Post #7 - Gender and Education

It was really hard to find good information that didn't repeat itself or wasnt more than 20 years old, but here is some of the stuff that I found. I think that a lot of the 'stereotypes' and testing results from the nineties, still have some prevalence today.
This website has link that you can click on to view "who does better" at reading, writing, math and science. These results are based on testing done in a few different years. The results are separated by gender, race, ethnicity and grade. I only focused on the gender for this research, but the other stuff was kind of interesting too. Girls writing skills were better, while the boys excelled in science, and the math scores went half and half. This information dates as recently as 1990 soo obviously these don't relate to key issues of 2010, but its some good background information on the subject and it still sort of applies.

Most websites generalize that there are "boy subjects" (science and math) and "girl subjects" (English and history). While the results form the first website up above tend to support this theory, from personal experience I can say that this really isn't true.

In my high school girls were generally smarter than boys. Now this was just one school but I would like to assume that the results from my school are typical in a few others. Every year the top 10 students get to do an article in the local newspaper. My senior year out of the three Warwick high schools there were only 5 boys within the top ten of each school. So of the 30 smartest students in Warwick, 25 of them were girls. My school had no boys until number 13!! We used to joke around because our honors classes were full of girls with only 2 or 3 boys in them. One teacher used to always question why men run this country and this world, when we were living proof that women were more prevalent in high school honors classes. It seems to me that somewhere between high school and the real world, girls lose their ground.

Knowing this information, as well as not being able to find a lot about keyissues of 2010, I decided to look up the rates of women versus men that continue to college and then graduate.
One website shows that in 2008, about 71.5% of women were enrolled in college and only 65.9% of men were enrolled.
The graph on the left shows the degrees conferred by females versus males. The statistics start in 1971 and are projected up until 2017. As you can see is shows females are stepping up there game. I believe that these statistics are really catching up to our times and not the stereotypical information one usually comes up with. It just goes to show that a lot has changed over the years.




This site gives teachers tips and tricks to make sure that you, as a teacher, increase the equity between boys and girls in your classroom. This website says that in the 90's research made it clear that girls were 'shortchanged' in the classroom. A lot of times it seems that teachers unknowingly exhibit these 'gender biases' in their classroom, so here are a few tips to help prevent that from happening. Here are the most important tips.
1. Show fairness in the class room. Make sure that posters and signs around the room depict boys and girls engages in the same activities (NO STEREOTYPES). Make sure that you never pin boys and girls against each other, whether in a classroom competition, spelling bees, or even lining up. Make sure you call on boys and girls equally for answering questions. A good solution for this is some sort of lottery system. I remember when i was in sixth grade our teacher had a 'Magic Cup' and we each had our name on a piece of paper in the cup and she would pick out of the Magic Cup when putting us in groups, sending us on a errand, calling on us, or anything else. I never realized until now that this method was used as a gender equality exercise.

2. Select a variety of books. This reminds me of the King and King book we read in class. You might want to have books that show males and females doing equal tasks. Stories that have females doing stereotypical things may just "perpetuate the biases" in the classroom.
"
3. Choose your words carefully. Avoid phrases like 'boys will be boys' as statements like these can allow the biases to continue. Make sure that you interchange he and she when giving examples in the class. When teaching subtraction you dont want to keep saying, "If Johnny has ___ apples and he takes _____ away, how many are left?" Make sure you use Sally or Susie or Jane; keep switching it up.