Canada ranks high among countries where boys consistently value academic effort less than girls, a gap which a new study says could be behind a troubling “boys’ crisis” in education. “Boys consistently report less positive attitudes than girls, regardless of socioeconomic status, family structure, or grade repetition,” the new study explains. “These gender gaps are observed in nearly all countries and are larger in more developed societies.” Published Tuesday in the journal PNAS Nexus, the study was based on survey responses from roughly 750,000 15-year-old students across 61 countries, including more than 34,000 teens in Canada. It found an overall link between attitudes toward academic effort, school achievement and participation in higher education – with the notable exception of boys’ continued high representation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Study author Clotilde Napp is an economist and director of research at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research at the Université Paris Dauphine-PSL. She notes that Canada has one of the larger gender gaps when it comes to reported attitudes towards trying hard at school, ranking 11th out of 61 countries in the study’s analysis. Reported gender gaps in academic effort were highest in Norway, Jordan and Lithuania, and lowest in South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. “For gaps in academic performance between girls and boys, and for boys’ representation in higher education, Canada sits around the middle of the distribution,” Napp told CTVNews.ca in an email from Paris. “So Canada fits the broader pattern of developed countries, where attitude gaps tend to be larger.” ‘This gap appears in almost every country’ While Napp says she expected to find that girls value academic effort more than boys, two findings from the study stood out for her as surprising. “First, this gap appears in almost every country in our study, and it is larger in more developed and more gender-equal countries — which runs counter to the common intuition that gender gaps shrink as societies become more equal,” Napp explained. “Second, the gap is associated with gender differences in performance and educational choices in verbal and arts-related fields, but not at all in STEM fields.” The study describes the larger gap in developed countries as part of a “‘Gender Equality Paradox,’ whereby more economically and more gender-equal societies tend to exhibit greater gender differentiation in preferences or behaviours.” The study does not focus on ways to narrow this gender gap, but Napp offers some suggestions, including “challenging the cultural idea that effort is ‘feminine’ and that boys succeed through innate talent; encouraging more positive attitudes toward effort among boys, particularly in fields where they are underrepresented, such as the humanities; and promoting the idea that success, for both girls and boys, comes through learning and effort rather than fixed ability.” While gender norms are most often associated with disadvantages for women and girls, the study points to cases where they can also be harmful for boys in terms of education outcomes. “But even here, this disadvantage is partial,” Napp added. “It does not extend to the most rewarding fields, since boys’ relative representation in STEM shows no such association with the attitude gap.” ‘Raising our expectations’ Brendan K. Hartman is a Vancouver-based sociologist and educational consultant who specializes in the social-emotional development and well-being of boys and men. Hartman – who was not involved in the study – says the findings were expected, based on his own research and classroom experience. “I think ... it’s probably more accurate to say that girls are outperforming boys as opposed to boys are ... falling behind from where they were in the past,” Hartman told CTVNews.ca. Hartman said the attitudes of boys toward academic effort can be shaped by their social environment, including how their friends react to achievement. “I had multiple boys in my PhD research, depending on the culture of that school and of their friend group, tell me that it wasn’t cool to try too hard,” he said. “One of the best ways we can narrow this gender gap and promote better academic effort in boys is raising our expectations.” Hartman suspects that a larger gender gap in developed countries may relate to available opportunities, with many boys seeing formal education as unnecessary for the lifestyle or future they envision for themselves. “You can argue that there’s more freedom to then choose how you want to be [in developed countries], and whether that involves education or not,” Hartman said. “Whereas in less developed countries, education can be seen as a higher priority because it’s one of the fewer pathways forward.” Sandra Boyes, executive director of professional learning and research at the Crescent Centre for Boys’ Education, says boys can be particularly vulnerable to how they perceive their academic abilities. “They often feel if they don’t get something right the first time, it means they’re not good at it,” Boyes told CTVNews.ca. She said a trusting relationship with a teacher can help boys feel secure enough to learn from mistakes. “That trusted relationship of being known, cared for, held in high esteem, even if mistakes are made along the way, is absolutely fundamental to the learning journey for boys,” Boyes said. Hartman added that one of the best ways to narrow the gender gap is to raise expectations for male students. He also stressed the importance of combining clear expectations with supportive relationships. “And research shows that their favorite teachers tend to be strict but caring,” Hartman said. Canada’s position Hartman cautioned that comparing countries can be difficult because results depend on the measures being examined, such as graduation rates, reading scores or broader measures of student well-being. He said Canada’s provincial education systems also make it difficult to draw a single conclusion about the country’s overall performance. However, regarding Canada’s position in the broader international picture he said, “We are definitely somewhere in the middle.” Boyes said early intervention can help boys develop the emotional skills and confidence that support their learning. “The younger the intervention, the more we can develop a boy’s sense of emotional literacy, to be able to speak their feelings and be proud of their feelings,” she said.
