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take a hold of it, and run to the next thing kind of thing. I m not
sure if it s to do with biology . . . I must admit when I think of boys,
I do think of them like that. They will give their full attention to
Teachers Talking 133
something for a certain period of time, then that s enough, and
they want to move on to something else.
(C.B.)
The comment about boys only wanting to learn a bit at a time ties in
with the previous comments about boys having a limited attention span
a comment repeatedly offered by boys themselves, and which was to be
echoed in turn by girls, talking about boys. It seems to have achieved the
status of fact in the narratives of learning and gender.
Learning styles: biology and the brain versus socialisation
The enduring nature of cognitively based theories of gender-differentiated
brain function has been discussed in earlier chapters; and conversations
with teachers suggest that many of them think about boys and learning
through a biologically based frame of reference. There was repeated ref-
erence to how boys/girls learn ; what boys/girls can do . For some, the
biological argument was interwoven with Howard Gardner s model of
multiple intelligences, also biologically understood, and currently a
popular and core component of most pre-service teacher education
programmes (Feldman and Gardner, 2003). This model works from
the understanding that learners learn in different ways are innately
designed to learn in different ways which must be accommodated in
the classroom regardless of teachers own learning style. It sits com-
fortably within current educational commitments to inclusivity and
diversity, and when it combines with a gender-frame as it appears to
do in much of our data it feels very solid. Professional development
work around the boys languages agenda in both Australia and the
United Kingdom often works from this learning style premise. Recent
professional development work in Scotland, for example, designed to
improve the outcomes of boys experience in language classrooms,
has drawn heavily on theories of brain differentiation. It accords
central place to the idea that there are students who can be identified
as boy-type learners and others as girl-type learners . Most boys and
girls are understood to fit into the appropriate gendered category, but
about 10 per cent of girls are believed to be boy-type learners ,
and 20 per cent of boys to be girl-type learners (Dobie and McDaid,
2001). It is argued, therefore, that 90 per cent and 80 per cent of
learners respectively are believed to behave and to learn in accord-
ance with biological predispositions associated with different configu-
rations of components of the brain; which leads to the argument that
if we want to increase male representation in language classrooms we
134 Boys and Foreign Language Learning
need to structure language learning experience in more boy-friendly
pedagogical ways.
The arguments referred to in Chapter 3, offered by more socially
oriented educational theorists that these cognitive predispositions/
learning styles are more culturally constructed than biologically given
continue to be sidelined by cultural common sense. As Mahony argues
(1998), biological arguments are attractive because they align so easily
with the social processes and practices which keep institutional wheels
turning, reproducing established values and practices. In our data, the
cultural argument is much less audible than the biological one. Some
teachers certainly talk about socialisation, peer pressure and cultural
orientations, but many more talk through normative discourses of
how boys/girls are in essentialist rather than constructivist terms.
Like the boys themselves, teachers appear to be thinking and acting
biology.
The influence of essentialism is not only commonsensically delivered.
Essentialist models of boy and girl drive much of the child devel-
opment literature in teacher education courses, which works through a
physiological lens, operating with classifications which are often described
as physical dimensions of learning development. These include phe-
nomena such as listening skills, concentration, sequential memory, fine
motor skills such as writing, visual tracking, body and spatial awareness,
sequencing and rhythm; and they are often explicitly accounted for
as sex-differentiated. Parallel to these physical features of a child s early
development are those skills loosely termed social , which include
sharing space or time, taking turns, collaborating and co-operating,
communicating including listening as well as speaking skills; and all
these dimensions of learning have clearly drawn sex-differentiated lines.
Many of the teachers in our research made specific reference to the lit-
erature which provides this kind of classificatory assistance. There was
a confidence in this kind of explanatory grid which suggests well-
established facts about male and female students. Individual views or
observations were often prefaced with authority investing phrases such
as: The literature shows that . . . , I ve read that . . . or Research shows
that . . . . Far fewer comments were made which in any way interrogated
such established, biologically based evidence, or drew from more recent
critical, socially oriented accounts of gendered learning development.
Physical and cognitive characteristics
Teachers on the whole, then, seemed comfortable in identifying what
they see to be differentiated physiological characteristics. They seem to
Teachers Talking 135
agree that boys have less well developed powers of concentration than
girls. The following was a typical remark: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
