Learning and Gender

Presented by The American School Board Journal; (National School Boards Association.) This article was co-written by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, authors of The Minds of Boys. Stevens is also head of the Gurian Institute.

On the day your district administrators look at test scores, grades, and discipline referrals with gender in mind, some stunning patterns quickly will emerge.

Kelley King, Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens

Boys are in crisis in many academic areas. But to turn things around, schools must implement instruction that is both boy- and girl-friendly.

Diane Cotner had been teaching “forever,” so she was confident in her teaching abilities. In 2007, however, confronted with an extraordinarily wiggly group of 2nd grade boys in a chronically low-performing school, Diane told her principal, “I can’t even get the boys to sit still for a short phonics lesson. I have to do something.”

Desha Bierbaum, her principal, responded with a new possibility. “I’ve been learning about the differences in how boys and girls learn. Why don’t you try letting the fidgety boys

Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, from ASCDExpress, November 25, 2010

A middle school teacher told us recently, “Boys in a classroom should be one of the most fun things in life. Boy energycan be contagious, after all. But in my school, we talk mostly about difficulties we’re having with boys. We need help understanding and teaching them. We’ve got to stop losing that boy energy from our schools.”

Everywhere around us, boys want to learn, but they aren’t