Understanding and

Educating the

Minds of Girls April 2011

Kelley KingTim Coble

NESASpring Educators’ Conference

How do we commonly

describe the

“ideal student”?

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Things I most enjoy about the girls in my class…

They want to please the teacher

Verbal

Neat, good penmanship

Organized

Do their homework

Longer attention span

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Things I most enjoy about the boys in my class…

Sense of humor

High energy, active

Creative

Out-of-the-box thinkers

Risk takers

Challenge the status quo

A Snapshot: Girls in School

• For every male who graduated from a four-year college and 1.30 females for every male undergraduate (Goldin, Katz, & Kuziemko, 2006).

• Girls significantly outperform boys in reading and writing in all countries (NAESP, PISA).

• More boys take math and science AP exams and their average score is slightly higher than girls (science, computer science, calculus).

• Given the widespread stereotype that girls

are bad at math (Cavanagh, 2008), these

results along with those of Hyde et al.

(2008) indicate that a gap exists between

popular belief and empirical reality. It is

rather amazing that girls perform similarly

to boys despite the widespread stereotype

to the contrary.• Female teachers’ math anxiety has a

negative effect on female students’

math achievement (U. of Chicago, 2010).

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State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part 5: Are There Differences in Achievement Between Boys and Girls?

(Center on Education Policy, March 2010)

Boys Project

www.boysproject.net

PISA data:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/28/46660259.pdf

National Center for Educational Statistics:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/equity/Section4.asp

Do classrooms nurture the nature of girls?

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Source: Daniel Amen www.amenclinics.com

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The Testosterone Factor

http://www.bbc.co.ukSearch: Sex ID

1 in 5 females

1 in 7 males

The Female Brain:Verbal vs. Spatial

How Girls Learn• Girls are sometimes behind in gross

motor development and spatial-mechanical development.

• Manipulatives help girls exercise their spatial brains and develop more confidence.

Hands engaged = brains engaged!

• Increase blood flow to spatial cortical areas of the brain (Gurr, 1994)

• Improvements in reading and creativity (Eisner, 1998)

• Enhance problem-solving (Longo, 1999)

• Higher college entrance scores (College Board 2000)

• Increase attention/focus (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999)

Visuals do all this….

What Do You

See?

Draw It!

Give girls a spatial assignment but without written instructions. Encourage them to use

reasoning/problem-solving skills to produce a product.

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Visuals for:*Pre-Writing*Assessments

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Implications for Early Childhood

The Female Brain:Sensory

Girls’ Writing……

• More adjectives; more words overall• More sensory details• More emotive details• Better handwriting (due to better fine

motor control & visual tracking)

Implications for girls…..

• Tone of Voice

• Giving instructions

• Seating

• Writing instruction

The Female Brain:Neural Rest State

How does movement help learning?

Movement activates most of the brain!

(Jensen 2001)

Improves attitude and decreases stress

(Bazzano 1992)

Better balance = better reading (Palmer 1980)

Following directions (Mohnaty & Hejmadi 1992)

Improved academic learning (Corso 1997)

General Movement Ideas• Class set of clipboards

• Opportunities to stand

• Stretch breaks

• Get own supplies

• Focus balls

• Therapy band on chair, velcro on desk

• One-legged stool

Content-Integrated Movement Ideas

• Rotating Stations

• Ball Toss Review

• Snowball Fight

• Continent Scramble

• Phonics Phitness

• Flyswatter Review

• Acting Out

• Killing the Blue

• Vote With Your Feet

Using music

• Relaxing

• Energizing

• Transitioning

• Stimulating sensory detail & emotion

www.songsthatteach.com

www.songsforteaching.com

www.rockhall.com

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Duhaney Park Primary School,

Kingston Jamaica

The Female Brain:Hormones &

Relationships

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Aggression Nurturance

Involves physical

interaction, tough

talk, competitive

games, and

aggressive nonverbal

gestures.

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Empathy Nurturance

Understanding how

someone else is

feeling and really

identifying with that

person and those

feelings.

The Female Brain:

Stress Response

and it’s effect on behavior & learning

ANTs

Emotional Fragilities…

• Females have a higher incidence of…– Eating disorders– Depression– Low self-esteem– Post-traumatic stress

The “Girl Code”• Message: “It is your responsibility to make

others happy.”

• Many (most?) girls are pleasers, which impacts their confidence & self-esteem.

• Too often, girls think being nice means being quiet, not showing anger, or not expressing their true feelings.

• Don’t overuse the word “nice”!

• We need to model/teach girls how to handle conflict and failure.

Like boys, girls vie for the attention and acceptance of their peers. They often use relational aggression in an attempt to secure their place in a social group.

Not always

sugar and

spice…

Girls raised without substantial father-figures are more at risk for:

• Bring abused• Being divorced• Getting lower grades• Being suspended/expelled• Having trouble getting

along with peers• Juvenile delinquency• Living in poverty• Teen pregnancy

Increasing Girls’ Confidence

• Single-sex opportunities

• Encourage questioning

• Collaboration• Opportunities

for healthy competition

ResourcesBaron-Cohen, S. (2003). The essential difference: The truth about the male and female brain. New York: Basic Books.

Brizendine, L. (2010). The male brain. New York: Broadway Books.

Chudowsky, N., & Chudowsky, V. (2010). State test score trends 2007-08, Part 5: Are there gender differences between boys and girls? Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy.

 

de Munck, J. C., Goncalves, S. I., Faes, T. J., Kuijer, J. P., Pouwels, P. J., Heethaar, R. M., & Lopes de Silva, F. H. (2008). A study of the brain’s resting state based on alpha band power, heart rate and fMRI. Neuroimage, 42(1): 112-121.

 

Gurian, M., Stevens, K., and King, K. (2008). Strategies for Teaching Boys and Girls. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

 

Kleinfeld, Judith. (2009, June). The state of American boyhood. Gender Issues, 26(2): 113-129.

 

Marzano, R., Pickering, D., and Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Alexandria: ASCD.

Whitmire, R. (2010). Why boys fail: Saving our sons from an educational system that's leaving them behind. New York: Amazon.

Durica, Karen. An Unleveled Playing Field: The Ways in Which School Culture Undermines and Undervalues Boys’ Writing. Colorado Reading Council Journal, Spring 2004.

Gurian, Michael and Kathy Stevens. With Boys and Girls in Mind. Educational Leadership, November 2004.

Gurian, Michael. Learning and the Brain. American School Board Journal, October 2006.

King, Kelley and Michael Gurian. Teaching to the Minds of Boys. Educational Leadership, September 2006.

King, K., Gurian, M., and Stevens, K. Gender-Friendly Schools. Educational Leadership, November 2010.

Me Read? No Way! A practical guide to improving boys’ literacy skills. www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/brochure/meread/meread.pdf

Me Read? And How! Ontario teachers report on how to improve boys’ literacy skills

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/meRead_andHow.pdf

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Looking at

our work through

adifferent

lens

Kelley Kingkelley@gurianinstitute.com

Tim Cobletcoble@asd.edu.qa

Thank

you!