Boys and Girls Learn Differently based on the research and

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Boys and GirlsLearn Differentlybased on the
research and writings of Michael Gurian

• Debra Austin

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Background

• Brain Stem
• where fight-or flight responses reside
• Limbic System
• where emotion is processed
• Four Lobes at Top of Brain
• where thinking generally occurs
• Different sensory stimulants are processed in
  each lobe
• Top of Brain
• Left Hemisphere
• verbal skills speaking, reading, and writing
• Right Hemisphere
• spatial skills measuring, perceiving direction,
  and working objects

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Female Brains vs Male Brains

• Female brains mature earlier and more quickly
  than male brains
• Girls acquire complex verbal skills earlier
• Corpus callosum is the bundle of nerves that
  connects the right and left hemispheres
• Up to 20 larger in girls than boys
• Gives girls better cross talk between hemispheres

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More Structural Differences

• Girls take in more sensory data than boys
• Hear and smell better
• Take in more information through their fingertips
  and skin
• Girls have better verbal abilities and rely
  heavily on verbal communication
• Boys rely heavily on nonverbal communication,
  being less able to verbalize feelings and
  responses as quickly as girls
• Boys have more development in the right
  hemisphere, providing them with better spatial
  abilities

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Chemicals and Hormones

• Boys
• Male brains secrete less serotonin than female
  brains, making males more impulsive and fidgety
• Testosterone is the male growth, sex-drive, and
  aggression hormone
• Males receive 5 to 7 testosterone surges per day,
  beginning around age 10, and these can cause
  moods that vacillate between aggressive and
  withdrawn

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Chemicals and Hormones

• Girls
• Oxytocin is more constantly stimulated in
  females, making them capable of quick empathetic
  responses to others pain and need
• Progesterone is the female growth and bonding
  hormone

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Hormones and Learning

• When females have high estrogen, they score
  higher on tests
• When testosterone is high in males, they perform
  better on spatial exams, but worse on verbal tests

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Female Brain has Learning Advantage

• Resting female brain is as active as the
  activated male brain
• Ruben Gur brain imaging techniques
• Female brain uses its resources quickly, often,
  and in more places
• Areas of Greater Functioning
• Females are memory and sensory intake
• Males are spatial tasks and abstract reasoning

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Considerations for Teachers

• Because girls can hear better than boys
• Boys need a louder voice
• Boys may need to be near the front of the room
• Females can see better than males in a darkened
  room and males see better than females in bright
  light

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Emotional Processing

• Girls
• Process more emotive stimulants and more
  completely than boys
• More likely to process hurt and talk about it
  with others
• Emotionally tougher they talk or cry about
  distress
• Boys
• Move information to limbic system and brain stem
• This response short-circuits intellectual and
  academic learning
• This emotive process takes longer and involves
  less reasoning

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10 Brain-based Differences

• Deductive/Inductive Reasoning
• Boys
• Deductive
• Start reasoning from general principle and apply
  it
• Have advantage in fast multiple-choice tests such
  as SATs
• Girls
• Inductive
• Begin with specific, concrete examples and build
  general theory, adding to their base
• Have advantage in verbalization, writing, and
  giving an example

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2 Abstract/Concrete Reasoning

• Boys
• Better than girls at calculating something
  without seeing it
• Abstract is explored more by the male brain, than
  the female brain
• Boys like abstract arguments, philosophical
  conundrums, and moral debates
• Architecture and engineering, which rely on
  abstract design principles, are attractive to
  male brains
• Girls
• Better when math is taught with manipulatives

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3 Use of Language

• Females
• Produce more words than males
• Prefer ideas conceptualized in normal language
  with concrete details
• Males
• Use fewer words and often work silently
• Find jargon and coded language more interesting
• Groups
• Parity in word use in female groups
• 1 or 2 dominating males speak more

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4 Logic and Evidence

• Girls
• Better listeners, hear more, and receptive to
  details
• Boys
• Hear less and ask for clear evidence to support
  anothers claim

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5 Likelihood of Boredom

• Boys
• Bored more easily than girls
• Need more varying stimuli to keep them
  attentive
• Once bored, likely to give up on learning and may
  act out
• Girls
• Better at managing boredom

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6 Use of Space

• Boys
• Spatial brains require more space
• Need more physical space when they learn
• Especially when younger
• May use more of a table than a girl, which
  teachers consider impolite or aggressive

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7- Movement

• Males
• Movement stimulates male brains
• Helps manage impulse behavior
• Girls
• Do not need to move around as much while learning
• Tips
• Give boys something to touch, chores, modeling
  clay, or encourage doodling
• Movement included in lessons physical
  representations
• Breaks stretch breaks change locations in
  room

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8 Sensitivity Group Dynamics

• Cooperative Learning
• Easier for girls
• Girls can learn while attending to a code of
  social interaction
• Boys focus on performing the task well, without
  sensitivity to those around them

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Pecking order

• Important for boys and they are fragile learners
  when low in the pecking order
• Less popular girls perform better than less
  popular boys
• Males at lower end of pecking order secrete more
  cortisol (stress hormone), which can sabotage the
  learning process. It forces the brain to focus
  on survival rather than the intellectual process.

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9 Use of Symbolism

• Both boys and girls like pictures, but boys often
  rely on them in their learning because they
  stimulate the right hemisphere, which is where
  many boys are more developed.
• Boys like symbolic texts, diagrams, and graphs
  because of the coded quality
• Girls prefer written texts

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10 Use of Learning Teams

• Both genders benefit
• Boys create structured teams
• Boys spend less time than girls in managing teams
• Boys pick leaders quickly and focus on the goal
• Girls form looser organizations

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Academic Performance

• Girls study harder than boys
• Girls choose harder courses in middle and high
  school at a higher rate than boys
• Girls get 60 of the As and boys get 70 of the
  Ds and Fs
• 62 of the top 1/5 of high school performers are
  girls

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Classroom Behavior

• Boys are louder, more physically aggressive, more
  competitive, and prone to attention-getter
  behavior than girls
• Boys are less mature
• Girls are more quiet, passive and sendentary than
  boys
• During puberty/adolescence boys seek outward
  dominance and girls seen inward excellence
• Girls have longer attention spans than boys

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Reading Writing Competence

• Girls are approximately 1.5 years ahead of boys
  in reading and writing competence at all school
  levels
• Boys are dominant in certain aspects of math and
  science due to brain structure
• Improved instruction is necessary for boys in
  reading and writing, as well as for girls in math
  and science

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Test Scores

• Boys score slightly higher on SATs
• Males are slightly better at storing
  single-sentence information than females
• Male brains have a visual advantage in working
  with and making quick deductive decisions on
  lists (such as multiple choice)
• Female brains think more inductively and need
  substantial information to make a decision
• Females have the advantage on essay questions

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Psychological, Learning Behavioral Disorders -
Girls

• Girls experience overt depression and eating
  disorders in their teens
• For every 1 suicide attempt by a boy, there are 4
  attempts by girls
• Females are less likely to experience learning,
  psychiatric, or behavioral disorder
• Not as many attention problems
• Use more cortical areas for more learning
  functions
• Secret more serotonin than males so less inclined
  toward hyperactivity

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Psychological, Learning Behavioral Disorders -
Boys

• Male brain lateralizes activity,
  compartmentalizing it in smaller areas of the
  brain, therefore suffering more learning
  disorders
• 2/3 of the learning disabled and 90 of the
  behaviorally disabled are boys
• Boys have 80 of the brain disorders and 70 of
  the substance-abuse problems
• For every girl who actually commits suicide, 4
  boys do.

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Psychological, Learning Behavioral Disorders

• Because girls use more cortical areas of the
  brain for learning, if they experience a slight
  defect, another area makes up for it
• Because the male brain lateralizes, a defect in
  one area of the brain may affect the only area in
  which a particular learning function is taking
  place
• Many boys are misdiagnosed with learning
  disorders, ADHD, or ADD

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Psychological, Learning Behavioral Disorders

• For Boys - create classrooms to help them deal
  with their natural impulsiveness, lateralization
  of brain activity, left- hemisphere disadvantage,
  and learning styles
• For Boys Girls create bonding and attachment
  communities in our classrooms/schools

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Maturity, Discipline Behavior

• The maturity gap between boys girls, especially
  teenagers, is one of the most pronounced
  brain-based gap and may be the most profoundly
  disabling feature of classroom life. It is the
  root of many behaviors labeled defective.
• The Boys and Girls Learn Differently Action Guide
  for Teachers, p 26

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Maturity, Discipline Behavior - Sex

• Female hormones, maturing earlier, guide girls
  toward long-term emotional attachments at a time
  when
• Immature male hormones may guide the boy toward
  short-term experimental attachments
• Teen pregnancy may lead the girl to drop out of
  school and the boy to abandon the girl and child

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Maturity, Discipline BehaviorSCHOOL

• Boys, with more impulsive and less mature brain
• Get into far more trouble in school
• Cause 90 of the discipline problems
• Are 80 of the dropouts
• Garner the majority of punishment for behavior
• Discipline that works for girls in middle and
  early high school
• Often inconsistent, friendly, and lacking
  profound authority
• Often doesnt work for boys
• Elder dominance systems with intense bonding and
  authority best manage boys until they learn to
  manage themselves

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Educational Aspirations

• Both boys and girls fear failure (boys more than
  girls) due to parent demands to compete in school
  and workplace
• On average, 8th and 12th grade girls have higher
  educational aspirations than boys
• 60 of college grads are female and college
  graduation is the most consistent indicator of
  stable future income

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Athletics and Extracurricular Activities

• Boys tend to choose interactive social activities
  that de-emphasize verbalization and emphasize
  spatial and physical aggression
• Boys participate more in sports (and have better
  funding) only 37 of HS athletes are girls
• Girls tend to choose interactive social
  activities that emphasize verbalization
• Girls are the majority of student-government
  officials, club leaders, and community liaisons

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Cultural Gender Bias - Boys

• Boys are at the most gender-based disadvantage in
  our schools
• K-6 teachers are 90 women
• Teachers have not received training in male brain
  development and performance
• Most systems rely less on kinesthetic and
  male-brain appropriate educational strategies
  needed by boys
• Early writers, eager to deal with anti-female
  bias in the workplace, may have been eager to
  prove similar bias in schools
• Although boys are called on more than girls, much
  of the attention boys get in school is punitive,
  not rewarding

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Cultural Gender Bias - Girls

• Boys may dominate discussions in some classrooms
  resulting in loss of voice for girls
• Role modeling and heroes in literature are more
  often male
• Good-old-boy networks in some schools teach males
  they are inherently privileged and bestow
  advantages on them, especially in access to
  employment networks

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Cultural Gender BiasStudent Coping

• Girls are more likely to express and detail
  negative feelings and experiences
• Boys are reluctant to share feelings about any
  experience or details about a painful experience
• Girls are only slightly more likely than boys to
  express feelings about bias

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Sexual Abuse and Violence

• Because males primarily victimize other males,
  boys are 3 times more likely than girls to be
  victims of violence on school property
• Girls are more often victims of sexual abuse or
  harassment at the hands of teachers, parents,
  coaches, school staff, and other students

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Protecting Boys and Girls

• Create a different school culture
• Closer bonding, smaller classes, more
  verbalization, less male isolation, better
  discipline systems, more authority, more
  attention to male learning styles
• Anti-bullying curricula help students deal with
  their internal systems for expressing angry, sad,
  and hurt energy

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Benefits of Experiential Learning

• In learning-by-doing, students internalize the
  content
• Content is less likely to be perceived as the
  teachers
• As students engage in activities, they are more
  apt to ask questions and make inferences

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Benefits of Experiential Learning

• Many projects are group-based
• Safety of group encourages introverted students
  to verbalize understandings and conclusions
• Group work allows students to experience,
  observe, and learn about group processes and
  dynamics
• Listening, cooperating, and competing

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Benefits of Experiential Learning

• Learning is retained when students can practice
  their new skills and talk or reflect about their
  new knowledge soon after the learning experience
• Coaching and feedback is especially important in
  the process

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Resources

• http//www.michaelgurian.com/
• Boys and Girls Learn Differently! A Guide for
  Teachers and Parents
• ISBN 0-7879-6117-5
• The Boys and Girls Learn Differently Action Guide
  for Teachers
• ISBN 0-7879-6485-9
• The Minds of Boys Saving our Sons from Falling
  Behind in School and Life
• ISBN 0-7879-7761-6