Education: Internal factors for gender differences in achievement(girls) Flashcards
Equal opportunities policies
Feminist ideas have had a big impact on the education systm today. Teachers now have to avoid negative stereotypes and have to encourage the fact that boys and girls can achieve the same things.
What policies have been put into place to encourage girls to pursue careers in non traditional areas?
GIST and WISE.
Female scientist visit schools in order to break barriers and stereotypes and act as a role model to young girls.
Boaler (equal opportunities)
Boaler states that the impact of equal opportunites has acted as a key reason for the change in girls achieivement. Many barriers have been broken in society thus causing education to be more meritocratic, making girls who work harder than boys achieve more and do better in education.
Link this all back to feminism (external)
Equal opportunitis A03
Many subjects like PE and IT are still dominated by particular genders.
Changes in assessment
Sociologist argue that the change in the way pupils are assessed advantage girls but disadvantage boys.
Gorard (changes in assessment)
Gorard argues that the gender gap in achievement was constant until 1989 when GCSE were introduced which then caused the gap to increase. He argues that the use of coursework in most subjects are a reason for this gap to increase.
Mistos and Browne (change in assessment)
Mistos and Browne conclude that girls are more successful with coursework because girs are more organised.
They have the bedroom culture in which it supports them to have better language skills, be organised, and more creative. Thus causing girls to achieve more.
Use this as a link
Changes in assessment A03
Subjects now have scrapped coursework so now, exams make up a larger portion of results. Thus making language not a sole factor to achievement.
Sociologist who talks about it: F&F
Teacher attention
French and French analyse classroom interaction. They found that boys recieve more reprimands/sanctions. They also found that even though boys recieved more attention, they felt picked on by the teachers as they have lower expectations of them.
Girls are the ideal pupil
Swann (Teacher attention)
Swann found that there are gender differences in communication styles. It is found that boys dominate whole class discussions whereas girls do better with pair/group work.
SFP and labelling (Teachers attention)
Teachers respond more positively to girls as they are seen as cooperative rather than boys who they label as disruptive. This can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy (SFP) to the girls causing them to raise their self esteem and achieve more.
Use this as a link
Teachers attention A03
Not all boys respond negatively to teacher labels, they could defer the label and have a self negating prophecy and achieve highly in school.
OR
W/c girls may not have positive labels either, this may only apply to m/c girls who are viewed as the ideal pupil.
Challenging stereotypes in the curriculum
Sociologists argue that the removal of gender stereotypes from textbooks, reading schemes and other materials has removed a barrier in girls achievement. In the 70s and 80s, girls were depicted negatively as housewives or mothers, when presented in textbooks like maths or physics, they were frightened or made boys seem more smarter than girls.
Weiner (challenging stereotypes in the curriculum)
He argued that once the negative stereotypes were removed in educational material, girls achievement increased as women were viewed in a more positive light.
Challenging stereotypes in the curriculum A03
Subjects like physics, maths etc are still dominant of particular genders.
