<\/a><\/p>\nIf you\u2019ve been paying attention to education news, you know that boys are falling behind academically. You\u2019ve heard they are lagging in reading and writing, graduating from high school at lower rates than girls, and filling fewer seats in college classrooms.<\/p>\n
No doubt you\u2019ve also heard theories about the causes of this phenomenon, from the rise of feminism to the departure of fathers from the home. You\u2019ve also heard ideas about how to reverse it, from same-sex classes to more male teachers.<\/p>\n
What you probably haven\u2019t heard is what boys think about it. Until now.More than 540 Maine boys and young men shared their views on schooling in a yearlong research project whose preliminary findings, released at a statewide education conference at Bates last October, are attracting queries from teachers across North America.<\/p>\n
The study confirms what researchers suspected \u2014 boys\u2019 underachievement parallels a sense of disenfranchisement in their schools \u2014 and it offers some surprises. Defying stereotype, for example, boys do care what teachers think of them. When boys have good relationships with their teachers, it has much to do with their love of a class.<\/p>\n
“Our boys are saying they want people to connect with them,” says Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro, Bates\u2019 representative to the Maine Boys Network, the consortium of policy analysts, educators, and youth-service professionals that sponsored the study. “They love it if someone \u2014 it doesn\u2019t have to be a male teacher \u2014 knows and shares their interests.”<\/p>\n
The project is significant not only for adding a vital piece to the national discussion, but also for its ambitious reach: Hundreds of boys offered opinions about the teaching techniques that engage them \u2014 or lose them. Nigro, with Maren Vouga \u201909 of Louisville, Ky., and Erin Bonney \u201909 of Sudbury, Mass., conducted a daunting analysis of the discussions, identifying common themes as well as classroom strategies that some Maine teachers are already putting to use.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s where Georgia took the lead,” says Mark Tappan, a Colby College professor of education who performed the data analysis with Nigro and Stephan Derochers, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maine\u2013Farmington. “She developed a way to critically examine
\nthe interviews. We were so lucky to have her expertise.”<\/p>\n
Their findings appear in the October 2008 report “The Gender Divide in Academic Engagement: Perspectives from Maine Boys and Young Men.”<\/p>\n
To read the report go to http:\/\/www.boystomen.info\/ and scroll down to the report.<\/p>\n
Children have been at the center of Nigro\u2019s research at Bates. She has studied children\u2019s memory to develop interview methods that improve preschoolers\u2019 recall and resistance to misinformation. She
\nalso developed a project to raise middle-school girls\u2019 awareness of careers in math and science.<\/p>\n
Her concerns about boys date to 1997, when she helped to interpret a survey of Lewiston sixth-graders\u2019 attitudes toward school and their future. (The survey had been designed and implemented by Bates students under the direction of Professor of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin, now retired.)<\/p>\n
“I was struck by the gender difference,” Nigro recalls. “Twenty-five percent of male students felt excluded in the classroom, that their opinions weren\u2019t valued.”<\/p>\n
When the survey was presented publicly to Lewiston residents, however, their attention went to other findings \u2014 understandably, since the national focus at that time was on improving girls\u2019 education and career opportunities. “People thought paying attention to boys would take away from the attention that was being paid, and still needed to be paid, to girls,” Nigro says.<\/p>\n
The Maine Boys Network study was her long-awaited opportunity. She and students from her “Action Research” psychology course were among numerous facilitators convening focus groups in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges during 2007\u201308. “The boys were thoroughly engaged,” she reports. “They took it seriously, but they also had fun. They appreciated that someone was asking the questions we were asking.”<\/p>\n
Students shared, among other things, their yearnings for a kinesthetic but challenging curriculum; variety and freedom in their assignments; caring, fair teachers; and the same respectful treatment that they thought girls received.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes I wanted to go off-script and intervene,” Nigro confesses. “One middle-school boy asked, \u2018Why do I have to study science? I want to be a lobsterman.\u2019 I asked him, \u2018Don\u2019t you think a lobsterman needs to know what\u2019s happening in the oceans, what\u2019s happening to the fish? That\u2019s science.\u2019 I could have gone on with an entire science lesson, but I stopped myself.”<\/p>\n
That exchange was among many poignant moments from gatherings that often stretched to two hours \u2014 with students begging for more time. “That boy was getting the message that you\u2019re a nobody if you don\u2019t go on with education,” Nigro reflects. “Yet the somebodies in his life \u2014 his father, his uncles, his grandfather \u2014 hadn\u2019t gone on in education. It made me see that we have to listen to them and think about how we convey the message that higher education is important.”<\/p>\n