These gender differences in boys' and girls' values may reflect the fact that whilst there has been encouragement for girls to 'break the mould' in the UK little pressure has been exerted on the majority of boys to rethink their understanding of masculinity. Considerable evidence is now available that girls are 'on the move' in terms of their expectations of their future. Girls perceive the need to be economically independent, especially if they cannot rely upon a man to support the family financially or be involved sufficiently in childcare. Girls secondly express the desire to achieve autonomy, to determine their own sexual preferences and partners rather assume traditional models of family life (Arnot et al, 1999). Mothers in the middle classes and 'transitional' working classes have been found to encourage their daughters' education 'in their own right' and to aim for social mobility either for themselves or in the case of African Caribbean girls for their community (Mirza 1992). In this context, girls' attitudes to education especially have been deeply affected by economic and cultural changes in society.
Other Political Factors
Political reforms cannot easily be isolated as causal factors in the closing of gender gaps in educational access and achievement, although anti-discrimination legislation represents a significant climate of change. These policies cannot be directly connected with the rise in representation of women in public life especially since for most of the postwar period women were a small minority in the UK government.
Women's jobs often command lower wages than ‘men’s work,’ leading to inequalities in pay and income. (EOC, 2001c: 1). Even with relative equality in levels of qualification, the gender pay gap is still in existence; female employees working full time earn on average nineteen per cent less than the average hourly earnings of male full-time employees (EOC, 2003a: 1).
Evidence identified in the fact that the majority of primary teaching staff is female: although women have always made up a majority of the primary teaching force, in recent years there has been a decline in the number of men entering the sector and a slight increase in the number of women. In 2002, women primary teachers outnumbered men by 5 to 1. It has also been suggested that primary teaching environments are biased towards ‘feminine styles,’ through their daily routines and practices, low teacher expectations of boys, the absence of male role models, and the way in which the curriculum is delivered and assessed. As a result, there are now moves in the UK to recruit more men into primary school teaching in order to tackle the problem of boys’ underachievement.
However, other commentators now believe that schools are becoming ‘re -masculine's’ through the emphasis on testing and assessment, performance indicators, and stratified and hierarchical management and administration structures (ibid., 91-2) Paradoxically these trends may also cause problems for boys. The increase in anxiety associated with high performance and less time for teacher- pupil sociability is understood to aggravate boys’ worries in a context where masculinity is associated with success or superiority.
It has been suggested that certain teaching styles tend to favour girls. The OFSTED review on gender research (Arnot et al l998) offered the following summary of research findings:
• Girls are more attentive in class and more willing to learn. They do better on sustained tasks that are open-ended, process-based, relate to realistic situations and require thinking for one. Girls may over-rate the difficulty of particular subjects. Girls find timed end-of-course examinations less congenial. Teachers believe that coursework favours girls but other factors (including syllabus selection) may be more important.
• Boys show greater adaptability to traditional approaches which require memorising abstract, unambiguous facts which have to be acquired quickly. They are more willing to sacrifice deep understanding for correct answers achieved at speed. Boys do better on multiple choice papers, whatever the subject.
Some studies also suggest that streaming and authority and management patterns also play a role.
The breaking down of the ideology of ‘separate spheres’ and the transformation of women’s education after the Second World War has shifted women’s education from being a training for domestic life, towards being on a more equal footing with that of men. However, women and men do not yet share domestic responsibilities in British society: and the continuation of women’s primary responsibility for the domestic sphere is a major factor standing in the way of the achievement of substantive gender equality. The official view until recently has been that girls' educational problems are now solved and little more needs to be done, in their name. Schools are developing initiatives in relation to boys almost to the exclusion of projects on girls (Arnot, Maton and Millen, 1996 ).The strategies offered to deal with boys’ ‘underachievement’ seem to promise a return to the situation identified by feminists in the 1970s, where pedagogies and practices were based around boys’ experiences (Skelton, 1998: 223). The current problem for the British education system is how to deal with the issue of boys’ underachievement while taking care not to re-marginalise girls: who, after all, are still a disadvantaged social group.
Upper classes do better
Many working-class parents had so many problems of their own to do with exhausting employment or no employment, leaking roofs or no roofs, that they really had not the time or the resources to appreciate free expression. What they did know was that they were not taught to write, read, talk, add or multiply too well and if their kids were not taught too well either, nothing was going to change. A few clipped their children across the ear holes in an attempt to get them to read and write...
Quite a lot of the upper-class parents support their children. They can afford to. Their children have motivation, they have books at home, their parents have done all right, they have money and they know their children will do all right and have money too. But the majority of the kids in London are working-class and a lot, well, they have no motivation from home, and they get none at the school. To them, it is all a big laugh. Tell them they can play snakes and ladders or ludo or read a book and they'll take the easy way out, it's only natural.
There is a range of evidence I can cite to support the idea that class subcultures - and, in particular, the value-orientations of parents towards their children's education - is a significant factor in educational achievement:
Kahl ("Some Measurements of Academic Orientation", 1965), stresses the idea that different classes develop different values and value-orientations ("aspirations") and these, in turn, find their expression in relation to different parental attitudes, motivations and so forth in relation to their children's education.
Douglas ("The Home and the School", 1964) suggested that the failings of working class home life needed to be redressed by such things as improved primary school teaching and an increase in nursery schools to provide the kinds of stimulation lacking in working class homes.
In particular, students in the lower streams (in the main from the working classes) were seen to require "non-academic" courses to help prepare them for their life outside school - this "need" being seen by Newsom as reflecting the "reality" of working-class adult life.
Hyman ("The Value Systems of Different Classes", 1967), argues that the value system of the working classes acts as a barrier to their educational advancement, in terms of the way they place a lower value on:
- Educational success
- High occupational status
- Opportunities for personal advancement through education
Despite the evidence put forward by the above witnesses, there is also a large number of contrary interpretations based mainly around the idea that the concept of class sub-cultures takes it for granted that, in a society with a highly-competitive, highly-differentiated, education system dominated by "middle class norms, values, attitudes, beliefs and ideologies", the children who succeed are those who can adapt most easily and successfully to the school environment and the beliefs / attitudes of their teachers. Thus, the picture we get is:
- Schools are middle class institutions.
- Learning involves a process of:
a. Conforming to middle class norms
b. Accepting middle class values relating to learning, teaching, knowledge, etc.
- To learn, the pupil must immerse themselves in the culture of the school.
This "realistic" view of schools as a social institution means that the children who succeed are those who learn how to conform and "learning to conform" is a socialisation process that starts in the family and involves parental attitudes and motivations "socialised into" their children.
Thus, "success" is not simply a matter of class background (although there is a relationship between class and educational success). Rather, children who succeed are those, regardless of their objective class background, whose parents socialise them into the norms and values of middle class life.
Burgess ("It's Not a Proper Subject: It's Just Newsom", 1984) argues that the solution proposed by Newsom to working class underachievement reflected the types of views outlined above. However, he argued that this solution simply perpetuated educational inequality since the types of (vocational) courses suggested by Newsom became, in practice, a further source of educational differentiation between middle class and working class pupils. In effect, vocational courses became a source of social stigma because they were associated with those who "could not cope" with a theory-based, academic, education.
Relative risk aversion sheds light on why, relative to working-class children, children of more advanced social classes are more ambitious and achieve higher levels of education. At a relatively early point in their educational career, most working-class children have already met the goal of avoiding downward mobility. Middle-class children generally need to acquire much higher levels of education to achieve their parents’ social class...
All else being equal, children should need only as much education as their parents to enter the same social class as their parents. If the values of education credentials are not constant over time, however, this simple relationship will not hold. If certain education credentials increase in value from one generation to the next, children will typically need less education than their parents did. Conversely, if the value of an education decreases, children are likely to need more education than their parents to achieve the same social class.
A significant body of research indicates that education credentials have devalued during the twentieth century. This devaluation was largely caused by ‘over-schooling’, i.e. a huge expansion in educational attainment that was not equalled by an upgrading of the labor market.
But this also explains the noted trend in merit aid that goes to those already succeeding socially – that is students from the middle and upper-middle class. If we assume a correspondence between social class and parental attainment, there is a “bigger bang for the buck” when you distribute financial aid to these classes.
Ethnicity
The achievement of ethnic minority pupils in British schools is a complex and sensitive issue and there are many factors for that. One of them is exclusion problems.
Highlighting the performance of any particular group of students can exacerbate their problems by encouraging prejudice and damaging self-esteem. Equally, to adopt a 'colour blind' approach risks allowing inequalities to remain unchallenged.
In every ethnic group in Britain there are high achievers. So, when highlighting overall patterns of achievement, there is a danger of appearing to suggest that all ethnic minority pupils have problems or are victims of a school system that is failing them. This would be unfair to many students and teachers.
However, to ignore patterns of achievement would be to put political correctness ahead of the need to know what is happening to ethnic minority pupils.
It is also clear that within the overall picture there is a patchwork of different experiences within and between schools. In some schools there is no difference in achievement between ethnic minority groups. In others the gap is very wide.
Most patterns of ethnic minority achievement are also strongly associated with differences of social class or poverty. The use of English as a first language in homes is another important factor in determining success at school.
Differences among groups
Overall then, pupils of Indian and Chinese origin tend to do very well, out-performing both the average and the scores of white pupils. By contrast, pupils of Pakistani origin show a very varied pattern of achievement with some doing very well and others relatively poorly.
Pupils of Bangladeshi origin, who tend to experience higher levels of poverty, mostly under-perform compared to other groups, although in one London borough they are the highest achieving of all ethnic groups.
Probably the greatest concern is over pupils, especially boys, of African and Caribbean origin. This concern extends beyond examination performance to issues of discipline and motivation.
The proportion of African-Caribbean students achieving 5 good GCSE grades is well below the national average. Yet in Birmingham, where there has been extensive testing of pupils at the school starting age of 5African-Caribbean pupils were doing better than the average.
In fact, recent trends suggest ethnic minority students are mostly closing the gap or, in some cases, pulling further ahead.
The proportion of African-Caribbean pupils getting 5 good GCSE s jumped from 23% to 37% between 1996 and 2000. Over the same period the figure for white students rose from 45% to 50%.
Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin students showed a more modest improvement, rising from 23% to 30% and 25% to 30% respectively. Students of Indian origin have pulled further ahead with 62% achieving 5 good passes, up from 48% four years earlier.
"Other Asian" students, a category that excludes Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students but includes children of Chinese origin, have the highest score at 70%.
There has been a growing focus on exclusion figures since analysis by ethnic background has revealed that pupils of African-Caribbean origin are several times more likely to be expelled as whites of the same gender.
In 2000/01, 38 in every 10,000 Black Caribbean pupils in England were permanently excluded. This was the highest rate for any ethnic minority group. Indian pupils had the lowest rate, at just three in 10,000 pupils. White pupils were expelled at the rate of 13 in every 10,000.
As with academic achievement, African Caribbean pupils are starting to close the gap as the numbers being excluded have fallen from a high of 60 per 10,000 in 1998/99.
Nevertheless there are serious concerns over the causes of this relatively high exclusion rate, particularly as evidence suggests that two out of every three pupils permanently excluded from school fail to return to full-time mainstream education.
Recent research has showed an unusually high degree of tension and conflict between white teachers and African-Caribbean pupils. There is also evidence that teachers are more likely to have a more negative view of African-Caribbean pupils than those from other ethnic minority groups.
Such findings have fuelled the calls for more black teachers and, from some quarters, for separate schools for black pupils, either on a full-time basis or as 'booster' Saturday morning schools.
There has also been a growing trend for families of Caribbean origin to send their children to the West Indies for a period of schooling there. Many parents believe discipline is better handled in Caribbean schools and that African-Caribbean teachers will have a better understanding of how to deal with their children's needs.
The presence of role models in schools is clearly important as a motivating factor for children however it is estimated only around 3% of teachers in Britain are from ethnic minorities, only around half the proportion in the population as a whole.
However, once again, recent trends suggest an improvement: the most recent figures showed that between 7 and 8% of new teacher recruits came from ethnic minorities.
Indian children
Indian parents have a great importance paid to family ties and unlike any other western cultures where youngsters usually live all by themselves, Indian parents live with their children even after they settle down. Age-old practices like Yoga and Meditation also play a very important role in shaping the character of a child. It teaches tolerance and attaining gradual progress in controlling all the faculties of human psyche. The family is the key to upbringing of kids by Indian parents. Teaching their kids to obey their elders and showing due respect to them in every occasion and situation is very essential for Indian parents. The old always hold the rules in making every important decision within the family whether it is a financial matter or a relationship. Children are always taught not to address their elders by names even if they are not related to you in any way and that also gives Indian's children mechanisms of how to deal with their teachers.
Unlike western traditions individualism is looked down upon in the Indian society as it has always inclined on the goal to serve its society and fulfilling family dreams rather than chasing one’s individual dreams.
Education is considered as the backbone of the Indian value system. Indian parents always urge their kids to acquire an excellent education and command them to steer clear of mundane distractions which could intercept their growing process. Indian parents firmly believe in the fact that good breeding is all about training a child to be a good citizen and an asset to the society. They are brought up to pay back their debts to the society which has cared for their needs.
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black children
Pakistani, Bangladeshis and black children are at-risk of high drop-out rates and academic failure. Yet, some of these children are able to succeed academically despite the numerous obstacles in their environment. These children may be considered educationally resilient. Protective factors of resiliency include individual and environmental qualities that allow an individual to overcome adversity and succeed, while risk factors hinder or prevent an individual from succeeding. Understanding the risk and protective factors that contribute to educational resiliency in their origin children will help in the development, as well as the modification, of programs that encourage academic success.
One individual characteristic that can have an effect on educational resiliency is self-efficacy. General self-efficacy determines how much effort adolescents will expend and how long they will continue to work on an objective even when faced with obstacles and/or aversive experiences. According to some studies, adolescents with high self-efficacy are more likely to succeed academically and perform behaviors that are conducive to academics. Thus, it is hypothesised that adolescents with higher self-efficacy will stay on-task with school work and achieves better levels.
Family characteristics may have considerable influence on children academic outcomes. For example, many black-origin parents receive very little formal schooling which can lead to unfamiliarity with the education system, thus leaving parents unable to support or advocate for their children. Another parenting factor that can influence academic success is parental monitoring. Parental monitoring of adolescents’ activities and friends may help prevent adolescents from engaging in behaviors that hinder academic success (e.g., delinquent behaviors). In addition, parental monitoring of adolescents’ homework and school activities may demonstrate to adolescents the high value the family places on academia. Similarly, perceived parental encouragement of academics has been found to help adolescents develop higher motivation to succeed academically. Moreover, parental ability to help the adolescents with their homework can also influence academic outcomes. That is why, it was hypothesised that parents’ education levels, monitoring, academic help, and educational encouragement would be positively related to academic motivation and classroom grades.
In addition to individual and parenting variables, neighborhood qualities should be examined to more fully understand academic resiliency in their society. Specifically, those adolescents who perceived their neighborhoods as having more protective factors (e.g., educational role models, wealth, and employment) and fewer risk factors (e.g., violent crimes, unemployment) will report higher academic outcomes than those adolescents who rated their neighborhoods more negatively. For example, living in neighborhoods with few professional people has been associated with school drop-out (violence and crime). This may be due to the few potential role models perceived by the youth. So, it was hypothesised that adolescents who perceive their neighborhoods more favorably would have higher academic motivation and grades.
Examining individual perceptions about the neighborhoods in which adolescents reside can provide a deeper insight into the antecedents of academic failure and success. The neighborhood qualities are: median family income and educational level of adults. Youth living in communities with lower income and education levels are more likely to face adverse conditions and be enrolled in schools with fewer resources. Conversely, those communities with higher income and educational levels should have more resources to encourage academic success. Therefore, it was hypothesised that students who live in neighborhoods with higher income and education levels will report higher academic outcomes.
In conclusion gender never works in isolation: it affects and is affected by ethnic and class cultures. The social class attainment gap substantially dwarfs both the race and gender gaps in educational performance, and the effects of race and gender aggravate social class differences. There is evidence of a shift in the role of education in relation to gender issues. The principle of gender differentiation which shaped the class divided school system is now clearly not as explicit nor as legitimate. It is more likely to be hidden within the individualising processes of learning (micro-inequalities) rather than be found in the formal structures of schooling. The conditions for sustaining gender inequalities, although different, are still in place. Each new wave carries high culture further away from the working class. Once, the middle-class left saw the workers as the very vanguard of history; now they are dismissed as sexist, racist and conservative. Rose searched a database of academic books published between 1991 and 2000. He got 13,820 hits for "women", 4,539 for "gender," 1,826 for "race", 710 for "post-colonial" and a piddling 136 for "working class".
This will add to the growing body of knowledge of educational resiliency with the following contributions. An ecological model is used in which the adolescent is seen as nested in the family which is nested in the community and the increased recognition that mothers and fathers influence their children differently, separate models are considered for mothers and fathers and two different academic outcomes are examined, motivation and levels.
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ISRAA AL-RIFAEE - - ACCESS TO TEACHING
