Abstract: this article is based on the prevalent low throughput rate which is a consequent of low performance of previously disadvantaged students who enter engineering studies at the south african universities. A different view from current research of resolving this problem is proposed. Research on the poor performance for these students tends to point fingers at external factors such as poor schooling for the disadvantaged. This article highlights the overlooked positive attribute about black engineering students, namely, their excellent academic achievement in high schools which gained them entry into the engineering programs at the university. Research on gifted education regards these students as exhibiting schoolhouse giftedness. Therefore, the article suggests that these youngsters are actually underachieving, which is a reversible phenomenon. In line with studies on the development of talent, nurturing environment and inappropriate self-theories are put forward as the factors for these students’ underachievement. Furthermore, interpersonal expectancy effect theory is proposed as the basis for future interventions to address the problem of underachievement in engineering studies at the universities.
Keywords: Black engineering students, failure, gifted students, academic underachievement.
Title: Failure or Underachievement of the gifted? Towards Understanding the Predicament of disadvantaged in Engineering Studies,
Author: Duduzile R. Mkhize
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3164 (online), ISSN 2348-3156 (Print)
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