OVERACHIEVEMENT AND COPING STRATEGIES IN ADOLESCENT MALES

How to assist young people to achieve to their potential is a universa l concern of educators. The relationship between achievement above tha t expected on the basis of IQ alone (often referred to as overachievem ent) in school assessment and preferred coping style, as assessed by t he Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS, Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), was inves tigated in a group of 374 boys in Grades 9, 10 and 11 at an independen t boys' school in metropolitan Melbourne. Separate partial correlation analyses for each of the three year levels showed that three of the c oping strategies, Work and Achieve, Solve the Problem, and Social Supp ort positively correlated with overachievement at all three levels. Ot her subscales also correlated significantly atone or other of the grad e levels. It was concluded that overachievement may be better regarded as approaching one's full potential by the use of optimal coping stra tegies and avoidance of alternative responses to stress which appear t o be non-productive.