But the influence of coursework also might have something to do with the stereotyping and labelling. Many people find it better than the actual exams and think they would not pass if there was no coursework but for some people it is just extra work. It became implemented in the 1988 Educational Act, when it was possible to complete a whole exam subject with it. But since then, the proportion of coursework has been scaled down. Girl’s success over boys is down to the “feminisation” of the education system rather than the culture of “laddism”, the head of a right-wing think-tank has suggested. But GCSEs had placed much more emphasis on systematic preparation in modules, worked on consistently over time, Dr Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute said. It was not surprising, therefore, that girls had done better since the changes were implemented. Dr Madsen Pirie argued: It is not that boys are becoming less able, or less academic than they were previously. It is that they now face examinations which have been feminised, and which fail to bring out their strong point. Dr Pirie said he was not suggesting that exams were right before and wrong now. It is that they were boy-friendly before, and are now girl-friendly.
This act might have caused teachers to stereotype/label girls as being better to work with.
Methodology
For my research method I will be using a closed questionnaire. I will be researching a group of 6th Formers because they have just taken their GCSEs and would have had the results. This method links in with my stated aims because I will be able to see, from their answers, why girls are out-performing boys, which of them actually have handed coursework in on time or got good marks on it and ask them whether they think their subject teachers stereotyped them.
I am using a closed questionnaire to gain information for my project. The benefits of using this method for my project are it is easy to analyse and represent the data in a graph or chart because there are a number of answers that could be filled in without in-depth answers, it is quite easy to give out if not too long and easy to repeat. It is also beneficial to the people filling it out because closed questionnaires are easy to fill out with just tick boxes and it doesn’t take up a lot of time to fill in. They are also reliable to use.
A questionnaire might help with the reliability of my research method because you can hand them out time and time again and still get the same results each year. You can hand them out at different schools and will be able to get them back and filled in with easy to understand answers. But if using an interview you may forget your answers the next time you ask them and if going to another school you might feel intimidated.
Since I am doing a questionnaire on ‘Why are girls out-performing boys at GCSE’ I would have to ask people who have just taken their GCSE’s and have got the results. This would leave year 12’s and there are 300 people in 6th Form, so a good representative of this would be to ask 50 people, which is 20% of the total, and this would help with the representativeness of my chosen method.
I’d choose a random sample of 6th Formers because I’m in Year 10 and I have a limited access to the 6th Form and this way I could give them out to everyone dressed in their own clothes – a sign in my school of a 6th Former. The bigger the number of 6th Formers I hand my questionnaire to the more representative my sample is.
I will probably give my questionnaire out near the 6th Form common room or in the Conservatory where the 6th Formers hang out. Since my questionnaire does not have loads of questions I’d be able to stand and wait for them to be filled out, without taking up to much time.
The advantage of this method is it won’t cost the school paper money for the print outs but I won’t pay anything either because I have loads of printer paper and ink. In real life it also wouldn’t be expensive as printing forms out and isn’t as expensive as buying recording tapes for interviews. Also as I am collecting the forms back at my school this will mean I won’t have to spend money on stamps or envelops. Another advantage is I can give out the forms at my school and I know lots of people so they won’t lie as much as if I just gave them to people randomly in the street.
My questionnaire gave my respondents anonymity. I did this by making sure there were no questions that needed a personal answer, e.g. there were no questions on gender, age or name. Another ethical problem is if I was an adult researcher and I was conducting research in a school I would need to have a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check. Also another ethical consideration was permission, so I sort out permission from teachers and student’s parents.
The problems with doing a closed questionnaire are that people can’t expand on their answers e.g. a person can’t say there is another reason that could affect exam performances. Plus I’d have no way of knowing if a person is lying or not taking it seriously because I don’t know them. To get around this problem I could give the questionnaires to people I know. Also, I could conduct it face-to-face so I can check to see if people are taking it seriously and this would help them because if they don’t understand the questionnaire I could help them if I was face-to-face. I could also face problems like the respondent not understanding my sociological language like ‘social-class’.
I did a pilot study so I could test out my method and the questions I wanted to ask. My pilot study was my friend Louise May, when her test came back and it had performance for a lot of the questions I realised I had to say, if it is to do with performance what might affect it. This allowed me to test my methods and fix any unexpected problems because she is roughly the same age group as what I will be giving my questionnaire to and will give nearly identical answers to a chosen few from my sample.
Pilot Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Findings and Analysis
Conclusion
I have now completed my coursework, doing and introduction, methodology and a findings and analysis and at the end I had to see if I have completed my set aims from my introduction.
My first aim was to find out why girls are out-performing boys at GCSE. However I believe I have not fully been able to find if this statement is true or not because instead of comparing the girl’s results to the boy’s results, to the questionnaire, I combined their answers to give whole answers. Also from my findings and analysis the main opinion on what affects a boy’s and girl’s performance was peer pressure, so from this boys and girls should be doing equally as good in their exams because they each have the same problem against them. Furthermore, the respondents’ mostly agreed that subjects were more related to both female and male as well as being more engaging for both. This also should mean that boys should achieve the same standard of results to girls. But yet the GCSE results do not agree with this because even though the girls and boys both have the same pressure and equal opportunity in subjects, girls are still out-performing boys at GCSE.
My second aim was to find out if the reason for the results was to do with coursework. I believe I managed to find if this statement was true or not because the results from my findings and analysis showed that people who tend to like school and think there is some point to doing work also completed coursework on time. The results were completely equal with 33 people saying yes to enjoy as well as yes to coursework on time. So if people enjoy school then they see a point to doing coursework, which helps them to revise, which will eventually help them in their exams. The people, who don’t do their coursework, tend to be the people who don’t enjoy school because they see no point to doing work that will have no affect on their life or education. In addition these people also have a tendency to be the students that have been labelled by their teachers, making them not enjoy school and not feel bothered to do coursework because they know the teachers don’t like them and think the will not be able to do it. My questionnaire limited me to what I could find out because after filling in one of my questionnaires, a friend told me that last year when he had finished some English coursework, the teacher had taken it off him, ripped it up and put it in the bin because the teacher had not believed he had completed the coursework himself. This was because he was a student that had got labelled, by this teacher for being a trouble maker as well as a bad student; however he had tried and completed his coursework truthfully and had not got it accepted. From this, I managed to complete my second aim because labelling has an affect on coursework and coursework has a huge affect on GCSE results, if not completed on time.
My third aim was to find out if teachers are stereotyping girls to be better than boys to begin with. From my findings and analysis I believe that I didn’t manage to find if this statement was true or not because in my questionnaires I did not ask whether they think they get labelled or not and whether they get more attention in class than the opposite sex. From this mistake at fully understanding what kind of questions would be more ideal, I did not find out if teachers are stereotyping girls to be better than boys. However, like in the second aim, my friend is a boy and was stereotyped, by an English teacher, as a person who doesn’t achieve much and doesn’t want to. If compared to some other people in his class, I’m sure I would find that the teacher had stereotyped all the boys to be like this and all the girls to be better. Dr Madsen Pirie argued ‘It is not that boys are becoming less able, or less academic than they were previously. It is that they now face examinations which have been feminised, and which fail to bring out their strong point’. This act might have caused teachers to stereotype/label girls as being better to work with, therefore achieving more and doing better.
From doing this coursework on ‘Why are girls out-performing boys’ I have learnt that coursework has a big affect on GCSE results, but also that I didn’t fully accomplish my aims and therefore have not been able to learn why girls are out-performing boys at GCSE. But I did find out that teachers may be labelling/stereotyping girls as better but cannot be sure.
Glossary
Stereotype: The assumption or belief that all members of a particular group are the same.
Feminisation: The practice, especially in female dominance, of switching the gender role of a male submissive.
Representative: A sample that has approximately the same distribution of characteristics as the population from which it was drawn.
Pilot Study: A smaller version of a study that is carried out before the actual investigation is done.
Stratify: Divides society into social classes.
Working Class: Lowest class in most social class systems, including factory workers, miners and others.
Middle Class: A social class of business or professional people.
Upper Middle Class: A sub-label sometimes applied by sociologists to the social group of wealthier or more privileged members of the middle class.
Index
C
Conclusion 10-11
F
Findings and Analysis 7-9
G
Glossary 12
I
Introduction 1-2
M
Methodology 3-4
P
Pilot Questionnaire 5
Q
Questionnaire 6