This article explained how boys are scoring lower than girls on reading tests, and how the gap continues to grow as students get older.  It lays out different ways to get boys more interested in reading, and explains how their brains are not as ready for some activities as soon as girls are.

Giving variety and choices, and allowing boys to focus on plot instead of emotions and feelings are just two examples of what the article says can be done to get boys more involved in reading in the classroom.  By getting them more interested in reading, their tests scores and the gap that we see will begin to improve.

Costello, B (2008). Leveraging gender differences to boost test scores. The Education Digest, 73(9), 32-35.

Related posts:

1. Closing gender gaps in science. Saunders, J., Nelson S.
2. Sax, L. Why Gender Matters
3. Reading, writing and gender: Instructional strategies and classroom activities that work for boys and girls. Goldberg, G., Roswell, B

This article explained how the teen brain is more like a child’s than an adult’s, which is contrary to popular belief.  It then elaborated on which parts of the brain are still changing and why this makes some aspects of learning more difficult for teens.  It then broke the teen brain down by gender, explaining how the girls’ brains develop sooner and more in places than boys.

Brownlee, S, Hotinski, R, Pailthorp, B, Ragan, E, & Wong, K (1999). Inside the teen brain. U.S. News & World Report, 127(6), 44-53.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt. 4: Movement
2. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
3. The Teen Brain Pt 3: Relevance and Experience

An Annotation

Another outstanding book explaining the power of emotions in the human experience.  The idea here is that a person’s ability to recognize, harness, and/or control their emotions play even a larger role in determining happiness and/or success than intelligence (whatever that is).

As emotional intelligence relates to motivation, Goldman wrote two excellent sections entitled, Flow: The Neurobiology of Excellence (90), and Learning and Flow: A New Model for Education.  The idea is that “flow” is a state of mind occurring when a person is able to forget everything and live in the pure moment of whatever activity they are engaged in.  A state of super-concentration when time bends and a person loses themselves.  The motivation for these types of activities and states are entirely intrinsic.

Goldman also touches on gender and emotion issues in a section entitled, His Marriage and Hers: Childhood Roots, in which he explains a bit about the differences between how boys and girls are able to articulate the emotions they are feeling based on girls greater verbal skills.  He also touches on aggression and how girls often feel threatened by “a rupture in their relationships,” and boys feel threatened by “anything that might challenge their independence.”

Related posts:

1. Emotional Intelligence: Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking
2. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Csikszentmihalyi, M.
3. Odd girl out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls. Simmons, R.

An Annotation

This article related some very interesting data about some AP test scores in the Dallas, Texas area.  The bottom line is that while girls are outscoring (and out-taking) boys in most AP tests, not only are fewer girls taking fewer physics and computer science tests—a lower percentage rate are passing.  This despite being measured to be equal in ability by a different test (PSAT).  For example, all boys scoring 70 or higher on the PSAT math exam also passed the AP chemistry exam.  But the same was true for only 50 percent of the girls.

So in 2003, the Dallas Gender Equity Project set out to figure out what was going on.  Working in collaboration with teachers, they found some fascinating gender inequalities (unknown to the teachers) related to things like female encouragement, participation, and confidence.  Many teachers then voluntarily changed their teaching styles and got a higher percentage of female AP test takers.

An interesting comment by a physics teacher:
“The most important lesson I took away for my female students was this:  Each student needs to feel that she is competent, important, and talented.  The number one thing we can do for a student is to sit her down, look her in the eye, and tell her that she’s good at this subject.”

Related posts:

1. Leveraging gender differences to boost test scores.
2. Sax, L. Why Gender Matters
3. Reading, writing and gender: Instructional strategies and classroom activities that work for boys and girls. Goldberg, G., Roswell, B

An Annotation

By far the best book I’ve found explaining both brain-based and social sex differences and their implications for the classroom.  The title would lead one to believe that this is a book only about boys.  But in reality that is far from the truth.  In explaining a particular male tendency, strength or weakness James often uses girls to compare.  So by reading this book, you really get both.

The thing that really sets this book apart from the rest is that it was written specifically for teachers.  It relates directly to the classroom using student type examples as well as giving copious examples of how to take advantage of or at least differentiate to deal with these differences.

Related posts:

1. How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. Bransford, J.D., A. L. Brown, and R.R. Cocking, eds.
2. Motivating students using brain-based teaching strategies.
3. Teaching with the brain in mind.

An Annotation

Recommended for grades 3-8, this book is loaded with specific lessons, tools, and activities designed to teach Language Arts skills (such as reading and writing) with gender in mind.  The authors do very little linking brain-based gender issues to pedagogy, so the value of this book lies in its practicality and activities, of which there are plenty.  In short the activities are presented as things that work without much discussion about why they work.

One additional value of this book is at the very end, where you’ll find an annotated bibliography of nineteen sources related to gender and Language Arts—none of which I’ve included here.

Related posts:

1. Gender Differentiation: Should we really be treating boys and girls differently?
2. Classroom strategies for interactive learning. Buehl, D.
3. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.

An Annotation

This is a fascinating collection of writings by girls themselves, collected and edited by Simmons after inviting them, after reading Odd Girl Out, to write about their own experiences.  Much of this bears out the findings Simmons published in her original book—only in the voices of girls ages 11-16.

Related posts:

1. Odd girl out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls. Simmons, R.
2. Girl power in a digital world. Williams, B.
3. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.

An Annotation

This is a fascinating look at the culture of girls in schools and how they deal with anger, aggression and bullying.  This book takes a look at this gender difference from the learned or social side of the coin, but Simmons premise is that girls are encouraged to be “nice,” which means, “Not aggressive.  Not angry. Not in conflict.”  She has traveled the country talking to girls about these issues and found a very secretive sort of culture in which girls are sneaky about their aggression—bullying by strategically and systematically separating and tormenting another girl.  With girls, it’s all about the relationship.

Simmons relates Carol Gilligan’s work describing how relationships play a much more important role in girls social development than boys.  She found that girls see danger “ . . . as isolation, especially the fear that by standing out they will be abandoned.”  Boys see danger as entrapment or smothering.

And they can hold a grudge forever.

Related posts:

1. Odd girl speaks out: Girls write about bullies, cliques, popularity, and jealousy. Simmons, R.
2. Girl power in a digital world. Williams, B.
3. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.

An Annotation

Again, much of the same brain based information as Sax, but Gurian does add an interesting section entitled How Boys Experience Their Feelings and Emotions, listing eight “internal processing methods favored by males” (21). These methods make sense when one keeps in mind what we now know about male brains and testosterone.

•    The action-release method
•    The suppression-delayed method
•    The displacement-objectification method
•    The going-into-the-cave method
•    The talking-about-feelings method
•    The problem-solving method
•    The crying method.

So Gurian links a lot of brain based information to male behavior, but he also takes a look at the culture of boys, and how it relates to things like competition, aggression, anger, role models, and task-specific empathy.

Related posts:

1. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.
2. The wonder of girls. Gurian, M.
3. Teaching the male brain: How boys think, feel, and learn in school. James, A.

An Annotation

Gurian is a family therapist turned author who repeats much of the same information that is found in the other brain-based literature, but especially in regard to comparing boys’ and girls’ (as well as men’s and women’s) need for what he calls intimacy.  Again, it’s Carol Gilligan’s ideas that boys/men seek independence while girls/women seek connectedness—and fear the opposite.  Gurian, however, at least links these tendencies to hormonal differences.  In one part he explains that testosterone drives ambition, independence, “less dependence on other’s opinions of them,” and competition; while estrogen, progesterone and prolactin combine over a monthly cycle to drive yearnings for connectivity, empathy, and conciliation.

Being a family therapist, much of his discussion is related to parenting, family dynamics and the relationships found therein.

Related posts:

1. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.
2. The wonder of boys. Gurian, M.
3. Odd girl out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls. Simmons, R.