Investigating gender differences in reading

Abstract

Girls consistently outperform boys on tests of reading comprehension, although the reason for this is not clear. In this review, differences between boys and girls in areas relating to reading will be investigated as possible explanations for consistent gender differences in reading attainment. The review will examine gender differences within the following different aspects of reading: differences in behavioural and motivational factors, difference in cognitive abilities, differences in brain activation during reading and differences in reading strategies and learning styles. A particular focus of this review will be on a research study which found a gender difference in reading favouring boys. Such a study may provide us with some insight into the type of learning environment to which boys may be more suited.

Keywords:

• gender
• reading
• achievement
• phonics
• teaching

Introduction

Gender differences in reading achievement are consistently found in national and international assessments [Mullis et al. 2003; Ming Chui and McBride‐Chang 2006; Mullis et al. 2007; Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) 2008a, 2008b, 2008c]. The gender difference in reading may reflect a difference in distribution, such that boys are disproportionally over‐represented at the lower end of the scale, and as a result, less often reach the standard expected for their age (DCSF 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Previous international studies, which included 35 to 40 countries, examined reading comprehension with 10 year old children and found gender differences favouring girls in every participating country (Mullis et al. 2003; Mullis et al. 2007). In addition, Ming Chui and McBride‐Chang (2006) showed that this gender difference in reading continues into adolescence, as a study with 15 year old children in 43 countries found that in every country, girls outperformed boys. These gender differences generally appear regardless of the type of reading instruction children have received (although see Johnston and Watson 2005; Johnston, Watson, and Logan 2009), or the writing system: whether an alphabetic (transparent or opaque) or ideographic orthography (Mullis et al. 2003; Ming Chui and McBride‐Chang 2006; Mullis et al. 2007).

Categorising children based on gender may be seen as a very broad and over‐simplistic way of examining individual differences in reading skill. Indeed, there is enormous variation in both boys’ and girls’ reading and cognitive abilities. Whilst reading disabilities are more prevalent in boys (Rutter et al. 2004), there is some evidence that girls are over‐represented as gifted readers, although these differences are small (Swaitek, Lupkowski‐Shoplik, and O’Donoghue 2000). Neuroimaging studies suggest that adult males and females display different patterns of functional activation during reading (Shaywitz et al. 1995; Pugh et al. 1996) and sex differences in children have been found in the localization of brain activation during word reading (Burman, Bitan, and Booth 2008). However, more recently, questions have arisen as to whether sex differences actually exist in functional activation during language related tasks (Wallentin 2009). There is some evidence to suggest that boys and girls have naturally different reading strategies (Thompson 1987) and benefit from different types of reading instruction (Johnston and Watson 2005; Johnston, Watson, and Logan 2009). In addition, substantial gender differences are consistently found in reading attitudes and motivation; both of which are associated with reading achievement (McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth 1995; Wang and Guthrie 2004; Morgan and Fuchs 2007; Logan and Johnston 2009).

As mentioned, a particular focus of this review will be on a research study which found gender differences in reading, favouring boys. Such a study may be informative as to the type of reading instruction and learning environment to which boys may be more suited. Johnston and Watson (2005) found that a systematic synthetic phonics method produced a gender difference in reading which favoured boys (in word reading and spelling), with equal overall attainment in reading comprehension. When a sub‐group of these children were compared with an analytic‐phonics‐taught group of children matched on age, vocabulary knowledge, socio‐economic status and years of education (Johnston, Logan, and Watson, submitted for publication), the results showed that the analytic‐phonics‐taught children showed the pattern of results often found in previous studies; girls had better reading comprehension, better spelling and equivalent word reading scores to boys. However, in the group of children taught by synthetic phonics, boys had better word reading and equivalent spelling and reading comprehension scores (whilst boys had better spelling and reading comprehension scores, these differences were not significant). In addition, there were fewer underachieving boys in the synthetic phonics group compared to the analytic phonics group. Children with scores of one or more standard deviations below the mean were classed as poor readers or spellers; 5.66% (word reading), 6.60% (spelling) and 9.43% (reading comprehension) of synthetic‐phonics‐taught boys fell into this category compared to 11.92% (word reading), 32.11% (spelling) and 28.44% (reading comprehension) of analytic‐phonics‐taught boys. Similarly, there were more boys achieving word reading, spelling and reading comprehension scores one or more standard deviations above the mean when taught by synthetic phonics; 43.40% (word reading), 25.47% (spelling) and 15.09% (reading comprehension) of boys fell into this category, compared to 12.85% (word reading), 9.17% (spelling) and 5.51% (reading comprehension) of analytic‐phonics‐taught boys. This suggests that there may be something specific about a synthetic phonics method which suits boys’ learning style. It should be noted that whilst boys benefitted in particular from a synthetic phonics approach, this approach did not disadvantage girls, who had reading and spelling ages ahead of their chronological age (Johnston and Watson 2005).

In order to understand why boys may benefit from synthetic phonics teaching, a description of the method will be given (see also Johnston and Watson 2007), including specific characteristics of this reading programme which may have suited boys’ learning styles in particular. The main principle behind synthetic phonics is that letter‐sound correspondences and blending skills are taught early on and at a relatively fast pace so that children quickly have a method to read independently. Children are taught at the grapheme‐to‐phoneme conversion level and are taught to sequentially blend the sequence of letter sounds in order to read words; this is the only reading strategy children are taught. Therefore, children do not learn the multiple word reading strategies which are typical of other reading programmes, such as whole word recognition, guessing words from context cues, using grammatical knowledge to predict words [e.g. strategies previously advocated by the UK National Literacy Strategy, Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) 1998]. Indeed, when several word reading strategies are taught within more eclectic approaches, gender differences are consistently found (DCSF 2008a, 2008b, 2008c; Johnston, Logan, and Watson, submitted for publication).

There are a number of characteristics of a synthetic phonics method which may lend themselves to boys’ natural learning styles and which will be discussed in more detail throughout the article. Firstly, it is suggested that synthetic phonics may be easier to focus attention on or may be less reliant on skills acquired before school: this may benefit boys if they have poorer attention or if they start school less equipped with reading readiness skills. Secondly, it is suggested that there are different cognitive skills underpinning children’s word recognition when they learn by a synthetic phonics approach compared to other approaches, and that boys are not at a disadvantage in the skills underpinning synthetic phonics. A third suggestion is that synthetic phonics fosters early integration of phonological and visual information, something which boys are not inclined to do naturally. Finally, synthetic phonics places a strong emphasis on phonics rules and teaches children to use a rule governed phonological approach to reading, which may be more in line with boys’ natural learning styles. These suggestions will be discussed further throughout the remainder of this article. It should be noted that the advantage for boys when learning to read by a synthetic phonics approach refers to advantages at the word reading level. This review so far has highlighted gender differences commonly found in reading comprehension (e.g. Mullis et al. 2003; Ming Chui and McBride‐Chang 2006; Mullis et al. 2007). However, since word reading skill is crucial for reading comprehension (Gough and Tunmer, 1986), improving word reading skill is likely to lead to increases in reading comprehension.

Gender as a context

Firstly, it is important to consider gender as a context in which children’s learning and development occurs. Within the classroom environment, whilst all children receive the same literacy instruction, differences in attention, interest and preference for different types of classroom activities may mean that boys and girls spend different amounts of time engaged in literacy activities. Therefore, aside from the investigation into why synthetic phonics may suit boys in particular, children’s attitudes to reading, motivation and reading frequency may also potentially provide explanations for the consistent gender differences observed in reading. Research consistently highlights gender differences in attitudes to reading and reading motivation (McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth 1995; Logan and Johnston 2009); differences which are greater than those found in attitudes to school and school motivation (Logan and Medford, submitted for publication) or in reading skill (Logan and Johnston 2009). Whilst attitudes and motivation are often associated with, or predict reading comprehension (McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth 1995; Wang and Guthrie 2004), there is little research investigating whether attitudes or motivation explain variance in reading comprehension scores over and above the cognitive skills commonly associated with reading. Logan, Medford, and Hughes (unpublished), found that intrinsic reading motivation explained significant variance in reading comprehension scores after controlling for previous reading comprehension performance, verbal IQ, decoding skill and reading frequency. In addition, Taboada et al. (2009) found that both cognitive variables and motivational factors could explain unique variance in both reading comprehension performance and reading comprehension growth. These two studies highlight the fact that there is often a discrepancy between a child’s competence (i.e. cognitive abilities) and performance (i.e. reading comprehension scores), and this difference may lie in their motivation or attitudes towards the task. However, could boys’ attitudes and motivation play a more significant role in their reading comprehension performance? Studies which have consistently shown associations between reading comprehension and attitudes to reading (McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth 1995; Mullis et al. 2003; Mullis et al. 2007) or reading comprehension and motivation (Gottfried 1990; Morgan and Fuchs 2007), have neglected to carry out separate analyses based on gender. Recent research has found that boys’ attitudes and motivation are significantly more closely associated with their reading skill than girls (Logan and Johnston 2009; Logan and Medford, submitted for publication). It could be the case therefore that boys’ attitudes or motivation plays a more significant role in their performance in assessments, although further research is necessary in order to determine this.

In addition to reading motivation, differences between boys and girls are frequently found in self‐reported reading frequency, with girls reporting that they read more often than boys (Coles and Hall 2002; Mullis et al. 2007). Associations between reading frequency and reading comprehension are commonly found in both self‐report measures of reading frequency (Mullis et al. 2007) and objective measures (Logan, Medford, and Hughes, unpublished). Therefore, gender differences in reading frequency could contribute to differences in reading comprehension performance. However, there is some evidence to suggest that reading frequency may not be as important a factor as motivation. For example, Wang and Guthrie (2004) found that reading motivation predicted text comprehension after controlling for reading frequency, but that reading frequency did not predict text comprehension after controlling for reading motivation. Similarly, Logan, Medford, and Hughes (unpublished) found that motivation explained significant variance in reading comprehension performance after controlling for previous reading comprehension performance, however reading frequency did not. It may be that reading frequency per se does not improve reading comprehension performance, but rather frequent reading with increasingly difficult texts is necessary in order to impact on reading comprehension skill.

In order for any type of reading instruction to be effective, children need to be attentive and engaged when learning. Studies have highlighted the importance of attentiveness to early reading (Samuels and Turnure 1974; Dally 2006) and later reading ability (Duncan et al. 2007; Logan, Medford, and Hughes, unpublished). In addition, Alexander, Entwisle, and Dauber (1993) found that children’s interest/participation and attention span had an effect on their performance in reading and maths throughout the first four years of school. It is generally reported by teachers that boys have poorer behaviour in class (Cullingford 1993) and are less task orientated (Datta, Schaefer, and Davis 1968). In addition, boys report significantly poorer attention during literacy lessons than girls (Logan, Medford, and Hughes, unpublished) and perform more poorly on tasks measuring attention (Warrick and Naglieri 1993; Naglieri and Rojahn 2001). Therefore, gender differences in reading could be related to differences in attentiveness during reading instruction and literacy lessons, which affects later reading development.

If this were the case then boys may benefit more from a type of reading instruction which is effective in focussing their attention. It is possible that boys benefit from a synthetic phonics programme as it only teaches one word‐reading strategy, and therefore once a child has grasped the skill of sounding and blending, their word reading develops quickly and with very little additional instruction. Rather than the combination of mixed methods and different strategies which are popular with many reading programmes, the principle of synthetic phonics (where there is one reading strategy for unfamiliar words) may benefit children who are less attentive in class. In addition, it has been found that children spend less time in literacy instruction when taught by a synthetic phonics approach than a more eclectic approach (Logan and Johnston, unpublished). Therefore, this method may suit boys in particular, as shorter lessons which teach only one reading strategy may be less demanding of attention. However, no research study has directly compared the importance of attention in reading development when children learn to read by different approaches.

In addition, a child’s pre‐school environment will affect their reading readiness skills and reading development. Pre‐school measures (e.g. language, verbal ability, pre‐reading skills, IQ) have been shown to be strongly related to children’s early and later reading development (Butler et al. 1985; Stevenson and Newman 1986; Muter et al. 1998; Gallagher, Frith, and Snowling 2000; Kurdek and Sinclair 2001; Chatterji 2006). Therefore if boys start school less equipped with the skills important for reading development, then they will arguably be at a disadvantage before their literacy instruction even begins.

However, the evidence to suggest that boys start school less equipped with the skills important for learning to read is mixed. Johnston and Logan (unpublished) tested 107 children on their letter knowledge, vocabulary, phonemic awareness and word reading at the start of school (prior to any reading instruction) and found no significant gender differences. However, there is some research to suggest that girls have an early advantage in verbal skills and therefore may be at an advantage compared to boys in their early literacy instruction. As infants (aged 18–24 months), there is consistent evidence to suggest that girls have superior verbal abilities (Galsworthy et al. 2000; Berglund, Eriksson, and Westerlund 2005; Westerlund and Lagerberg 2008). In addition, prior to starting school, Locke, Ginsborg, and Peers (2002) found that girls’ receptive language abilities, general conceptual abilities and non‐verbal abilities were significantly better than boys. However, Chatterji (2006) found only minor differences favouring girls at the start of kindergarten, but these differences increased up until the end of first grade. These children were assessed on a variety of reading related measures including print familiarity, letter recognition, phonological awareness, word recognition, receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension and comprehension of words in context. Therefore, it may the case that girls, in general, have a small advantage in early reading readiness skills.

A small research study found that when children learnt to read by a synthetic phonics approach, their early reading success was less dependent on their pre‐school acquired skills than when children were taught by a more eclectic approach (Logan 2009). A teaching approach which is less heavily reliant on pre‐school acquired knowledge is likely to be of an advantage to those children who start school less prepared for reading instruction [i.e. children from more deprived areas, and, one could argue, boys (although the evidence for this is not conclusive)]. Indeed, Johnston and Watson (2005) found that when children were taught by synthetic phonics, there were no significant differences in word reading or spelling between children from disadvantaged and advantaged homes throughout every year in primary school, with a significant difference only emerging in spelling in the final year (Johnston and Watson 2005). This is in contrast to research studies which report differences in reading skill and educational success between children from more advantaged areas and disadvantaged areas (White, Graves, and Slater 1990; Arnold and Doctoroff 2003). Children from advantaged and disadvantaged areas differ most markedly in their language ability (Hackman and Farah 2009). Therefore, the fact that there were no differences between advantaged and disadvantaged children when taught by synthetic phonics suggests that this approach does not rely heavily on a child’s language skills and verbal ability for word reading and spelling success. Early differences in verbal abilities are the most consistent and cited difference between boys and girls (Galsworthy et al. 2000; Locke, Ginsborg, and Peers 2002; Berglund, Eriksson, and Westerlund 2005), therefore a teaching approach which does not rely heavily on verbal skills for word reading may benefit boys. As mentioned, synthetic phonics teaches one strategy (decoding) for reading, and children are not encouraged to use reading strategies which are arguably reliant on their verbal abilities (i.e. use context or grammatical knowledge to predict words within text). However, these are techniques which are advocated with more eclectic approaches, and interestingly, which show gender differences in reading achievement.

A possible reason why synthetic phonics does not rely heavily on pre‐school acquired knowledge could be that the fast introduction to phonics and blending skills allows children to read independently early on and is therefore particularly beneficial to children who arrive at school with poor letter knowledge and reading readiness skills. If boys have poorer literacy environments prior to school (the evidence is mixed) and poorer initial verbal abilities to rely on for reading (the evidence for this is stronger), then a synthetic phonics approach will not disadvantage them to the same extent as other approaches might.

The investigation into pre‐school acquired skills and the initial differences commonly found between boys’ and girls’ verbal abilities leads naturally to a review of whether there are general cognitive differences between boys and girls throughout school, and if so, whether these can help to explain gender differences in reading attainment.

Cognitive differences between boys and girls

Research studies have shown relatively high significant correlations between intelligence and reading achievement (Stanovich, Cunnigham, and Feeman 1984; Carver 1990; Chen, Lee, and Stevenson 1996; Naglieri 1996; Naglieri and Ronning 2000), suggesting that general intelligence has a relatively strong and consistent relationship with reading skill. Research investigating gender differences in cognitive abilities often produces conflicting results, perhaps due to differences waxing and waning at different ages, or the wide variety of tests which can be used to measure the same cognitive abilities. Keith et al. (2008) used the Woodcock–Johnson III test of cognitive abilities to examine gender differences: those results up to age 15 will be focused on as these are the most relevant. In this large scale study, consistent sex differences favouring girls were found in processing speed (six IQ points), above and beyond sex differences on g (general factor of intelligence), whilst boys showed a smaller but consistent advantage on comprehension knowledge and visual‐spatial ability (two IQ points). Reynolds et al. (2008) measured cognitive gender differences in children aged six to 18 using the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children II and also found a gender difference favouring boys on visual‐spatial ability and crystallised ability. The gender differences reported in these studies however are not in those skills commonly associated with reading and in this review, a focus will be only on those cognitive skills typically associated with reading comprehension to examine whether these specific cognitive abilities could explain differences in reading skill. According to the simple view of reading, there are two key skills necessary for reading comprehension; decoding (i.e. phonological) skills and linguistic comprehension (Gough and Tunmer 1986). The simple view of reading argues that in order to have good reading comprehension, a child needs to have good word reading and decoding skills in order to read text, but also good linguistic comprehension in order to understand what they have read. Indeed, research has highlighted the importance of word reading and decoding skills (Curtis 1980; Muter et al. 1998; Dally 2006) and verbal ability (Nation and Snowling 2004; Ouellette 2006; Ricketts, Nation, and Bishop 2007) for reading comprehension.

Gender differences in pre‐school verbal ability have been discussed, however there is very little evidence to suggest that there are gender differences in verbal abilities throughout childhood and into adulthood. In a large meta‐analysis conducted with 165 studies examining gender differences in verbal ability, girls had better verbal abilities, although the overall difference was very small (Hyde and Linn 1988). However more recently, Wallentin (2009) found that when the effect sizes from the studies included in this meta‐analysis were weighted by number of participants, males had slightly better verbal abilities. In addition, 66% of the studies included in the analysis found no significant gender differences in verbal ability, therefore there is no strong evidence to suggest that girls have superior verbal abilities throughout school.

With regard to decoding and phonological skills, Logan (unpublished) tested 158 ten year old children on a non‐word reading test and found no gender differences in children’s ability to use letter sound rules to decode unfamiliar words. Consistent with this, Johnston and Wu (unpublished) tested 114 five year old children and found no gender differences in early decoding skill. As argued, just as a reading strategy which emphasises use of context/grammatical cues for word recognition will rely more heavily on verbal abilities, a reading strategy which stresses sounding and blending letter‐sound correspondences for word recognition will rely more heavily on decoding skill. If there are no gender differences in phonological reading ability, then boys are not at a disadvantage with a skill which is important for word recognition.

Soderman et al. (1999) carried out a large‐scale study with first grade children and found significant gender differences, favouring girls, in visual memory and saccades (ability to track non‐symbolic figures across a printed page). If first grade girls do have better visual memory, then they will benefit from a reading approach which is heavily reliant on this skill, such as a whole word approach, where children are required to commit whole words to memory, by possibly using visually distinctive cues as prompts for the word.

Indeed, recent research has shown that different cognitive skills underpin children’s early reading development when they are taught by different types of reading instruction (Logan and Johnston, unpublished). It was found that for children taught by an eclectic approach (where children are taught multiple strategies for reading), letter knowledge and rhyming skills were associated with early reading success, whereas for children taught by a synthetic phonics approach, letter knowledge and memory span were associated with their early reading (due to the sequential method of blending letter‐sound correspondences, children’s memory spans limited the length of words in which they were able to decode). This study highlights the importance of recognising the effect of different types of reading instruction on the skills underpinning children’s early reading development.

Gender differences in brain activation

Gender differences in brain activation during reading and reading related tasks would provide some neurological basis for differentiating males and females for analysis of reading strategies and approaches. Indeed, neuroimaging studies examining gender differences in adults suggest that males and females show different patterns of brain activation during language related tasks such as phonological processing and reading (Shaywitz et al. 1995; Pugh et al. 1996; Clements et al. 2006). There is also behavioural evidence to confirm this (Hsiao and Shillcock 2005; Lindell and Lum 2008).

A possible reason as to why synthetic phonics is particularly effective for boys is that it fosters early integration of visual and phonological information; something which boys are not inclined to do naturally. Burman, Bitan, and Booth (2008) found that boys’ pattern of brain activation during visual and auditory processing was modality specific: processing of printed words was associated with activation of areas of the brain concerned with visual processing, and spoken words were processed in areas concerned with auditory and phonological processing. This suggests a lack of integration of visual and phonological information. In contrast, girls’ performance was correlated more with activation in supramodal areas of the brain during the reading and spelling tasks. Therefore, it could be argued that boys are slower to develop an approach to reading where visual and phonological information is integrated. However, from the beginning of reading instruction, synthetic phonics encourages children to link visual (letters) and auditory (sounds) information, which may lead to more supramodal activation in boys’ brains.

However, despite evidence suggesting gender differences in functional activation during language related tasks, Wallentin (2009) argues that those studies reporting gender differences tend to be smaller studies; larger studies tend to report no differences. Therefore further research is necessary to investigate whether teaching method affects the pattern of brain activation during reading and reading‐related tasks, and whether fostering early integration between visual and phonological information ameliorates an area of weakness for boys in particular.

Gender differences in reading strategies

There is a small body of research to suggest that boys have a more phonological approach to reading (Baron 1979; Thompson 1987; Johnston and Thompson 1989). If a child takes a phonological approach they will utilise the letter‐sound correspondences in words and rely more heavily on these cues for reading and spelling than contextual cues or visual cues (i.e. word length, initial letter), which are more common with eclectic approaches.

Thompson (1987) argued that boys had a more phonological approach to reading as they read words with a greater reliance on the phonological segments. This was a naturally occurring strategy, as both boys and girls had received no systematic phonics teaching; however there were substantial overlaps in the distribution of scores of boys and girls. Baron (1979) also found that boys tend to rely more heavily on rules in word reading, as they took longer to read lists of words which were orthographically similar but had different pronunciations (e.g. maid, said). Johnston and Thompson (1989) carried out a study comparing the reading strategies of two groups of children; one taught via a systematic phonics method, the other via the book experience approach (where children are encouraged to predict words based on context/initial letter). Boys taught via the book experience approach were more likely to use phonological information than girls, despite receiving no phonics instruction, although the gender difference was not significant.

Gender differences in reading strategies therefore appear to be small or negligible. However, Johnston and Watson (2005) and Johnston, Watson, and Logan (2009) found that boys read better when being taught to read by a method strongly focused on phonics (i.e. synthetic phonics). Therefore, boys’ better word reading skill with synthetic phonics could be attributed to the fact that they are naturally disposed towards a more phonological approach to reading. Indeed, throughout the duration of the study, boys and girls showed no significant differences in reading comprehension (which relies on other skills such as verbal ability). However, it was on those abilities which rely more heavily on phonics, for example rules for reading (decoding) and spelling (segmenting), that boys were at an advantage compared with girls (Johnston and Watson 2005).

Soderman et al. (1999) argue that the brain is a pattern‐seeking organism, therefore in early childhood classrooms, children’s experiences should be “ripe with action, repetition and meaningful hands on activities” (Soderman et al. 1999, 11). The systematic method of building up words to read them and breaking down words to spell them using letter‐sound rules may suit boys’ style of learning in particular. Therefore, rather than focusing on the fact that synthetic phonics has a strong phonological element, there is also the “rule” type element which may suit boys. This is consistent with Baron‐Cohen (2002), who argues that males are more naturally disposed towards rule governed systems (i.e. that females are better at empathising and males are better at systemising). Therefore a predominantly rule‐governed approach to reading, where children are solely required to learn and apply phonics rules, may be better suited to boys’ natural learning styles.

Whilst a number of research studies have highlighted gender differences in strategy use in mathematics (Carr and Jessup 1997; Carr and Davis 2001; Imbo and Vandierendonck 2007), there is less research examining differences in strategy use during reading. In terms of reading strategies, the fact that boys read and spelt better than girls when learning by synthetic phonics, could be attributed to their more phonological approach to reading, or their preference for a rule based approach to reading. However further research is necessary to investigate this further.

Areas for future research

This review has highlighted several potential areas to focus research into gender differences in reading. Firstly, children’s motivation has been shown to be associated with and to predict their reading comprehension performance; however, there is very little research examining whether motivation plays a more significant role in boys’ reading comprehension performance, and if so, what types of motivational interventions may be particularly suitable for boys. In addition, boys clearly benefit from a systematic synthetic phonics teaching approach which advocates one principal reading‐strategy; however it is unclear why this may be the case, although some suggestions have been made which warrant further research. Indeed, there is very little research examining the skills underpinning children’s reading development as they learn to read by different methods. Whilst reading programmes often differ substantially in terms of the reading strategies taught to children, research has neglected to investigate whether this affects the skills underpinning children’s reading success. It could be the case that boys benefit from reading instruction with a strong phonics element; such an approach may rely less on general language skills for word recognition or may be easier to focus attention as only one principal reading strategy is taught. However further research is necessary in order to investigate this. It is also suggested that synthetic phonics may foster early integration of visual and phonological information and promote a more rule based phonological reading strategy; something which may suit boys’ learning styles in particular. However, again, the research supporting this is not conclusive and therefore further research is necessary in order to understand which elements of a synthetic phonics programme benefit boys.

Conclusions

This review has highlighted the multi‐faceted nature of differences between boys and girls and has focused upon a number of different areas which show potential for explaining gender differences in reading; and therefore routes towards redressing these differences. Whilst a review into gender differences in reading aims to draw attention to the differences between boys and girls, it should be noted that there is substantial variation in the population, and that all children, regardless of gender, will benefit from an increased understanding of the most effective ways to teach reading and the cognitive skills supporting reading development.