Auckland Primary Principals’ Association Conference

1. Auckland Primary Principals’ Association Conference ‘Mum, Girls can do anything. What can I do?’ - Boy

2. Check in... Check your responses to the scrum activity? Did you experience: Enthusiasm Caution? Shyness at physical contact? Fear of being hurt? Fear of touch? Scorn ? Criticism? Glee? Relief at some physical movement ? Resentment? Frustration? Rejection? Disobedience for any of the reasons above? This may be your response to boys in schools and what they ask, demand and bring

3. The current education system is not serving boys well. For at least 20 years, girls have been achieving better than boys • In 2009 there were 60% more female graduates from tertiary education than male. Stats. NZ • Prof. David Fergusson: Dunedin study. Boys are behind in all subjects, at all levels. 1996 • Report 2007 provided no recommendations only named the issues. • This is an international phenomena • Other countries are doing better • Effort is coming from teachers not the system

4. Boys behind in achievement 90-95% of RTLB referral are boys 80-95% police youth engagement Illiteracy 80-90% male Prison population 80-85% male. Literacy and numeracy are key rehabilitation factors Unemployment figures show more men becoming unemployed/unemployable than women. Graduates of tertiary ed. 60% more women each year Do we have a feminised system ?

5. Male teachers Primary • 1971 37.8 % male teachers in primary • 2006 14% report (2006) Early childhood • ECE 1992 2.1% • ECE Now under 1% and rising (Farquhar 1997) • Norway (10%).

6. We all support notions of equality • We celebrate that girls can do anything • We shudder at the effect of boys not being able to achieve to their fullness and the way boys and men handle those effects. As with Maori education this becomes a human rights issue. • Efforts to address inequality for boys have been slow and defensive. Practitioners have tended to see the problem as boy-owned rather than a systemic problem.

7. Who needs to improve? • The analysis has not been client-centred. It suggests that the system is OK and concludes boys need to improve within the system. • There is little evidence of positive discrimination which might rectify this situation. A learner-centred approach that examines differences, needs and solutions is required. • Teachers are making the difference not policy

8. Approaches to difference • Boys have differences from girls that are both social constructions and genetic.(nature and nurture) • How much of either is not the issue.When they arrive in our care they are different. • If we are teaching and caring in a child-centred manner then we will respect those differences. Rugby provides us with an appropriate metaphorical structure! Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage and Score

9. Assisting boys achievement • Crouch: to embrace active mission-based learning within order and security • Touch: The body is the learning tool, kinesthetic learning, action • Pause: Consider content that activates boy’s interest • Engage: Involve men in inspirational leadership that generates, models aspirational intention. • Score: Getting across the line to achieve results, completion, endings, achievement of aspirations

10. Crouch: to embrace active mission-based learning Aspiration? Order and security orient on the goal and mission, embrace active mission-based learning Crouch Crouch: Poise, get ready, to embrace active mission-based learning within structure, order and security. • Purposeful mission-based intention: goes somewhere for a reason. Has goal/try line and results/score • Order and security: rules, consequences, boss, fairness • Structure: compartmentalised, linear, clear framework, may be graduated, clear rewards, predictable.

11. Touch • Touch: The body is the learning tool, kinesthetic learning, action. • Doing: Active and kinaesthetic is the way to learn, action methods, manipulating an environment, creating 3D (solid) and 2D (visual) fields to work in. • Success/solution is by doing something • Touch boys and allow and encourage touch • Kinaesthetic relating to boys: Holding arms, hands/pat on backs • Rough and tumble. Boys experience power physically. • Play through touch: wrestling, rugby, holding, contact sport, martial arts • Reassurance of strength, warmth, intention.

12. Touch • Boys are much less auditory. Talk less, give short instructions, one step at a time. Women reduce your vocab to one third. • Outdoor activity, large motor movement • Produce things, concrete results of labour • Less focus on the emotional and verbal • TV and film programming for males express this difference well • Video games know about this world of kinaesthetic action and achievement • When under threat males will go ‘into a cave’ and sort out a doing solution before talking about it. • Doing links to the linear thinking

13. Pause: Consider the content and process • Pause to consider content and process that activates a boy’s interest • Factual, comparative, measured • Cause-effect • Goal oriented: treasure discovery, search, hunt, fix, find out, resolve a problem, achieve, find the unknown. • Good for problem solving, fixing things, inventing things • Action, movement from one point to another, speed, balls, wheels, directional movement • Danger, suspense, terror, uncertainty, adventure • Associated with robustness and aggression

14. Pause: Content and process ctd • Gives drive, focus, purpose and intention. • Sensitive to hierarchy, power and order. • Consider Linear Thinking • Strong focussing on one thing, purposeful and may eliminate the peripheral • Finds out how things work • Begins and follows to a conclusion or solution • Sometimes called scientific, rational, logical or cause/effect • Active and moves directionally to an end • Tends to be black and white • Seeks boundaries and compartments

15. Engage: men, fathers, aspiration and leadership • Involve men in inspirational leadership that generates, aspirational intention. • Boys are hungry for engagement with men • Attract and keep and value male teachers • Engage fathers and involve them for their own worth • Engage, welcome and involve parents not living with the child. • Share fathers and use mentoring schemes • Ask future based questions that lead the child to connect the present with meaningful activity now

16. Engage:men, fathers, aspiration and leadership ctd • Establish intention in vocation and /or hold vocation for the boy • Provide heroes: super and local • Create affirmation and foster male self esteem • Respect masculinity and different ways of doing things • Foster leadership and give responsibility that involves both achievement and nurture. • Ask who would you be like? Who would you be?

17. Score: Get across the line to achieve results, completion, endings, achievement of aspirations Is there a satisfactory completion and ending? Notice linear learning and solutions, outcomes, results, completions, endings resolutions. Did you score?

18. score • Understand Linear Thinking • Promote problem solving, fixing things, inventing things for a clear goal • Give all the time needed for that goal • Allow projects to be kept so that they can be finished • Focussing on one thing at a time • Promote purposeful completion • Reward and acknowledge results not just process • Finding out how things work is a goal of exploration • Begin and follows to a conclusion or solution • What was the score/measure, numbers, • Value the scientific, rational, logical or cause/effect • Allow it to be active and move directionally to an end • Allow for black and white responses and answers • Notice boundaries and compartments

19. In a world where differences have not been acknowledged, the use of feminised processes and content has been assumed as normal and generic, when in fact it has discriminated against boys’ achievement.

20. What can I do? Boys can do anything! • Validation for being boys • Generate action, mission and challenge • Foster creation, invention, risk-taking • Foster Care and nurture Challenge the ‘feminine-sides’ theory. Men and women do the same things but in different ways. • Protection, Fierceness and competition self and others, when it’s over it’s over.

21. Consequences for inaction on this issue • A Male underclass • A ‘Cool to fool’ culture • Drop out • Gangs • Achievement by alternative means • Poor health and wellbeing

22. Consequences for action on inequality: • Equality • Living fairness • Greater appreciation of diversity • Increased aspiration • Reduced dysfunction in schools • Balanced parenting and responsibility • More love for kids • Better health for males • Increased social wellbeing • Increased happiness for those giving and caring

23. Assisting boys achievement • Crouch: to embrace active mission-based learning within order and security • Touch: The body is the learning tool, kinesthetic learning, action • Pause: Consider content that activates boy’s interest • Engage: Involve men in inspirational leadership that generates, models aspirational intention. • Score: Getting across the line to achieve results, completion, endings, achievement of aspirations

24. Presentation by: Warwick Pudney AUT University 9219999 ext 7729 warwick.pudney@aut.ac.nz