Studenti universitari con disturbo specifico dell'apprendimento: implicazioni cliniche e pratica educativa

Abstract

Introduction In recent years, with the approval of Law No.170/2010, the number of the university students with Specific Learning Disorders in Italy has considerably increased. Despite this, the percentage of these students in the university population (around 1%) is still significantly lower than expected, especially when compared to the percentage of pupils with SLD in schools of all types and grades (around 5%). Moreover, as the most recent scientific literature show, still a significant number of young adults with SLD drop out at university. Additionally, there is another critical issue: the lack of knowledge about the characteristics of these disorders in adulthood. While a vast scientific literature is available regarding the difficulties of pupils with SLD during primary school, we are still far from an in-depth knowledge of the difficulties that an adult with SLD encounters during his university studies. Objectives On this basis, the present research project focused on the following objectives: to investigate the characteristics of SLD in adulthood, to analyse the difficulties reported by the students with SLD and to identify the barriers and the facilitators, which characterize their university experience. Results The results obtained have highlighted the presence of difficulties in reading, writing and calculating abilities even in adulthood. In this age group, university students with SLD continue to be slower and less accurate in reading and writing compared to adults without SLD and show weak calculation abilities. Additionally, the results demonstrate deficits in the working memory and the processing speed. These deficits are associated with difficulties in the tasks of rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness. Concerning the emotional and motivational aspects, our SLD group did not present high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem or poor resilience compared to controls. We then identified the main barriers and facilitators encountered by students with SLD in the university environment and during distance learning (initiated in the Covid-19 health emergency period), by means of qualitative surveys conducted according to the Student Voice approach. Finally, we included the results of the research period performed at the University of Burgos, Spain, under the supervision of Prof. Sonia Rodríguez Cano, consisting in the standardization of the Vinegrad questionnaire for the Spanish context.