Enhancing academic engagement of underachieving gifted students: The effects of Martin's educational program

INTRODUCTION: Gifted students are superior to their peers in terms of cognitive, educational, scientific, creativity, and artistic abilities. There are also gifted students who struggle with cognitive, educational, social, emotional, and behavioral development, especially academic performance. They are called underachieving students. One of the main problems of these students is the low level of academic engagement in educational settings. Thus, this study investigated the effectiveness of Martin's educational program on academic engagement (behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agency) of underachieving gifted students. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty underachieving gifted students were selected by purposeful sampling from a high school in Isfahan, Iran, and were divided randomly into the experimental (n = 15) and the control (n = 15) groups. All participants completed the students' academic engagement questionnaire (behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, and agency engagement) at pre/post-test. RESULTS: The findings showed that Martin's cognitive-behavioral program had a significant effect on academic engagement and its subscales, including behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, and agency engagement. CONCLUSION: School counselors could benefit Martin's cognitive-behavioral program to promote the academic engagement of underachieving gifted students.