Welcome to Teachers At Risk
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Oct
26
I’ve decided to take a different approach to writing my blog entries mainly for practical reasons. I’ve been writing my blog for more than three years now and really enjoy it, especially sharing ideas with readers. I learn so much. But, since I started working on my MEd, I just don’t have as much time to devote to my blog but I still want to continue it so I’m scaling way way back- not quite to the point of the 140 characters of Twitter. (I’ve almost given up on Twitter) You get the idea. When I get more time, I’ll go back to writing more in depth articles.
Here’s my first attempt at being brief.
There’s been lots of discussion about boys’ learning styles and girls’ learning styles and how they differ and now there’s some controversy. Dr. Spence in his 2008 book, The Joys of Teaching Boys , makes the case that boys learn differently from girls and have suffered under a “unisex model for child rearing and teaching.” He notes boys’ disengagement at school not only leads to poor grades and unproductive lives, but also can lead to the kind of violence Toronto schools have struggled to control in recent years. For these reasons, the Toronto School Board is going to fund an all boy elementary school, a first for the Board. There are of course lots of privately funded all boy schools, but this will be the first one in a public school system in the province of Ontario.
Lise Eliot doesn’t agree with the idea the girls and boys have different brains just because of their sex. She’s a neurobiologist who conducted a meta-analysis of the literature trying to chart how the brains of boys and girls differ. To her surprise she found that there’s little evidence to support this. She found that kids brains are shaped by how kids spend their time playing. She expands on this in her recent book Pink Brain, Blue
Brain.I haven’t had a chance to read either book yet, but I’ve noticed that boys and girls act differently in the classroom. I always thought it was because of socialization. (On the nature vs nurture debate, I tend to side with nurture to explain this difference). Just look at the toy aisles and you’ll see what I mean. Of course I’m making a sweeping generalization here. Still….
What does your experience lead you to believe?
References
News articles
Why boys need Barbies and girls need footballs
Anne McIIroyToronto Board pushes for boy-friendly schools Josh Wingrove and Anthony Reinhart
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