Teaching girls

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Teaching girls
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Plus ca change?

• Good teaching is good teaching
• Diversity of learning styles
• Variety
• Pace
• Challenge
• Assessment for Learning approaches
• Good questioning
• Opportunities for discussion
• Quality feedback
• Regular review of material

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Male and female brains
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What are the differences?

• Common (mis)conceptions
• Better at exams?
• Which subjects?
• The female and male brains

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Possible causes for concern (1)

• Does school success
• mean success in
• later life?

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Pupils approaches to thinking and learning
Attitude to thinking


ACTIVE
PASSIVE
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
Attitude to learning
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Possible causes of concern (2)

• The
• course work
• approach

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Possible causes for concern (3)

• Ongoing inequality in the workplace

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Barriers to success 1 risk avoidance

• Children need risk to thrive as adults
  Dragons Den judge article
• TES article on risk and challenge
• Surprisingly low self confidence
• What are we telling them? (Dweck article)
• What are we praising?

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Students are not fools. If regurgitation and
getting the right answer are what bring high
marks, then that is what they will try to do.
McPeck, Teaching Critical Thinking
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We need to encourage children to push
themselves, to go beyond their limits, in order
to build a nation of bold and confident people
Helping children to experience risks in a managed
way is not only key to their general development
but also to bringing on the next generation of
entrepreneurs, to the benefit of the economy and
society as a whole.
Simon Woodroffe, founder of Yo! Sushi, judge on
BBCs Dragons Den and supporter of HTIs Go4it
award
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Barriers to success 2 Lack of creativity
X

• Prefer to repeat
• other peoples
• ideas than
• generate own
• See this as
• safest route to
• praise and school
• success
• Schools killing creativity? Ken Robinson talk

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Barriers to success 3 Low resilience
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When we and others look at bright girls in our
studies, we find that they are the group with the
greatest vulnerability to helplessness. They are
more likely than boys to hold an entity theory of
their intelligence (i.e. that their intelligence
is fixed and cant be changed, for example by
effort or experience), they are more likely to
want tasks they are sure they can do well at and
they are more likely to blame their abilities and
show impairment when they encounter difficulties.
Prof Carol Dweck, Self Theories, 2000
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Gifted girls need to learn that the hallmark of
intelligence is not immediate perfection, but
rather the habit of embracing new tasks that
stretch your skills and build your knowledge.
Prof Carol Dweck, Self Theories, 2000
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Building habits for success

• Activities to raise awareness
• of habits and their application
• Strategies for rewarding habits
• Focus on the dispositions which we wish to
  promote show what we value give them
  responsibility report writing
• Provide quotations and role models

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Teacher behaviours which help (and hinder)

• How we label
• How we give feedback
• What we praise
• How we plan our lessons
• How we become role models

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one factor in the development of (helpless)
patterns may be bright girls early successes
which undoubtedly bring them acclaim from their
teachers and parents for their intelligence and
goodness. This may teach them a framework that
can limit their later achievement.
Dweck, Self Theories, 2000 124
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teachers may be over-indulgent in their
praise of girls intelligence, as a means of
overcoming harmful stereotypes and encouraging
girls achievement.
Dweck, Self Theories, 2000 125
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these experiences can encourage an entity
theory, performance goals, challenge avoidance
and helpless responses to later difficulties.
The diet of early success and praise may even
make girls eager to buy into the entity theory
and now we have a recipe for trouble.
Dweck 2000
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Analysis suggests that, while on the outside
bright girls may appear industrious,
well-integrated, responsible and successful, a
paralysing instinct drives them to avoid the
unknown an undeniable sign of a lack of
confidence and belief in their own intellectual
abilities. A self-reinforcing cycle is set up
and perpetuated in which girls become
increasingly less likely to develop their
strengths and more content to hide within the
confines of what is known and safe.
C J Simister, Bright Girls who Fail, Gifted
Education International, 2005
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Study strategies classroom tools to develop
deeper understanding

• Lesson planning content disposition
  thinking/learning skill
• Diamond 9
• Information mapping
• Mandalas
• Odd one out
• Jigsaw method
• Mysteries
• Teach it

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Study strategies and classroom tools to develop
deeper understanding

• What is the question?
• Random limits
• Spot the mistake
• Waynflete!
• Personal challenge award
• Summarising (in 20 words)
• Whats always true about ?

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Study strategies and classroom tools to develop
deeper understanding

• The main problem with
• 10 ways to do X
• Oxbridge questions
• What if/just suppose ?
• De Bono Thinking hats
• Ten steps to independent thinking
• Alternative explanations
• Persuade me that
• Patchwork thinking