Gender and educational achievement

• Why has girls achievement improved

  edward and david - gender differences in primary socialisation

  • gives girl an advantage e.g mothers talk to baby girls more frequently than boys, which means that girls may be more experienced in listening and speaking
• Hannan on Girls educational achievement improvement


  Boys relate to their peers by doing, girls relate to one another by talking. This puts girls at an advantage because school is essentially a language experience, most subjects require good levels of comprehension and writing skills
• Kirby - improve in educational achievement 


  Communication has been replaced with TV, DVD and computer games, there has been a decline in family discussion time, through occasions such as mealtimes, thus reducing opportunities for boys to catch up with girls in term of language development
• Wilkinsons


  Girls relative success in education is due to post industrialisation, transformed the attitudes of young women, increasing new job opportunities for women in the service sector of economy.
• Feminisation of the economy and the workforce

  As a result girls may believe that the future offers them more choices and they are provided with the incentive to seek economic independence
• Family changes


  Changes in employment have been accompanied by changes in the family, such as increase in divorce, increase of age at first marriage, increase age of women at birth of their first child, the growth of lone parenthood
• This means more women take ok the major income earner role, creates a financially independent, career- minded role model for girls
• Beck 


  These changes in family are part of the growth of risk and uncertainty, which have created a more individualised society in which men and women have to be more self reliant and financially independen, this further increases the incentive for girls to preform academically so that they dont risk reliance upon a husband are sufficiently well qualifed to cope with uncertainties of labour market
• Female expectations


  Wilkinsons - genderquake in terms of profound changes in their attitudes and expectations about their future, compared with those of their mothers and grandmother, their aspirations are no longer restricted to family life and the mother/ housewife role most tennage girls are committed to education
• In 1976 sue sharpe discovered that the girls priorities were love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers. when repeated 1994 she found that the priorities had changed to job career and being able to support themselves above all priorities
• Frances and skelton


  the majority of primary and secondary school female

  pupils appear to see their chosen careers as refelcting their identity and as a vechile for future fulfilment, and many girls are now looking forward towards jobs that require degree level qualification.
• Wilkinsons and sharpe


  feminist ideas were filtering down through the media and education system and ultima into family life.
• Sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s also led to greater emphasis on equal opportunities in schools consequentl, teachers are now more sensitive about avoiding gender stereotyping in the classroom
• Different in subject choice 


  Gender socialisation - lobban found gender stereotyping in childrens books, with women clearly linked to domestic roles
• Subject choice 


  Subject counselling- in giving subject and career, teachers and career advicers may channel boys and girls into choosing different gendered subject options, in order with their own gender choice
• Subject choice 


  Subject images, gender images and peer pressured. colley the gender perceptions of different subjects are important influences on subject choice, arts and humanities subjects seen as feminine and sciences and maths seen as masculin - females are invisible in science books
• subject choice 


  Teacher and teaching method - traditional cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity may still be held by teachers which are passed onto students via teaching style
• However 


  Colley found that changing the content of the curriculum a subject can alter its gender identity- e.g music on computers more boys might takeit
• Critisms

  1. Girls would be preforming even better if boys werent holding them back
  2. teachers are too busy controlling boys that they dont give girls the attention they deserve