The Human Side of Dyslexia: An Exploration of Children's Self-Esteem and Potential Interventions

Introduction

Over the past decades, dyslexia has intrigued the interest of experts from various disciplines such as medicine, psychology, linguistics, pedagogy and social sciences assessing all its different facets (Helland, 2020). However, research has been mainly conducted within the strand of linguistic theory (Uppstad & Tønnessen, 2007) and has focused upon issues of etiology and remediation, neglecting the human side of dyslexia, that is the personal and socio-emotional needs of children with dyslexia (Burden, 2005). In fact, there has been a paucity of research on dyslexia and self-esteem (Burden, 2008; Glazzard, 2010), although self-esteem is suggested to play a significant role in children’s psychological wellbeing, social functioning and cognitive development (Paulus et al., 2018). Both children’s and adults’ performance on different tasks (e.g., work, school) tend to be related to their self-perceptions (Cvencek et al., 2018). Education has set the boosting of students’ self-concept as a goal and a desirable outcome, since it may act as mediator facilitating academic achievement (Shavelson & Bolus, 1982). Therefore, the intention of the present paper is to discuss the emotional aspects of dyslexia in association with children’s self-perceptions. More specifically, the paper will provide an overview of recent literature analysing the notion of dyslexia, the notions of global self-esteem and specific-domain self-concepts, the relationship between dyslexia and children’s self-perceptions and feelings towards themselves, as well as proposed interventions.