Dr Oluseyi Akintunde Dada, Dr German-James Effa Anagbogu, Dr Josephine Damsel Nanjwan, Augustine Undiugweundemaye Ani & Raymond Ogbebe Ogar
Abstract
Gifted underachievement is a serious threat to potential achievement and national development. There is, therefore, an urgent need to search for and apply effective therapy as an intervention to correct and improve particularly Mathematics achievement for gifted and talented students. This study, therefore, examined the efficacy of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) in enhancing Mathematics self-efficacy and achievement of underachieving gifted students in Calabar, Nigeria. The study adopted an experimental design. The sample consists of 160 participants who show evidence of giftedness but underachieve in Mathematics and have low Mathematics self-efficacy. The sample was randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Pretest and posttest were conducted and the instruments used were Intelligent Test, Mathematics Achievement Test and Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale. MANCOVA was used for data analysis. Findings showed that REBT enhanced significantly the Mathematics achievement and self-efficacy of the participants. It was concluded that Mathematics underachievement and self-efficacy can be prevented or reversed with the appropriate use of REBT. It was recommended, among others, that school-wide assessment should be conducted to identify Mathematics gifted underachievers with low self-efficacy, and that REBT should be used to reverse the trend in Nigerian Schools.