The following short summary is an excerpt from the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education
Using Gender-Specific Teaching Methods Helps All Students Learn More Effectively
Simply separating girls and boys into different classrooms will boost their academic performance. However, if teachers use methods custom-tailored to either boys or girls and if a school sets up its classrooms to accommodate gender differences, academic performance will improve even more.
The following is a summary of the latest educational research on gender-specific teaching.
The Physical Classroom
Girls tend to think of their teacher as a friend and ally. They want to please people in authority and get to know them. They enjoy learning in small, informal discussion groups. For these reasons, a "girl-friendly" classroom might have sofas and soft chairs. Students would call their teacher by his or her first name. Since girls enjoy working together rather than individually, teachers would assign two or three girls to collaborate on class presentations and projects.
Boys learn better in formal situations with clear structure and discipline methods. Seating should be formal with the teacher clearly in charge of the class. Boys should not address teachers by their first names. Teachers should use a confrontational style, such as asking a boy, "Prove that to me, Robert!"
Girls' hearing is four times more sensitive than boys'. This fact has implications for gender-specific teaching. For example, soft-spoken female teachers will put the boys in the back of a classroom asleep. On the other hand, girls sitting near a teacher with a loud voice will experience him or her as "yelling." Boys will pay more attention in class if the interactions are louder and livelier. Their teachers should not remain seated behind a desk when they lecture but rather keep moving around the room.
Gender-Specific Attitudes
Girls tend to be critical of themselves and their schoolwork. Although they earn better grades than boys, they are less confident of their abilities. If they do poorly in a subject, they believe they have personally failed their teachers, whom they want to please. For these reasons, girls need praise and reassurance from their teachers. Teachers should reinforce each girl's performance and make her feel competent as a learner.
On the other hand, boys tend to be very confident, even overly confident, about their academic abilities. If a boy gets a bad grade, he blames it on not working hard enough on a particular day, whereas a girl is more likely to believe she is simply not intelligent enough to master the material. Boys who are only average students with average grades often believe they are brilliant. In general, teachers need to help boys develop realistic attitudes about their abilities and shortcomings.
Teaching Math and Science
Girls use the cerebral cortex in their brains when they learn math and science. This is the part of the brain that processes language. This means that teachers should connect these subjects to the real world by using story problems and practical applications. Teachers should present science and math lessons couched in language.
However, coding math and science in language actually makes these subjects harder for boys to understand. They enjoy pure number theory and pure science. Teachers can build lessons around charts, graphs, and matrices.
Teaching Literature
Girls enjoy analyzing the relationships between characters in stories and novels. They like role-playing activities such as performing skits or writing in the voice of another person.
A boy's center of emotional thought is in the primitive part of his brain, not in the cerebral cortex as in females. Most boys cannot comfortably answer questions such as "How does this book make you feel?" or "Describe Hamlet's grief about his father's death." Boys do not like role-playing activities. In general, they prefer non-fiction that includes descriptions of how things work or of real events such as battles. If they read fiction, they prefer it to be action-oriented.
Studies of single-sex schools show that girls get a boost in their math and science test scores after being taught in a language-rich, girl-friendly way. Similarly, a University of Michigan study found that boys in all-boys high schools scored better in reading, writing and math than boys in co-ed schools. Other researchers have found that boys in all-boys school do better in English and foreign languages than those in co-ed situations. The trend in research is that gender-specific teaching enhances learning for both boys and girls.