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What about the boys?

• Reconsidering gender equitable education

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• Janice Wallace
• Educational Policy Studies
• University of Alberta
• wallacej_at_ualberta.ca

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• Why now?
• Which boys?
• What are the strategies that have been tried?
• Where should we go from here?

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Why now?

• Growing attention to high stakes standardized
  tests
• Media attention to failing and disadvantaged
  boys increases political pressure to act

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? Growing attention to high stakes
standardized tests ?Media attention to failing
and disadvantaged boys increases political
pressure to act ? Does not recognize that boys
have not being doing well in literacy measures
relative to girls for decades (e.g. Stanchfield,
1973)nor that reading scores for both boys
and girls have been improving overall.
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Influential theories

• Traditional
• war against boys
• toxic gender roles
• biological brain differences
• failure to produce real men

• Criticaltraditional theories are
• strategies of the right and economic interests to
  naturalize preferred ways of being a boy
• do not explore the complexity of boys
  lives/multiple ways of being

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Questions to consider

• Who is best prepared to work with boys?
• What do we understand about forms of masculinity?
• What forms of masculinity are preferred and why?
• Whose interests are served by preferred forms of
  masculinity?
• How are these forms linked to particular social,
  political, ideological, and economic interests?

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Which boys?

• Traditional arguments that are shaping changes in
  school practices portray all boys as an
  undifferentiated group of underachievers, who
  are all victims of their own biology (Greig,
  2003, p. 39) or feminism, or liberal parenting
  orthe list goes on.
• BUT research tells us that it is particular boys
  who are less likely to succeed

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• Race and social class have a greater
  impact on achievement than gender.
  (Weaver-Hightower, 2005)
• In high migrant density working-class suburbs in
  western Melbourne, for instance, one in three
  boys could expect to fail university-accredited
  English if he chose to take it, compared with an
  anticipated failure rate for girls of one in
  five. And yet boys from the wealthy inner east
  suburbs do better than groups of girls from
  working-class and rural areas, their results
  being exceeded only by girls from similar
  socio- economic backgrounds
  (Gilbert Gilbert, 1998)

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• The sons of doctors, accountants and other
  professionals will continue to make it into
  university. But Coulter points out that in the
  past, people didn't worry much about the boys of
  working class families because in so many cases,
  as soon as they were old enough and strong
  enough, they joined their fathers working in
  factories. But as unskilled jobs dwindle,
  opportunities for boys to leave high school and
  land good jobs that provide a foundation for the
  future are becoming rare. More parents are
  pinning their children's future on them getting
  a university education.
• (Rebecca Coulter in London Free Press,
  Saturday, October 29, 2005, accessed on-line)

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• Gay boys and boys with disabilities have
  profoundly different experiences of school
  than heterosexual and non-disabled students.
  If researchers are not careful and nuanced in
  their examination of the issues, they may
  misrecognize disadvantages as affecting all boys,
  when really boys who are white, heterosexual,
  able-bodied, middle class, and traditionally
  masculine tend on average to do quite well.
  For boys of color (e.g., Ferguson, 2000 Sewell,
  1997) and gay boys (e.g., Friend, 1993), however,
  the conditions are much more grim.
  (Weaver-Hightower, 2005)

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Changing definitions of literacy

• Blair and Sanford (2004) argue, traditional
  definitions of literacy do not factor in the
  forms of technological literacy in which many
  boys engage outside the classroom. It could be,
  they argue, that some boys have moved on to other
  forms of literacy that are not privileged in the
  classroom but with which they exhibit higher
  levels of competency than girls.

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What are the strategies that have been tried?

• Boy friendly books
• Technology and boys
• Increase the number of male teachers and male
  role models
• Single sex settings

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What about boy friendly books?

• essentializes boys i.e., suggests that all boys
  prefer action-oriented or information books and
  no boys like to read poetry or fiction
• does not recognize that differences between boys
  and boys, and girls and girls are just as
  significant as those between boys and girls
• considers only the interests of traditional
  notions of masculinity and does not at all
  consider the affirmation and expression of
  other ways of doing masculinity.

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boy friendly books continued

• perpetuates a rigid binary between fixed gender
  identities. (Greig, 2003, p. 43)
• may valorize violence or physical aggressiveness
  without questioning these behaviors as normative
  for males.
• females and non-traditional males may be
  alienated and boys may not be encouraged to
  explore multiple ways of being

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Technology and boys

• Technology is not neutral pedagogical terrain
• Pedagogy often perpetuates narrowly defined
  masculine norms to the exclusion of females and
  multiple expressions of masculinity.
• Schools may actually be perpetuating inequity at
  the same time that they are pursuing it.

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Increase the number of male elementary teachers
and male role models

• Studies designed to support these ideas provide
  little support. Instead, boys who have male
  teachers do not have fewer problems in school and
  are not better adjusted than other boys.
  (Coulter McNay, 1995)
• Presumes a homogenous category that does not
  recognize the many performances of masculinity
  that a male teacher may bring with him to the
  classroom

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• There are a complex set of inter-related
  economic, social, and political factors that are
  at play in the choices males and females make
  when considering a career in education.
• Males contemplating teaching positions that are
  most stereotypically attached to female interests
  are caught between the feminized expectations
  for working with young children, traditional
  masculine ideals, and unchallenged homophobia
  that fuel fears about men working with young
  children.

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• Male and female teachers working together need
  to foster more reflective dialogue and debates
  regarding the construction of gender. It means
  men and women, through conversations and dialogue
  with students to raise awareness and promote
  discussions about acceptable male behaviour, must
  raise critical questions about the performance of
  gender, challenge the privileged position of
  hegemonic masculinity, and create safe, equitable
  places for all students. (Greig, 2003)

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Single sex schooling

• Is immediately pro-active, therefore politically
  desirable
• Associated with a long history of prestigious
  male institutions
• BUT there is no significant advantage according
  to research
• May respond to perceptions that boys are more
  talkative and active with stricter discipline, a
  competitive atmosphere, and more physical
  activities.

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• strategy may negate the very male characteristics
  they have been set up to accommodate
• may further marginalize boys who are already not
  succeeding because they do not fit into
  traditional male behaviours
• may reinforce the very behaviours that do not
  serve boys well in school.

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Where should we go from here?

• We have a moral obligation to act in the best
  interests of all students
• We need to actbut wisely rather than
  precipitously
• There is no one simple solution, no tips for
  teachers (Lingard et al., 2002) that can fix
  boys. Nor do all boys need fixing
  (Weaver-Hightower, 2003).

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• Find out which boys are truly in need, find out
  what their problems are and what the roots of the
  problems are, and develop smart,
  non-stereotypical ways to help boys live in a
  world that demands masculinity to be
  reconceptualized as something more inclusive
  (Weaver-Hightower, 2003).

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• Politicians, school administrators and parents
  need to listen to what boys have to say about
  education. If they did, he says they'd learn that
  boys aren't yearning for more action-packed
  reading materials or more male teachers. "It's
  what the teacher actually does in the classroom"
  that makes the difference for boys, Martino says.
  
• He said student success comes from the capacity
  of a teacher to engage students in learning, how
  well teachers of either gender explain and how
  well they listen. (Helen Connell quoting Wayne
  Martino (UWO),London Free Press, Saturday,
  October 29, 2005)

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Strategies to consider

• Encourage in your students a sense of competence,
  control, and challenge
• Design literacy tasks that have a clear and
  immediate purpose
• Respond to students personally and with genuine
  interest

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• Encourage students to develop self-efficacy
  through allowing them to have some control of the
  knowledge they acquire
• Allow for inquiry based learning, individual
  choice, and accommodation of students interests
• Make learning relevant to real life contexts

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In other words, excellent teaching strategies
work for boys and for other students in your
class!

• Promote dialogue, model, and act in ways that
  affirm genuine and multiple possibilities for
  young boys (Greig, 2003)
• In English classes, add explicit attention to
  boys emotional vocabulary
• Use critical literacy strategies
• Develop action research projects to develop a
  deeper understanding of how particular boys are
  taking up literacy strategies
  (Weaver-Hightower, 2005)

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• Basing plans on deep knowledge of the
  particular students and contexts, we can as a
  profession, avoid entrenching harmful versions of
  masculinity, wasting time on gimmicks, and
  rolling back the gains of girls.
• (Weaver-Hightower, 2005)