Tracking and the effects of school‐related attitudes on the language achievement of boys and girls

Abstract

In this study we examined whether the underachievement of boys in language at the end of secondary education is related to school‐related attitudes. Data were drawn from the LOSO project, a longitudinal research project in secondary education. The results showed that there were gender differences in language achievement in favour of girls in the lower tracks, but not in the highest track. The underachievement of boys was associated with boys’ less positive relationships with teachers, less positive well‐being at school and less positive attitude towards schoolwork. Furthermore, the results showed that—in the lower tracks—boys who were the least attentive in the classroom, the least interested in learning tasks and the least motivated towards learning tasks achieved better than expected. Post‐hoc analyses revealed that these are the more intelligent boys. Possible explanations of the demotivation of the more intelligent boys in the lower tracks are discussed.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the Department of Education of the Ministry of the Flemish Community for funding the project.

Notes

1. There also exists a fourth track; namely, the artistic track, which combines general education with active practice of art. We do not mention it here because we have too few students following this track in our data.

2. The official language in Flanders is Dutch. The Belgian variant of Dutch is Flemish. The difference between Flemish and Dutch that is spoken in The Netherlands can be compared with the difference between American and British English.

3. We will examine the language achievement at the end of secondary education (Grade 12) corrected for achievement differences four years earlier (Grade 8). During the final four years of secondary education, students belong to different classes. We will use a cross‐classification to model the classes of two grades, namely the classes of Grade 10 and the classes of Grade 12 (for more information about cross‐classification, see Rasbash et al., 2000). We restrict the cross‐classification to two grades in order to not make the model too complex.