Reassessing Gender and Achievement

Questioning Contemporary Key Debates

Becky Francis, Christine Skelton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134317691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Challenging current theories about gender and achievement, this book assesses the issues at stake and analyses the policy drives and changing perceptions of gender on which the 'gender and achievement' debates are based.

This new topical book guides the reader through the different theories and approaches, drawing together and reviewing work on gender and educational performance. The authors also highlight the continuing problems experienced by girls in terms of achievement and classroom interaction. The subjects covered include:

• perspectives on gender and achievement
• the construction of gender and achievement in education policy
• evaluating boys' underachievement
• the future for boys and girls?
• raising achievement: 'What works in the classroom?'

Teachers, education professionals and students engaged in teacher training will welcome the editors' objective yet critical expertise.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Writing on gender and achievement has swamped the British education media in recent years, yet concerns around issues of ‘gender gap’ appear to be growing rather than receding. And the issue of boys’ apparent educational underachievement in comparison to girls is increasingly identified as an international issue. So, given the proliferation of books and articles on this subject in recent years, is there really a need for another one? We can provide a positive answer to that question, on two counts. First, there is a need to draw together the diverse research and arguments concerning the ‘gender gap’, and to analyse the various different claims, counter-claims and assumptions underlying these debates, in order to provide a thorough, critical, contemporary guide to the debates and work in the area. Second, we believe that the majority of contributions to this field (including some of our own works) have been locked into micro issues. Either they concentrate on the nuances of the arguments (For example, to what extent are boys really ‘underachieving’? What effect is the focus on boys having on girls? Why are generalisations being made that are not representative of particular groups of boys and girls?); or they focus on possible pedagogic and institutional approaches which seek to narrow the gender gap in achievement. There is far less attention to the broader philosophical or political questions upon which these debates might be seen to be predicated, but which usually remain unarticulated.

At this point we can hear readers who are teachers asking ‘what do these matter when we are constantly told that we need to “do something” about boys’ attitudes, behaviour, self-esteem and performance in tests?’ The reply to this is that the political and philosophical contexts provide answers that point the way to how we might realistically tackle inequities through schooling. These broader questions include: Is the gender gap actually important? Why is it? If it is, to what extent can/should we do anything about it? Is equity in achievement either desirable or attainable? And if, in light of these discussions, we decide we do need to address some boys’ achievement, to what extent do we actually want boys to change their behaviours? We would also point out that the various theories utilised to explain the ‘gender gap’ have not been taken to their (often radical) logical conclusions, or the implications of such conclusions been explored.

The nature of ‘achievement’

‘Achievement’ is extraordinarily narrowly conceived within the debates around ‘gender gap’, which position achievement as exclusively reflected by credentials from performance in examinations. Broader views of educational aims and ‘achievements’, such as increased understanding, social competence, citizenship, extension and diversification of abilities and so on, are marginalised and effectively invalidated by the hegemony of the credentialist terminology and focus. Mahony (1998) relates what she refers to as the ‘obsession with academic achievement’ to the rise of the ‘competition state’ (p. 39); the neo-liberal implication of education as ensuring vital human capital in a competitive global economic climate. This book is concerned with the debates around ‘gender gap’ and the origins of the discourses which produce them; and, as such, engages with this conception of ‘achievement’. But we also hope to show that other issues such as the social life of the school, the extent of pupils’ engagement with each other and with school culture and so on are important in their own right, as well as in relation to the attainment of education credentials.

Our own position

We shall in this book be examining ideological perspectives and policy preoccupations that underlie different standpoints in the debate on gender and achievement. It is therefore appropriate that we pause for a moment to elucidate our own positions in relation to the subject.

We are both white, feminist academics, middle-class in terms of our current professional positioning, although one of us (Christine) is of working-class origin. One of us (Becky) is a mother of young boys.

Feminists have been extremely sceptical of, and often hostile to, concerns about boys’ educational attainment. Some of the reasons are discussed more fully later on in this chapter. Indeed, in Britain, the feminist response to the media and policy furore on ‘boys’ underachievement’ can be characterised as initial hostility followed by scornful silence. When the claims about boys’ underperformance first hit the headlines in the mid-1990s, feminist academics engaged closely with the debate, producing key works in the area (such as Epstein et al.’s Failing Boys, 1998). These works expressed concerns with a lack of accuracy in the analysis of gender and achievement reflected in the debate, and an unjustified skewing of interest and resources away from girls. But as the debate continued unabated, and often apparently impervious to feminist critiques, feminists disengaged from the discussions. Talk of boys’ achievement is now often met with disdainful sarcasm in these circles, and feminist writing in the area has dried to a trickle (certainly in the UK at least). Indeed, due to the validity of many feminist concerns about the perpetuation of the ‘boys’ underachievement’ debate, we have both experienced periodic anxiety during the writing of this book as to whether our project is a legitimate one, and the implications of our analyses from a feminist perspective. However, we maintain that feminist engagement with the achievements of both boys and girls remains vital for the following reasons:

1. Boys’ underachievement at literacy and languages is a valid cause for concern.
2. Unless we engage with the debate, the arena is free to be dominated by conservatives and/or propagators of ‘short-term solutions’, who are engaging with it.
3. The policy concern does at least focus on equity, hence ensuring the legitimacy of attention to different sorts of equity (gender, social class, ‘race’ etc.). (This is in contrast to current policy drives which seem to be moving away from equity altogether.)

These issues will be elucidated further throughout the book.

So, to summarise, this book attempts to outline both the micro and the macro issues around gender and achievement. Some of the key issues are briefly touched on below, and developed more fully in the following chapters.

So is there a ‘gender gap’ that favours girls?

Basically, yes. Certainly at schooling level, in the vast majority of countries where education is equally open to girls and boys (by this we mean in terms of access, rather than in terms of non-discriminatory practices within institutions). On the other hand, female out-performance of boys is strongly connected to their overwhelmingly higher achievement at language and literacy subjects, which somewhat skews the achievement figures overall. For example, the OECD PISA study (2003) showed that boys were doing slightly better than girls at maths in almost all the participating countries, and that girls and boys were performing to relatively equal standards at science (although where there were gender gaps these favoured boys). However, in all 43 countries involved in the PISA research, girls demonstrated greater proficiency than boys in the combined reading scale, with an average difference of 32 points across countries (this gap was somewhat slimmer in Britain, but still stood at 26 points). In Britain girls do better than boys at GCSE (the exams taken at the end of formal schooling, age 16) in almost every subject (DfES, 2004b). In 2002–3 58.2 per cent of girls gained five or more A–C grades, compared to 47.9 per cent of boys. This picture is replicated or exceeded in most OECD countries: although there are grave concerns among British policy-makers and journalists about ‘boys’ underachievement’, Britain is actually one of the five countries where the OECD PISA study (2003) identifies the gender gap as narrowest.

Hence, the comparative underachievement of boys at school is an international phenomenon. Why then is it so contested? Generally, it has been feminists (such as ourselves) who have resisted the notion of ‘boys’ underachievement’ and challenged the assumptions behind the claims and concerns about boys’ underperformance. The challenges have been made on several counts, and for a variety of reasons. Some reflect a concern with accuracy. For example, in Britain it is not the case that boys are significantly underachieving in comparison with girls at all subjects. Quite apart from the fact that boys’ overall performance has been improving on a yearly basis, boys almost match girls at science and maths: in 2003 52 per cent of 15-year-old boys in England, and 53 per cent of girls, attained GCSE grades A*–C for any science; and 50 per cent of boys attained these grades in maths compared to 52 per cent of girls. (And in both cases, more boys than girls were actually entered as candidates, DfES, 2004b.) The significant difference is at English and modern languages (for instance, in 2003 68 per cent of girls and only 52 per cent of boys in England gained a GCSE A*–C grade at English). So their poor performance at language subjects drags boys’ overall achievement figures down. There are also concerns at the way in which data is recorded and analysed (such research will be examined further in Chapter 4).

These concerns about accuracy reflect an anxiety on the part of some researchers that the issue of boys’ (‘under’) achievement is being inflated and over-hyped (Epstein et al., 1998; Lucey, 2001; Skelton and Francis, 2003). Take a look at the following quote from a broadsheet newspaper:

The male backlash is here, and it has nothing to do with Robert Bly men discovering the wild man within by banging the bongos in American forests. We are talking about boys. They cannot read, write their own names or speak properly. They are physically and socially clumsy. Increasingly they cannot even do the boys’ stuff, the maths and the science. As a result, they . . . are outnumbered in the workforce, and left to their own often criminal devices.

(The Observer newspaper, 5 January 1998: 12)

This quote is not from an ironic ‘tongue in cheek’ piece or opinion column, but from the leader comment in a ‘serious’ broadsheet newspaper, and is not unrepresentative of what Griffin (1998) has referred to as the ‘moral panic’ among British journalists and policy-makers concerning boys’ educational achievement. Hence the main reason for feminist apprehension is that an over-estimate and consequent over-concern with boys’ achievement will (a) mask the continuing problems faced by girls in schools, (b) justify a greater focus and expenditure on meeting boys’ needs (at the expense of girls), and (c) deflect attention from the larger achievement gaps according to ‘race’ and social class. Certainly, in Britain and elsewhere a great deal of money is being channelled into research, policy strategies and institutional and teaching practices geared at ‘raising boys’ achievement’. For example, the British government has invested in ‘Playing for success’, a country-wide scheme ostensibly aimed at both sexes to encourage after school homework but, given its links to football, was most evidently targeted at boys. In Australia the Minister for Education, Science and Training trumpeted a $4 million budget for identifying ‘lighthouse’ schools in boys’ education in 2002, also heralding a review of the existing gender equity policy framework which had previously focused on girls.¹ In Canada, pilot projects to engage boys with reading and encouraging their educational aspirations have been set up across the country (TES, 2004). Meanwhile in the USA, $1.2 million is being spent on a 36 month study of single-sex settings to counter boys’ apparent disaffection and underachievement; and the single-sex strategy is being actively pursued by the government (TES, 2004). Even some key policy makers in Britain are beginning to acknowledge that such work and the general focus on boys can lead to the marginalisation of problems facing girls.²

Moreover, as we discuss fully in Chapter 4, the gender gaps in achievement according to ‘race’ and (particularly) social class remain more significant in Britain in comparison with gender, and hence the focus on gender in government education policy has led some to suspect that gender is the ‘easy option’ for government, as tackling the gender gap (unlike the gap according to social class) does not raise social justice issues around the distribution of wealth, and any redistribution which might be required to raise the achievement of those underperforming (Regan, 1998; Griffin, 1998). The point that other variables are more significant predictors of achievement than are gender also has implications within the gender and achievement debate, as clearly some groups of boys and girls are doing better than others (we discuss these trends in detail in Chapter 4). Yet this is not recognised in the general debate that positions (all) girls as outperforming (all) boys. To suggest that all girls are now achieving, or all boys underachieving, and proceeding on that basis, clearly risks ignoring (and hence potentially exacerbating) the continuing underachievement of particular groups of girls.

The gender and achievement picture becomes particularly complex at post-16. In Britain girls are increasingly outstripping boys at A level (59.8 per cent of girls gained A–C A level in 2002–3 compared to 51.7 per cent of boys), although particular issues remain (such as the fact that three times as many boys as girls are entered for physics A level). It is at this level in British education that the element of subject-choice is reintroduced (as the National Curriculum for compulsory schooling involves the same core subjects for all pupils). The extent to which young men and women immediately revert to gender-stereotypical subjects is striking, and clearly has an important bearing on their futures, as we discuss further in Chapters 4 and 6. These stark differences in subject choices along gender lines are perpetuated at undergraduate degree-level, although this level of education is also beginning to reflect clearly the general out-performance of young men by young women. In Britain it has been the case for over a decade now that more women than men enter higher education, and more women have been gaining ‘good’ degree awards than have men for some time.

All this complexity impacts even on the use of terminology when writing on gender and achievement. For example, many of us put inverted commas around ‘boys’ underachievement’ in order to reflect either the authors’ scepticism about the notion/extent of boys’ underachievement, or (as in our case) to flag up the concept as a generalisation within which many complexities and contradictions are subsumed.

All this being said, it is clear that generally boys are doing less well than are girls in terms of exam performance, and that in spite of much effort on the part of policy-makers and many teachers, this gap remains evident (particularly in relation to language and literary subjects). This is not because boys’ performance is getting worse (in Britain their exam performance is improving), but rather because girls are continuing to do better. We want to turn now to consider the broader political and philosophical questions raised earlier, beginning with whether the gender gap is important. The very asking of this question introduces a national/international dimension. For example, while boys’ underachievement is seen as ‘the’ important issue in the UK and the USA, in Australia and Canada debates on gender and education often centre more around masculinities, particularly in relation to boys’ behaviour and attitudes (Mills, 2001; Martino and Berrill, 2003).

Does the gender gap matter?

The underachievement of boys is not actually a new phenomenon. Michelle Cohen (1998) demonstrates this point by citing John Locke’s concern at boys’ lack of language skills back in 1693, and how boys have historically been seen to demonstrate ‘a habit of healthy idleness’ (Board of Education, 1923, cited in Cohen, 1998). As Arnot et al. (1999) point out, although it tends to be assumed that in Britain girls were underachieving in comparison with boys until the late 1980s and that they then began gradually to ‘overtake’ boys, this was not, in fact, the case. More girls than boys actually gained five or more exam passes at age 16 in the 1970s and 1980s. It was simply that, prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum, girls’ success tended to be in the ‘wrong’ subjects (e.g. arts, domestic science, etc.), meaning that their achievements were rarely noticed or valued. (Indeed, even in feminist research at the time the onus tended to be on raising girls’ achievement at maths and science, rather than on highlighting their out-performance of boys at English and languages.³) Girls’ performance at maths and science has certainly improved since then: in the case of science the introduction of the National Curriculum made this subject compulsory for the first time in 1988, so the sudden increase in girls’ science qualifications mainly reflects the fact that considerably more girls were forced to pursue it. This illustrates how social policy and expectations can have a strong effect on gender and achievement (girls’ former underachievement at science and maths had often been explained away as the result of biological predilections for the sexes to do better at different subjects).

Likewise, in the days of the tripartite system of schooling in Britain (1940s–1960s), the level of ‘11 plus’ exam result required for entry to grammar schools was actually set lower for boys than for girls, to ensure that sufficient boys gained entrance. This was in recognition that girls do better than boys at exams at age 11, and was seen at the time as due to natural developmental differences (boys catch up in secondary school). More recent developments in gender and achievement have thrown a new light on such a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Perspectives On Gender and Achievement
• Chapter 3: The Construction of Gender and Achievement In Education Policy
• Chapter 4: Evaluating ‘Boys’ Underachievement’
• Chapter 5: Explaining Gender Differences In Achievement
• Chapter 6: What Has Happened to the Girls?
• Chapter 7: The Future for Boys and Girls?: (Re)Constructions of Gender and Achievement
• Chapter 8: Raising Achievement: What ‘Works In the Classroom’?
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Appendix 4
• Notes
• References