Be sure also to give boys a taste of success. Contrary to popular belief, it is success that begets motivation, rather than the other way round. In her research on why girls “do better” than boys, Smyth found unconscious gender stereotyping may play a role. The fact is, these myths, like all myths, are totally fallacious. If teachers really want to improve outcomes for boys, then they need to build positive relationships with them. We recommend the following steps to getting boys on side: 1 | Avoid confrontation Boost their 'cultural capital': It might be tempting to get boys in a sports-mad school to write essays about big match finals, but it can be better to open up students' minds to the world and help them find interests and passions they may never have known of. As aresult of this attainment gap, schools up and down the country have invested time and money in training aimed at raising boys’ attainment. Indeed, Ihave sat through anumber of well-intentioned staff INSET sessions during my many years as ateacher, where Ihave been told that boys and girls learn differently, that boys thrive in acompetitive environment and that Ishould consider ways to make my subject more ​ ‘boy-friendly’. However, simply looking around my classroom at the wonderfully different characters Ihad in front of me suggested these solutions were not really solutions at all: boys are not all the same.

This book opens with stark facts about the gender gap – not only in school, but in society: 96 per cent of our prison population is male.

Research shows that boys are very competitive, care about the result of a competition more than girls, and they strive to be part of the “high ability” club. Roberts argues this hyper-competitive spirit breeds a self-destructive behaviour in boys that results in them “downing” the textbooks to protect their self-esteem: “If I haven’t tried, I haven’t really failed,” is the thinking behind this. Some boys, believing that they’ll never get recognition for any academic output, will try to seek attention by playing up in class.

Boys (and girls) have more respect for teachers who know their stuff. Being an expert in your subject (or subjects) is a must. Chapter 4: Mental Health– Another thought-provoking listen with chilling statistics. Pleased to know that a number of the recommended strategies are already in place in my setting. Appreciated the mention of teacher modelling openly talking about their emotions and shoulder-shoulder talks, which made me think of a Pivotal podcast that I listened to in my first year of teaching and has stayed with me since.. Teachers’ high expectations of themselves and their students, in subject knowledge and behaviour for learning, trump gender considerations (such as single-sex classes, or male students being taught by male teachers) every time.Chapters on violence, sexism in schools, peer pressure and relationships offer evidence-based and practical information for schools wishing to lift the schooling outcomes and behaviours of boys. The topics are grounded in real-life scenarios, which also help to give the views credibility and a sense of familiarity for teachers. Be warned though: sarcasm as a form of humour is a huge no-no. ‘Banter’ with the boys is not appreciated. Even when boys seem to be enjoying it, they’re probably not. As an English teacher and a feminist, I like to think that I’m quite attuned to the ways in which language reveals certain social assumptions. I’ve spent hours patiently discussing the problems with language like “That’s so gay” and questioning the nature of ‘banter’ with frustrated students who didn’t see the problem. Yet, just in this blog, I’ve used phrases like “challenging boys” and described a low set without mentioning the gender divide, assuming the unequal gender divide of bottom sets to be implicit. As a new HOD, I have tried to ensure that we teach some non-stereotypical texts, but unlike Pinkett, I don’t currently make an effort to use homonormative pronouns in the classroom. I can imagine the way that my classes might respond to his example “Why might a man write his boyfriend a sonnet?” and have been somewhat unwilling to disrupt learning in this way. Although I regularly have the kind of “Why do we assume his love is a woman?” conversations about literature, I definitely haven’t yet normalised the ‘no song and dance’ approach that Pinkett advocates. Hi Hannah, thanks for your comment and for sharing the video. I think Laurie A. Couture’s new book sounds really interesting. Similarly, the author makes a cogent argument for not making all boys’ learning “relevant”. First, he refers to cognitive social scientist Daniel T Willingham’s example of how content doesn’t always drive interest. For instance, we’ve all attended an event or lecture we thought would be boring but ended up being fascinating.

The key to changing attitudes in schools, Pinkett believes, is for teachers to admit they are as prone to the same biases as everyone else. “Teachers don’t like to admit they’re human. There’s a pressure on us to think of ourselves as saints: to admit our fallibilities is to admit you’re human, yes – but who wants a robot for a teacher?” What teachers have to get past, he says, is the belief that if a boy doesn’t comply, doesn’t hand in homework or is misbehaving, that it’s because he’s male. “We need to stop ourselves: because maybe whatever is going on isn’t, after all, because he’s a boy. And it’s that realisation that can free pupils from stereotypes, and give them the chance to do what everyone wants, which is truly fulfil their potential.”Recently, I had the oddly perfect experience of reading Boys Don’t Try alongside Sally Rooney’s booker winning novel Normal People. Both books had that excellent brain-worming effect of being in my thoughts and conversations for weeks, as well as each seeping into my experience of the other. Although Rooney’s novel is a twisting narrative about a single evolving relationship, the early sections are rooted in the complex social pressures teenagers face, the impact of which echo into the characters’ adult relationships and personalities. It’s a brilliant novel which resonated with me personally, but it also served to highlight the messages Roberts and Pinkett make in their great new book for teachers.

The Teaching Delusion: Why teaching in our schools isn’t good enough (and how we can make it better) by Bruce RobertsonA “good student” is seen as a compliant one, with boys more frequently sanctioned and girls spending more time on homework.