Do Students Correctly Estimate Their Reading Ability? A Study of Stockholm Students in Grades 3 and 8

Abstract

Data from a survey in Stockholm are used to look at differences between how students' self-concepts and self-efficacy relate to actual reading skills, differences between how boys and girls estimate their reading, and differences between how older and younger students estimate their reading.A quarter of the students made correct self-assessments of their reading. A majority overestimated their skills. The ability to self-assess reading skills among boys and girls seems to depend on how they are asked. There was only a small difference in favor of older students when students in Grades 3 and 8 were compared.

The relationship between students’ self-assessed reading skills and other measures of achievement

“…In general, girls had a clearly more positive attitude than boys toward reading. A previous study from Sweden, also conducted with a sample of primary school children, found the association between general reading performance and self-assessment to be fairly equal for boys and girls (Fredriksson et al, 2011). I could find no evidence in my study of SES influencing the students' selfassessments relative to their overall test scores in PIRLS.…”

“…Kuncel et al (2005) meta-analysis of ability to make accurate self-assessments across different student groups was inconclusive as to whether gender and/or other demographic variables influence the validity of self-assessments. In a study from Sweden, Fredriksson et al (2011) found the association between general self-assessment and scores on a reading test was almost the same for both boys and girls in both Grades 3 and 8. However, there were indications that Grade 3 girls were slightly better than Grade 3 boys at making general self-assessments of their reading skills.…”

“…McDonald and Boud (2003) also found positive effects of self-assessment on achievement across a range of subjects for older students. However, despite positive findings such as these, several researchers, among them Blatchford (1997) and Fredriksson et al (2011), have found only modest correlations between student self-assessment and criterion variables. In the primary school years, predictive validity is perhaps not an issue, but it is still essential that self-assessments are a fairly accurate indicator of skill level if they are to serve as a basis for students' further learning.…”

Examining the relationship between grit and academic achievement within K‐12 and higher education: A systematic review

“…Given that grit mainly represented how the individuals perceived their current effort and interest toward long‐term goals, it is very likely that one's perception about him/herself varies the results. For example, Fredriksson et al () reported that younger children tended to overestimate their self‐efficacy and school abilities. Such differences may result in different relationship patterns with outcome variables.…”

How well do capability assessments reflect actual capability? An experimental study of capability assessments with multi-actor dependencies

“…Studies with individual capability assessments have shown that people in general underestimate the timeframe of large tasks and overestimate the timeframe for small tasks (Halkjelsvik et al 2011), underestimate the timeframe to fulfil a task (Dunning et al 2004), overestimate their driving skills (Mynttinen et al 2009), overestimate their reading skills (Fredriksson et al 2011) and a majority describes themselves being above average in ambiguous traits (Dunning et al 2004). A study which included both individual and peer capability assessments have shown that people of individualistic cultures overestimated their generous manner and underestimated their negative behaviours, although they were about right regarding their peers, while members of collective cultures on the other hand had more accurate prediction both regarding their own and their peers' positive and negative behaviour (Balcetis et al 2008).…”