Boys' Education: Reading & Literacy

"In this episode of the IBSC Exploring Boys’ Education podcast, Bruce Collins interviews seven teachers from IBSC member schools who have successfully implemented storytelling as a pedagogy in their schools. These teachers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa describe how they use of narrative in their classes ... "

Drawing on more than 20 years of experience, Sullivan shows how to reinvigorate the sense of excitement that boys felt when they first heard a picture book being read aloud.

"“The current study was conducted with a sample of elementary schools, in New Zealand (a national setting where essentialist gender attitudes have existed and where policies to implement scholastic gender equity have been critiqued as unsuccessful). The influence of teacher gender and of a teacher-student gender match and mismatch on teacher’s expectations of their elementary student reading achievement, was tested via hierarchical linear modeling. Male teachers’ expectations were found to be lower for students of both genders in reading and negative implications for male teachers and their students’ reading achievement were revealed.” !!! ... "

"Results: Our results reveal the importance of individual student and home characteristics for promoting students’ reading attitudes, particularly the number of books at home and the amount of reading outside school. Our results also indicate that school and classroom-related factors such as the time spent on reading and the availability of a classroom or school library show no or only little interrelation with students’ reading attitudes. These findings are relatively stable in the cross-country comparison. Conclusions: As expected, our results also support previous findings on gender differences in reading attitudes, as girls show more positive attitudes toward reading than boys. The implications of these results for researchers, politicians and practitioners are discussed ... "

"Discussion: Based on fathers’ and teachers’ reports, the Fatherhood Reading Squad program seemed to have a positive influence on both fathers and students. Specifically, fathers and teachers believed that fathers’ reading to students had a positive impact on students’ view of fathers in society as well as students’ reading motivation. Student motivation, as evident through book engagement in the classroom, was also observed. Second, the program seemed to have an impact on fathers themselves, including their confidence in parenting and a personal sense of accomplishment for reading in class ... "

"Overall, the study offers readers theatre as a viable option for use in the classroom, promoting literacy development, textual and social engagement, and personal expression (Taylor, 2004), all of which can be more challenging goals for boys who may be reluctant readers.”

“Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine whether gender differences in reading achievement can be accounted for by parents' enjoyment of reading and the emotional contagion of reading enjoyment from parents to their children. To achieve this aim, secondary data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) drawing on 84,429 students in 14 countries were analyzed…. PISA has data obtained from parents themselves and these data are linked to student self‐report data as well as objective measures of student achievement. The robustness of the data allows more confidence in the results obtained…. In terms of practical implications, the findings provided useful information that can help parents become more cognizant of their roles as critical socializers, and how their emotions towards a certain task or field can influence their children's outcomes. This information can also be useful in designing interventions that intend to address the gender gap in student performance in certain fields. "

“Results. We found evidence of increasing gender differences, which were also moderated by the socio-economic status (SES) of parents: a gender gap either already existed (intrinsic motivation and reading behaviour) or intensified (reading self-concept and reading behaviour) between third and sixth grades. The interaction of gender and SES seemed particularly important for reading self-concept, with the gender gap growing less substantially for higher-SES children. Moreover, this pattern persisted for reading self concept, even when controlling for achievement differences.”

“The findings of the present study suggest that the gender difference in PISA performance is mainly explained by reading fluency. However, mastery orientation, homework activity and leisure book reading are significantly linked to different types of PISA Reading measures for boys and girls. There are still gaps in knowledge regarding the developmental paths leading to the gender difference in PISA Reading performance and reading fluency.”