Identifying Australian Aboriginal Children with High Academic Potential Using Dynamic Testing

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of dynamic testing as a method for identifying high academic potential in Australian Aboriginal children. The 79 participating children were all Aboriginal and were drawn from Years 3-5 in rural schools in northern New South Wales. The dynamic testing method used in this study involved a test-intervention- retest format where the intervention was designed to address predicted causes of underachievement. In order to gain insight into the school performance of identified academically gifted Aboriginal children eight case studies were developed using interview and academic performance data. To enhance further the academic profile of the participating children, self-concept and academic locus of control data were collected. The dynamic testing results showed that many of the participating children were academic underachievers. Furthermore, the children identified as having high academic potential were most affected by underachievement. The dynamic testing method used in the present study proved to be an effective identification tool, revealing high academic potential in similar proportions to those in the instrument normative population. Other commonly used methods of determining academic giftedness have had less success with Aboriginal children. All of the case participating children were shown to be underachievers, seven of them as 'invisible' underachievers, a term coined for the present study in the absence of a suitable definition to account for the child who underperforms both in the classroom and on some measures of assessed aptitude for achievement. The case study and dynamic testing data together revealed that the academic underachievement of the participating children resulted from a combination of metacognitive inefficiency and socio-emotional factors. Foremost amongst the latter were expectation issues related to both the teachers and the children. The involuntary minority status of the participating children was the likely dominant factor in the expectation issues. The present study has implications for both gifted education and Aboriginal education generally. These implications arise from the findings of this study that many of the children were 'invisible' underachievers and that it is possible to identify this underachievement in the dynamic testing process.