Causes of Gender Differences in Foreign Language Learning

This essay,in light of recent studies in foreign language teaching and learning by gender,try to explore the causes why boys are underachieved in language learning from a world-wide perspective and accordingly identify what clues for good practice already exist and to offer some tentative suggestions to help the"failing boys".     

Gender Metaphor for Colonialism in John Bull's Other Island

John Bull's Other Island is the only play of George Bernard Shaw dealing with the Irish problem.He manages to define and ridicule colonialism in it and satires English colonialist’s intention and nature.This paper studies colonialism in this play through sexual metaphor,to decipher how it works simultaneously as an intimation of the British colonial attitudes and a satire of economic exploitation.     

School Differences in Producing Gender‐Related Subject Choices

Gender differences in mathematics are well‐documented. This article reports the results of a longitudinal study on the development of mathematics achievement and choice behaviour of both boys and girls between 12 and 15 years of age in higher general secondary education. First of all, it is shown that there are differences in the development of mathematics achievement between schools. There are, however, no gender‐related differences between schools in these development patterns. The main issue is that differences in choice behaviour between boys and girls can only partially be explained by differences in mathematics achievement. It therefore seems worthwhile to assess the role of schools in this process. Results indicate that schools neither differ in gender differences in choice behaviour, nor in their potential to transform initial achievement differences between boys and girls into an inclination to choose mathematics as a final examination subject. In other words: differential school effects in terms of gender‐specific school effects could not be demonstrated.     

Gender Issues – Inclusion Perspectives in Teaching and Learning in Post-Conflict Kosovo

Understanding the role of women in the development of society generally and in education in particular is a critically important dimension of inclusive thinking. Understanding the challenges confronting women in Kosovo as they strive to be full partners in a post-conflict society which is also an emerging democracy is another substantial dimension of inclusion as well. In building a greater understanding of the inclusion of females and female leadership in educational settings in Kosovo the author relates the issue of gender to teaching and leadership in Kosovo’s higher education with specific reference to one University.     

Gender Effects in Children’s Development and Education

This paper attempts to clarify several lines of research on gender in development and education, inter‐relating findings from studies on intuitive/informal knowledge with those from research on achievements and attitudes in science. It acknowledges the declining proportions of male teachers world‐wide and examination successes which indicate a reversal of educational disadvantage from female to male; as well as the recent evidence on the effects of the gender of teachers upon student success. An empirical contribution to the literature is offered, drawing from the gender‐related findings from research on children’s cosmologies in China and New Zealand with 346 boys and 340 girls (of whom 119 boys and 121 girls participated in the current study). The investigation focused on children’s concepts of the motion and shape of the Earth through observational astronomy and gave children opportunities to express their ideas in several modalities. The in‐depth interviews allowed children to share their meanings with gender differences becoming apparent (e.g. girls’ superior ability to visually represent their cosmologies and boys’ greater awareness of gravity). However, these differences were not universal across genders or cultures and marked similarities were apparent both in the content of children’s responses and in their reasoning processes. By comparing boy/girl cosmological concept categories and by tracking their developmental trends by age, statistical evidence revealed the extent of the similarities within and across these diverse cultures. The findings reinforce those from the authors’ knowledge restructuring and cultural mediation studies and provide support for the view that boys and girls have similar, holistic‐rather‐than‐fragmented, cosmologies which have features in common across cultures and ethnic groups.     

Variation by Gender in Abu Dhabi High School Students’ Interests in Physics

Abu Dhabi high school students’ interest in physics in different contexts was investigated with a survey conducted in connection with the international project, The Relevance of Science Education (ROSE). The sample consisted of 2248 students in public and private schools. Means of most items that belong to the school physics context for both girls and boys were below the score of (3.0). The most interesting topics for both genders were connected with fantasy items. The least interesting items (particularly for girls) were connected with artifacts and technological processes. Girls assigned the highest scores for “why we dream” and “life and death.” Boys assigned the highest scores for “inventions and discoveries” and “life outside of earth.” The main message of the study is that new curricular approaches and textbooks can be developed through combining technological and human contexts. The implications for curriculum development, teacher professional development programs, and other education strategies in Abu Dhabi are discussed in light of the ROSE survey.     

Challenging Sexism? Gender and Ethnicity in the Secondary School

This article discusses understandings of girls confronting sexism in a Swedish multiethnic urban school. The empirical study includes school observations, conversations and formal group interviews with 15–16‐year‐old pupils from seven classes in four schools. The article provides an analysis of one of the schools, where the fieldwork showed gender to be frequently on the agenda. In particular, girls confronted what they deemed to be sexist and derogatory remarks from male classmates. Teachers were also seen to comment on gender during lessons and to act on what they agreed to be sexism among pupils. However, gender was largely understood as important to cultural differences and dealt with as related to pupils’ family and ethnic background. This is explored in the article as well as the various, partly conflicting ideas on gender expressed by different groups of pupils.     

Gender Differences in Lunar‐related Scientific and Mathematical Understandings

This paper reports an examination on gender differences in lunar phases understanding of 123 students (70 females and 53 males). Middle‐level students interacted with the Moon through observations, sketching, journalling, two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional modelling, and classroom discussions. These lunar lessons were adapted from the Realistic Explorations in Astronomical Learning (REAL) curriculum. Students’ conceptual understandings were measured through analysis of pre‐test and post‐test results on a Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI) and a Geometric Spatial Assessment (GSA). The LPCI was used to assess conceptual learning of eight science and four mathematics domains. The GSA was used to assess learning of the same four mathematical domains; however, the GSA test items were not posed within a lunar context. Results showed both male and female groups to make significant gains in understanding on the overall LPCI test scores as well as significant gains on five of the eight science domains and on three of the four mathematics domains. The males scored significantly higher than the females on the science domain, phase—Sun/Earth/Moon positions, and on the mathematics domain geometric spatial visualisation. GSA results found both male and female groups achieving a significant increase in their test scores on the overall GSA. Females made significant gains on the GSA mathematics domains, periodic patterns and cardinal directions, while males made significant gains on only the periodic patterns domain. Findings suggest that both scientific and mathematical understandings can be significantly improved for both sexes through the use of spatially focused, inquiry‐oriented curriculum such as REAL.     

The Voice of Gender in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

The paper deals with the reading and interpreting of the voice of gender in Emily Dickinson’s poems.The gender,the 1yric poem and the reading constitute the performance.Dickinson succeeded in constructing alternatives to a traditional,fixed binary gender system(woman/man) and opens opportunities for the reader to perform alternative gendering.Analysis of voices of gender in and of Dickinson’s poems shows that her variant performances of gender are crucial to the general construction of her poetry.Through the analysis of the voice of gender in Dickinson’s poetry,the paper discloses the crucial function of poets construct in women’s rebellion and self-salvation and subverting patriarchy,which also demonstrates her uniqueness in her life and literary creativity.     

Examining Boys’ Readings of Gender in the English Classroom

As an opinionated and often challenging class of year 10 boys, they demonstrated a strong sense of their identity as a group of ‘bright boys’. One of their English teachers described the class as ‘boisterous, but very motivated – they love discussing texts’, but she also recognised their tendency to ‘descend into testosterone fuelled competitiveness’. I became interested in the ways these boys read and responded to literature and in particular how their strong view of themselves as ‘bright boys’ influenced their reading of gender in literature. I examine two lessons with this year 10 class in which they discussed representations of gender in two literary texts. I was interested in the ways they constructed and asserted their masculine identities through class discussions about gender in literature and I found myself wondering: how do these boys read gender, and why do they read gender in these ways?     

Gender differences in adolescents’ academic motivation and classroom behaviour

The present study investigated gender differences in adolescents’ academic motivation and classroom behaviour and gender differences in the extent to which motivation was associated with, and predicted, classroom behaviour. Seven hundred and fifty students (384 boys and 366 girls) aged 11–16 (M age?=?14.0, 1.59 SD) completed a questionnaire examining academic motivation and teachers completed assessments of their classroom behaviour. Girls generally reported higher levels of academic motivation, whilst teacher reports of behaviour were poorer for boys. Interestingly, boys’ reported levels of academic motivation were significantly more closely associated with teacher reports of their classroom behaviour. Furthermore, cognitive aspects of boys’ motivation were better predictors of their classroom behaviour than behavioural aspects. On the other hand, behavioural aspects of girls’ motivation were better predictors of their behaviour. Implications for understanding the relationship between motivation and behaviour among adolescent boys and girls are discussed, in addition to interventions aimed at improving adolescents’ classroom behaviour.     

Gender performativity in physics: affordances or only constraints?

In this forum we engage in a dialogue with Allison Gonsalves’s paper ‘“Physics and the girly girl—there is a contradiction somewhere”: Doctoral students’ positioning around discourses of gender and competence in physics’. In her paper Gonsalves uses a sociocultural approach to examine women doctoral students’ stories about becoming physicists. In doing so her paper focuses on how discourses of masculinity and femininity can create available and unavailable positions for the women students. In this dialogue we do a parallel reading of two of the student narratives presented by Gonsalves, using Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of discursive agency as a means to more explicitly bring the affordances for women identity constitution offered by their localized physicist context to the fore, rather focusing on its, often more visible, constraints.     

Gender representation in Japanese EFL textbooks – a corpus study

This paper seeks to investigate whether the Japanese government’s attempt to promote a ‘gender-equal’ society in recent decades and the improved status of women are reflected in patterns of gender representation in Japanese English as a foreign language textbooks. The study made an analysis of four popular series of English language textbooks published in 2011 for local Japanese students with corpus linguistic tools (e.g. concordancing, keyword in context) to investigate the ratio of female-to-male appearances, the extent of use of gender-neutral and gender-marked constructions, the common adjectives associated with women and men, the common address titles for reference to women, and the order of appearance of women and men. The findings revealed some evidence of gender equity, including common use of gender-inclusive vocabulary (e.g. salesclerk, waitperson) and the neutral address title Ms for women. The ‘male-first’ phenomenon, however, is still prevalent in contemporary Japanese textbooks, suggesting the secondary status of women. Variations were found in different series of textbooks pertaining to the representation of women and men in the domains of quantitative balance and gender stereotyping. It is suggested that specific guidelines be compiled by the education authorities to help textbook authors write educational materials that help promote a gender-fair society in Japan.     

Gender,science and modernity in seventeenth‐century England

The seventeenth century in England, bounded by the scientific stimulus of Francis Bacon at the beginning and Isaac Newton at the end, seemingly saw a huge leap from the Aristotelian dialectic of the past to a reconstruction of knowledge based on inductive methods, empirical investigation and cooperative research. In mid‐century, Puritan reformers inspired both by the scientific thinking of Bacon and by the educational reforms of Comenius, hoped that educational reform at both school and university level would follow political and religious changes. In 1661, after the restoration of the monarchy, the founding of the Royal Society suggested that acceptance of experimental and practical science at the highest level had been achieved and that this would impinge on education. None of these assumptions can be accepted at face value. Indeed, the whole intellectual and educational history of the seventeenth century is far more complex than often portrayed. Various scientific and philosophical world‐views and different methods of scientific investigation jostled for supremacy and major leaps forward in scientific knowledge were often a combination of some of these. The physical sciences still came under the umbrella of ‘natural philosophy’. Nevertheless, this period is seen as the beginnings of a scientific revolution that has profoundly affected, even generated the modern world. Generally such developments have been both hailed and derided as masculinist. Earlier historians usually neither saw nor looked for women's place in scientific development: more recently, feminist historians have both tried to correct the picture and sought to explain the exclusion of women from most of it. Some have seen Western science itself in this period constructing notions of masculinity and femininity that would prevent women participating in the scientific ventures which represent modernity. This article will investigate the position of women within the scientific and educational developments of seventeenth‐century England. The development of Baconian science and its effects on Puritan reformers, especially Samuel Hartlib, John Dury and other like‐minded scholars, will be examined. It will be shown that their ideals, like those of Jan Comenius whom they admired and worked with, had positive implications for female education. Although, however, some females were affected by the educational reforming impulses of the Hartlib circle, in the changeable political and intellectual world of seventeenth‐century England, very little lasting reform was achieved. Generally women were not well educated in this period. They were excluded from formal educational institutions such as the grammar school and the university although these were not necessarily where scientific and educational reform took place. The advent of printing in the sixteenth century and the growth of scientific lectures in the seventeenth enabled upper and some middle‐ranking women to take part in some of the intellectual ferment of the day and women naturally had a place in science through their culinary and medical roles. Contemporary research has uncovered some of the scientific work done by women and stimulated significant discussion on what can be counted as ‘science’. In England, female relatives of those who espoused scientific and educational reform were themselves involved in such initiatives. On the other hand, they were shut out from membership of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, established in 1662, or any other formal institution. Some women were affected by Cartesianism and other scientific theories including those on both natural magic and more occult philosophies. This was a century, however, when unorthodox thinking could meet with frightful consequences and eminent thinkers across the continent fell foul of religious and political authorities. The period was shamed by the highest number of witchcraft trials ever in Central and Western Europe, including England, chiefly against women, albeit mainly the old and the poor. In the second half of the century, longings for stability and peace were more likely to consolidate patriarchical and conservative mores than give way to radical social ideas. Nevertheless, as this study will show, a number of women, chiefly of aristocratic lineage or at least educated above the norm, were able even to publish their scientific ideas. Two of the women mentioned here did so through translation: Lucy Hutchinson, translating Lucretius, and Aphra Benn, translating Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle. Hutchinson particularly revealed her own thinking through the notes she added to her edition. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, chose to pour out the scientific and philosophical ideas she gathered through reading and conversation, in a torrent of unedited publications. Anne, Viscountess Conway, in more measured tones and timing, drew from her private form of higher education to publish The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which influenced leading philosophers of her day, including Liebniz. Both she and Margaret Cavendish were sufficiently confident to critique Descartes, although Anne Conway's thinking was based on a sounder education. Bathsua Makin was able from her own excellent education and her contacts with the Hartlib circle at home and Anna Maria van Schurmann and others abroad to promulgate an education for girls that would enable them to learn and use a range of sciences and mathematics in an extended female role. Even so, these women were a privileged few and promoted scientific and educational ideas from a vantage point of their own fortunate educational and/or social position. For none of them was this uncomplicated, while for other women, even ones within intellectual circles such as that of Mary Evelyn, their scientific impulses were restrained by gendered notions. Thus it is shown that in both the opportunities offered by new scientific and educational ideas and in their exclusion from the mainstream the position of women was in line with conflicting modern principles that underlay a contested terrain in science for the centuries to come. In addition, this brief exploration of these gendered contradictions of the scientific revolution in England shows the benefits of understanding the large areas of learning which are outside or juxtaposed to formal education, the networks that facilitate leaning and the contemporary context of gendered and scientific beliefs pervading different forms of knowledge.     

Who cares? Gender dynamics in the valuing of extra-curricular activities in higher education

Despite the assertion that higher education is becoming increasingly ‘feminised’ and that male students are the relative losers, gendered meanings continue to permeate higher education in ways that mean that the recognition of women's experiences are frequently marginalised. Our paper reports on research designed to explore student participation in extra-curricular activity from a perspective informed by a broader conceptualisation of the extra-curricular as a site of gendered, raced, and class practices intimately tied to the development of an employable self. We found that women frequently undervalue their participation and are more likely to be dismissive of extra-curricular activity as of value to their employability than men and that they rarely consider caring to be a form of capital which can be utilised or invested in to support their future employment. We argue that higher education institutions need to support students, in particular women, to recognise the value of their participation.     

Gender differences in adolescents’ choice of heroes and admired adults in five countries

Seven hundred and sixty-eight adolescents from five countries and regions (USA, Spain, Hong Kong, Qatar, and Malaysia), aged 13–19 (M?=?15.78; SD?=?1.28) years, responded to a questionnaire designed to determine who was their most admired famous adult or hero. Male heroes clearly outnumbered admired females (73.3% vs. 26.7%). There was a pattern of same-sex choices, but it was more likely for girls to choose male heroes than for boys to choose females. Over half of the admired adults were athletes, and movie, television, and music stars. Regarding the personally known adults, there was a more balanced choice of males and females, with parents as the most frequent choice. Results suggest that society continues to fail in providing an adequate supply of female role models.     

Gender Neutralities, Dichotomies and Hidden Inequalities: Analysis of Vocational Teachers’ Reflections on Gender in the Profession

This article analyses how Finnish vocational teachers make sense of the meanings of gender in their work. The context of the study consists of the two most gender segregated environments of vocational education: the female-dominated Sector of Health and Social Services and the male-dominated Sector of Technology and Transport. Our analysis draws on 23 teacher interviews conducted in two vocational institutions, offering vocational upper secondary education and training to both young and adult students. The data is analysed from post structural and material feminist theoretical positions, using various conceptualizations of gender. Our findings suggest that both male and female teachers have adopted the idea of gender neutrality, whilst they simultaneously provide dichotomical and hierarchical perceptions of men and women as vocational teachers. Consequences of minority position in the staff room are different for females and males. In the field of technology and transport, women in the minority, on the other hand, need to struggle continuously with masculine vocational hierarchies to gain professional respect.     

Gender Differences in Faculty Member Job Satisfaction: Equity Forestalled?

Guided by Hagedorn’s (2000) theory of faculty job satisfaction, mindful of social and organizational structures of higher education, and acknowledging recent changes in the academic labor market, this study examines satisfaction for approximately 30,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty members in 100 US colleges and universities. Findings revealed similarity between female and male faculty members in some aspects of work satisfaction, but difference in other areas in which women reported lower satisfaction. Findings also revealed that perceptions of department fit, recognition, work role balance, and mentoring are more important to women faculty’s satisfaction than male peers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Are There Gender Differences in Quantitative Student Evaluations of Instructors?

Research in Higher Education - Recent research conducted at numerous universities has found evidence of instructor-gender differences in student evaluations of teaching (SET). This paper examines...     

Poles apart? Gender differences in proposals for sexuality education content

Are young women and men’s preferences for sexuality education content poles apart? This article explores gender differences in senior school students’ suggestions for issues sexuality education should cover. Findings are analysed in relation to debate about mixed and single sex classrooms and boys’ perceived disinterest in lessons. It is argued that young women and men’s content preferences were largely similar on items that a majority selected for inclusion. Topics less than half of participants named revealed a greater number of gender differences. Employing theoretical insights from feminist post‐structuralism, responses are also examined for how they position young people as sexual subjects and whether these conform to or deviate from perceptions of ‘conventional heterosexualities’. This examination enables an understanding of how young people view themselves as sexual and whether this matches their constitution within sexuality programmes. The implications of students’ content preferences and the way these position them as sexual subjects are considered for the possibilities they present for programme design and delivery.