Galley, M. (2008). Would boys and girls tend to answer differently? In M. Sadowski (Ed.), Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education (2nd Ed., pp. 85-98). Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
“boys tend to rely on nonverbal communication, which Gurian says has enormous ramifications for them in an education system that relies so heavily on conversation and words.”
“The boys she studied who were educated in single-sex classes felt that they could take more risks in class and in making friends. They reported that it felt like a release to be in classes without girls and said that they asked questions they might not have felt comfortable asking if girls had been in the room. Thus, boys were better able to express their learner identities, including being able to speak freely and take risks, in classes that did not include girls”
I chose these two passages because they reminded of the student I observed last Friday for my focal learner study. I noticed a lot of nonverbal communication happening between him and a teacher. It seemed to me that this was some of the most effective communication that happened between this student and teachers. The teacher was able to understand what the student needed or wanted and respond in a way that quickly refocused him on the task at hand.
I also noticed that the student’s interactions with his female classmates seemed very different from those with his male classmates. Many of the curse words I heard were reserved for conversation with female classmates and my initial reflection is that the majority of times that he yelled out in class were related to female classmates.
These initial reflections on my observations have reevaluating the value of gender segregated education. My general opinion is that it wouldn’t be beneficial because we all need to learn to get along with each other at some point. However, these reflections seem to indicate that have separate classes or schools for boys and girls could be beneficial.