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"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 117 - 118
When you Learn, Do NOT Care the Gender
The 2003 PISA study is only one of the latest to reveal gender-related learning and educational achievement differences. Far more questionable are the works which have appeared over recent years claiming to be inspired by scientific findings apparently to show that men and women think differently due to a different brain development.
Titles like "Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps" have become popular reading. How much is this founded on sound research? Is there a “feminine brain” and a “masculine brain”? Should teaching styles be shaped according to gender?
There are functional and morphological differences between the male and female brain. The male brain is larger, for instance, and when it comes to language, the relevant areas of the brain are more strongly activated in females. But determining what these differences mean is extremely difficult.
No study to date has shown gender-specific processes involved in building up neuronal networks during learning; this is another candidate for additional research.
The terms “feminine brain” and “masculine brain” refer to “ways of being” described in cognitive terms rather than to any biological reality. Baron-Cohen, who uses these expressions to describe autism and related disorders (2003), believes that men tend to be more “methodical” (ability to understand mechanical systems) and women better communicators (ability to communicate and understand others), and he suggests that autism can be understood as an extreme form of the “masculine brain”. But he does not propose that men and women have radically different brains nor that autistic women have a masculine brain. He employs the terms “masculine and feminine brain” to refer to particular cognitive profiles, which is an unfortunate choice of terminology if it contributes to distorted ideas concerning the workings of the brain.
Even if it were established that, on average, a girl’s brain makes her less capable of learning mathematics, would this be grounds to propose education specialised to these differences? If the goal of education were to produce intensely specialised human beings, then the question may be worth at least considering but so long as its most important role continues to be to create citizens with a basic culture, such a question loses its relevance for educational policy. Where differences can be shown to exist, they will be small and based on averages.
The much more important individual variations are such as to rule out being able to know if a young girl, taken at random, will be less capable of learning a particular subject than a young boy taken at random, etc.
Titles like "Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps" have become popular reading. How much is this founded on sound research? Is there a “feminine brain” and a “masculine brain”? Should teaching styles be shaped according to gender?
There are functional and morphological differences between the male and female brain. The male brain is larger, for instance, and when it comes to language, the relevant areas of the brain are more strongly activated in females. But determining what these differences mean is extremely difficult.
No study to date has shown gender-specific processes involved in building up neuronal networks during learning; this is another candidate for additional research.
The terms “feminine brain” and “masculine brain” refer to “ways of being” described in cognitive terms rather than to any biological reality. Baron-Cohen, who uses these expressions to describe autism and related disorders (2003), believes that men tend to be more “methodical” (ability to understand mechanical systems) and women better communicators (ability to communicate and understand others), and he suggests that autism can be understood as an extreme form of the “masculine brain”. But he does not propose that men and women have radically different brains nor that autistic women have a masculine brain. He employs the terms “masculine and feminine brain” to refer to particular cognitive profiles, which is an unfortunate choice of terminology if it contributes to distorted ideas concerning the workings of the brain.
Even if it were established that, on average, a girl’s brain makes her less capable of learning mathematics, would this be grounds to propose education specialised to these differences? If the goal of education were to produce intensely specialised human beings, then the question may be worth at least considering but so long as its most important role continues to be to create citizens with a basic culture, such a question loses its relevance for educational policy. Where differences can be shown to exist, they will be small and based on averages.
The much more important individual variations are such as to rule out being able to know if a young girl, taken at random, will be less capable of learning a particular subject than a young boy taken at random, etc.
"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 117 - 118
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