These researchers arrive at the following overarching conclusion: "The testing situation may underestimate girls' abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys' abilities. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence and an occasion for a high-five.
They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. Conscientiousness is uniformly considered by social scientists to be an inborn personality trait that is not evenly distributed across all humans. Seligman and Duckworth label "self-discipline, " other researchers name "conscientiousness. " As it turns out, kindergarten-age girls have far better self-regulation than boys. Grading policies were revamped and school officials smartly decided to furnish kids with two separate grades each semester. Doodling during a lecture for example crossword club.fr. In contrast, Kenney-Benson and some fellow academics provide evidence that the stress many girls experience in test situations can artificially lower their performance, giving a false reading of their true abilities.
Homework was framed as practice for tests. In a 2006 landmark study, Martin Seligman and Angela Lee Duckworth found that middle-school girls edge out boys in overall self-discipline. These days, the whole school experience seems to play right into most girls' strengths—and most boys' weaknesses. Doodling during a lecture for example crossword club.doctissimo.fr. The findings are unquestionably robust: Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields where boys are thought to surpass them.
The latest data from the Pew Research Center uses U. S. Census Bureau data to show that in 2012, 71 percent of female high school graduates went on to college, compared to 61 percent of their male counterparts. These top cognitive scientists from the University of Pennsylvania also found that girls are apt to start their homework earlier in the day than boys and spend almost double the amount of time completing it. When F grades and a resultant zero points are given for late or missing assignments, a student's C grade does not reflect his academic performance. This finding is reflected in a recent study by psychology professors Daniel and Susan Voyer at the University of New Brunswick. One such study by Lindsay Reddington out of Columbia University even found that female college students are far more likely than males to jot down detailed notes in class, transcribe what professors say more accurately, and remember lecture content better.
This begs a sensitive question: Are schools set up to favor the way girls learn and trip up boys? Disaffected boys may also benefit from a boot camp on test-taking, time-management, and study habits. These core skills are not always picked up by osmosis in the classroom, or from diligent parents at home. In one survey by Conni Campbell, associate dean of the School of Education at Point Loma Nazarene University, 84 percent of teachers did just that. By the end of kindergarten, boys were just beginning to acquire the self-regulatory skills with which girls had started the year. Girls' grade point averages across all subjects were higher than those of boys, even in basic and advanced math—which, again, are seen as traditional strongholds of boys. Less of a secret is the gender disparity in college enrollment rates. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. This is a term that is bandied about a great deal these days by teachers and psychologists. On the whole, boys approach schoolwork differently. Gwen Kenney-Benson, a psychology professor at Allegheny College, a liberal arts institution in Pennsylvania, says that girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. Staff at Ellis Middle School also stopped factoring homework into a kid's grade. Let's start with kindergarten.
A few years ago, Cameron and her colleagues confirmed this by putting several hundred 5 and 6-year-old boys and girls through a type of Simon-Says game called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task. They found that girls are more adept at "reading test instructions before proceeding to the questions, " "paying attention to a teacher rather than daydreaming, " "choosing homework over TV, " and "persisting on long-term assignments despite boredom and frustration. " One grade was given for good work habits and citizenship, which they called a "life skills grade. " They are more performance-oriented. Not just in the United States, but across the globe, in countries as far afield as Norway and Hong Kong.