Dyslexia and Academic Confidence

Klassen, R., 2002, A question of calibration: A review of the self-efficacy beliefs of students with learning disabilities, Learning Disability Quarterly, 25(2) pp. 88-102.

Commentary Part 2 – on self-efficacy:

Klassen provides an overview of the underpinning ideas on self-efficacy beliefs but is particularly reminding us that according to Bandura (1995), these are context specific evaluations of capability and comprise 4 core experiential components: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, communicative persuasion (specifically in social and verbal contexts) and interpretations of affective states.  So in terms of this my enquiry, the ‘context’ is academic output which includes the element of ‘achievement’ rather than is equivalent to it because we might include a range of academic activities and functions as contributory factors to OUTPUT.  In particular, these might be more formative assessments that seek to appraise and advise on learning processes rather than assess learning outcomes, but which might also include other more general functions in academic contexts such as expedience in the research and sourcing of knowledge support resources, or embracing more diverse or individualized ways of communicating knowledge and expressing ideas, for example that we might expect to come across in less writing-based study courses, arts-related perhaps, or in computing and information sciences, or in engineering to name a few.

So in the light of this introductory preamble, might we view making judgments about COMPETENCE in Bandura’s stated 4 experiential compenents as a collective measure of academic confidence? Perhaps so, despite Klassen referring us to a further paper from Zimmerman (1995) in Bandura’s (1995) edited collection, which suggests that self-efficacy beliefs are different from competence beliefs because the former are task-specific however my view is that there may be a need to be clearer about what constitutes ‘a task’ (Zimmerman) as equal to or different from ‘a context’ (Bandura) which adds another layer to the teasing-out process for locating academic confidence into the contexts of my project.

Klassen’s methodology:

Recalling the focus of Klassen’s paper, essentially a summary of self-efficacy research 1997-2000, it is of note that the my approach for this project is to gain an overview about published research on academic confidence, academic self-confidence and  academic behavioural confidence, as reported in an earlier post, which is similar to the procedure adopted by Klassen to search for prior research relating self-efficacy theory specifically to learning disabilities – much as any academic meta-analysis might be, setting aside the quantitative aspect of this.

The key criteria Klassen subsequently applied to analyse the collection of research studies  were enshrined in 5 questions:

• ‘What is the nature of the sample and what academic domains are included?’
• ‘Are gender differences in efficacy beliefs addressed?’
• ‘What is the main research question … and what are the outcomes in terms of self-efficacy?’
• ‘Are the efficacy beliefs of students with LDs [different] compared with the beliefs of normally-achieving or low-achieving students; if so, what are the differences?’
• ‘Is calibration addressed; if so what conclusions are drawn?’

I am struck by Klassen’s tacit assumption that students with LD are unlikely to be anything other than, at best, ‘normally achieving’ and it remains one of the main foci of this research project to establish that students with a learning profile that identifies with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) can be, and in many cases are ‘high-achievers’ along the spectrum of summative academic output.

Summary table of research reviewed by Klassen (2002, p43) – commentary continues beneath it. Highlighted in the table are the studies that focused on college/university-aged students, these being just 3 of the 22 research studies reviewed – I will be digesting these three studies in due course – and it is also notable that the scope of most of the studies was to explore the effectiveness of learning interventions using self-efficacy as an assessment parameter.

One interesting result that Klassen reports here refers to the research by Baum and Owen (1988) which was interested in ‘Why [do] bright, learning disabled children have such a poor sense of self-efficacy when they possess greater intellectual and creative potential?’ (p325; p14 in Klassen (2002)) suggesting that this may be related to their actual academic achievements persistently falling short of their own, high internal standards.  Now although their research was with children with an age equivalence to UK upper primary, it may be of note that even though not identified as such by Baum and Owen, a corollary to their explanation may be that this is an indication of how the stigmatization of ‘difference’ may impact on learners so that their academic output is at a standard below the level one might expect in relation to their intellectual capability.  Given that Baum and Owen’s research takes place a good decade ahead of the idea of academic confidence being more objectively formulated by Sander et al it is of no surprise that their research conclusions made no mention of this possibility. My conceptualization of academic confidence is becoming clearer by considering this as another explanation for the results of studies such as theirs by thinking about this as the impacting factor to explain discrepancies between expected and actual academic achievement in students with learning differences.  Taking this one stage further, we might expect ‘bright children’ to make it to university and that it is not unreasonable to suppose that they bring with them this ‘baggage’ of learning related emotions connected to their negatively impacting perceptions of their ‘learning differences’ to their academic output – aka ‘academic confidence’?

However, Klassen reports a further study conducted by Saracoglu et al (1989) with university students where the results suggested that there is no difference in ‘Global [= General] Self-Efficacy’ between the group with learning differences (disabilities) and the non-LD group. Additionally, and to confound matters further, a much later study by Slemon and Shafir (1997) exploring the calibration of efficacy and [academic?] performance between LD and ‘normally-achieving’ students found that there were not so much overall differences between the two groups but different patterns of mis-calibration, the most interesting feature of which was the better accuracy in estimating achievement potentials for the LD group although these students also showed lower levels of [academic?] optimism than their normally-achieving peers.  GoogleScholar reveals related research that has been conducted after Klassen’s paper which will be the subject of analysis and review, to be reported in a subsequent post.

All the research studies mentioned by Klassen relate to the construct of self-efficacy in its psycho-educational context of course, and the majority relate it to specific criteria. This is in line with Bandura’s original thinking that the construct is at the very least domain, if not task specific. It is clear to see that gaining an understanding of self-efficacy is fundamental to gaining an equally clear comprehension of the meaning of ‘academic confidence’ in the domain of university learning.

But the way I see academic confidence in the context of this project, (at the moment at least!) is more about it being an assessment of the feelings that an individual learner has to their perceived levels of competency in tackling ‘academic tasks‘. Now the point here is that from a professional viewpoint at least as Learning Developers in university contexts, we speak of striving to enable and empower the students we meet through professional interactions to find ways to increase and enhance their levels of competency in ‘academic skills’. This raises an interesting point: are ‘academic skills‘ an indicator of ‘academic competency‘ in a similar way that ‘mathematical skills‘ might be / are  an indicator of ‘mathematical competency’? Or is this analogy at fault because assessments of mathematical competency will invariably include assessments of mathematical knowledge since without possession of mathematical facts would it be possible to demonstrate mathematical competency? How could we assess a learner’s mathematical competency in, say, manipulating calculations in decimals without them having knowledge about the system of counting numbers and ‘place value’?

I am taking this thinking further by suggesting therefore that by considering the phrase ‘academic knowledge‘ we can shift the discussion into the same domain as ‘mathematical knowledge‘ provided a sensible understanding of what is meant by ‘academic knowledge‘ can be established in a such a way that is relatable to discipline-specific knowledge.  Academic knowledge, in the context of this discussion at least, perhaps may be aligned with the concept of ‘scholarship‘? I am  reminded of a very interesting and relatively recent paper by Kinchin et al (2008) where a discussion of the nature of ‘scholarship‘ is presented, albeit in the context of the scholarship of teaching in university learning environments. To discuss the paper further digresses from the thread in this  BlogPost so a more comprehensive discussion of the nature of scholarship may appear later in a subsequent post should this be deemed useful and relevant.

To return to the point and to tidy up with some summarizing of Klassen’s discussion points:

• A key fact is that the studies Klassen reviewed by and large show that ‘self-efficacy ratings are predictive of subsequent functioning’ (2002, p20) and later in his discussion  suggests that estimations of self-efficacy might be regarded as a form of metacognition (2002, p22) then citing research that supports the argument that learners with LD have been shown to be metacognitively deficient to some degree (Klassen’s eg: Butler, 1999) and further cites the study by Pintrich et al (1994), one of the papers in his review, which supports the same view.
• Another key fact is that Klassen’s review tells us that many of the studies he considered report mis-calibration of efficacy beliefs in students with LD but particularly that it is more common for these students to over-estimate their [academic] confidence than accurately, or under-estimate it. It is suggested that one factor that may explain this is the lack of ‘task demand awareness’ at the outset, as reported in the previous BlogPost referring to research by Butler (1999).  Klassen reminds us of the social cognitive theory that being optimistic about self-efficacy beliefs inclines learners to greater effort, determination and perseverance but adds that his synopsis of this collection of research studies reveals that ‘for students with learning problems, positive efficacy beliefs, especially in the face of academic weaknesses, might not operate in the same way as for normally-achieving students’.  Klassen summarizes this part of his discussion by suggesting therefore that if we are to consider self-evaluation as an internal reflective judgment about metacognition and/or self-knowledge then by severely mis-judging efficacy this is certainly generating a substantially less-than-accurate self-knowledge which may be academically harmful (2002, p24).  This is interesting and a factor that I had not previously considered, and I am now reflecting on how this may impact on data collected on Academic Behavioural Confidence in the final part of this research because it may emerge that students with identified dyslexia – research group DI (see the Research Design page for a refresh on research groups) – may in fact produce higher (than expected) scores on the ABC Scale which is counter-intuitive and which might be directly attributable to mis-calibration. This will need thinking about.
• On methodological issues that Klassen identifies in the studies reviewed, the most significant reported was described as ‘conceptual blurring’ by which is meant a level of departure from principal definition of self-efficacy in the broad body of social cognitive theory literature. Pajares (1997) has also cautioned researchers to take methodological care when working in an unfamiliar territory of motivation constructs so I must take precautions to ensure that use of such constructs in the development of the methodology for this project are clearly understood and correctly employed.
• A final factor of note is Klassen once more pointing us to Pajares’ extensive work on self-efficacy to recount that generalized self-efficacy measurements used to assess confidence in tackling tasks or dealing with situations are by their very definition not specific to the nature of these tasks and situations.  We are reminded that this can lead (and has led) to the de-contextualized use of self-efficacy measures by assuming them to be markers of fixed personality traits rather than more accurately considering the domains of functioning to which the self-efficacy is attributed.  Klassen further cites studies from his review (eg: Baum & Owen, 1988 amongst others) that sought to gauge self-efficacy without clarifying a domain of functioning, reasoning that although unspecified, we might assume that this is the academic domain and hence the studies are locating their self-efficacy measures in terms of academic functioning (which, by the way, I attempt to comment on in the ‘Commentary’ attached to a previous BlogPost).  Klassen also draws focus to weaknesses in understanding about the self-efficacy beliefs people possess when operating in domains that are comprised of numerous sub-domains. In the context of this research project this is an important idea to understand as it is well-researched feature of dyslexia that it can be a disparate blend of strengths and weaknesses, especially amongst learners with the intellectual capacity to function in university learning environments to one degree or another. In this vein, The Researcher has already reflected on sub-domains within the suggested bi-directional relationship between academic confidence and academic output with an attempt made to visualize this in the first of the Literature Review Maps that will be supporting this PhD project.

I am encouraged by closing remarks in Klassen’s paper that suggest directions for future research:

• accurate measurement of self-efficacy beliefs in students with LD is more complex than indicated by previous (to 2002 presumably) practice;
• self-efficacy research with LD groups needs to be conducted in different ways than to date;
• using qualitative measures to validate quantitative analysis seems prudent;

all of which are consistent with my scoping and planning of this project.