Volksschule bald männerfreie Zone

[Kleine Zeitung, 18.04.2010]

Nur noch acht Prozent der Volksschullehrer sind männlich. Was sind die Folgen, wenn männliche Bezugspersonen fehlen?

Harald Schabus gehört einer Minderheit an. Der Grazer Volksschullehrer zählt zu jener Minderheit männlicher Pädagogen, die sich in der Steiermark noch um die jüngsten Schulkinder kümmern. 3768 Lehrerinnen stehen nur noch 332 Lehrern gegenüber. Ein österreichweiter Trend, der sich seit Jahren verstärkt. Immerhin unterrichteten 1971 noch 45 Prozent männliche Pädagogen in den Volksschulen.

Ursachen für den dramatischen Rückgang gibt es viele. Harald Schabus führt ihn unter anderem auf Bezahlung und Image zurück. Warum er selbst sich für die Volksschule entschieden hat? "Die Arbeit mit jüngeren Kindern war mir sympathischer, weil sie noch offener sind. Was man gibt, bekommt man zurück."
Als einen der Gründe für den Rückgang ortet auch der Innsbrucker Pädagogik-Professor Josef Aigner das veränderte Berufsbild und den Imageverlust. "Die kognitive Wissensvermittlung ist früher im Vordergrund gestanden, heute ist es der sozial-pädagogische Bereich. Männer wollen aber Wissen vermitteln. Dazu kommt, dass Lehrer bei uns als halbtags beschäftigte Fußabstreifer der Nation gelten."

Wesentlich für Aigner ist eine Änderung der gesamten Ausbildung: "Wir bräuchten ein Image des Volksschullehrers als Spezialist für die Kindheit insgesamt."
Über die Auswirkungen des "Weiblichkeitskäfigs", in dem sich Kinder zunehmend befinden, sind sich Experten noch uneinig. "Wir wissen es nicht genau. In einer weiblich betonten Welt finden aber männliche Eigenschaften weniger Platz. Im Kindergarten haben wir gesehen, dass Kinder mehr toben, körperlich stärker agieren, sobald ein Mann mit ihnen spielt. Sie müssen weniger unterdrücken."
Harald Schabus kommt nach 26-jähriger Berufserfahrung zu einem ähnlichen Schluss: "Buben brauchen das männliche Vorbild. Es wäre wünschenswert, wenn Kinder mehr männliche Bezugspersonen hätten."

Die stellvertretende Präsidentin des Landesschulrates, Elisabeth Meixner, kennt das Problem seit Langem. "Die Schulen verweiblichen. Tragischerweise geschieht das fast unbemerkt und es gibt kaum Strategien, um diesem Trend entgegenzuwirken." In einem Pilotprojekt ermöglicht sie nun AHS-Schülern, Volksschulen zu besuchen. "In den nächsten zehn Jahren geht die Hälfte der Lehrer in Pension. Ziel wäre es, möglichst viele Männer für diesen Beruf zu gewinnen."

Wer hat Schuld an der "Krise der Buben"?

[Science.orf.at, 04.05.2010]

LINK

A framework for ‘best practice’ in boys’ education: key requisite knowledges and Productive Pedagogies

Amanda Keddie
Faculty of Education
University of Southern Queensland

Abstract

In enhancing the social and academic outcomes of boys, positive teacher-student relationships and quality pedagogy that is informed by key research-based understandings and knowledges about gender are positioned as central. The managerial rather than pedagogical focus currently characterizing Queensland (Australia) schools, where the acquisition of basic skills are seen as more important than students‟ intellectual engagement, can be seen as constraining boys‟ academic and social development. In examining what might constitute „best practice‟ in boys‟ education, this paper draws on significant socio-cultural research in the area of gender, masculinity and schooling to define the key understandings and knowledges seen as necessary for teachers to effectively construct and apply contextually driven pedagogic strategies to improve educational and social outcomes. The Productive Pedagogies framework of quality
teaching and learning (The State of Queensland, 2001) is presented as potentially generative in this regard. This framework is presented here as a way forward for teachers in moving beyond the „common sense‟ and prescriptive approaches that continue to drive much of the curriculum and pedagogy in our schools and more specifically many of the programs designed to address the educational needs of boys. In drawing on understandings of gender inequities as a product of social practice, the paper illuminates how teachers can adopt the Productive Pedagogies framework in connecting with boys in intellectually engaging ways to explore their understandings of gender and masculinity and broaden their appreciation of difference and diversity.

LINK

Equally prepared for life [2009]

HOW 15-YEAR-OLD BOYS AND GIRLS PERFORM IN SCHOOL
PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)

LINK

Boys, Engagement, Bullying/Cyber-Bullying & Learning

Australasian Boys Education Network

NATIONAL CONFERENCE SERIES 2008

>April 21 Melbourne
>May 9 Adelaide
>May 12 Perth
>May 15 Brisbane
>May 16 Sydney

LINK

Getting boys' education 'right'

Titre du document / Document title
Getting boys' education 'right' : the Australian government's parliamentary inquiry report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics = Obtenir une 'bonne' éducation des garçons : le rapport parlementaire de l'enquête du gouvernement australien comme exemple de la politique de récupération du masculin

Auteur(s) / Author(s)
MILLS Martin (1) ; MARTINO Wayne (2) ; LINGARD Bob (3) ;
Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)(1) The University of Queensland, AUSTRALIE(2) University of Western Ontario, CANADA(3) The University of Edinburgh, ROYAUME-UNI

Résumé / Abstract
This paper focuses on the Australian federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys' Education, Boys: Getting it Right, which is shown to be an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. The paper demonstrates how, through a variety of rhetorical strategies, its anti-feminist politics are masked and how the report works with essentialised differences between boys and girls. The argument is demonstrated through a focus on a number of the report's recommendations, including the call for a recasting of current gender policy, the need for creating so-called 'boy-friendly' curricula, assessment and pedagogical practices, and for employment of more male teachers. The report draws on populist literature and submissions from the boys' lobby, as well as practice-oriented submissions to the neglect of theoretically oriented and (pro-)feminist work. As such, the significance of the construction of masculinities to boys' attachment to and performances in school is totally neglected, limiting the value of the report's recommendations for improving schooling for both boys and girls.

Revue / Journal
TitleBritish journal of sociology of education (Br. j. sociol. educ.) ISSN 0142-5692

Source / Source
2007, vol. 28, no1, pp. 5-21 [17 page(s) (article)] (2 p.)

Langue / Language
Anglais

Editeur / Publisher
Taylor and Francis, Abingdon, ROYAUME-UNI (1980) (Revue)

Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords
Gender difference ; Gender ; School ; Male domination ; Boy ; Male ; Educational Policy ; Australia ;

Mots-clés français / French Keywords
Essentialisme ; Différence selon le sexe ; Genre ; Ecole ; Domination masculine ; Garçon ; Masculin ; Politique de l'éducation ; Australie ;

Localisation / Location
INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 22239, 35400015931000.0010

Conference puts spotlight on boys' education

1233 ABC Newcastle, July 4, 2007

University academics from across the world have gathered in Newcastle for a two-day conference aimed at improving educational outcomes for boys.

The Working with Boys, Building Fine Men conference starts today, and will discuss a range of initiatives, including mentoring programs.

Guest speaker John Andriunas says he will highlight the success of his program which tries to get fathers more involved in their sons' schooling.

"Mums have been the care givers throughout the history of our children and they look after the kids right from birth right through preschool and school," he said.

"We don't want to take anything away from the mothers, but we have found that the educational outcomes, social outcomes for children if their fathers are involved are a lot higher."

Back to basics for successful boys

"The reason for this is clear: boys do have a different way of working from girls", The New Zealand Herald, Friday April 29, 2005


John Morris

The Minister of Education has recently set up a think tank to investigate the reasons why boys are not achieving as well as girls in the secondary school system.

It is not before time. In 2000 I wrote a piece for the Herald outlining the growing disparity in achievement between the genders.

In the interim the situation has become worse, largely because of the introduction of NCEA. The resultant increase in on-course assessment has been well proven to favour the way that girls work and further militate against boys achieving to their potential.

In Australia, Britain and the United States there has been voluminous work done on this issue and the minister has wisely suggested that a review of the available literature would be one of this think tank's tasks.

I am delighted that the ministry is also doing some research on this topic. In the past, intensive independent research has not been a strong point of the ministry or New Zealand Qualifications Authority. If it had been I am sure NCEA would have a vastly different look about it than it does today.

One key part of the research for the four principals chosen for the think tank (two of whom lead South Island boys' schools) should be to talk to other heads of boys' schools around the country, particularly those schools that have a proven record of academic success in external exams.

These people, more than most, know how boys work and what works with boys.
Boys' schools are uniquely placed in this regard because, unencumbered, they are able to operate best practice for boys.

They do not necessarily have to consider political correctness and pedagogical orthodoxies, because they can focus exclusively on what is best for boys alone.
There have long been arguments about whether boys do better in single-sex schools than in co-educational schools.

From my experience teaching for 31 years, 20 of those in boys' schools ranging from decile 3 to 10, I believe strongly that boys in boys' schools outperform boys in co-educational schools.

A glance at the 2003 University Bursary league tables will give an indication of this. While boys' schools account for fewer than 10 per cent of the country's schools in total, five of the top 20 performing schools in Bursary last year were single-sex boys' schools - 25 per cent.

This is not an aberration. The academic success of boys' schools can be traced back throughout the history of Bursary exams.

The reason for this is clear: boys do have a different way of working from girls. This requires an approach to teaching and learning that is different from today's accepted orthodoxy.

Boys' schools that recognise these differences are able to implement strategies and programmes that suit the way boys learn and therefore enhance boys' prospects of academic success.

There are undoubtedly many things that impact on the academic success of boys but experience would suggest there are 10 non-negotiable traits that need to be implemented to ensure they reach their academic potential.

They are, in no particular order:

* Structured teaching and clear organisation.
* Discipline and order with few distractions.
* Clear targets set and met.
* Competition.
* Work that is meaningful and challenging.
* Material is presented in a way that is as relevant as possible to boys' lives.
* Homework is focused and brief, marked and returned promptly.
* Activities are purposeful and lead to a result.
* There is a reliable ladder of progress, and explicit rewards are provided to channel boys' competitiveness.
* Teachers actually teach; direct instruction, rather than the child-centred voyages of discovery so much loved and espoused by the doctrinaire teachers' colleges, has been proved the most successful approach with boys.

It could be argued these traits are also significant in the academic success of girls, and I would not disagree. However, I believe boys temperamentally depend much more than girls on these principles of traditional education and without them struggle to reach their potential and compete.

In its research planning into boys' underachievement I suggest the think tank does not get too esoteric but rather concentrates on the basics, much like the successful teachers in successful boys' schools who continue to stress the basics and reap the rewards of academic success for their boys.

In boys' schools the 10 traits listed arguably constitute best practice and allow boys to develop their own thoughts and views and to become independent learners.

There are of course those who, brought up on the child-centred pedagogy, doubt that independent learners can develop from such an approach.

I firmly disagree. I am constantly excited to see boys grow, mature and become young men confident of their own views and thoughts.

I was delighted to see that when the Education Office reviewers last visited Auckland Grammar School they recognised this fact and noted that the positive school tone and high standards of teaching had produced confident, independent learners (ERO Report 2001).

For years boys' (and girls') schools have successfully helped students to develop a strong sense of self-esteem and worth, while accommodating differences in learning styles and creating a climate of disciplined achievement.

In large part this is because teachers in boys' schools are able to embrace the distinctive tempo, sequence and style of learning specific to boys.

Of course most boys in New Zealand attend co-educational schools and such specialisation is much more difficult. But if we genuinely care about the academic progress of boys generally, then some of the methods used in successful boys' schools must be looked at and perhaps tested in a co-ed environment.

* John Morris is headmaster of Auckland Grammar School.

Experiment in single-sex classes

Equity online (WEEA Equity Resource Center), Thu, 23 Apr 1998


The following article was written by an Australian family therapist and author of "Raising boys" which was last year's best-seller here in Australia. I thought it would be of interest in the present context.

The Cotswold experiment

Steve Biddulph relates a very positive story of how a British secondary school's novel approach to education has helped solve the problem of learning, behaviour, and boys. He asks why similar models can't be established in Australia and calls for a non-ideological approach to education that benefits both girls and boys.
The two great debates which have been racking the education world lately may just have been solved by a creative experiment in an English secondary school. The school separated girls and boys for one subject only - English - and found dramatic improvements in boys' results, and behaviour. And the girls did better, too! All over the world, two closely linked questions have been putting education in the headlines. The first is the perennial debate about single sex schools vs. co-education. The second is the alarming decline in boys' attainment and participation at school, which has been noted in almost all industrial countries.
Parents and educators everywhere note that boys both have trouble, and cause trouble, at school. How to help boys learn and behave better in schools has become the number one educational challenge worldwide. Parents of girls are solving the problem by flocking to enrol their daughters in girls' schools. But where can the boys run to?While few in education would decry the progress made with girls' attainment and opportunities in the last 20 years, the fact is it's not working for boys.

Boys' TER scores, literacy rates, and retention rates are falling. Teachers point out that boys are often unmotivated, lack confidence, see learning as unmasculine, and are depressed and demoralized about their future. Bart Simpson-like, the boys fill the remedial classes, and the detention lists.

THE NEW APPROACH

To meet this challenge, The Cotswold School, a co-educational secondary school in Leicestershire, England, undertook an experiment of dazzling simplicity. The school assigned boys and girls in fourth year of secondary school to separate English classes. They then tinkered with the curriculum - the choice of texts, poetry, and discussion materials was tailored to boys' interests in the boys' classes, and girls interests in the girls' classes. In addition, class sizes were reduced to about 21 per class, and some intensive writing and reading support was instituted for the boys.

According to national statistics for the UK, only 9% of 14-year-old boys nationwide get grades in the range of A to C for English. English is not a subject which boys either like or do well in. The result of the Cotswold experiment was dramatic and convincing. After two years in the new gender- segregated classes, 34% of boys scored in the A-C range in their final GSCE exams. The school had increased the number of boys in the high scoring range by almost 400 per cent.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the girls did significantly better too. The school recorded scores in the A-C range for 75% of girls, compared with 46% the previous year.

The experiment was the brainchild of Marian Cox, head of the English department at the school, and is part of a wider study of student groupings for the study of English, which will end in 1998. Already, the gender separation effects have caused considerable excitement around the U.K. Cox told the London Times newspaper last month that the benefits went far beyond just English scores: "Behaviour, concentration, and reading levels all improved significantly. I believe if we can catch them even younger than 14, before they give up books for TV and computer, and the anti-heroic role models are entrenched - we would have even better chances of success." When I interviewed Marian Cox recently, she explained that boys at the school found they could relax and express themselves more without girls present, and girls reported the same. She felt that separation "just for English" was a good alternative to the extreme of single sex schools, or completely separate curricula for boys and girls as practiced in some English schools.

Cox noted that, "The most frequent observation from visitors to these classes was that the atmosphere was more calm and settled". Boys were responding to more support in reading - given time to read the books in the classroom, they were learning to enjoy reading, often for the first time. "Some of these boys had never read a complete book before, apart from an adventure game or instruction manual. But they found they enjoyed it." Several boys in the study were now planning to study English at higher levels.


THE AUSTRALIAN APPROACH

In Australian education there is considerable turmoil over gender. Advocates of girls' education are divided. Many are pleased with the successes of efforts to raise girls' horizons, and while they see the need for more of this, they are concerned about boys' needs too.Those who work in schools tend to hold this view more strongly - the difficulty of boys is just so evident. Teachers point out that unless boys are helped, they will continue to be a problem to girls, too - disrupting classes, monopolizing teacher time, bullying each other and girls in the playground, and so on.However a separate, more hard-core group, based in the ideological world of the universities and training colleges, feel that boys must never be given special help, that girls' disadvantages are so entrenched that they must receive all the resource cake for the foreseeable future. This group is horrified by even the idea of boys' special programs, and in NSW at least, have been effective in preventing them from taking place.

Dr. Victoria Foster, the author of the NSW gender strategy, and NSW Labor MP Meredith Burgman, have both argued that school MUST favour girls to make up for the inequalities that girls face in the outside world. In effect, they are saying we should handicap boys in school, to make up for the sexism "out there". These policies and attitudes do impinge on boys and schools - many parents, and boys themselves, have told me they feel this acutely. Parents are beginning to protest, to the point where Warren Johnson, Executive Officer of the NSW Parents and Friends Association, has proposed a special conference to bring boys' education experts together to try and counter the unfairness of the State's gender equity policy as it stands.

The problem with much of this debate is that it is needless. What the Cotswold experiment shows is that everyone can benefit if we tailor programs to each "special needs" group in schools. Boys, girls, low income groups, migrant and ethnic groups, and so on, all present different challenges. We don't need to create "bad guys" and we don't need to treat children as the soft targets for ideological "gender wars".

The Cotswold experiment does three important things. First, it acknowledges that boys generally have a slower development of language skills.
Second, it takes account of the dynamic by which boys, feeling verbally outclassed by the girls in expressive subjects, often become hoonish and macho as a defence mechanism, spoiling the class for themselves and for the girls. Third, by specifically targeting English, it tackles the key life skills of self-expression, self-awareness and communication - the very things men traditionally lack. These are the skills that make boys into better fathers, partners, and workmates - which most girls and women long for.

In Australia, with suicide now accounting for one in 34 male deaths, any program reducing boys' isolation would be a godsend. (In fact, there's a good case to be put for English classes qualifying for funding from the mental health budget.) Segregated classes and curricula are not risk free. There is always a danger of reintroducing stereotypes - MacBeth for the boys, Romeo and Juliet for the girls. Peter Vogel, editor of Certified Male magazine, pointed out recently his own experiences in a boys' school, where "every boy was supposed to be macho, like sport, war, and competition. If you didn't, then you didn't feel good". As usual, this comes down to the skill and maturity of the teacher - being able to encourage a wide range of ways of being a boy, or a girl.


THE RESULTS

The Cotswold results are encouraging - when separated, the girls and boys seemed able to relax and drop the old roles. This gives teachers a chance to draw out more of the real child, without the role playing that passes for lots of school behaviour. Once experiencing this richness of being, boys are less likely to return to being the gruff, cool automatons that so exasperates their parents by the early teens! Boys in these programs actually became more expressive, creative, linguistically skilled - in short more human, and more equipped for life. Girls continued as they have through the last decade, to become more assertive, analytical, and exuberant. In short, everybody wins.

Peter Vogel

http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/edequity98A/0054.html

Childhood versus the Pussycat Dolls

Mercatornet, 29 March 2007


Written by Theron Bowers

A widely publicised report on the sexualisation of girls belabours the obvious and fails to make effective recommendations. Why?

First, Madonna, then Britney, today's queens of pop eroticism are the Pussycat Dolls. The former burlesque dance troupe turned singers are everywhere posing in lingerie and chirping, "Doncha". Last spring the toy company Hasbro even announced a plan for a Pussycat fashion doll. According to the New York Times, the toy line was "intended for children age 6-9" and aimed "to mimic the act’s playfully risqué style". Other sexy dolls have been hits -- the Spice Girls dolls generated 150 million. The Bratz dolls, mini-skirted valley girls, are popular and have a Saturday morning cartoon show. So the Hasbro deal didn’t raise any eyebrows. The business section of the Times reported on the story no differently than any other commercial deal. Readers were probably left wondering, what’s next, pole-dancing Barbie?

Fortunately, parents responded quickly to the prospect of their 6-year-old daughters mimicking the Pussycat Dolls. Less than a month later, Hasbro dropped its plans. Unfortunately, moms and dads had slowed the march against childhood for only a moment.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has also noticed these assaults on girlhood. Last month, it released a report from its Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Like many professional organisations, the APA is a subsidiary of the progressive movement. A few years ago the organisation published a study which suggested that child sexual abuse wasn’t very harmful. Lately, the APA has taken up the battle against American Indian mascots, abstinence education and teaching intelligent design.

The APA claims that the task force was begun in response to "public concern". The concern is hardly new. More than 25 years ago, the starlet Brooke Shields became a 15-year-old teenage sex kitten in provocative Calvin Klein ads for jeans. In 1999, after the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, we were introduced to the Felini-esque world of child beauty pageants with six-year-old girls coquettishly batting their eyelashes and prancing around in swim suits.

The APA's report spins a tale of a monistical cultural web involving the media, families and peers which harass and sexualise young female victims. In a Stockholm Syndrome twist, the girls adopt the men’s sexual image of women. The story ends with women suffering from impaired cognitive functioning, body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, physical health problems and exploitation.
The Task Force has an easy time proving the obvious. The media frequently presents women as sexual objects. Unfortunately, the title of the report states, "Girls." Most of the sexualised images are of women. The authors of the report state that girls model themselves after women, hence the images are relevant.

Their justification is acceptable. Girls grow up with bed-hopping shows like Friends and Sex and the City. Former Disney Wonderkid, now trampy boozer, Linsay Lohan has praised Sex and the City stating that the show ''changed everything for me, because those girls would just sleep with so many people!''
However, the Task Force has a tougher problem demonstrating harm. Most researchers work at universities where there is a shortage of 12-year-old girls. The majority of the studies involve college women. While the old lemons and lemonade approach may work for some problems, good research isn’t so flexible. The Task Force tries to finesse the lack of relevant subjects by reasoning that "what young women believe about themselves and how they feel at the present moment were shaped by how they were treated and what they were exposed to when they were girls." Excuse changing the metaphor, but this lemon is hard swallow. People’s beliefs and feelings are also changed by what they experienced one hour ago. Anyone who has been to college knows how easily some young people can change after a few weeks.

None the less, the Task Force arrives at some interesting conclusions about the consequences of sexualisation. The attention grabber in several stories has been the swim suit versus the sweater experiment. The authors described an experiment with college students. Students were asked to try on and evaluate either a sweater or a swim suit. While waiting in a dressing room, they were asked to complete a math test. The women who wore the sweater did significantly better on the math test than women in the swim suites. The report notes similar results among minority women.

The writer concludes that thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualised ideas disrupted "mental capacity" (although it appears that performance was disrupted rather than capacity). The Task Force gushes over this series of studies: "The implications are stunning and suggest that sexualisation may contribute to girls dropping out of higher level mathematics in high school."
As for mental illness, the Task Force argues that cultural beauty ideas lead to eating disorders. However, the studies cited noted that only when the beauty idea emphasises thinness is there an association with anorexia.

Looking at the culture through the microscopic lens of science, the Task Force distorts the evidence throughout the report. The microscope shows decreased cognitive performance. Yet, the big picture reveals that college attendance is higher than ever and women outnumber men. The microscope focuses on the influence of beauty on thinness but ignores the influence of class values and health on thinness. Remember Gloria "You can never be too rich or too thin" Vanderbilt?

The Task Force places most of the responsibility for solving the problem with the government, through schools, legislation and research money. When mentioned, parents are portrayed as either ignorant dupes or as promoters of a sexualised message. Mothers are criticised for "fat talk" and fathers appear lecherous. Despite the emphasis on modesty and virtues other than attractiveness in traditional Western faiths, religion is only briefly mentioned and more attention is paid to eastern meditative practices than traditional Christianity.

Some headlines have proclaimed that the report calls for a removal of sexualised images of girls. In fact, the Task Force's recommendations are quite tepid. Although a minuscule proportion of advertisements involve sexualised image of children, the Task Force only suggests that the government "reduce" the use of sexualised images of girls. The Task Force recommendations are silent about limiting the use of eroticised adult female images or pornography. The Task Force fails to heed their previous evidence that girls are sexualised by modelling themselves after the images of adult women. The Pussycat fashion dolls may have a new life after this report.

The APA Task Force calls for a safe surrender and no meaningful changes in our current climate of sexualisation, illustrated by their emphasis on comprehensive sex education. Sex education is a harm-reduction strategy which is not intended to combat or support resistance to sexualisation any more than needle exchange programs fosters overcoming addiction. Meanwhile, the APA has declared a jihad against abstinence-only programs. Unlike cucumber and condom programs, the abstinence-only approach may actually encourage girls and boys to respect themselves, their sexuality, marriage and children.

The APA Task Force knows the problem but not the solution. For the Task Force, strengthening families and returning to traditional values is not a consideration. The Pussycat Dolls can curl up by their milk and sleep well tonight. The APA is no threat to Doll Power.

Theron Bowers MD is a psychiatrist Deep in the Heart of Texas and may be contacted at tcbowers@sbcglobal.net.

Single-sex schooling

Mercatornet, 02 August 2005


Written by Andrew Mullins

Comparing the benefits of single-sex education and coeducation.

Author Andrew Mullins is Headmaster of Redfield College, an independent Years 2-12 Boys’ school in the northwest of Sydney. His career has included over 25 years' teaching the humanities in Australian secondary schools, leading to his interest in presenting the wisdom of classic thinkers and philosophers. He has developed a strong policy of involving parents in the process of reflecting desirable values to young people. He is the author of Parenting for Character (Finch Publishing, 2005).

Current controversies The comparative benefits of single-sex and coeducational schooling have been much debated over the past 50 years. The proponents of single-sex education argue that boys and girls have differing needs and that their styles of learning are different. They point to data demonstrating the comparative under-performance of both boys and girls in co-ed classrooms.

Proponents of coeducation argue that mixed education is more in keeping with the mores of modern Western society, and that children from co-ed schools are better adjusted. Both contend that their own approach is truly holistic. The debate has a social component as well. Coeducation is sometimes regarded as a solution to the failure of the modern family to provide sufficiently for the effective socialization and moral development of children. The financial savings of using shared facilities have led governments to amalgamate formerly single-sex schools and open new co-ed schools, both public and private. In some countries governments have told independent schools to embrace coeducation or forfeit public funding. A new element in the debate is widespread agreement that somehow education is failing boys. Boys are generally outperformed by girls; statistics of self harm and depression amongst boys are alarming; there seems to be a growing alienation of boys from their parents and fathers in particular.

Psychologists write of the “father hunger” of boys who grow up without sufficient input from their natural father. As Western society strives for gender equality, everyone has become more alert to the unfairness of discrimination on the basis of sex. This argument is used by both sides. Proponents of single-sex education argue that only through single-sex education are the specific needs of boys and girls met. Proponents of coeducation argue that coeducation ensures equity of access to educational facilities and courses. Single-sex education supporters reply that equality of the sexes does not necessitate identical provision for males and females, and that the best way of attending to the needs of boys and girls is to offer them facilities and courses that satisfy their unique requirements.
The advantages of single-sex education Boys and girls are wired to learn in different ways It seems beyond dispute that boys and girls learn at different paces and in different ways. This is not a matter of gender bias, but of experience verified time and again by psychological research. The view from the 1970s that gender traits are mere cultural constructs has been discredited.

Cross-cultural studies over the past 30 years reveal that gender differences across the wide variety of cultures are remarkably constant (1). Here are some relevant differences. According to a 2001 study (2), women use the right and left hemispheres of the brain to process language; men use only the left hemisphere. In general men are more likely to use one area of the brain for a given activity; women are more likely to use more of the brain. Studies show that women respond to directions that include data about what they will see and hear; men prefer abstract directions (3) . Girls’ brains develop through adolescence so that girls are better able to discuss their feelings; boys’ brains do not. Research is revealing major physiological differences in the brains of even pre-adolescent boys and girls (4) . For example, seven-year-old girls hear better than boys (5). These physical differences lead to differences in the way boys and girls learn.

Teachers need to encourage girls, while boys need a reality check. Direct challenging works well with boys and they tend to respond to clear boundaries. Emotional activity is processed in a completely different part of the brain in older girls compared with older boys. It has been suggested that girls respond more innately to literature and that they more easily make links between ideas and emotions. In stories, girls tend to respond to nuances of character, boys to action 6. Role-playing exercises allowing a student to explore character work particularly well for girls. Inductive exercises allowing girls to act hypothetically also work well. There is evidence that boys respond more to structured lessons, finite tasks, and perhaps to the more abstract. Girls tend to respond more readily to group work and team work. One fascinating study suggests that under certain circumstances stress has a beneficial effect on male learning, but that it can impair the learning of a female, and that this characteristic is wired in the male brain from before birth 7.Most children learn better in a single-sex environment On average, children in single-sex education outperform children of comparative ability in co-ed contexts. In a 20-year Australian study of 270,000 students, Ken Rowe found that both boys and girls performed between 15 and 22 percentile points higher on standardised tests when they attended single-sex schools.(8)

The National Foundation for Educational Research in England (9) found that, even after controlling for student ability and other background factors, boys and girls performed significantly better academically in single-sex schools than in co-ed schools. Students in Jamaica attending single-sex schools outperformed students in co-ed schools in almost every subject tested.(10) A 1997 study by Jean and Geoffrey Underwood showed that girl-girl pairings performed best on tasks, and that girl-boy pairings tended to depress the achievement of the girls involved. (11) Boys and girls experience the benefits of schooling in different ways. British studies suggest that females more than males benefit academically from single-sex education: they participate more in class, develop higher self esteem, score higher in aptitude tests, are more likely to choose sciences and other male domains at tertiary level, and are more successful in careers.

Research suggests that boys dominate the classroom in a co-ed environment. Boys can behave more loudly. Some research has shown that girls receive fewer encouraging comments than boys in co-ed environments. Studies by Cornelius Riordan suggest that children from underprivileged backgrounds are the greatest beneficiaries of single-sex schooling.(12) The message of all this research is simple: there are no differences in what girls and boys can learn, but here are big differences in the best way to teach them.Single-sex education meets the needs of boys better Boys and girls have different needs and education which respects personal differences must take this into account. On a practical level, the intuitively directed and affectively oriented styles of learning which suit most girls are not always compatible with the more structured and practical approaches which appeal to boys. Single-sex schooling allows teachers to tailor their teaching style to the boys and facilitates a more rounded educational experience. In a co-ed school, boys can opt out of curriculum areas where they would be out-performed. Furthermore, there is evidence that mixed classrooms can discriminate against either boys and girls depending on the subject, the gender of the teacher, the teacher’s methodologies, and the prevailing culture in the school. Some schools have now started running single-sex classrooms in English and other humanities subjects to improve the performance of boys. The pilot study that demonstrated improved performance of boys in this context has been known as the Cotswold Experiment. (13) Single-sex education meets the needs of girls betterSingle-sex education has clear benefits for girls. In the first place, it often gives them expanded educational opportunities by allowing them to pursue non-traditional disciplines for girls such as mathematics or science.

Single-sex schooling also offers more opportunities to girls to exercise leadership. When girls and boys are in the same classroom, the boys tend to dominate and overshadow equally talented girls. On an emotional level, single-sex education puts less pressure on girls, especially in adolescence. At that age, girls are more prone than boys to suffer from low self esteem. It is difficult to manage this issue in a co-ed climate when boys dominate in the classroom and when they receive more recognition, allowance for misbehaviour and encouragement. Single-sex education makes greater provision for gender role modelingThe shortage of male teachers in the primary classroom is a concern in many countries. In the first six years of school, many boys in co-ed schools seldom encounter a male teacher. Because children imitate those they admire, it is common sense to ensure that boys and girls find in their teachers truly admirable role models. The example of professionalism, values and consistently positive behaviour is most important. But there are other aspects of example that are gender-specific. A boy learns what it means to be a man from his father, but this is reinforced if there are other admirable men in his life. This is also true for girls and their female teachers.Single-sex schooling allows boys and girls to mature at their own pace Girls mature earlier than boys: they are better behaved, more diligent and more sensible and they find it easier to relate to the adult world. For all these reasons, it is often argued that girls exert a civilising influence on boys. Whilst this may be true in some situation, the converse is also true: boys can uncivilise girls. When adolescent girls and boys study together, there is much evidence that a proportion will end up distracted from their work.

Single-sex schooling is often criticised for reinforcing negative images of masculinity. Unfortunately this can even happen in co-ed schools. The problem is not solved by bringing girls and boys together, but by vigilantly managing the culture in a school and sub-groups in the school. Single-sex schooling does not handicap children socially There is no evidence that children who have attended co-ed schools enter adult relationships that are more stable or fulfilling with the opposite sex. Assertions that children from co-ed backgrounds are better prepared for adult life seem to be flawed. There is a higher rate of unplanned pregnancies (and by implication, of terminated pregnancies) for girls in co-ed schools. One study has shown that students from single-sex schooling are not noticeably thwarted in the development of relationships with the opposite sex either at school or later at university.(14) Coeducation can allow socialising to complicate intellectual development. Of course a positive school culture and the superior training of teachers can work against this. But it is difficult to protect impressionable young people from the images of precocious intimacy that saturate the media. Since emotional attraction and physical attraction works first of all at the level of physical proximity, there seems a strong argument to separate a teenager’s academic world from his or her social world.

In a coeducational secondary classroom the lines between social life and school can become blurred. Single-sex education allows children to think about things “other than their hormones”. Single-sex schooling makes it easier to be a good parent Single-sex schools also provide parents with an opportunity to manage more effectively the social development of their children, particularly in the early years. It makes it easier for them to impart education about sexual matters in a way consistent with their values. Of course when parents choose to send their children to single-sex schools they will need to have much more initiative in providing for the social development of their children. They should set up many opportunities for boys to mix with girls in a family setting during childhood, well before they turn 14 or 15. It is very late to be starting to talk with a child about these issues once he or she has reached mid secondary school. An undeniable problem for all families is the gulf between home life and a teenager’s social world. Children must feel they can bring their friends home. Coeducational schooling does little to help because it creates a social environment which is totally beyond the parents’ knowledge and largely outside their control. Unhappily when youth culture becomes divorced from family life, a certain percentage of children are sure to end up badly damaged. Even if single-sex schooling is better for children, it demands more of their parents because they have to take responsibility for helping their children acquire mature social skills.

It is easier for parents who send their children to co-ed schools to shirk this responsibility, even though this is not a task which can be delegated to anyone else. Indeed, the notion that parents can wash their hands of the problems of teenage social life may account for some of the popularity of co-ed education. But although relinquishing their leadership role might make parents’ lives easier, the children often suffer from their neglect.


Quotes
• “You cannot tell from looking at a slice of someone’s brain if that person was Black or Asian, a Jew or a Christian, or a Hindu or a Muslim. But you can tell whether that person was male or female.” ~ National Association for Single Sex Public Education:
•“Girls’ schools provide an environment that not only is good in and of itself, but that in its redefinition of competitiveness and collaboration, of autonomy and connectedness, presents a model that other schools do well to emulate.” ~ Dr David Riesman, Harvard University
•“When girls go to single-sex schools, they stop being the audience and become the players.” ~ Professors Myra and David Sadker, American University
Internet links National Association for Single Sex Public EducationA site set up by Dr Leonard Sax. An excellent summary of the research. National Coalition of Girls’ Schools Useful quotes, references to research, lists of benefits of girls-only education. Do Girls and Boys Do Better in Separate Classrooms?4 Troubled Teens websiteThe New Gender Gap: From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex. BusinessWeek online. May 26, 2003. Boys just can’t be boys! Sid Sidebottom. Submission to Australian Parliamentary inquiry into education of boys. 2002.

References
(1) Paul Costa, Antonio Terracciano, & Robert McCrae, “Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: robust and surprising findings,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, volume 81, number 2, pp. 322-331, 2001.
(2) Michael Phillips, Mark Lowe, Joseph T. Lurito, Mario Dzemidzic, and Vincent Matthews. Temporal lobe activation demonstrates sex-based differences during passive listening. Radiology, 220:202-207, 2001.
(3) N. Sandstrom, J. Kaufman, S. A. Huettel. Males and females use different distal cues in a virtual environment navigation task. Brain Research: Cognitive Brain Research, 1998, 6:351-360.
(4) María Elena Cordero, Carlos Valenzuela, Rafael Torres, Angel Rodriguez, “Sexual dimorphism in number and proportion of neurons in the human median raphe nucleus,” Developmental Brain Research, 124:43-52, 2000.
(5) John F. Corso, “Age and sex differences in thresholds”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31:489-507, 1959.
(6) William Killgore, Mika Oki, and Deborah Yurgelun-Todd. Sex-specific developmental changes in amygdala responses to affective faces. NeuroReport, 2001, 12:427-433.
(7) Tracey J. Shores & George Miesegaes. Testosterone in utero and at birth dictates how stressful experience will affect learning in adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99:13955-13960, October 15, 2002.)
(8) “Boys and girls perform better at school in single-sex environments”. April 17, 2000.
(9) Spielhofer T, O’Donnell L, Benton T, Schagen S, Schagen I. “The Impact of School Size and Single-Sex Education on Performance”. National Foundation for Educational Research. 2002.
(10) Marlene Hamilton. Performance levels in science and other subjects for Jamaican adolescents attending single-sex and coeducational high schools, International Science Education, 69(4):535-547, 1985.
(11) Underwood, G., & Underwood, J. (1997). Children’s interactions and learning outcomes with interactive books. Paper presented at the CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) Conference, April 2 1997, at the University of Exeter.
(12) Cornelius Riordan. Girls and Boys in School: together or separate? New York: Teachers College Press, 1990.
(13) Steve Biddulph. “The Cotswold Experiment”. Certified Male. 1995.
(14) Neville Bruce and Katherine Sanders, “Incidence and duration of romantic attraction in students progressing from secondary to tertiary education,” Journal of Biosocial Sciences, volume 33, pages 173-184, 2002.

Boys' education

Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training


Overview

Over the past decade there has been considerable community concern about the level of achievement attained by boys in Australian schools.

An inquiry into the education of boys in Australian schools was conducted in 2002 by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training found that overall, while many boys in Australian schools are doing well, boys are not achieving as well as girls across a range of educational and social measures.

Some areas of concern for boys compared to girls are their lower literacy achievement, lower school retention and lower levels of participation in higher education. Boys also have higher rates of school exclusion. There is also evidence that boys’ performance as a group in areas such as literacy has declined over time.

To help those boys who are not achieving in school, the Australian Government is delivering a range of innovative programmes.

Success for Boys is a national $19.4 million initiative that is offering average grants of $10,000 up to 1,600 schools over 2006 and 2007. Success for Boys focuses on at-risk and disadvantaged boys and will address the following key intervention areas: positive male role models; literacy; information and communication technology; and improving Indigenous boys’ engagement with school and educational achievement.

Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools is a $7 million initiative that was implemented in two stages over 2003 – 2005, and has provided funding to over 550 schools to assist them in improving boys’ educational outcomes.

The Australian Government has also managed a number of research projects relevant to boys’ education, and was the major sponsor of the 4th biennial Working with Boys, Building Fine Men conference held on 3-5 April 2005.

For further information on research into boys’ education please visit our boys’ education research and websites page, which includes the 2003 Australian Government publication Educating Boys.