Self-fulfilling stereotypes surrounding boys at school

Research into the causes of boys’ under-achievement at school has found that the negative stereotype of academic inferiority in boys may be a major contributing factor. The paper, which appeared in the journal Child Development this week, demonstrates that encouraging children to think of girls and boys as equal in academic ability can improve boys’ performance in various tasks. It was also shown that children believe adults share these views.

Led by Bonny Hartley, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Kent, three studies were conducted involving schoolchildren in Britain between the ages of four and ten. The first found that, from the ages of four and seven respectively, girls and boys associated the positive scenarios with which they were presented with girl protagonists and the negative scenarios with boys. In the second study, being told that girls were academically superior caused a decline in the way boys performed in tests of reading, writing and maths. The final experiment saw boys’ level of achievement in a test increase when told that boys and girls are equal in ability, while the girls’ results were not affected.

In an interview with ScienceOmega.com, Hartley discussed the aims of the research, where this negative stereotype about boys may come from, and why their under-achievement in scholastic settings may be a self-fulfilling prophecy…

What was the original aim of your study?
Our original aim was to find out whether and at what age children acquire the stereotype that boys are academically inferior to girls, and begin to perceive that adults also endorse this stereotype. We wanted to find out how young boys and girls are when they start to think that boys are not expected to do as well as girls, and whether this is an idea that is consistent across ages and genders.

We also wanted to find out whether messages conveying this stereotype are self-fulfilling and threaten boys’ performance at school, and if it is possible to counteract these negative effects in order to improve performance.

Were you surprised to find that stereotype threat plays a role in boys’ under-achievement?
While it wasn’t a complete shock, we were somewhat surprised to see how young children were – only seven to eight years of age – when they began to associate girls with working harder and doing better. It is surprising inasmuch as men are usually seen as strong, dominant and powerful in society, whereas boys are cast in rather a negative light at school and may not realise their true potential as a result.

Where do you think the idea that girls are bound to perform better than boys academically comes from?
It will make for very interesting future research to investigate where exactly the stereotype originates, but the idea is bound to come from various different societal sources, including the media. It might be that some TV programmes, for example, portray boys as naughty and normalise a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude.

Parents may – inadvertently – reinforce the idea that boys are more likely to misbehave and that it’s normal for boys not to do as well at school. Peer groups will also play an important role as boys behave differently in the company of their contemporaries than they do when they’re alone. It may also be due in some part to their own experiences at school; that when the test results come in, it’s often girls who are at the top of the class. What is clear is that all these factors combine to influence the way children think about themselves and their peers from a very young age.

Some of the media coverage when I presented initial findings from the study a couple of years ago suggested that teachers were to blame for the stereotype and for favouring girls over boys in the classroom, but that is not the case at all. This was neither the aim, nor the finding of our research. It is an issue that society as a whole needs to address, not the sole responsibility of teachers.

What could be done to tackle this persistent, self-fulfilling stereotype?
In school, pupils are often grouped by ability, and this may result in the genders being separated with girls occupying higher ability groups and boys largely in the lower ability groups. They may also be divided into girls and boys in other cases where they’re being judged on their performance, which may mean something as simple as lining boys and girls up separately in the classroom. This can serve to reinforce the belief that there is expected to be a divide between them in terms of how well they will do. Changing practices like this could influence how boys perceive themselves and how they believe they are perceived by others.

We could also look at changing the way boys and their behaviour are portrayed by the media and particularly television programmes since this affects them from a very early age. Our findings highlight the importance of promoting positive gender expectations about school engagement, and challenging negative academic stereotypes.

Do you have further research planned on gender stereotyping in schools?
As well as finding out where exactly the idea comes from that girls are better than boys academically, it would be interesting to find out whether the negative stereotype only applies to certain groups of boys. This will help in finding and targeting potential measures to reverse the effects that this self-fulfilling stereotype is having on boys’ performance.