oa Beter leren rekenen gaat samen met grotere zekerheid, beter leren spellen met meer twijfel

Increasing competence in arithmetics leads to greater confidence, but with improvement in spelling doubt increases

To explore the relation between academic confidence and ability, an arithmetic and a spelling test were administered to 166 students in grades 4 and 5. For each item, students indicated whether they were confident about their answer. The agreement (‘calibration’) between confidence and test performance is limited. Overestimation of performance exceeds underestimation. Confidence is not a general characteristic of a student, but is dependent upon school domain and ability in that domain. Overestimation of arithmetic performance hardly differs between grades, but overestimation of spelling turns into underestimation. Apparently, the increase in ability leads to an increase in confidence in case of arithmetic, but turns into ‘suspicion’ in the spelling domain. Boys are more confident than girls, even if the answer is wrong. Girls excel in the identification of wrong answers.