Suppose you are teaching students in the early elementary grades. You give all your students a blank sheet of paper and a box of crayons and tell them to draw whatever they want. What do children draw?
Studies using this paradigm have found that young girls tend to draw people, pets, flowers, and/or trees, facing the viewer, with lots of detail, eyes, hair, clothes, facial expressions, etc.
Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to draw a dynamic scene of action, such as a rocket smashing into a planet, or soldiers shooting at each other. Faces, if visible, are often lacking features.
Note: this version of the workshop is intended for a K-12 coed school. Other versions of the workshop are available for K-8 schools, for high schools, for girls’ schools and for boys’ schools. Please contact us with a brief description of your school for more information about customizing the workshop for your school.
1) Some sex differences appear to have an innate basis.
Girls and boys see the world in subtly different ways (see Why Gender Matters, second edition, appendix on female/male differences in hearing, for more information and scholarly citations on this point).
The differences in these drawings may derive at least in part from hardwired differences in the visual system (again, please see Why Gender Matters, second edition, appendix on female/male differences in hearing, for scholarly citations on this point). Teachers who understand these differences will have boys who love to draw. Teachers who do not understand these differences are more likely to have boys who say, “Drawing is for girls.” Ironically, the lack of understanding of gender differences has the unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Because so few teachers understand the differences between girls and boys in terms of what they want to draw, the result is – in many cases – boys who think that the visual arts are unmasculine. But the importance of these differences extends beyond visual arts. How we see influences how we read and how we write. Some characteristics of “boy writing” – particularly the emphasis on action – may be traced in part to these differences in the visual system.
Sequence of development. We now know that the various regions of the brain develop in a different sequence in boys compared with girls (see Why Gender Matters, second edition, pp. 85 – 88, for citations on this point). This new research demonstrates that sex differences in the brain diminish as a function of age. Sex differences in the brain are largest between young girls and young boys; whereas sex differences between adult females and males are small. The same is true for many parameters relevant to education. For example: How long can you sit still, be quiet, and pay attention? We find no difference on that parameter comparing a 40-year-old woman with a 40-year-old man. But when we compare a 6-year-old girl with a 6-year-old boy, we find that the average 6-year-old boy can sit still, be quiet, and pay attention for only about half as long as the average 6-year-old girl. He may be sitting still and being quiet, but he is not paying attention. It’s common to find 6-year-old boys who absolutely have to stand and make buzzing noises in order to learn. It’s unusual to find a 40-year-old man who absolutely has to stand and make buzzing noises in order to learn.
Another important insight from recent research has to do with when we reach full maturity in terms of brain development. We now know that women do not reach full maturity in terms of brain development until about 22 years of age; men, not until 30 years of age. The 15-year-old boy still has a very long way to go. What is developmentally appropriate for a 6-year-old girl may not be developmentally appropriate for a 6-year-old boy; and the same is true for a 15-year-old boy compared with a 15-year-old girl.
If teachers don’t understand these differences, the result is girls who believe that “geometry is tough” and some boys who believe that “poetry is stupid.” The teacher’s lack of awareness of sex differences has the unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Conversely, teachers who understand these differences can break down gender stereotypes: they can enable more girls to excel in and to enjoy math and computer science, and they can inspire more boys to get excited about creative writing, poetry, and Spanish language.
How to accommodate these differences in the coed classroom? How to allow a 6-year-old boy to stand and make buzzing noises, without distracting his peers? That’s our focus in this section.
2) Instructional practices (this next section, on gender-aware strategies for each subject area, occupies most of the workshop)
We will consider applications to these subject areas:
How to accommodate these differences in the coed classroom? The key is to understand the differences, and offer choices without labeling. For example, in American history, you might offer students a choice of either writing an essay on “How would it feel if you were. . .” versus “Describe and evaluate the choices available to Col. Joshua Chamberlain after the fourth assault by the 15th Alabama at Little Round Top.” Some girls may choose to write about Col. Chamberlain; some boys may choose to write about their feelings. That’s great. Girls and boys can both be enthusiastic about history, in the coed classroom, if you understand these differences.
Ironically, the result of ignoring gender – pretending gender doesn’t matter, and assuming that one instructional style works equally well for both girls and boys – disadvantages both girls and boys. Both girls and boys may decide that history is stupid and boring.
3) Some girls and boys don’t fit the usual stereotypes.
Some girls don’t want to play with dolls; they’d rather kick a football or wrestle a hog. Some boys don’t enjoy football or hockey; they’d rather read Twilight. Research by Jerome Kagan, Patricia Cayo Sexton, and others, has demonstrated that these boys share a number of characteristics which distinguish them from ‘mainstream’ boys (for the relevant scholarly citations, please see Why Gender Matters, chapter 9):
What do educators need to do to ensure that all boys – including these boys – fulfill their potential? And what about gender-atypical girls, a.k.a. “tomboys”? How do the principles described above differ for these girls – if they are different?
4) Best practices for classroom management and motivation – with an eye on boys.
5) Best practices for classroom management and motivation – with an eye on girls.
We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various seating arrangements, how to encourage group work without promoting the formation of cliques, and the difference – in girls’ eyes – between teammates and friends. We will consider specifically preventing the “Meangirls” phenomenon. This strategy, developed initially at an independent school in Illinois, the Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart, has been effective in preventing girl-on-girl bullying in coed schools across North America (see Girls on the Edge, first edition, pp. 147 – 154).
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