Gender issues

It is considered that gender is an issue when discussing learning behaviors, but it is an area that seems to have attracted only limited study. Whitelaw et al. (2000: 97) suggest that literature does inform educators that gender has a ‘substantial effect on the ways in which children negotiate their personal positions in the relationship between academic achievement, school cultures and home/peer culture’. Abraham (1995) also suggests that girls are more passive when it comes to accepting school rules and systems, but Whitelaw et al. (2000: 98) think that:

some girls are far from being passive in their compliance. They may be actively deploying a range of strategies and a degree of flexibility in their approaches and responses to widely different expectations and experiences. Such flexibility may be allowing them to achieve in both academic and social arenas, with peers and adults, skilfully negotiating the inconsistencies of the spheres which they inhabit.

Discussion

Discuss the issues mentioned above. How do you see girls behavior in the classroom? Are their behaviors always conducive to effective learning and do girls incorporate strategies that enable them to be respected by their peers as well as maintain positive relationships with their educators?

Crozier and Anstiss (1995: 44) say that evidence they collected from a study showed that the ways in which pupils were talked about by their educators ‘seemed to be determined by their gender and girls were additionally disadvantaged by a concern with their gender in teachers’ discussions about them’. They found that plans to support problem behaviors in boys were carefully implemented, while proposals to support girls’ behavior were often dealt with on a ‘wait-and-see basis’. They suggest that because girls’ behavior generally presents less of a problem in school, even though they are just as prone to problems and are just as needy, the predominant focus about behavior remains targeted on boys. As a result, girls’ needs are often neglected until severe action is required. A report by Susannah Kirkman (TES, 2003) says: ‘New research shows a three-fold increase in serious psychological distress among 15 year old girls since 1987, mainly triggered by rising educational expectations.’ Crozier and Anstiss (1995: 45) say that educators need to make sure girls’ needs are not marginalized and that, ‘For schools to redress the balance there needs to be a shift of focus from behavior and control issues to concern with learning and the variety of factors and events that interfere with it.’ A similar view was expressed in an article entitled ‘Off the rails’ in the Guardian Education (Berliner, 2003: 4) about a mother and her two daughters:

She [the mother] needed it [support] while the girls were at primary school, when things were going wrong, and the response was to control and contain rather than to refer them for specialist appraisal and help. Their problems weren’t extreme then but they are now.

Discussion

Take another look at how social, emotional and behavioral difficulties are supported in your workplace setting. Is there a difference, in practice, between how boys and girls are helped or not? Do colleagues feel there is a difference and, if so, why?