Chapter 9 - Girls, Boys and Learning Styles

Girls just wanna understand........no wait.......girls just wanna have fun........but can they enjoy mathematics and "have fun" if they don't understand?


As I read this chapter (and many others) my own mathematical experiences started to make a little more sense and I gained a new level of confidence that had been lacking for many years. Boaler asserts that “women tend to value connected knowing, characterized by intuition, creativity and experience, whereas men tend to value separate knowing, characterized by logic, rigor and rationality.” This is especially interesting because when I took advanced mathematics in high school the class was almost entirely females, yet the teaching style seems to have catered more towards the learning style of males, lessons were presented much like those at Amber Hill, in a series of disconnected ideas, sequential steps to practice and “know”, things that you didn’t “need” to understand, you just had to “remember”.......but I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t “know” something without understanding it, so rather than stay in a program which I knew I was unlikely to experience success in I switched to the academic math program. This class consisted of far more males than females, yet the teaching style was directed more towards that of females. There was more time allowed to make connections and build understanding, math was no longer simply a game with rules that had to be followed. The pressure and competition of the advanced class had been removed, and there was time to ask questions that related to understanding, time to try our own way of doing things or to figure out just why “the rules worked”.

I sympathize with the girls at Amber Hill, aware of the fact that instruction was not meeting their needs, but unable to do anything about it. Students at Amber Hill were assigned to sets and were not able to make the choice to move between them, I had that choice, but in doing so I had to make some sacrifices, for example, I knew that by switching to the academic class that the math classes I could take in university would be restricted would be restricted; however this was just fine with me at that point, as I had no desire to take math classes beyond high school, looking back now I wish I had taken more math classes in University and that I had remained in the advanced program, but alas hindsight is 20/20.....

A question that remains with me after reading is why should the girls at Amber Hill have been expected to compromise their desire for understanding and replace it with a desire for speed akin to that of the boys? Why should they change who they as learners to meet the teacher’s needs? Is there an approach that would allow both genders to be successful........enter Phoenix Park, the open ended inquiry projects allowed boys and girls to experience success with mathematics, why then is such an approach not emphasized and utilized everywhere? Is it because it is an approach that requires more of the student, but far more of the teacher that the direct instruction method?.......this leads to the next chapter and ability grouping.....



I wish I had been present for the discussion on this chapter, it would have been interesting to hear what others had to say on this topic, to hear their experiences and ideas related to gender and learning styles. Hopefully the blog posts will allow me to gain a sense of the discussion.