Education: Gender and educational achievement:

Question 1

How has the decline in the nuclear family had an affect on gender educational achievement?

Answer 1

The traditional nuclear family is in decline. Thus girls are more prepared and desire to be financially independent from an early age. Which means they understand the need for educational success.

Question 2

What Act was passed in 1970? What did it do?

Answer 2

The Equal Pay Act, 1970:

Made it illegal to pay women less money for the same work of equal value.

Question 3

What Act was passed in 1975? What did it do?

Answer 3

The Sex Discrimination Act, 1975:

Made it illegal to employ someone on grounds of gender.

Question 4

What was Sue Sharpe’s study of gender and educational achievement?

Answer 4

Sharpe interviewed girls about the way they see themselves and their futures in 1974 and the 1990’s.

Question 5

What did Sue Sharpe’s study reveal about girl’s and society’s changing attitudes?

Answer 5

In 1974 the girls main ambitions were ‘family’, ‘marriage’ and ‘love’.
In 1974 to be intellectual and intelligent was considered to be ‘unattractive’.
However in the 1990’s their main priorities were: ‘jobs’, ‘‘a career’ and being able to support themselves.
They were more confident as society accepted strong women as role models.

Question 6

What do Liberal feminists think about girl’s changing educational attainment and achievement?

Answer 6

Continue to create equal opportunities in education. It is a meritocracy (agree with functionalism).

Question 7

What do Radical feminists think about girl’s changing educational attainment and achievement?

Answer 7

It’s a good start, but the education system is till patriarchyl. Stereotyped subject choice, sexual harassment and parts of the curriculum ignore the contribution of women.

Question 8

What did Ghaill develop about sexual harassment in schools?

Answer 8

‘The male gaze’:
Girls are seen as sexual objects, looked up and down by males in schools. They are subjected to dominant heterosexual masculinity. Boys peer group label each other as ‘gays’ if they don’t participate.

Question 9

What term did Lees, 1986, develop about sexual harassment in schools?

Answer 9

‘Slags and Drags’.

Question 10

What term did Connel develop about sexual harassment in schools?

Answer 10

That girls suffered a ‘rich vocabulary of abuse’.

Question 11

Why do working class girls underachieve?

Answer 11

They underachieve as they suffer a dilemma of identity. They are caught between meeting the ideals of a working class student and middle class identity of the 'ideal student'. 
Try to keep their working class identity instead of being pushed into a middle class habitus. 
As a result they want to be negatively labelled instead of incurring the halo effect.

Question 12

What is Bourdieu’s idea of ‘symbolic capital’?

Answer 12

Status, recognition and sense of worth gained from others (peer groups).

Question 13

What did Louise Archer et al do? What did she find?

Answer 13

She used Bourdieu's idea of symbolic capital when studying a group of working class girls in education.
She found that they employed different strategies in order to maintain their working class status, including employing 'hyper hetero-sexual identities'.

Question 14

Define hyper hetero-sexual identities:

Answer 14

Where the group invested a large amount of time and money into constructing a ‘desirable’ and ‘glamorous’ identity. The feminine identities constructed made sure that the girls weren’t labelled as ‘tramps’. So they weren’t marginalised from their group.
However the effort into their appearance lead the teachers to believe they were distracted and that it prevented them from engaging with their education. Also, other peer groups would label them as incapable of educational success.

Question 15

What term did Bourdieu develop to describe peer groups labeling other pupils as incapable of educational success?

Answer 15

‘Symbolic violence’.

Question 16

What subjects are girls achieving higher in at GCSE standard?

Answer 16

All subjects.

Question 17

What percentage of girls and boys achieve an A*-C in English?

Answer 17

70% of girls, 54% of boys.

Question 18

What did Stanworth, 1983, Licht and Dweck, 1987 and Renold and Allan, 2006, all have in common concerning gender educational achievement?

Answer 18

That girls lacked confidence, underestimated themselves and felt undervalued in the classroom.
Renold and Allan’s, 2006, research found that this still remained true today.

Question 19

What did research in South Wales find about girl’s in education?

Answer 19

That they were torn between being educationally bright and attractive to boys.
To seem attractive to boys they played down their academic abilities.

Question 20

What did Barbar’s 1996 research find about boys educational attitude and results?

Answer 20

That ‘more boys than girls think they are able or very able, and fewer boys think they are “below average”’. Yet the GCSE results contradict the statement.

Question 21

What do boys think about their results in education? Which sociologist’s research links to the theory?

Answer 21

Boys seem to coast along and expect good results, not challenging themselves academically. This maybe because they don’t like school. However, they still think they are very capable.
Francis’ research in 1998-9 confirms this. When they failed the boys tended to blame the teacher or their own lack of effort, not their ability.

Question 22

What did Forde at al argue, concerning boy peer groups?

Answer 22

Peer group pressure encourages dominant masculine identity developed by resistance to school, which does not work with academic success.

Question 23

What did Epstein et al, 1998, argue about working class boys and educational achievement?

Answer 23

That they risked harassment, bullying or were labeled as ‘gay’ for working hard out of school. And aspiring for academic success is seen to conflict with adolescent conceptions of masculinity.

Question 24

What did Francis’, 2000, research discover about male peer groups? What is the consequence of this?

Answer 24

The boys gained more peer group matcho status by resisting teachers and schools - through laddish behaviour. This contributed to their underachievement in learning.

Question 25

Are boys or girls more likely to develop anti-school subcultures?

Answer 25

Boys.

Question 26

What do teachers tend to focus on the genders for?

Answer 26

Boys are focused on for behavioral issues.

Girls are focused on for educational reasons.

Question 27

What did Ghaill suggest about the correlation of male underachievement and employment?

Answer 27

Suggests that the decline in traditional working class male jobs is a factor to explain why working class boys underachieve in education. 
They lack motivation and ambition as they feel they have limited prospects so qualifications are useless to them. Changing employment patterns have resulted in a number of predominantly white working class boys having lowered expectations. They also have a low self image and lack of self esteem.

Question 28

How does Parson’s roles of the family contribute to male underachievement?

Answer 28

The breakdown of the male breadwinner role in the family has also lead to a crisis of masculinity. This insecurity is reflected in schools where boys don’t strive to achieve as education seems pointless to them.

Question 29

What does Jo Boaler, 1998, see as a key reason for girls changing level of educational employment?

Answer 29

Impact of equal opportunities policies. Many of the barriers have been removed and schooling has become more meritocratic - so that girls, who generally work harder than boys, achieve more.

Question 30

What year was the National Curriculum introduced? What did it ensure?

Answer 30

1998.

It ensured girls and boys studied the same subjects in education.

Question 31

Who found that boys receive more reprimands than girls in education?

Answer 31

Jane and Peter French, 1993.

Question 32

What did Beckie Francis, 2001, find?

Answer 32

While boys actually got more attention, they were disciplined more harshly and felt picked on by teachers who tended to have lower expectations of them.