Academic confidence and dyslexia at university

This study explored how university students' academic confidence may be affected by them being identified as dyslexic. Contemporary views of dyslexia range from considering it primarily as a literacy-based, specific learning difficulty (BDA, 2017), to a multi-factorial information processing difference (Tamboer et.al., 2016). Currently, and by defining dyslexia as a disability, dyslexia-identified students at university in the UK are entitled to receive academic support to enable equitable engagement with their studies. Confidence is a robust dimensional characteristic of individual differences (Stankov, 2012) and academic confidence has been defined as the level of strong belief, firm trust, or sure expectation of responses to the demands of studying at university (Sander & Sanders, 2006a). Academic confidence has been linked to academic capability and ultimately, to academic achievement (de la Fuente et.al., 2013). In this study, academic confidence was gauged using the Academic Behavioural Confidence (ABC) Scale, a metric designed to explore and explain differences in the study behaviours and learning strategies of students at university (Sander and Sanders, 2003, 2006a, 2009). The ABC Scale draws from the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) of Bandura, and particularly the application of SCT to learning through the concept of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), considered as the parent construct of academic confidence (op cit, 2006a). Data was collected by self-report questionnaire from a sample of n=166 university students, who had declared either a dyslexic learning difference or not. By comparing differences in ABC between students with dyslexia and those with no identified dyslexia, evidence emerged that the non-dyslexic students showed significantly higher levels of academic confidence than their dyslexia-identified peers, principally indicated by a moderate-to-large effect size range (0.532 < g < 1.086). From the non-dyslexic group, a sub-group of quasi-dyslexic students was identified, being those who presented attributes and characteristics that were similar to those in the dyslexic group. To achieve this, a fresh metric was developed, the Dyslexia Index (Dx) Profiler, which framed dyslexia through the lens of study skills and learning behaviours at university. Existing dyslexia screeners were considered to be ethically inappropriate for this study. The academic confidence of students in the quasi-dyslexic group was compared to those in the dyslexic group, and the remainder of the non-dyslexic group. The quasi-dyslexic students also had substantially higher levels of academic confidence in comparison to their dyslexia-identified peers, indicated by a small-to-moderate effect size range (0.184 < g < 0.406). For students in the dyslexic group, significant differences in ABC were also revealed as a function of how these students were told of their dyslexia, with those whose dyslexia had been diagnosed as a disability showing the lowest levels of ABC. To further explore more nuanced differences between the groups, both principal component analysis and a tentative regression analysis were used. The main conclusion drawn from the analysis outcomes was to suggest that identifying dyslexia in university students may be counter-productive, because this might negatively impact on academic confidence, and possibly on academic achievement