education

• Boaler - policies make a massive difference
• Gorard - change since intro of GCSEs
• Mitos and Browne - coursework favours girls
• Elwood - most of course is exams
• Weiner - textbooks removing stereotypical images
• Francis argues there is higher expectations for girls - boys = lower expectations, treated harshly
• Swann - girls' communication style favoured at school
• Jackson argues that high achieving girls look more attractive to schools
• Slees - boys look less attractive due to their behaviours, more likely to look like liability students, 3x more likely to be excluded for behaviour
• Archer argues that MC girls gain symbolic capital through achievement vs WC who achieve through dress and piercings.. Creates a conflict
• 2013 - 40% girls on FSM achieved 5 grades A-C compared to 68% not on FSM
• Hypersexual feminine identities - are created in order to gain status, however this means girls are rejected and looked down upon - symbolic violence
• Boyfriends also = status, however are a distraction to girls = worse achievement
• WC conflicts - some want to do well however are conflicted between the heterosexual feminine identities and MC notions of gaining educational capital
• Evans argues that these girls will go to university to increase their earning power
• Archer argues that they limit choices by going to nearby unis - WC habitus
• McRobbie - magazines from 1970s and 1990s - found that girls would prioritise love and marriage in 1970s and 'not being left on shelf' compared to 1990s - there was more role models for women, more independence
• Increase divorce
• Increased cohabitation, decreased marriage
• More lone parent households, 90% women headed
• Smaller families
• 1970 equal pay act
• 1975 sex discrimination act
• More women falling through the glass ceiling
• Prosser - women doing jobs other generations were not available to women in prior
• Fuller - women's central identity based on education
• Beck and beck gernsheim - 21st century individualism
• Sharpe - interviews with women, 1970s found that women found education unattractive, compared to 1990s which most women saw themselves in a career in the future
• Feminisation of education
• Sewell - schools prefer girls' skills sets such as methodological thinking and attentiveness, don't nurture boys' skills such as competitiveness and leadership
• Gorard- coursework favours girls
• Only 14% male primary school teachers
• 42% of 8-11 year olds said they'd work harder if they had a male teacher
• READs idea of disciplinarian and liberal discourse suggests that it doesn't matter which gender, it matters more on which type of discourse is used
• Epstein - WC boys that try hard are often labelled as sissies and homophobic language
• This is because working hard in school is not a part of their identities and is seen as a threat of masculinity
• Working manual jobs eg.
• Poor literacy skills
• DCSF - Mostly girls are read to by their parents and when boys are read to this is less frequent and tends to be the mother - feminising reading
• Activities and leisure of boys eg. football - does not help with development of literacy and language skills, leading to less advantages in the education system. The fathers and sons reading policy aimed to tackle this and to de-feminise the experience of education for boys and increase attainment