need to be more competitive. Rather,
students can cope better in a competitive system
through a greater task focus in the classroom,

58 The Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 24 (2)
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more personalised standards and benchmarks for
excellence, and less focus on comparisons with
others.
This paper proposes a number of ways for
developing a greater focus on the task at hand and
for promoting personalised standards of excellence
in the classroom. The first is to increase the
emphasis on personal bests (Martin, 2001, 2002).
This reduces comparisons with others and places a
greater focus on personal standards and
benchmarks. Related to this, the second involves
making it clear to students that comparisons with
others can reduce their level of attention to the
task at hand. Moreover, relative to those who are
task oriented, students who are performance
oriented and focused more on comparisons with
others tend to possess less metacognitive
knowledge about their own cognitive processes and
use metacognitive strategies less frequently
(Schraw, Horn, Thorndike, & Bruning, 1995).
The third is to arouse curiosity whenever possible.
Curiosity directly invokes a task-based (not
performance- or comparison-based) orientation
and hooks students into the intrinsic (not extrinsic-
or reward-focused) elements of a task.
Encouraging active learning can be a fourth way to
direct students’ attention to the task at hand,
thereby reducing one’s competitive focus
(Winebrenner, 2001). Examples of active learning
include summarising schoolwork in one’s own
words, expanding on key ideas, drawing
mindmaps, brainstorming key ideas of a lesson,
discussion groups, role-playing, debating, as well
as practical and hands-on activities.
A fifth way to reduce the focus on competition
(yet operate comfortably within it) is through
explicit focus and valuing of broader notions of
achievement. Specifically, this entails emphasising
educational outcomes such as personal bests, skill
development, learning new things, understanding
new things, and solving problems (Martin, 2001,
2002, in press). This approach does not necessarily
require a devaluing of outcomes such as grades
and relative performance; however, it clearly
communicates to the student that there are
additional educational outcomes that are
worthwhile pursuing. Part of the focus on broader
achievements also involves emphasising effort and
strategy perhaps more than ability and
intelligence. These are unambiguously process-
related constructs and reduce the emphasis on
performance. Notwithstanding this, it will be
recalled that a focus on effort can imply a lack of
ability for some gifted and talented students and
where this is the case it may be more fruitful to
focus on the quality of effort (i.e., strategy) more
than the quantity of effort.
Conclusion
Research focusing on gifted and talented students
identifies some consistently emerging motivational
factors underpinning their approach to school and
schoolwork. These factors hold direct implications
for strategies educators can use to enhance
underachieving gifted and talented students’
motivation and sustain the high levels of
motivation demonstrated by those students who
are achieving to their potential. Taken together,
the research suggests that there are clear
motivational benefits to be gained by gifted and
talented children, as well as their teachers and
counsellors, through genuinely reworking these
students’ ideas of what it means to be smart,
positioning effort in a much healthier and positive
way, reworking their view of intelligence,
addressing their fear of failure and fear of success,
and gaining a good balance between challenge and
skill. Addressing some, most, or all of these factors
places gifted and talented students in a much
stronger position to achieve to their potential.
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Contact Details
Professor Andrew J. Martin
School of Education (Educational Psychology
Research Group)
University of New South Wales
Email: andrew.martin@unsw.edu.au
Biographical Note
Dr Andrew Martin is currently Professor of
Educational Psychology in the School of Education
at the University of New South Wales specializing
in motivation, engagement, achievement, and
quantitative research methods. He is also Honorary
Research Fellow in the Department of Education at
the University of Oxford, Honorary Professor in the
Faculty of Education and Social Work at the
University of Sydney, Fellow of the American
Educational Research Association, and President of
the International Association of Applied
Psychology’s Division 5 (Educational, Instructional,
and School Psychology).