Stealing from the Future or The Dangers of Coasting

It sounds like the ideal in some ways, not having to put in too much effort to get results, but it can quietly steal from the future.

Coasting along not having to put in much effort to achieve the desired results is likely to mean never learning healthy work or study skills. It provides very little opportunity to practice persistence, a quality that is considered to be one of the most important in success in life. It is also likely to result in little real learning. At worst it can have an impact on health, both physically and mentally and the dysfunction can become engrained in the personality, with an expectation that everything will come easily and an unwillingness to put in any effort. 

Even a child who is working at a level well ahead of their age mates can stop learning if the learning environment doesn’t meet their needs. Letting the child coast, languishing in an environment where the curriculum is at a level lower than their learning level or progressing at a pace too slow for that particular child, even for part of a year, can have consequences. Self esteem can plummet, love of learning can disappear, and knowledge and achievement levels can actually go backwards. Depending on the personality of the child, willingness to cooperate or to be patient waiting for others to catch up can also take a dive.

Studies conducted in the northern hemisphere with their long summer break provide some insight into what happens when children are not actively learning. For some children (particularly those without enriched environments out of school) significant regression in achievement levels have been shown after the summer break. Anecdotal comments from teachers in Australia also suggest that even our shorter summer break has a similar effect. (Perhaps this is why schools use tests for the year just completed at the start of the new school year to find out what the kids know instead of using the end of year tests for the current year level, which would at least provide insight into what the students don’t know, or need to learn that year. It would be an effective pre-test but that is a post for another time).

At the Asia Pacific Federation for Giftedness conference in Singapore in 2008 James Stronge from the College of William and Mary presented some interesting research on teacher quality and effectiveness. He outlined the way the gains from an effective teacher can still be evident 3 – 5 years later. Similarly the negative impacts of an ineffective teacher can also last 3 – 5 years. While our children may be able to largely recover from one ‘bad’ year (equating to a year in which they learned little), two back to back has significant long term impacts on learning trajectory. Lost learning time is lost, but it is the impact on motivation which is perhaps more cumulative.

The results of coasting along, the expectation that learning is easy and the lack of opportunity to develop the skills of how to learn often catch up with gifted students in the high school years where they are faced with an increase in new content and expectations. For some the safe choice is to avoid challenge, further compounding the problems of coasting and the impact on self esteem. It is often at this point that less able students who have experienced a better match between their needs and the curriculum offered and who developed ‘academic resilience’ as a result, out perform gifted ‘coasters’.

Gifted students need achievable challenge to grow as learners, to reach into their gifted potentials and develop skills such as flexibility, perseverance, interest, and inventiveness.

Parents are in an ideal position to monitor their child’s enthusiasm for learning. Many parents have told me of their concern that the sparkle in their child’s eyes, or their flame for learning being the catalyst to finding out more about their child’s needs. Remembering that many children show the teacher what they perceive he or she wants to see, the teacher may be oblivious to the changes that you can see as a parent. While being involved in your child’s educational path might not be what you had planned, as a parent of a gifted child it can pay dividends.

Coasting vs Consolidation
Coasting is different to consolidation. This is where after a period of learning, mastering new challenges, the child steps back for a time while this new learning is assimilated with what they already know. When a gifted child is working at an appropriate level, they will probably need to spend about 10% of their time consolidating. Coasting tends to be long term, a bit like taking a stroll instead of jogging.