http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V3NQXTfZbY

Men and women really are living on different planets when it comes to their personalities.

Researchers, from Italy and the Manchester Business School, say the reason we think men and women are similar is that we have been using the wrong methods to assess them.

Women scored higher than men on:

Sensitivity Self-relianceWarmth TensionApprehension

Men outscored women on:

Dominance VigilanceEmotional Stability Openness to changeRule-consciousness

The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in PersonalityPublic library of Science One Journal | www.plosone.org

Gender issues

The term ‘gender issues’ refers to the social and educational aspects of

the pupil’s being male or female.

Girls do better than boys at school.

Boys should be allowed to wear skirts to school, says children's tsar

Mr Baillie said ‘We should be rejecting discriminatory practice and allowing our children and young people to express themselves.'I would agree that gender specific uniforms or dress codes can cause serious distress in gender-variant pupils.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2100314/Scottish-childrens-tsar-adds-support-schoolboys-battle-wear-skirt-school.html#ixzz1mLOC3x2G

Boy wears skirt to school in protest against 'discrimination'A 12-year-old boy has worn a skirt to school in protest against ''discriminatory'' rules which ban boys from wearing shorts.

1986

Subject Boys Girls

English 66 79

Maths 67 67

Any Science 73 75

E & M & S 61 67

Geography 66 75

History 67 74

Any MFL 67 77

Any D & T 56 73

2010/11 - Achieved grades A*-C of those attempting the subject

DfE: GCSE and Equivalent Results in England, 2010/11 (Provisional)

"A lazy youth becomes a burden to those parents, whom he ought to comfort, if not support. But you can no more rouse them, with all of their fine arguments, than you can a log. There they lie, completely enchained by indolence… Business tires him; reading fatigues him; the public service interferes with his pleasures. Ask him what he has done with his morning – he cannot tell you; for he has lived without reflection, and almost without knowing whether he has lived at all!"

William Alcott's The Young Man's Guide (1831),

Coursework vs. exams - Study of GCSE Maths (Stobart, 1992): Boys

achieve a small mark advantage in exams, which offset girls’ small advantage in coursework.

- Creswell (1990): 1989 GCSE exams in English, Maths and Science. Girls’ marks for coursework higher; Maths and Science: Boys’ marks for exams higher.

- Ranking of subjects in terms of coursework (Stobart et al. 1992), Improved performance of girls directly related to the weighting and type of coursework

Girls v Boys

In contrast to girls’ underachievement in the 70s and 80s, the underperformance of boys has attracted substantial concern, resulting in a number of government funded projects and interventions.

Strategies to raise boys’ achievement, if successful, are also likely to raise girls’ achievement, and thus perpetuate the gender gap. It has been argued that any strategy to raise boys’ achievement should not be done in a way that could be detrimental to girls’ social or academic progress. There is not a case for boy-friendly pedagogies – pedagogies that appeal to and engage boys are equally girl-friendly.

Boys

Analysis of the past 25 years of research papers on gender show that boys

• display more confidence in the classroom and see themselves as more academically able than they are.

• are more likely to blame poor results on extrinsic factors, such as teachers or examination practices.

University Trends

• More women than men go to University in the USA and UK.

• Girls continue to opt out of mathematics and science in the later stages of their educational careers.

• Boys still dominate science and technology at A-level and enter higher education to study these subjects in larger numbers.

• Men outperform women in science at all grades.• Women have not improved their average science

achievement scores since 1996.• SWE-AWE-CASEE ARP Resources – Gender Differences in Science Performance. SWE-AWE CASEE Overviews. Retrieved• <date> from http://www.AWEonline.org.• The DfES Standards Site: Gender and Achievement3

The Gender Gap

• The Gender Gap Index ranks countries according to salary, access to education, workforce participation, life expectancy and sex ratio.

• Using such data, Nordic countries top the poll – women are paid as much as men, occupying senior jobs.

• In the UK women lag behind men in seniority, as well as wage earning

• The UK ranks 33rd out of 135 countries

Higher education of mothers

• Effect through income – higher income, more education

• Effect on home investment –quantity/quality

• Tastes/attitude to education of children

Most research suggests that mother’s education is more influential than father’s; and has a bigger influence on girl’s education

Single Sex Teaching in Science

• Girls participated more, were more extrovert, interacted more with the teacher, received less harassment from others than in mixed sex classes.

• Boys were ambivalent in their feelings about these. They posed a challenge for teachers in task-oriented activities. Boys in single sex classes reported the most harassment.

Teachers’ implementation of gender-inclusive instructional strategies in single-sex and mixed-sex classrooms Parker, Lesley H. & Leonie J. Rennie, Curtin University of TechnologyInternational Journal of Science Education, 2002, Vol. 24, No. 9, pp. 881 – 897

Rose Report on Attitudes towards science

• In wealthy countries, very few want to become scientists, particularly not the girls

• In wealthy countries, no girls want to work with technology and even the boys are ambivalent

• In poor countries, ‘everbody’ wants to become a scientist and work with technology, but very few get the opportunity

Findings on gender, social class and ethnicity

Gender is not the strongest predictor of attainment

the social class attainment gap at Key Stage 4 is three times as wide as the gender gap

some minority ethnic groups attain significantly below the national average and their underachievement is much greater than the gap between boys and girls

gender is an independent and significant predictor of attainment, and the gap in attainment at GCSE between boys and girls is relatively stable across the social class groupings

Findings on gender, social class and ethnicity

Consideration of social class and ethnicity alongside gender helps schools to identify which students are ‘underachieving’

(Source: Gender and education: the evidence on pupils in England, DfES, 2007)

The influence of the school and teachers’ attitudes

Teachers are just as susceptible to stereotyping as any other portion of the population. In their classroom and daily dealings with young people, their expectations and treatment of their pupils may be influenced by:

Girls:

•Disciplined with deadlines

•Liking for open-ended work

•Taking care with presentation

•Less confident in abilities

•Opt-out more passively

•Prefer verbal, empathetic, and imaginative work

Boys:

•Take a last-minute approach

•Liking for structured, short tasks

•Lack of care with presentation

•Overconfidence in abilities

•Opt-out more aggressively

•Prefer spatial, sequential, logical work

•Peer group approval is paramount

Questions for you to consider?

Thinking about your first placement school

• To what extent has your school promoted the value of gender inclusive strategies?

Questions for you to consider?Thinking about your classroom

• Who do I call on when hands are raised in class, boys or girls? Do I address them in the same manner?

• Do I equally tell-off both genders when problems and issues arise in the classroom?

• Do I ask higher level questions of each gender?

Questions for you to consider?

Thinking about your classroom

• Do I have the same expectations of all of my students?

• Do I provide equal amounts of help, feedback, encouragement and praise?

• Do I use gender free language in the classroom?

Questions for you to consider?Thinking about your classroom

• Do I interrupt one gender more often than the other? • Do I use examples of both genders when teaching a

lesson? Is the text I use contributing to gender biased actions?

• Research on single sex classrooms showed that boy’s ability to communicate improved – how could you support boys’ oral and written communication in a mixed class situation?