Education: internal factors for gender difference in achievement (boys)

Question 1

Which sociologist talks about ‘Laddish’ subcultures and what do they say?

Answer 1

Francis - They founds that boys were more worried than girls when being labelled as swots because it acts as a threat to their masculinity.

Question 2

How does this link back to education? (Laddish subcultures)

Answer 2

Within working class culture, masculinity is seen as being tough and doing manual work so when it comes to non - manual work or schoolwork, W/c boys may see this as too feminine so they reject it to avoid being labelled as ‘gay’ for doing their schoolwork thus causing them to underachieve.

Question 3

Laddish subcultures A03

Answer 3

Masculinity is a social construct, it can differ cross culturally or between social classes.

Question 4

Feminisation of education

Answer 4

It is believed that schools dont nurture masculine traits such as competitiveness and leadership. Instead, schools focus on attentitiveness in class and methodical working.

Question 5

Sewell (feminisation of education)

Answer 5

Sewell believes that coursework should be replaced with exams and that schools also promote outdoor adventures to the curriculum in order to promotre the physical ability of males.

Question 6

Feminisation of education A03

Answer 6

Schools do promote outdoor adventure and physical ability through sports day.

Question 7

Lack of male primary school teachers statistics

Answer 7

14% of primary school teachers are male
39% of 8-11 year old boys have lessons with no male teacher
42% of boys stated in a survey that male teachers made them behave better and work harder.
90% of lone parent families are headed by females.

Question 8

Do we really need more male primary school teachers?

Answer 8

Francis found that two thirds of 7-8 year olds believed that gender didnt matter.
Haase found that even though females dominate the primary school sector, men still have a better chance of headship than female. Thus proving that men still dominate.

Question 9

Read (Lack of male primary school teachers)

Answer 9

Read explores the view that schools are becoming feminised and the extent to which males need more role models in school. They found that teachers of different genders had a different discourse (way of communication).

Question 10

What are the 2 types of discourse?

Answer 10

disciplinarian - teachers authority is made explicit through shouting, sarcasm etc
Liberal - Teachers authority is implicit. Pseudoadultification - teacher speaks to the pupils as if they were adults and they expect them to be sensible to the teacher.

Question 11

Lack of male primary school teachers A03

Answer 11

Disciplinarian discourse - females can do both.