Bad Boys and Good Girls? Patterns of Interaction and Response in Whole Class Teaching

Abstract

The article describes the findings of a cross-phase study into boys' underachievement which investigated patterns of classroom interaction by boys and girls. The data illustrate how underachievers, of either gender, are the least likely group to be participating positively in the classroom and most likely to be engaged in off-task interactions. The underachieving boys' reluctance to participate emerges in year 1, but by year 4 the underachieving girl is behaving in the same way. To a lesser extent, the older high-achieving boy begins to exhibit similar interaction patterns to the underachievers. By contrast, the high-achieving girl remains consistently actively participant and on-task. The article questions the extent to which whole class teaching is benefiting the learning experience of underachievers and challenges the current tendency to construct underachievement in terms of gender.