Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

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Here Roberts explores anumber of reasons why this is problematic. One reason is that boys get bored of things that interest them eventually. Willingham ( 2009) in Why Don’t Students Like School? states:

To get boys putting pen to paper, teachers need to have relentless high expectations when it comes to what you want them to produce. If we mask this fear with the bravura of ‘not trying,’ it allows us to hide our vulnerabilities and provide an excuse for underachieving. Fear of failure, they write, is a deep psychological threat that can lead to self-sabotage: the person’s motivation to avoid it exceeds their motivation to succeed. It is essentially a fear of shame, a paralysing emotion. The two schools-based authors write chapters in turn. In chapter one, Mark Roberts tells of his early success as a teacher with a reputation for teaching boys well and describes his popular classroom strategies.In fact, an Australian study by Josephine Infantino and Emma Little found that of 350 pupils sampled, 78% felt that a private rebuke was the most effective method of dealing with inappropriate behaviour. Chapter 4: Mental Health– Another thought-provoking listen with chilling statistics. Pleased to know that a number of the recommended strategies are already in place in my setting. Appreciated the mention of teacher modelling openly talking about their emotions and shoulder-shoulder talks, which made me think of a Pivotal podcast that I listened to in my first year of teaching and has stayed with me since.. There’s a danger of treating boys differently and patronising them, says Roberts. “So, for example, you’ve got a boy you think doesn’t like reading, so you decide to pander to his love of football and give him a book about that to read. But in narrowing your expectations, you’re narrowing his. It’s the same with, for example, teaching boys about Shakespeare by concentrating on the sword fights or the fighting: it’s like we’re hoodwinking them into learning, and it doesn’t work. What we need is a big shift in ethos: too many teachers believe boys can do less, they don’t think boys can succeed as well as girls at school. I don’t think it’s about watering it down: it’s about having high expectations for boys as well as for girls.” This year – again – girls outperformed boys in the Leaving and Junior Cert. They sat more higher level papers and got more H1 grades overall. Academic studies show boys are underachieving, in all stages of education, from preschool – where boys lag behind in language and communication - up to college. A gender gap in educational attainment means boys get lower exam results than girls, are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to go to university than their female counterparts.

A “good student” is seen as a compliant one, with boys more frequently sanctioned and girls spending more time on homework. Despite the continued debunking of the learning styles theory, the notion that boys benefit from kinaesthetic activities persists. Willingham ( 2009) states:So is there really a crisis? Or some kind of moral panic? Why are boys falling behind? And what can we do to help them achieve more? Crisis

The fact is, these myths, like all myths, are totally fallacious. If teachers really want to improve outcomes for boys, then they need to build positive relationships with them. We recommend the following steps to getting boys on side: 1 | Avoid confrontation Chapters on violence, sexism in schools, peer pressure and relationships offer evidence-based and practical information for schools wishing to lift the schooling outcomes and behaviours of boys. The topics are grounded in real-life scenarios, which also help to give the views credibility and a sense of familiarity for teachers. If we can encourage boys to really value formal education, help them see it for themselves, it goes a long way to helping them to meaningfully engage and embrace it.”Other chapters look at mental health, violence and aggression, or the problems caused by “banter”– offering ways to develop more positive relationships in lessons. This book opens with stark facts about the gender gap – not only in school, but in society: 96 per cent of our prison population is male. The head of “The Brunner” is optimistic. He says there is a degree of under-performance in boys, but this does not mean they are no longer achieving. As such, Iwas interested to read Boys Don’t Try: Rethinking Masculinity in Schools by Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts which examines key research in this area and encourages teachers to reflect on how they define masculinity. Each chapter has athree-part structure: stories, key research and practical solutions. Chapter One focuses on some of the most prevalent myths about teaching boys and their engagement with learning and how these myths can actually be damaging to boys education.