Research aims to find key to helping boys succeed at school

For schools to do well with boys, says an Australian researcher, they must understand three things: boys' male identities, their learning styles and their need for good relationships.

Deborah Hartman from the Boys in Schools Program said research was helping schools evolve from the idea that 'boys were a problem, caused problems and had problems'.

"Schools are now looking to a strengths-based and solutions-based approach so they can build on the positives that are already out there in the community and in the boys themselves."

The latest research on boys in schools will be presented at the 'Working with Boys Building Fine Men' conference from 3-5 April at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, education experts have called for a campaign to assist boys in schools as NCEA results have revealed a widening gap in achievement between the two sexes.

Latest Qualifications Authority figures show 58 per cent of boys failed University Entrance last year, compared with 49 per cent of girls.

Headlocks could boost classroom performance

"I often commented during the [Good Man] project that the most effective technique for controlling Year 10 boys, while trying to get at least a few scraps of information into their heads, might be to allow them to stand up every 10 minutes and put someone in a headlock."

- Celia Lashlie, commenting in a recent New Zealand Herald feature,
on the difficulties of teaching boys for whom physicality
can over-run their ability to sit still in class.

Ms Lashlie, the first woman in New Zealand to work in a custodial role in a male prison, has been working on the 'Good Man' project; a project commissioned to facilitate discussion within and between boys' schools in New Zealand to create a working definition of what makes a "Good Man" in the 21st century, a definition which can then shape the direction taken by schools in the education of their students.

Resources

More information on the Australian conference.

A New Zealand Herald feature looking at boys' NCEA results.

A Subtext story on boys' education and New Zealand's only female principal of an all-boys school.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard last year announced a ministerial reference group on boys' education which expects to come up with options to help boys by the end of this year. More information is at this web page.