Countering Boys’ Underachievement

(or raising boys’ achievement)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

... highlighted the importance of how the local labour market impacts on young people’s motivation.

Solution? Link success in subject to real life labour.

Macnaughton (2000) claimed that children are a ‘sponge model of identity’.

Mac an Ghaill (1994)

... suggested that ‘the most important factor that prevents the motivation of boys’ was ‘boys’ peer group culture’.

Solution?Engage boys in discussion as often as possible. Make school a social place for them to be.

Shipman and Hicks (1998)

Superhero play (recuperative masculinity)

Interviewed a group of 14-16 year old boys. Queried their perceptions of masculinity.

Harland (2009)

Give them tasks they can do! Draw answers out of them – help them explain. Band within the classroom? Protect their delicate egos. Tell them that you value their input. Reinforce that they have something to offer. Highlight their successes. Celebrate their successes. Let them lose and learn to lose gracefully. Positive discrimination! Be fair and give them same opportunities as the girls.

The solution?

1. Able and behaved (Jordan Hart?)2. Able with attitude (Matthew James?)3. Able but distracted (Lewis Green?)4. Less able but behaved (Lewis Lee?)5. Less able with attitude (Morgan Green?)

Lloyd (2009)

‘Pupils respond positively to an ethos that encourages and stimulates high standards’(Ofsted, 2003)

Whole school approaches

... found that ‘even a minority of staff who had low expectations of underachieving boys ... but did not see it as their responsibility to offer positive opportunities to those that were anti-learning (or pro-social!) could negatively impact on the school ethos,’

Younger and Warrington (2005)

Advocated mentoring because ‘males need a mate ... and very much to be accepted by other boys.’

West (2001)

They don’t appreciate being shouted at for what they deem minor incidents.

They appreciate teachers with a bit of humility and self-deprecating humour.

They wish staff would see them as young men and not little boys.

They begged for explanations to be short and simple – less teacher talk and more pupil work.

They like ‘revision lessons’. Sport can be used as a tool but not excessively.

Morris, Halford, Brown-Pinheiro, Evans (2014)

Keep IT use varied. Boundaries need to be kept/no empty threats. They want people to be aware that often

performers in the class aren’t doing it to be naughty but they are doing it to make people laugh.

They like being positively grouped together as ‘boys’ but not negatively.

Teachers’ attitudes will impact on male pupils.

The boys (cont...)