Gender, educational achievement and subject choice

Question 1

Cohen

Answer 1

According to Michelle Cohen (1998), girls have educationally outperformed boys in the early years of schooling since mass education was introduced in the UK. However, girls have not always had the same opportunities to progress to higher levels of education. Before 1877, no British university accepted female students.

Question 2

Department of Education - KS2

Answer 2

Department of Education (2011) statistics show that at Key Stage 2, girls did better than boys in reading and writing, although there was no difference in the percentage achieving Level 4 in Maths.

Question 3

McDonald et al.

Answer 3

McDonald et al. (1999) argue that the generalisation that girls outperform boys applies most strongly to working-class children; among the middle-class, the gender gap in achievement is either very small or non-existent. Moreover, the gender gap is wider in comprehensive schools than in selective schools.

Question 4

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Answer 4

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests in 2013, the gender gap in achievement (with girls outperforming boys) was lower in most other countries.

Question 5

Edwards and David

Answer 5

Edwards and David (2000) suggest that gender-differentiated primary socialisation gives girls an initial advantage in both primary and secondary schools, but still tends to create a patriarchal society. For example, the willingness of boys to break rules can lead to their dominating classroom.They suggest that there is some evidence that girls are taught by their parents to conform to more formal standards of behaviour than boys, which familiarises them with what is expected in the classroom. For example, at home, they are taught to sit still, to be quiet, to read and to listen.

Edwards and David also found that, at home, parents allowed boys to be noisier and more attention-seeking than girls. They found that this mode of socialisation often translated into primary school boys more likely to break rules and less bothered than girls when told off by teachers.

Question 6

Burns and Bracey

Answer 6

Research by Burns and Bracey (2001) found that girls at secondary schools generally work harder and are more motivated by boys.

Question 7

Hannan

Answer 7

Hannan (2000) shows that girls spend their leisure time differently from boys. Whereas boys relate to their peers by doing (that is, by being active in a range of ways), girls relate to one another by talking. This puts girls at an advantage, because most subjects require good levels of comprehension and writing skills.

Question 8

Frosh et al.

Answer 8

Evidence from Frosh et al. (2001) suggests that boys who are members of ‘macho’ subcultures regard schoolwork as ‘feminine’ or ‘unmanly’ and have a tendency to engage in hyper-masculine behaviour, such as back-chatting teachers, being disruptive in class and bullying the more academic boys. Showing an interest in schoolwork was deemed silly, soft and weak. Masculine status was associated with being sporty, funny and ‘up for a laugh’.

Question 9

Kirby

Answer 9

Kirby (2000) argues that it is noticeable from research that boys who do well at school are often helped at home, away from the view of the peer group. Boys often consider it weak to request help from a teacher and it is also especially difficult for a boy to accept help from another boy.

Question 10

Kindon and Thompson

Answer 10

Research by Kindon and Thompson (1999) indicates that boys interrupt more frequently and answer more often, even when they do not know the answer. Moreover, boys are surprised when they fail exams and tend to put their failure down to bad luck rather than lack of effort. On the other hand, girls are more realistic, even self-doubting, and try much harder in order to ensure success.

Question 11

Francis

Answer 11

According to Francis (2000), boys are no longer likely to consider themselves as more able than girls, as was the case in the 1970s and 1980s. Francis also notes that boys are more likely to have career aspirations that are not only unrealistic but less likely to require academic success (such as professional footballer) whereas girls’ career ambitions more often require academic success (such as doctor) which drives their commitment to schoolwork.

Question 12

Wilkinson

Answer 12

Helen Wilkinson argues that female aspirations underwent a radical transformation in the last two decades of the 20th century. She suggests that young women experienced a ‘genderquake’ in terms of profound changes in their attitudes and expectations about their futures, compared with those of their mothers and grandmothers.

The last 30 years have seen a feminisation of the economy and workforce. Jobs for women in the service sector of the economy (financial services, retail, mass media, health, welfare and education) have expanded.

Question 13

Sharpe

Answer 13

Sue Sharpe’s surveys of young working-class females in London support Wilkinson. Her study of working-class girls in London found that most girls had very traditional ideas about womanhood and prioritised ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, more of less in that order’. When the research was repeated in 1994, she found that the priorities had changed to ‘job, career and being able to support themselves’ above all other priorities.

Question 14

Beck

Answer 14

Ulrich Beck (1992) sees changes in employment and the attitudes of girls and women as part of the growth of risk and uncertainty, which leads to greater insecurity for males and females alike. Both relationships and jobs are insecure and cannot be relied on to last in the long-term. According to Beck, this creates a more individualised society in which both men and women have to be self-reliant and, to a greater extent, financially independent.

Question 15

Mac an Ghaill

Answer 15

Mac an Ghaill (1994) suggest that working-class boys are experiencing a ‘crisis of masculinity’. They are socialised into seeing their future male identity and role in terms of having a job and being a ‘breadwinner’, but the landscape has changed.

Question 16

Wragg

Answer 16

Wragg (1997) believed that pessimism about the world of work, induced by declining job prospects for males, has filtered down to primary school boys and undermines their desire to work hard.

Question 17

Jackson

Answer 17

Jackson (2006) believes that working-class male adolescents may conclude that education and qualifications are irrelevant because they can see that the jobs they will end up doing are unskilled or semi-skilled at best and not well paid.

Question 18

Francis and Skelton

Answer 18

Francis and Skelton (2005) argue that these underachieving boys are often vulnerable, confused and insecure. They suggest that while the underachieving boy may appear tough on the outside, seeking to impress and boost his self-image, on the inside he is insecure and has low self-esteem. This can be reinforced by a lack of educational success.

Question 19

Rothermel

Answer 19

Research by Rothermel (1999) has found that, among home-educated children, boys are as successful as girls. This suggests that what goes on inside schools plays a crucial role in boys’ underachievement.

Question 20

Epstein

Answer 20

Epstein (1998) identifies a ‘poor boys’ discourse that blames schools for failing to cater for boys. Teachers, the exam system, and female concerns and interests ignore boys’ learning needs and fail to appreciate and understand their masculinity, especially during primary school. To resolve this, proponents argue that schools should be made more ‘masculine’, and attention and resources should be directed from girls to boys.

Question 21

Sukhnanda et al.

Answer 21

Sukhnanda et al. (2000) report that boys generally feel they receive less support, encouragement and guidance from teachers. They feel that teachers have higher expectations of girls and are more critical of boys for non-academic reasons, such as bad behaviour and scruffy presentation. Consequently, they view schools as alien places.

Question 22

Abraham

Answer 22

Abraham (1995) argues that schools fail to confront traditional notions of masculinity and that teachers may even collude with pupils in traditional gender stereotypes. In Abraham’s study, deviant boys were more popular with some of the teachers than academic boys and girls.

Question 23

Coffey and Delamont

Answer 23

Coffey and Delamont (2000) argue that schools have always been patriarchal. In 2014, most senior staff in schools and colleges were male, the discourse of education remained fundamentally male - hierarchical and competitive - and the ethos of most schools, especially secondary schools, was still resolutely masculine - authoritarian, regulatory and sexist. For example, there are still schools that will not allow girls to wear trousers.

Question 24

Myhill

Answer 24

Myhill (2000) argues that girls’ success may be down to their being passive and compliant learners, but that boys may be getting the better education because teachers interact more frequently with them. Moreover, girls’ greater conformity in the classroom may be a positive attribute in the school, but a barrier in the workplace because, as Myhill points out, ‘few company executives, politicians and lawyers would be described as compliant and conformist’.

Question 25

Machin and McNally

Answer 25

Machin and McNally (2006) comment that the change to GCSEs did coincide with improvements in the performance of girls relative to boys. Furthermore, they cite research which suggests that girls do tend to do better in coursework while boys are better off at doing end-of-course exams. They suggest therefore that this shift may have been key to changing patterns of gender and achievement in GCSEs.

Question 26

Bleach

Answer 26

During English, Bleach (1998), for example, observes that girls tend to favour fiction over non-fiction and creative writing over factual writing, whereas boys are more likely to prefer reading non-fiction and writing factual responses. Boys dislike lengthy fiction, especially the pre-20th century texts that are an essential part of the national curriculum at GCSE and A-level.

Question 27

Weiner et al.

Answer 27

Weiner et al. (1997) suggest that newspaper reports about ‘failing boys’ reflect a middle-class concern that working-class black and white boys are leaving education with few or no qualifications and consequently may develop into a potentially socially disruptive underclass.

Question 28

Osler

Answer 28

Osler (2006) argues that the current focus on boys’ underachievement is hiding a serious problem of exclusion and underachievement among girls, which is increasing at a faster rate than that of boys. For example, African Caribbean girls are often hailed as one of education’s success stories, yet girls classified as African Caribbean are more vulnerable to disciplinary exclusion than their White female peers.