Does gender matter?

LET’S TALK: Some educational experts say female students are more comfortable with conversational learning that allows them to ask questions as they go.

Experts divided on if there is an optimal way to teach boys and girls

Boys and girls are different, so it makes sense that they learn differently too, doesn’t it?

While there is no consensus on the matter, private and independent schools — be they single sex or coed — all have a different take on the topic, which informs how their students are taught.

Mary Gauthier, executive director of the Wernham West Centre for Learning at Upper Canada College, says her school is committed to creating an atmosphere where boys feel a connection to their education and a sense of passion and purpose.

Although she’s cautious not to generalize or create any gender-based myths, she believes relationships and being able to relate to what they are learning to be key when it comes to teaching boys. Gauthier says boys tend to respond well to teachers who care about them as individuals and says they like to be included in lessons by being asked to share what they know. Boys also respond well to clear and consistent boundaries like having their shirts tucked in and wearing a tie to school.

She says it’s also important that lessons aren’t always structured the same way and that they incorporate a variety of lecture, group work and inquiry-based instruction where boys can investigate and develop their own questions.

“We work really hard to make sure our teachers know the boys in the room,” Gauthier says. “You take time when you’re teaching to know their interests, that you know what they care about in their world and then actually include that in your teaching.”

Gauthier says teachers who can adjust their teaching according to engagement levels also do really well with boys so they feel connected to the content, have a sense of independence and feel that their questions matter.

St. Michael’s College School principal, Terence Sheridan, who used to teach at a coed school, says he typically finds boys are more hands on when it comes to learning and can benefit from a structured environment.

WE CAN WORK IT OUT: Research suggests boys prefer to figure out a problem through trial and error whereas girls talk more about it before starting.

While the school caters to boys, he says, they also address individual learning styles and use different mediums like computer labs to encourage boys to learn.

“There’s a variety of assessment too, whether it be presentations or individual communication, so it’s not all just writing a test,” he adds.

He says boys also respond well to initiatives and positive competitiveness, which is why they implement things like a competition for who racks up the most points in the school’s accelerative reading program.

Havergal College’s director of admissions Maggie Houston-White believes girls are more comfortable having conversational learning that allows them to ask questions and have a need to develop relationships with their teachers.

“It’s important for girls to feel that they are in an environment where they will be mentored and monitored,” she says. “Girls tend to need time to pause and think before answering questions and they like to have eye contact when they’re having dialogue and conversation.”

She says it’s important to have a curriculum that is both challenging and interesting and takes into account what’s meaningful to the girls in order to engage them deeply into each subject matter.

But not all schools believe learning styles are gender-based.

“I think there are many auditory, visual, kinesthetic learners and I think that would account for boys and for girls,” says Bayview Glen’s head of school Eileen Daunt. “I think that’s across the gender divide — all different styles of learning.”

She says her school finds ways to personalize their students’ learning environment.

“I think what good schools do, whether they be coed or not, is they teach the individual,” she says. “They look at ways to reach each child and make sure that they have the skills they can take with them once they leave school to be successful in the world.”

Psychologist Michael Leatch, who is also Crescent School’s director of student services, says it’s important to avoid generalizations when discussing how boys and girls learn best.

“Just as there are many ways to be a boy or girl there are many ways to teach boys and girls,” he says. “Individual student need should be the predominant factor that educators consider when determining the best way in which to teach students.”

While some boys are active and like to move while they learn, he says, others may learn better through contemplative reflection and debate.

He believes educators need to be skilled in assessing a full range of learning styles and have a repertoire of strategies they can draw from to educate boys or girls as unique individuals.

However, Sterling Hall’s director of curriculum Nick Szymanis says brain science proves boys and girls are built differently mentally.

“Boys are operating from curiosity-driven, often kinesthetic intelligence and have better spatial memory,” he says.

In addition to having different colour and sense perception, he says they also have a different threshold for attention.

“Boys also don’t hear as well as girls, their fine motor skills develop later and they can overestimate their abilities,” he says. “Boys in general, read later than girls by as much as 12 to 18 months.”

Since boys are kinesthetic by nature, he adds, learning often occurs with movement like swinging feet, tapping and fidgeting. He says the school encourages boys’ natural curiosity through the use of educational props such as interactive games, dice and cubes. The majority of boys at the school also have daily physical education classes so they can expend their energy and focus better in class.

“What the best research is showing us is that boys thrive when they can figure out their way around a problem, often in a small group,” he says. “The most impactful learning seems to be a combination of processes where information is unpacked by a combination of natural curiosity and group interaction.”

Bishop Strachan School grade 12 student Carly Walter believes the different learning styles boys and girls have are innate and obvious.

“Girls and boys are both distracted by different things and have different natural abilities,” she says. “From my experience, girls seem to spend more time talking about a task or abstract principle before actually attempting it, whereas boys often execute tasks in a trial and error method.”

Among her classmates in the all-girls school, Walter says, she sees a lot of differences in study habits as some are visual learners and others excel with auditory instructions.

“A lot of my peers like to simplify abstract principles with concrete examples,” she says. “Other differences are as simple as enjoying listening to music while studying or preferring to work in silence.”

Bishop Strachan School’s head of school Deryn Lavell says the individual learner is most important, whether in an all girls, all boys or coed environment.

She does note a different kind of energy among the girls and says they develop and mature at different times than boys, which needs to be taken into account.

“We talk about a culture of power of learning and that’s really important for the girls,” she says. “For the girls it’s really important to find ‘where am I as an individual and how do I fit in with this group and where does that matter?’ ”

When it comes to competitiveness, Bishop Strachan School’s senior school principal Angela Terpstra says rather than measuring girls against each other they perform better by striving for their personal best and not in the same cutthroat spirit that may motivate boys.

Another important difference, she says, when it comes to the notion of learning is girls like narrative, particularly fictional narrative, where as boys gravitate more to real life.

Finally, just as courses are taught in different ways, Terpstra says, students are also assessed in a variety of ways.

“The evaluation is really important because for some people a paper pencil test might be the right thing to do whereas others they might actually need some pictures, they might need it read to them and some girls they actually need more time than others,” she says.