Gender+Differences

Susan Kovalik, founder of the Center for Effective Learning, points out that gender impacts on student engagement. Hard to believe but girls and boys are different. They learn, fight, and see the world, hear and express their emotions differently.

While there are no absolutes there is a continuum of differences. A gender neutral classroom ignores these differences mostly detrimental to the boys.

Studies show that from birth girl babies respond differently than boys do music indicating that from the start they hear differently. Girl babies hear 1,500Hz tone about 80% higher than boy babies. Studies show that hearing differences increase as they grow older. Noise levels that distract a girl in class are ten time softer than distracts boys. Girls do not learn well in a noisy classroom and when spoken to by a male teacher it may be interpreted as yelling at them. Conversely males need a loud voice to get attention. Ask any wife how many times they say to their husband that they are not listening to them---maybe they do not really hear them.

Boys and girls also see differently. A study of eye movement indicates that female babies focus on the face of a smiling woman and boy babies focus on moving objects. The rods and cones are different in males and females. Girls will work on a worksheet in a classroom while boys are distracted by movement in the room or out the window.

Girls draw nouns and boys verbs.

Girls take risks but are not inclined to risky behavior. Boys overestimate their abilities and girls underestimate.

In the classroom girls are more likely to do their homework because they want to please the teacher, boys less so and will not do homework that they have no interest in.

Knowing about gender differences can inform and direct what we do in the classroom.

Two good sources: "Hearing Sensitivity in Newborns", Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 8:200-317, 1997

Sax, Leonard. Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. Basic Books, 2007.