Increasing boys' achievement

In the following two articles, Dr Peter West, head of the research group in men and families at the University of Western Sydney, discusses some of the issues around increasing boys' achievement and encouraging them to read for pleasure.

1. Increasing boys's achievement - lessons from research
Research evidence suggests some practical things schools can do to engage boys and improve their educational attainment, social skills and health. Dr Peter West, reports. Read this article in full

2. Boys and guns… and books?
Should boys play with guns? And what does this have to do with their enjoyment of reading or wider learning? Dr Peter West, head of the research group in men and families at the University of Western Sydney, discusses the implications of recent guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families on gender differences in early achievement. Read this article in full

The literature on getting boys on the road to success suggests that the following avenues are fruitful. We have to start in the classroom. Boys spend some 13,000 hours in classrooms and the level of teaching they get is all-important.

How do we motivate boys?

Shipman and Hicks said that teachers and boys had different ideas of motivation. Teachers thought boys were motivated when they were taking notes. But the boys felt this was just teachers keeping them heads-down in useless busy work. Boys felt they were motivated when they were exploring, experimenting and arguing (West, 2002, p. 112).

Some research also talks about a need for some risk, challenge, even a whiff of danger as part of how boys want to learn; hence the attraction of the outdoors. If it's too safe, it becomes boring for many boys. And bored boys often cause trouble.

What teachers should do

• Abandon teacher talk as the main mode of instruction. Provide as much variety in instruction as possible (Martin, 2002, p. 152; West, 2002, p. 168)
• Maximise opportunities for success (Martin, 2002, p. 152; West, 2002, p. 168)
• Keep a check on who gets praised. Girls say that boys don't get praised as often as girls (West, 2002)
• Active and practical learning is very important for all learners, though some subjects challenge teachers in this regard, notoriously, English.
• Highlight relevance and application of knowledge. "What can I use this for?" is a key question for boys (Martin, 2002, p. 152; West, 2002, p. 168)
• Teach through real objects, excursions, artefacts, etc. Good teachers are teaching principles and generalisations from things relevant to boys' interests (Martin, 2002, p. 145)
• Gary Wilson at Kirklees LEA in the UK says that boys often don't know many things which teachers assume they do. Things that are taken for granted include how to organise thoughts into paragraphs; how to put fors and againsts on a page; and how to sum up an argument. Cleve Latham in the USA gives his boys rubrics on how to write an essay - introductions, developing ideas, summing up (West, 2002, p. 132)
• Boys are not all the same. Therefore, room for diverse ways of learning among boys (and girls) is important (Martin, 2002, p. 152; West, 2002, p. 168)
• Research says that nothing can be done until teachers raise their expectations of boys. This is the absolute bottom line.

What schools should do

• Make sure that boys feel valued and liked (Martin, 2003, p. 152)
• Give boys responsibility for learning. In one case, a school took Year 9 away from the rest of the school to a separate campus. They had no canteen; the boys had to organise one. They had no gym: the boys' fathers were asked to help the boys build one. The lessons of responsibility learned were powerful (West, 2002, p. 168)
• Boys feel teachers "don't ask, don't listen and don't care" in too many schools (Slade and Trent, 2000, p. 205)
• But schools that work well with boys show that they care through listening to boys' voices and correctly analysing needs (West, 2002)
• Slade and Trent have a useful summary on what a good teacher for boys looks like: she or he listens to you, laughs with you, respects you, wants you to succeed, doesn't mark you down for bad behaviour and so on (West, 2002, p. 112). Compare with a similar list of a with-it teacher that boys like in Martin (2003, p. 101)

Many of the elite schools I visited in my Best Practice in Boys' Education Project deliberately taught boys a whole range of social skills that showed them how to chat, how to meet and greet people, how to eat out, how to conduct yourself among adults. Learning social skills might help boys better negotiate some of the difficulties in school and in life. Too often, a boy in trouble in one class gets into a confrontation with a year coordinator. A minor problem escalates and it becomes a mammoth one, ending in suspension or expulsion. Boys storm out slamming doors and shouting, imitating the male behaviour they see on television.

Schools should:

• help parents support effective pedagogy. Some sources emphasise the role of fathers (West, 2001, p. 10; Martin, 2003, p. 9)
• support literacy at all levels, model reading and keep persisting with this
• help teachers not to fear (and thus too quickly punish) boys but to have fun in learning with them. Black males seem to suffer from this problem especially (West, 2001; 2002)

Cleve Latham at a school in the USA found boys enjoyed school when it wasn't like school. His English lessons were based on debates, activities, movie reviews and similar activities (West, 2002, p. 132). Others write about the power of the peer group to get boys achieving. It can also act as a way in which underachievers support each others' failure.

Boys respect people who listen, respond and care about them. Above all, teachers should find ways of responding to boys' comments and carrying out some of their suggestions. This, and carrying out the above principles, should provide boys and teachers with much more fruitful ways of spending those 13,000 hours together.

References

A. Martin (2002) Improving the Educational Outcomes of Boys. ACT Department of Education, Youth & Family Services.http://www.det.act.gov.au

A. Martin (2003) Enhancing the educational outcomes of boys, Youth Studies Australia, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 27-46.

Shipman and Hicks, cited in West (2002) What is the Matter with Boys? Sydney: Choice Books. See www.tta.gov.uk/php/read.php?resourceid=1948 [pdf document]

Malcolm Slade and Faith Trent (2000) What the boys are saying: an examination of the views of boys about declining rates of achievement and retention, International Education Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 201-229.

P. West (1999) Boys, sport and schooling: some persistent problems and some current research, Issues in Educational Research, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 33-54.

P. West (2001) Report on Best Practice in Boys' Education. Sydney: University of Western Sydney.

P. West (2002) What is the Matter with Boys? Sydney: Choice Books.

Further reading

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs (2003) Boys: Getting it Right [chair: K. Bartlett]. Canberra: Australian Federal Government.

OECD (2001) Knowledge and Skills for Life: First Results from PISA . Paris: OECD.

Boys and guns… and books?

Should boys play with guns? And what does this have to do with their enjoyment of reading or wider learning? Dr Peter West discusses the implications of recent guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families on gender differences in early achievement.

Most parents’ reaction is to stop gun play at once. Parents’ websites contain much anxious discussion, especially from mothers, who worry about seeing their child playing with a gun. Not having a toy gun provides the opportunity for many boys to invent one. Parents say their sons bite into a sandwich, which becomes a gun: “Bang, bang, you’re dead”.

There is a huge range of difference among boys across socio-economic status, race, and language. Yet it appears that boys all over the world often play with guns, and – later in their lives – with computer games in which they aim at being the best and eliminating the rest.

But these games may be useful to get boys learning. Confident, Capable and Creative: Supporting Boys’ Achievements, a report by the Department for Children, Schools and Families on the early years of learning, says that boys often act out what they see males doing on TV or in video games. And it argues that every child is entitled to challenging and enjoyable learning; this must include boys. Many children do chose gender-specific activities, and each has a personal learning journey. We must trust the richness of children’s ideas, the report says; not impose our own.

The UK Children’s Minister, Beverley Hughes, called it, “a commonsense approach to the fact that many children, and perhaps particularly many boys, like boisterous, physical activity.” Her masterful wording encompasses many debates and will create many more.

Case studies in the report emphasise exploration, experimentation and “mucking about with things”. Some might see this as the kind of play that males typically do – “messing about in boats” as described in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. Many men do enjoy mucking about with cars, computers and boats. Fathers play with kids (especially sons) and it’s typically in a more challenging and competitive way. They nurture (as mothers do) but in characteristically different styles.

Efforts to improve boys’ achievement in the UK and Australia have looked principally at behaviour and learning. Without wishing to make gross comparisons between boys and girls, there are worrying trends in behaviour among boys. Oppositional and conduct disorders are twice as common among boys, according to a report by Sebastian Kraemer (2000) in the British Medical Journal.

Despite many academic articles, a gap between boys and girls’ achievement remains. Among low achievers in the UK, boys outnumber girls by 20 per cent. A gender gap in achievement between boys and girls has been discussed in Australia since the O’Doherty Report was released in New South Wales in 1994 . Last year, the subject rose to prominence in the USA and is still being hotly debated.

The UK report says too many boys develop negative images of themselves as learners, in part because of learning that is not purposeful. The issue was summarised when one British boy wrote in an exam, “I will try my hardest, no matter how pointless the task is”. Following boys’ agendas does improve learning, the report says. Staff should “help boys to achieve more rapidly by providing opportunities for learning that engage them.”

The report argues that schools and childcare centres want pupils to listen patiently, speak nicely and (as they grow older) write attractive descriptions. These are exactly the things most boys find the hardest. Boys’ natural exuberance and energy may often be misinterpreted. Thus, boys can be labelled as difficult and their behaviour called inappropriate. And boys are not seen as positive learners; and become fed up with learning as such. If their interests and learning preferences are not respected, they lose interest in formal learning and switch off. Boys cited in the report said that sitting on the carpet was boring, and “it wastes your life”.

In contrast, a project which followed boys’ interests found sudden, dramatic improvements in their speaking and listening skills AND behaviour.

Engaging boys in schoolwork has been discussed in all countries surveyed by the OECD’s PISA Report. Emphatically, boys are not all the same. But the problem of capturing boys’ interests has been registered in almost all countries surveyed by the OECD and it keeps cropping up in unexpected places. Only last week I was asked by a theatre in London, “How on earth do we engage the boys who visit us?”

There will be many implications from the report. For instance, do we have enough men in teaching? Professor Andrew Martin at Oxford University told me that although teacher quality is paramount, boys prefer to raise certain issues with a trusted older male, not always a father. And males often tolerate more active and boyish learning, Sebastian Kraemer argues. Getting suitable males into teaching has been oft-discussed, but no workable solution has been found.

Perhaps the report follows a trend back to more boy and girl-specific learning. It might encourage a move back to single-sex learning, even within a co-educational school.

There are some echoes of the report in the work done to date by the Australian Government’s Boys Education Lighthouse Schools Program (BELSP). Among the 10 BELSP principles for engaging boys appear the following: flexibility of approach, rather than a standard, teacher-directed activity; practical and hands-on learning; and the use of appropriate male role-models. Like the UK report, the BELSP program wants teachers and caregivers not to enforce stereotypes but to challenge them. The balance among all these principles is difficult to maintain.

The report is not a sensational call encouraging boys to be aggressive in childcare centres and the early years of school. It is a cautious call questioning caregivers’ understandable anxiety about the ways in which many boys play. It supports those of us who argued that schools should be made more boy-friendly. It might spark a useful debate on what is permissible in the early years and how to channel the restless activity that many boys show, rather than condemn it and turn boys off learning.

January 2008

References

Department for Children, Schools and Families (2007) Confident, capable and creative: Supporting boys' achievements. www.teachernet.gov.uk.

Kraemer, S. (2000) The fragile male. Lessons from everywhere, British Medical Journal, 321: 1609-1612. www.bmj.com.