Why do boys lag behind?

Sydney
4 November 2001

Indifference main worry, says Dr Pell

Open your hearts to the refugees, bishop pleads

Beazley visits aged villa

Health care needs more money

Two Australias: Labor backs national poverty summit

Biblical principle behind split-income tax policy

Sydney’s new Maronite bishop

Archbishop Pell in protest on cloning

Amnesty backing imprisoned priest

‘Bishop buses’ ready to roll

Trinity students get their sea legs on board the Kanimbla

‘PR campaign’ on embryos

Antioch: 20 years of showing the light

Unity Group enjoys day in the sun

Soldier, teacher, actor, priest – Mark’s inspired journey

Why do boys lag behind?

Sacrament of Penance: NZ bishop denies ‘radical reform’ charge

Letters: Catholic schools

Conversation: An hilarious ministry - Fr Hilary Doran, Carmelite priest

Reflection: Questions that will require religious answers

Too many prisons?

Opinion: Can the West avoid a ‘holy war’ with Islam?

Having fun with Vinnies to help those in need

‘God’s engineer’

Tamil Catholics celebrate their 10th birthday

Education: Teach your children ‘how to pray – not what to say’

Inspirations: Fatima ‘prayer for peace’

Why do boys lag behind?

The teacher needs to get the best from each individual student

A national symposium in Sydney examining the problem of why boys are falling behind at school has come up with some surprising answers. Kathleen Carmody reports

When asked what’s the most difficult year to teach, most teachers would agree it’s Year 9. And, in particular, year 9 boys. There’s been a lot of talk about the widening gap between boys’ and girls’ academic achievement – a gap that is at its widest in the middle school years.

Educating Boys in the Middle Years, a symposium at St Ignatius’ College Riverview, highlighted the problems associated with educating boys in the crucial middle years (years 5-10) and endeavoured to offer solutions to redress the balance.

Shane Hogan, headmaster at Riverview, says one of the main outcomes of the symposium was the conclusion that there was a need for the ongoing professional development of teachers.

“Unless teachers are developed and changed with time, then you’re not going to be able to attack this issue of the middle years where kids fall off, and aren’t as keen, and don’t like school,” he said. “And boys, in particular, are amplified in that situation.”

One of the key speakers, Dr Ken Rowe, a principal research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, told the symposiumn that while much discussion on the issue of boys’ learning had focused on gender differences, these differences paled into insignificance compared with teacher effects.

Mr Hogan said Dr Rowe’s main theme was that teachers make a difference.

“His argument was that the teachers’ profession is getting older in Australia and it’s harder to attract good people, so those that are there need to be forced to retrain,” Mr Hogan said.

It wasn’t enough for teachers to be trained initially, then left to their own devices for the rest of their career.

They needed to retrain to cope with the changing way in which “boys need to be educated and young children need to be educated”. And the training needed to be ongoing.

A number of speakers saw a need to develop boys’ literacy skills.

Dr Rowe described the growing emphasis on literacy in the school curriculum and how boys, who are shown to develop these skills more slowly, are suffering as a result. Rather than change this aspect to better suit boys, he reemphasised the need for high quality teaching, particularly in regard to literacy and related verbal reasoning and written communication skills.

Getting boys more interested in reading was seen as vital by many. “If they are to compete with girls on a level playing field,” Mr Hogan said, “we have to get boys interested in reading and we have to challenge them with things that they like.”

He said Dr Rowe had rejected the notion that the sex of the teacher made a difference to learning outcomes.

Instead it was the capacity of the teacher to get the best from each individual student that mattered.

About 190 people from around the nation took part in the forum. About 30 per cent of participants were parents, which Mr Hogan said was a good sign as it made teachers more accountable.

Parents who attended such conferences he said, “can go back to a teacher and say: ‘well I heard at a conference a better way of treating my boy, who’s not doing his homework and not coping; have you thought about such and such?’ ”

Mr Hogan said that recognition of the need for teacher development was the major outcome of the symposium. “While we all came to talk about boys in the middle years and the strategies (needed), most of us walked away saying it can’t be done without developing our teachers,” he said.

Riverview was already devising strategies as a result of the forum. “We’re looking to redirect our energies here into developing our teachers more,” Mr Hogan said.

“The program we’re going to put in place is to firstly look after their physical needs, to make sure that they have a good teaching environment – classrooms and their own offices … computers on their tables and such.

“But then we want to get down to the individual needs of the teachers in terms of discipline – are they coping well with the changing attitude of the boys; knowledge of their subject – so again how many years is it since you’ve had a refresher on economics, business studies, or English.

“And probably the most important one is to look at ways of making our curriculum more attractive to boys ... But let’s go one step further. If boys learn best by hands-on – charts, graphs, and such – how can we integrate that into our learning?”

Mr Hogan agreed that the continuing problem of boys falling behind wasn’t going to be solved overnight.

He was positive, though, that by raising awareness a solution could be found.

“I don’t think there’s a quick fix; I think it’s cultural,” he said. “But I think the great thing out of this is the fact that people are aware and want to do something.”