How Gender Affects Schooling and

Learning: Being Male

Andow, Mary JoArnold, SarahBarber, Jessica

Belliveau, MatthewBernard, Tara

Blair, Kali

Are you a boy or a girl? Let’s STEREOTYPE!

1. What do you perceive to be the differences between boys and girls? Differences in the classroom?

2. Does this change as they move throughout the school system (from elementary to secondary)?

Boys Learning / Schooling

•What we will present are various POV’s (Points of View)

•Psychologists, authors, journalists, teachers, parents, etc. have varying viewpoints on the experience of boys in the classroom

•We suggest examining all views and taking what is most pertinent (in your view) to the classroom

Is it Nature? Ask Dr. Oz

•Brain Biology:

• The brain is divided into the right and left hemispheres

• The left hemisphere is the logical, detail-oriented side of the brain in charge of analyzing, conceiving and executing plans.

• The right hemisphere sees the big picture and specializes in detecting and responding to unexpected stimuli and how objects interrelate in space

• In the womb the developing brain is exposed to hormones that affect how it forms; boys get more testosterone, which favors development of the left side of the brain and girls get more estrogen, which sparks more connections throughout the brain.

Is it Nature? Ask Dr. Oz•Inside a Boy’s brain:• When it comes to language boys are all left sided• They have less activity all around making their

brains "less alert“• They have a smaller corpus callosum, the bridge

between the two hemispheres• The memory center is smaller and fight or flight

center is bigger

•What this means:• Boys tend to have a low attention span and need

more novelty• They like to get to the point quickly and directly• They rely on and enjoy more spatial mechanical

activities over words and talking

Or is it Nurture?

• Alice Eagly: Gender is a social experience

• Boys are reared with different social experiences which in turn cause a difference in behaviour compared to girls

• Think about the “Pink and Blue” treatment in infants. Boys are given trucks to play with and girls are given dolls. Parents let boys be more aggressive and require girls to be more reserved

• Since aggression is more tolerated in males at home it is also more tolerated from them at school.

• In North America we tend to be more disapproving of males who exhibit feminine traits than we are of females who exhibit male traits.

POV: Boys Amidst an Educational CrisisPeg Tyre, Newsweek (01/30/06)

•Boys in every demographic are falling behind in school

•Boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes

•"Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?" says Thompson. "And if it does, he isn't going to do it.“

•Boys doing worse than girls on standardized reading and writing tests

•Boys bring to kindergarten a set of physical and mental abilities very different from girls'. Boys tend to have better hand-eye coordination, but their fine motor skills are less developed, making it a struggle for some to control a pencil or a paintbrush.

•In elementary-school classrooms—where teachers increasingly put an emphasis on language and a premium on sitting quietly and speaking in turn—the mismatch between boys and school can become painfully obvious. "Girl behavior becomes the gold standard," says "Raising Cain" coauthor Thompson. "Boys are treated like defective girls."

POV: What Crisis?Education Sector Think Tank + The AAUW

• Boys in school are, in many ways, doing better than ever

• “…much of the pessimism about young males seems to derive from inadequate research, sloppy analysis and discomfort with the fact that although the average boy is doing better, the average girl has gotten ahead of him”

• The real story is not that boys are doing worse, but that girls are doing better

• Reading Achievement:– 9-year-old boys increased 15 points between 1971 and 2004, and girls that age

increased seven points, remaining five points ahead of boys – 13-year-olds improved four points for boys and three points for girls, with girls

10 points ahead

• Mathematics Achievement: – 9-year-old boys gained 25 points and girls gained 20 points between 1971 and

2004 with boys ending up three points ahead– Thirteen-year-old boys increased 18 points and girls 12 points, with boys three

points ahead

• AAUW says academic success is income based rather than gender based, citing that students from families with incomes $37,000 or below score lower in math and reading

• Both research reports noted that a focus on sex differences could sidetrack efforts to put more resources into inner-city and rural schools, where both boys and girls need better instruction

POV: David Sadker: He Wrote the Stuff That Shaunda Made you Read for Today

•Sadker’s Overall View: Neither boys nor girls rule in school

•School is portrayed as a place in which boys are victims and girls rule – Sadker presents evidence that such a world does not exist

•Girls and boys confront different school challenges and respond in different ways

•Boys tend to have lower grades and are more likely to be grade repeaters

•Boys score higher in verbal and math national assessment tests

•Boys still dominate in physics, calculus and more advanced courses

•Boys trail females in participation in extracurricular activities

More Sadker

• Boys are the minority (44%) of students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate institutions

• Boys receive more teacher attention

• Boys are disciplined more harshly

• Boys count for 71% of school suspensions

• Boys constitute 60% of high school athletes

• Men make up 99% of corporate chief executive officers in America’s 500 largest companies

• Men constitute 16% of elementary teachers and 7% of nurses

• Both boys and girls exhibit different strengths and have different needs. Gender stereotypes short-change us all!

Forget the Experts. Let’s Ask the Boys!

What do these boys tell us about their needs in the classroom?

VIDEO

How do we Teach Boys?

• “Helping Boys Succeed” by Deborah Taylor & Maureen Lorimer– Offer more technology– Use multiple literacy strategies– Encourage mentoring relationships– Incorporate more Action-Oriented Activities– Investigate Single-Gender Schools and Classes

• Rather than perpetuating the stereotypes, how can we use teaching methods that cover a variety of learning needs?

• Use spatial methods of teaching rather than a pure focus on verbal-linguistic methods. Again, this will help boys, but probably some girls as well!

• They key is to differentiate. Reach as many different students as possible. This is a great thing to do for our boys without overlooking the needs of girls

That’s our opinion, but lets see what an in-service teacher has to say about boys …

VIDEO

Discussion Questions / Collaboration

• Which point of view from this presentation do you think has been most true in your experience?

• Is there value in understanding differences between girls and boys? Why or why not?

• Will understanding gender differences change how you treat boys in your classes? How you teach them?

• Give us your ideas on how we can improve the learning experience for boys from kindergarten to grade 12.

Thanks for Listening

Questions?

References

• http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/aauw_study_says_no_boys_crisis

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/AR2006062501047.html

• Sadker & Sadker

• http://www.michaelgurian.com/newsweek_1_22_05.html

• http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/battle-sexes

• Alice Eagly in Psychology (Third Canadian Edition)

• Deborah Taylor & Maureen Lorimer in “Helping Boys Succeed”