The Australian: 'Gender divide' in road of learning [ 05apr05 ]

The Australian: 'Gender divide' in road of learning [ 05apr05 ]
'Gender divide' in road of learning
Jennifer Buckingham, Schools editor
05apr05

IT'S all in their brains - boys just can't help arguing with their teachers, while girls are determined to impress them.

The innate differences in the thinking of our children are so stark, according to researchers, that educators need to develop a completely different approach in the classroom.
Boys preferred a competitive environment, to be challenged, and to have frequent changes of activity to "turn their brains on", according to Dutch psychologist Martine Delfos.

"In school, boys need competition in order to feel stimulated and to know their place in the hierarchy," she said yesterday.

"The strategy of girls is more often to please the teacher, whereas that of boys is more to compete with the teacher."

Dr Delfos, who will address a boys' education conference in Melbourne today, said the instinctive male response to anxiety or danger was to take action, while the female response was more likely to be passive.

Research shows boys tended to externalise their anxiety and girls to internalise it.

"The most important problems for boys at the end of primary school are behavioural; with girls, the most frequent problem is tummy ache," Dr Delfos said.

"Boys have a tendency to action and need action in class. A variation between movement and sitting still is more important for boys than for girls."

Dr Delfos also believes that many diagnoses of behavioural disorders are normal externalised behaviours to anxiety-generating social experiences - "only a boy reacting in a 'sane' way to an 'insane' situation".

"Boys need an educational surrounding with more possibilities to express their energy and their discomfort," she said.

Her advice for educators is based on her development of the new concept of "preference behaviour".

"Men and women, boys and girls, are capable of doing the same things but they have preferences linked to their evolutionary gender roles.

"From the first day of life, boys tend to look longer at objects, girls look longer at faces. Boys have an orientation toward understanding the working of things while girls are oriented to relating."

After a long period during which there was much resistance to the idea of brain-based differences between the sexes, especially among educators, there has been growing international interest in Dr Delfos's work.

There has also been a change in Australia, said Deborah Hartman, manager of the Boys in Schools program at the University of Newcastle.

"If we actually acknowledge there might be some differences between boys and girls we might be able to tap into those strengths."

She said a lot of progress had been made in the past decade.

"We're really starting to see the benefits now of a shift in thinking in boys' education.

"We're noticing in those schools their behavioural statistics are improving and we are also starting to see evidence that boys are more engaged in lessons, including a shift in literacy results."

But it would be quite a few years before results would be known, Ms Hartman said.

"The main objective now is for the schools that are doing really good work to share their ideas and results."



privacy terms © The Australian