Gender and Educational Achievement

Gender and Educational Achievement a) Explain what is meant by “peer-group status”. (2 Marks) Peer-group status is being seen as “big” or important in the eyes of friends and other people around you. b) Suggest three ways in which teaching might be altered to favour boys. (6 Marks) Three ways in which teaching can be altered to favour boys are:- * Include practical work to make sure they understand the work. offering extra credit or chances unequally between males and females, favouring the males * School Topics that the school teaches such as Maths, Design Technology, Physical Education and many more are more male based subjects. c) Outline some of the factors outside the education system that have affected gender differences in school. (12 Marks) There are many factors outside the school education system that have affected gender differences in school.
Firstly it can be said that parents expect more from their children to be hardworking, have responsible over their actions and behaviour towards others, to be tidy and neat. This is known as Parental Aspiration. Compared to girls, boys are more Laddish behaved which leads them to disrespect teachers in schools. Furthermore peer pressure can also affect gender difference in school; this is suggested in some case where boys impress their friends by acting like a “Cool” person, in the end not paying attention in class or to their studies.
Whereas most girls are more likely to achieve better in their studies, this is more likely they stay away bad influenced people. According to Francis (2000) “boys no longer likely to consider themselves more able than girls”, this is considered to the subject choices that boys undertake, which do not require academic success, however girls think more realistic which do require academic success such as becoming an Engineer or a teacher, this makes them seem to work harder in school’s to go to University and to pursue the profession job.

Additionally other external factors that may affect gender difference in school are crises in masculinity where women and males have equal rights to work and more women get into the well-paid jobs. d) Using information from Items A and B and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations of why girls achieve better results than boys. (20 Marks) Throughout the past years girls are improving and getting better results than boys. Reasons behind these achievements that explain are “Soft and hard subjects”, parental aspiration, girls aim higher and many more reason.
These examples give some idea of why the girls perform better than boys. In this essay I am going to compare on why girls achieve better results than boys. For the past many years studies have been conducted to find out the girls achievements are better than boys, also in the recent studies have been concluded as girls and young women’s attitudes towards education, marriage and work have been changed over the years. Sue Sharpe who is a sociologist conducted a study on working-class girls in London and their attitudes towards education.
Sue Sharpe compared the attitudes of working-class girls in London schools in the early 1970’s and 1990’s. She found that the 1990’s girls were more confident, more assertive, more ambitious and more committed to gender equality. Sharpe found that the main priorities of the 1970’s girls were ‘love, marriage, husbands and children’. By 1990’s this had changed to ‘job, career and being able to support them with education being the main route to a good job. In 1994, Sue Sharpe found that girls were increasingly wary of marriage.
They had seen adult relationships break up around them, and had seen women coping alone, in a ‘man’s world’. Girls were more concerned with standing on their own two feet and were more likely to see education as a means to financial independence. Furthermore both male and female parents expect more from them in their studies; however boys now tend drift more into large peer groups and involve into gang violence, this makes the boys seem as poorly behaved in school and underachieve in their studies. On the other hand girls are more organised and meet their deadline for their given coursework.
Additionally a recognition that girls were put off by what were traditionally seen as “boys subjects” or also known as hard subject such as maths, technology, physics and chemistry. This led to the introduction of equal opportunity initiatives such as Girls into Science and Technology. But Girls tend to take soft subject for A- level such as Biology, Sociology, textiles and many more, this is because they more easy subject to do. A recent report was on the new which was regarding less than 50% girls are undertaking the subject physics, which is known as a “manly subject” for A-level.
In addition early research on peer-group status states that the development of antischool subculture that tended to be developed by some working-class boys, particularly those placed in lower streams, bands and sets. Studies by Hargreaves (1967) and Willis (1977), for example, showed how such boys were either fatalistic in accepting school failure as inevitable and so developed anti-educational coping strategies, or sought to compensate for status frustration by gaining credibility in the eyes of their peers.
To conclude girls in school achieve higher than boys in school, this is because to some of the factors in school and out of school which may affect many boys with their studies and their behaviour. Overall girls seem to be more able to concentrate in class whereas boys are more practical type and choose hard subjects such as physics, maths, Physical Education and many more.