Boys, Girls and Achievement

Addressing the Classroom Issues

Becky Francis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134579211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Girls are now out-performing boys at GCSE level, giving rise to a debate in the media on boys' underachievement. However, often such work has been a 'knee-jerk' response, led by media, not based on solid research. Boys, Girls and Achievement - Addressing the Classroom Issues fills that gap and:
*provides a critical overview of the current debate on achievement;
*Focuses on interviews with young people and classroom observations to examine how boys and girls see themselves as learners;
*analyses the strategies teachers can use to improve the educational achievements of both boys and girls.
Becky Francis provides teachers with a thorough analysis of the various ways in which secondary school pupils construct their gender identities in the classroom. The book also discusses methods teachers might use challenge these gender constructions in the classroom and thereby address the 'gender-gap' in achievement.

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1 Gender and Achievement

A Summary of Debates

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Much has been written recently about gender and education in terms of achievement and change. If we are to believe the impression given by the media, any gender disadvantage previously experienced by girls has now been transferred to boys, reflecting a whole new set of relationships in the classroom. Hence, it is argued, the focus of concern regarding gender disadvantage should now centre on boys. Yet a number of feminists (e.g. Howe, 1997; Francis, 1998a; Paechter, 1998) have maintained that gender relations in the classroom are actually characterized more by continuity than by change. This book aims to explore the construction of gender in the secondary school classroom, with particular attention to the issues of power and achievement. It attempts to demonstrate some of the ways in which gender relationships and power inequalities are maintained, as well as exploring apparent changes in these patterns. Finally, it discusses the disadvantages in the perpetuation of oppostitional constructions of gender for both sexes, and explores methods by which the normative production of gender difference might be further disrupted. In this chapter the controversial issue of gender and achievement is discussed, to contextualize the research in current policy debates regarding gender issues in education at secondary school level.

Gender and Achievement

Gender and Achievement in the 1970s and 1980s

When some of the first studies of gender issues in education were carried out by ‘second-wave’ feminists in the 1970s and early 1980s, they presented a grim picture of rampant gender inequality in the classroom. According to this work, girls were marginalized and belittled in the classroom, the victims of systematic discrimination from male classmates and teachers and the school system itself.¹ The accounts provided in these studies resonated with female readers, as they reflected many of our own educational experiences. It was argued convincingly that the catalogue of discrimination that girls and women experienced in the educational system explained the low achievement of girls at maths and science in compulsory education, and the relatively low numbers of women progressing to further and higher education (Stanworth, 1981; Spender, 1982 ).

Many of these studies were particularly concerned with the role education seemed to play in reducing girls’ self-confidence and feelings of self-worth and consequently in lowering their ambitions concerning continuing education and future work (Clarricoates, 1980; Stanworth, 1981; Spender, 1982). There was also a focus on the ways in which girls were persuaded, subtly or openly, that traditionally masculine subjects such as the ‘hard’ sciences and maths were ‘not for them’. Many girls avoided such subjects, and when they pursued them their ‘O’ level performance was significantly lower than that of boys (see Spender, 1982). This issue particularly concerned some feminist teachers and researchers, especially because qualifications in these subjects are often necessary for access to prestigious and highly remunerated careers. In being channelled into arts subjects at the expense of sciences, girls were also being diverted away from high-status areas of future work (Thomas, 1990). Hence, programmes such as the Girls Into Science and Technology (GIST) and Girls Into Mathematics (GAMMA) projects were initiated to encourage female interest in maths and the sciences. Valerie Walkerdine (1988; Walkerdine et al., 1989) pointed out early on that perceptions of girls as ‘lacking’ at maths were actually grounded in fashionable notions of the ‘right way’ to learn maths: girls’ learning methods did not conform to these notions and were consequently constructed as pathological by teachers. Hence, able girls were not being entered for prestigious exams. She and others² also observed that boys were underachieving at language subjects, and that this issue was being ignored. The failure to address boys’ poor performance at languages while debating girls’ apparent inadequacy in the sciences meant that girls were being unduly problematized compared with boys (Walkerdine, 1988). However, the relative lack of attention to boys’ underachievement in language subjects was explained by the low status of languages in the public perception and in the curriculum hierarchy (and this was, in turn, bound up with the association of languages with femininity; Walkerdine, 1988).

The Climate of Change

The early feminist studies of education did much to raise awareness among teachers concerning girls’ underachievement at maths and science and their low aspirations regarding post-compulsory education. The consequences of the often low expectations of teachers concerning girls and their achievement was also stressed. In Britain, many feminist teachers worked hard during the 1980s to introduce classroom practice with which to counter these trends, as either individuals or groups or as part of specific initiatives such as GIST and GAMMA (see p. 5). In some cases, programmes geared to improving equality of opportunity were taken up and implemented by sympathetic local education authorities (Arnot et al., 1999). Arnot et al. (1999) note the achievements of teachers in raising awareness concerning the discrimination against girls in schools. However, they also point out that these actions and strategies were never cohesively co-ordinated, but tended to take different forms in different schools, and were practised in some localities and not in others.

In terms of educational policy in the 1980s, however, equality of opportunity was not a priority (Blyth, 1992). Indeed, the Conservative administrations led by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and by John Major in the early 1990s often made this lack of concern with equity issues explicit (see Arnot et al., 1999). Instead, the changes in British educational policy at the time reflected concerns with ‘standards’. The Conservative government was concerned that standards in British state education were deteriorating. It was hostile to the teaching profession, which it saw as undermining educational standards through the propagation of ‘woolly’ liberal teaching practices based on apparently left-wing concerns about equity and empowerment in the classroom. The Conservative administrations saw the improvement of educational standards as vital if the British workforce was to remain competitive with other nations in the global economy (Arnot et al., 1999). (These concerns continue to be reflected in the current Labour government’s policies on lifelong learning.) There was an increasing focus on traditional whole-class teaching methods and the importance of the ‘3 Rs’ (Francis, 1998a). This stress on the importance of ‘the basics’ and the drive to standardize education led to the Education Reform Act in 1988. The act established a compulsory curriculum for schools and introduced standardized testing of pupils in English, maths and science at different stages of compulsory education.

This meant that girls and boys were compelled to take the same subjects at school for the first time. While many commentators were concerned that the teaching of equity issues was marginalized by the introduction of the National Curriculum (e.g. Blyth, 1992), the National Curriculum served to ensure that girls could no longer choose to avoid, or be steered away from, traditionally ‘masculine’ subjects such as maths and science. By the early 1990s it became evident that girls’ GCSE results in these areas were improving, and by 1995 they matched boys’ achievements in these subjects for the first time.

The economic backdrop to these changing patterns in gender and achievement has been argued by some to account for the apparent ‘crisis of masculinity’ that men are argued to be experiencing. Manufacturing industry and connected occupations have been in decline since the 1950s, whereas the service sector has been growing (Maclnnes, 1998; Rees, 1999). This decline in manufacturing has been particularly acute since 1979. Figures reported by Arnot et al. (1999) demonstrate that these changes are not as recent as is sometimes supposed: service sector jobs accounted for nearly 70 per cent of total employment by 1989, showing that a very high proportion of the restructuring of the marketplace took place in the 1980s. However, traditionally, manufacturing and industrial jobs are seen as masculine and are done by men, whereas the skills often required in the service sector, such as empathy and communications skills, are seen as being more feminine. For this reason the changes in the labour market are seen as having disadvantaged men. Certainly, it is the case that Britain is one of the few places in Europe where male unemployment is higher than female unemployment (though some female unemployment goes unreported, and unemployment generally is currently dropping in the UK) (Rees, 1999).

The decline of the manufacturing industry has meant that there are fewer traditionally masculine unskilled jobs available to school leavers. Such jobs required few (if any) qualifications and were the natural destination for young men leaving school without qualifications (such as the group of ‘lads’ studied by Willis, 1977). The decreasing availability of such jobs has led some commentators to suggest that working-class schoolboys now have less incentive to work hard because of the shortage of manual jobs on leaving school, and that this may to some extent explain their comparative underachievement at school (Pickering, 1997; Arnot et al., 1999). This argument seems slightly curious, as one could equally suppose that the lack of manual jobs not requiring qualifications could provide such boys with a greater incentive to achieve in order to access jobs requiring qualifications.

Gender and Achievement: the Current Situation

Against this backdrop of changes in the marketplace, and partly because of the impact of unofficial feminist projects and official Government policy in schools, the situation regarding gender and achievement at GCSE level has altered dramatically since the 1980s. Girls have been performing increasingly well in terms of attainment at GCSE level, and their achievements at this level now equal or exceed those of boys in all subjects (Maclnnes, 1998; Barker, 1997), excluding some minor yearly fluctuations. This development has received widespread media attention, often being linked to the debate about ‘boys’ underachievement’, which is discussed below. Owing to the rather hysterical nature of the response to this development in certain sections of the media, it is important to separate the facts from fiction regarding gender and achievement. Gorard et al. (1999) show that a lack of statistical understanding on the part of many commentators has led to a misrepresentation of the figures and a tendency to portray the ‘gender gap’ in GCSE achievement as bigger than it really is. Further, some question the extent of girls’ apparent previous underachievement. Epstein et al. (1998) point out that in the days of the tripartite system, lower marks were accepted for boys to pass the 11-plus exam than for girls, supposedly because girls mature earlier and perform better than boys. Moreover, as Arnot et al. (1999) remind us, more girls than boys were gaining five ‘O’ levels in the 1970s and early 1980s, so in this sense they have always outperformed boys. Yet because girls tended to choose, or were steered into, traditionally feminine, non-academic subjects, such as domestic science and needlework, their ‘O’ level success was not viewed as significant. Their under-representation and performance at the more ‘important’, masculine subjects such as maths and the sciences was deemed more salient. And indeed, in the 1970s and early 1980s, fewer girls than boys went on to pursue post-compulsory education.

However, in the 1980s girls’ exam results in traditionally male areas began to improve, and this was accelerated with the introduction of the National Curriculum. Girls have caught up with boys in maths and science, and are continuing to outperform boys at languages. Moreover, slightly more women now enter further and higher education than do boys (Department of Education and Employment, 1998a), more women than men get ‘good’ (first or upper second-class) degrees than do men (Higher Education Statistical Agency, 1999), and more women are entering the workplace than ever before (Rees, 1999).

Yet some gendered patterns in education have not changed. One of these is subject choice at the post-compulsory level. The National Curriculum compels pupils to pursue the same core subjects in school, but once compulsory schooling is completed pupils appear largely to revert to traditional choices, with girls tending to choose arts/humanities subjects and boys opting for science/technology subjects. Indeed, Arnot et al. (1999) and Rees (1999) observe that fewer young women are now enrolling on ‘hard’ science and information technology (IT) ‘A’ level and degree courses than a decade ago, despite a global skill shortage in precisely these areas. The sciences have a higher status than the arts in Western society, and science qualifications are more likely to secure a job. Moreover, this job is likely to be better paid than a job resulting from an arts qualification (Rees, 1999). Where men and women opt for non-gender traditional subjects at degree level, men excel compared with their female fellows, whereas women tend to perform poorly compared with the majority male group (Thomas, 1990). In higher education, men continue to gain more first-class degrees and postgraduate qualifications than do women (Francis, 1998b; Epstein et al., 1998).

And importantly, although women are represented in ‘middle management’ in increasing numbers in the workplace, they remain dramatically under-represented in top jobs and in the most powerful positions in society (Rees, 1999; Halford et al., 1997). Hence it is important to point out that although media reports tend to present boys as being disadvantaged in terms of school achievement, there is no evidence to suggest that this has affected their future career prospects compared with women working in similar areas. Indeed, shifts in the status, practices and gender make-up of occupations are taking place that are deeply worrying from a feminist perspective. For example, professions such as law and medicine have been losing their traditional power and status just at the time when women have begun to enter them in large numbers (Crompton, 1997). The association between greater numbers of women and a loss of power is also reflected in less prestigious positions, as many women holding non-management positions in the service industry are working in part-time, low-paid, and insecure positions (Ainley, 1993). (A particularly vivid example is provided by Fernie and Metcalfe’s (1996) account of the rapidly expanding phenomenon of call-centres: in call-centres low skills are required, and a largely female workforce is surveilled and regulated to incredible extremes by mainly male managers). Indeed, some writers refer to a ‘feminization’ of the workplace generally, using this term to imply the loss of power and security that brings the conditions of male workers down to the level traditionally experienced by women. I argue that, when used in this sense, the term ‘feminization of the workplace’ actually has deeply conservative implications. Not only is it misleading, as the change in working conditions has nothing to do with gender (real ‘feminization’ might rather have increased childcare facilities in the workplace, for example, where despite the increase in women working there has been little attempt to accommodate their needs in the workplace), but, more worryingly, the term seems to echo the discourse of ‘blaming women’ (Epstein et al., 1998), as though working conditions for men have deteriorated because of the increased numbers of working women.

The recent media focus on girls’ GCSE success compared with that of boys may in part be explained by the recently implemented policy of league table publication in Britain, whereby the GCSE results from each school are published. The availability, indeed prominence, of figures on GCSE achievement has highlighted the achievements of girls (albeit these may be exaggerated by misuse of the figures; see Gorard et al., 1999). Whatever the reason, the clarion discussion in the media and in the academic press of girls’ outperformance of boys at GCSE level has constructed a discourse of ‘boys’ underachievement’ (Raphael Reed, 1998). This discourse is by no means limited to the UK: it is prominent in many English-speaking countries (such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), as well as other Organization for Economic Growth and Development nations (Yates, 1997; Epstein et al., 1998).

Evidence suggests that girls’ improved achievement at GCSE level is the result of the removal of previous barriers to girls’ attainment and changed expectations on the part of girls (Epstein et al., 1998). However, girls’ improvements are often presented in the media as having been at the expense of boys. As Arnot et al. (1999) observe, the improved achievement of girls has been problematized, leading to the denigration, rather than praise, of teachers’ success with girls. There is a tendency to imply that because girls were underachieving at maths and science in the 1970s and early 1980s teachers and educationalists have focused on improving girls’ achievement, with the result that boys’ needs have been ignored. Yet in fact, boys’ GCSE results have also been improving year on year, although not as dramatically as those of girls. Epstein et al. (1998) have identified three separate discourses used in the popular and academic press to explain boys’ educational ‘failure’: ‘poor boys’, ‘failing schools’ and ‘boys will be boys’ (they do not discuss pejorative narratives in reference to boys such as those noted by Griffin, 1998, and Francis, 1999a). The ‘poor boys’ discourse presents boys as disempowered victims, and this discourse blames females (girls, mothers, female teachers and/or feminists) for boys’ apparent underperformance. Cohen (1998) ably discusses how low educational achievement among boys has historically tended to be seen as the result of external faults, such as the teacher, school, or method of learning or assessment, whereas low educational achievement among girls is perceived as the result of internal inadequacies. Certainly, there have been noticeably few attempts to explain boys’ relative underachievement as being the result of inherent inadequacies, which was a reason previously used to explain girls’ underachievement at maths and sciences in the past (e.g. their apparently lower spatial ability).

Hence many government and academic initiatives to improve boys’ educational achievement are built on the supposition that boys’ comparative underachievement is a result of a failure to make education sufficiently appealing to boys (see, for example, Clark, 1998; Department of Education and Employment, 1998b; Qualification and Curriculum Authority, 1998 ). Some commentators have also been quick to suggest that the increased assessment of coursework introduced with GCSEs has aided girls’ success. Assessment of the previous ‘O’ level exam (which GCSEs replaced) was based almost entirely on examinations, which boys are seen to be more comfortable with. However, as MacDonald et al. (1999) and Arnot et al. (1999) point out, even with the reduction in coursework for GCSEs in the mid-1990s, girls are continuing to improve their performance: there has b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Gender and Achievement: A Summary of Debates
• 2 Theoretical Perspectives of Gender Identity
• 3 Gendered Classroom Culture
• 4 Young People's Constructions of Gender and Status
• 5 Young People's Talk about Gender and Studentship
• 6 Young People's Views of the Importance of Gender and Education for their Lives
• 7 Young People's Talk about Gender and Behaviour
• 8 Discussion: Gender, Achievement and Status
• 9 Teaching Strategies for the Future
• Appendix 1: Interview Schedule
• Appendix 2: Transcript Conventions
• Appendix 3: Attributes of an Ideal Pupil
• Notes
• References
• Index