Male learning styles - a teacher's perspective

Willowz

Since Australia is such a big country, I'm guessing there is plenty of room for individuality. Usually, I'd think, individuality means doing things the hard way.

Astronuc

And there's the little matter that most of the outback is desert - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserts_of_Australia

The along the northern coast is the potential to encounter salt water crocodiles, or fresh water crocodiles in the inland streams and billabongs.

In the oceans are a variety of exceptionally poisonous fish, or the blue ring octopus, or the box jelly fish, or the great white sharks, primarily out west.

And there are numerous poisonous snakes.


So one has to really know the land. Nevertheless, I never worried about any of that growing up on the south coast. We just had to contend with bull ants and bluebottles.

cmb

I spent a sabbatical in Adelaide. Those bluebottles are disgusting. They do not even fly away when you wave at them. I resorted to wearing a fly net!

My wife was bitten by a brown snake there. I hear it is the most deadly snake in the world (because it is so prolific). Fortunately for her it did not appear to have envenomated, and she was OK.

I would not have fancied going off to do any 'team-building' adventures in the wilds, unless I was confident I knew what, and how to deal with, the nasty beasties that live out there!

TheStatutoryApe

Yes, I had though about that or the possibility that students may be shunned by "teammates". I do not really have any experience with this sort of thing but I imagine there are ways of doing it that work better than others. I am sorry I do not really have any information to offer in that direction.

narrator

Hey, no prob.. it was a good suggestion and prompted a rethink of team activities. :)

darkchild

How much? Zero, because "male domain" doesn't exist. Just ask the large number of males who are giddy about the markedly unadventurous task of sitting in front of screens programming for 8 or more hours per day. This men are from Mars, women are from Venus nonsense is old, no matter how many different new ways you try to spin it.

Why the boys especially?

narrator

Oh I disagree, though not entirely. There are definite differences between males and females - not necessarily of the Mars/Venus type, but nature & nurture both have their impact.
At 15-18 years, males tend to engage differently than females. As generalizations go, I do see the reverse in both sexes, but they're less in numbers. Within the classes that I teach, most of the girls will quite happily work on a task that involves pen and paper, and chat about social things while still getting the work done. Most of the boys cannot or will not do the work if there is such distraction. Most of the boys would rather be "doing" and they dislike sitting with pen and paper. (It's well known that females multitask better than males. I wish I could multitask better.) There's a lot more to the dynamics, but in approximate terms, that's how it has consistently presented itself in my 3 years of teaching, at 5 geographically and socioeconomically different sites.

Unlike regular high school, I have these "disconnected school-refusers" all day, every day, so it's not like having them for a 45 minute period then they're off to the next class.

And 3 years teaching at 5 sites comes from being sent to one of our other sites for a while, or a day or two a week, depending on curriculum and staffing needs.

darkchild

Clearly there are differences, but they are a lot more subtle than "this group is adventurous and this other group is not."

Zarqon

I might also be enough simply to have a competitive element at all, even if it's not something exotic that requires trips or such. I've heard of teachers who've had success with teaching their students chess, and then arranging chess competitions. Just the fact that there is a competitive element means that many more focuses on the task rather than become bored with it.

ych22

I am terribly surprised that no one considered the one-size-fits-all approach to Education being employed in the Western world, and how it is subconsciously jamming pre-university preparation down the throats of every young person.

Here in Singapore, our Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs) and polytechnics (leading to a pre-U vocational diploma) train people from the ages of 15 to 21 to become mechanics, hairdressers, chefs, electrician and other vocations. However, in recent years, there has been a shift from the belief that everyone should have a different post-secondary education depending on their inclinations to academic material, to the belief that everyone "can make it" and get a degree.

What it all leads to, is a terrible obsession to get a degree "at all costs". While we may agree that everyone should have a good shot at tertiary education and the supposedly "better future" it promises, we should also acknowledge that a vocational education can be rewarding and be more suited to certain personalities.

Coming to the main point- I think everyone excels in different ways, so some people will struggle when put into the classroom. Allowing them to explore and have adventures is fun, but ultimately some people are just not meant to learn maths and physics in the classroom.

I hope I did not come across as sounding elitist...

mathwonk

what makes you think "cavemen" were all male?

narrator

There were cavemen and cavewomen.. (but of course the name is a misnomer).

A lot could be said for the nature/nurture side of cultural evolution, as shown in tribal societies, where male and female roles were, in most cases, clearly delineated. Chicken or egg, it suggests that such roles have either had an evolutionary effect or were determined by an evolutionary difference - or a combination of both. However it happened, I think our biological evolution has not yet caught up with our modern egalitarian cultural evolution, leaving differences in learning styles between males and females.