Addressing the Needs of Male Learners

Addressing the Needs of Male Learners

by Bill Brozo

At Community College of Philadelphia, as well as other community colleges, male student enrollment is far lower than female enrollment, and the academic achievement of males, in most areas, is below expectations. In order to examine how to close this gap, Jay Howard, Viewpoints editor, posed five questions to Bill Brozo, Ph.D., a nationally known authority on literacy and masculinity and author of To be a Boy, To be a Reader (2002, International Reading Association). Bill Brozo is a professor of literacy in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. He has taught in middle and high schools and has written extensively on literacy development for children and young adults. Brozo consults with teachers and administrators nationally and internationally about using practices in the classroom that are responsive to students’ reading and learning needs. He has served on the International Reading Association’s Commission on Adolescent Literacy and is a current member of the PISA/PIRLS Task Force charged with analyzing the results of the Program for International Student Assessment and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and promoting effective teaching worldwide. - Jay Howard

J.H. In remedial English classes, instructors at CCP have a good deal of leeway to select materials and teaching strategies. Do you have any suggestions regarding materials or strategies to help encourage male students?

B.B. First and foremost in the planning of remedial English, teachers should be considerate of how to sustain engagement with print for all students. It is only through extended and repeated encounters with text that students improve their reading. As concerns male students, careful selection of texts should be made based on interests and difficulty.

Plucker and Omdal (1997) in their article “Beyond Boredom” point to a number of causes for student antipathy toward learning in schools, such as lack of intellectual challenge and a lack of application of knowledge. They argue instead for classrooms that promote active learning, employ a student-centered curriculum, and, above all, capitalize on student interests. We will never make significant progress on the reading and learning problems for young men unless we dedicate ourselves as teachers first to discovering what holds their interests and next acquainting them with quality books related to their interests.

Clearly, a highly effective way to motivate males to read and keep them reading is to look carefully at their interests (Baker & Wigfield, 2000). We have known for some time that young male readers have strong preferences for stories with male protagonists (Johnson & Peer, 1984; Langerman, 1990; Ollmann, 1993; Samuels, 1989). We also know that when preferences and interests are matched with books, depth of processing and learning are enhanced (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Hetton, 1994; Glasgow, 1996; Guthrie, Alao, & Rinehart, 1997). This appears to be particularly true for males (Osmont, 1987,).

In spite of fears that encouraging young men to read more of what they like—such as books with male characters in action and adventure plots—will further strengthen sex stereotyping, concerns about tolerating numbers of listless and struggling male readers must loom larger in the minds of remedial reading teachers. Furthermore, the ideal goal of helping male youth develop sophisticated and critical literacy skills may only be achievable after first supporting a habit of regular reading with texts that engage them.

Therefore, garnering males’ interest in reading, keeping them reading, and channeling their reading ability into academic mastery must be a priority.

J.H. In Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men (Heinemann, 2002), Smith and Wilhelm suggest that reading skills (literacy) can be taught in ways that are more appealing to male students. Do some reading materials or instructional approaches appeal to and motivate male students?

B.B. In this book and in their other work on boys and literacy, Mike and Jeff are not inclined to support differentiated text but differentiated instruction as the key to inspiring boys to become engaged readers. Surely, a curriculum that combines the use of texts that appeal to particular male students and engaging instructional strategies to mediate understanding of and critical reflection on these texts holds great promise for “reaching” males. In other words, one supports the other. Good strategies alone will help but will not be sufficient, in my experience, to build lifelong readers. High-interest texts will often sell themselves, but they are given even greater power when offered within a supportive learning context. My new mantra to teachers interested in helping male youth become lifelong readers is: the right stuff, at the right level, in the right ways.

J.H. In “An examination of at-risk college students’ sexist attitudes towards reading” in College Reading Research and Practice, (IRA, 2003)Valerie-Gold and Commander examined students’ attitudes towards reading and school. What are male students’ attitudes about books, English, reading and school?

B.B. Among the possible explanations as to why young male pupils are not the readers they can and should be, the more convincing, to my mind, is the argument that reading often conflicts with their sense of masculinity. Findings from recent reports (Klein, 1997) strongly suggest that the steady reading achievement decline experienced by boys between the ages of 7 and 16 is largely a consequence of social pressures from peers. Boys undergo tremendous pressure not to appear “nerdy” or “brainy,” so many turn against learning and reading because, in the words of Browne and Fletcher (1995), it’s more “cool to be a fool” (p.74).

It is nearly axiomatic that boys will be taught to read in school by females. Spring (1997) estimated that 85% to 95% of all teachers in the U.S. elementary and middle schools are female. While there are no hard data to say that this fact alone has an inimical effect on boys’ reading achievement, there are strong implications that it may have an insidious effect on their perceptions of and attitudes toward reading.

Given the feminized reality of public schools, especially in English and reading, it is not difficult to see how young males may begin regarding reading as an activity that is inconsistent with the image of masculinity as it is stereotypically portrayed in the popular culture (Childs, 1995; Crain, 1996; Mcleod, 1997). Indeed, investigations into reasons why males seem to resist reading uncovered the possibility that the very books and literature teachers use in elementary and middle school classrooms may have an “emasculating-like” effect on young men (Neumark, 1996; Alloway & Gilbert, 1997).

Nola Alloway and Pam Gilbert (1997,) assert that: “...dominant and hegemonic discourse of masculinity may be in conflict with the institutional constraints of schooling, and more specifically, with the ways boys are asked to know themselves as literate subjects in school-based literacy classes...there is a potentially abrasive interaction between: the social and pedagogical production of students as literate subjects; institutional attempts at regulating students at school; and the ways that boys take themselves up as masculine subjects” (p.54).

Daly, Salters, and Burns (1998) found gender-based identification with characters from stories common among male pupils. A type of gender-schemata tends to focus their attention on personae and events in the text which conform to their notion of what is appropriate male behavior. In their study, middle-grade boys had superior recall to girls over story content with male protagonists, particularly when the character exhibited recognizable behavior. The opposite was true when stories featured female protagonists.

Bugel & Buunk (1996) had similar results to the findings of Daly and his associates but using informational text instead of story material. Passages with “male” topics, such as predicting volcanoes, football players, and the new Volkswagen car models, were reported to be easier to read by males than passages with traditional “female” topics (e.g., midwifery, fashion). In addition, males had superior reading comprehension of male-oriented text versus the female-oriented text, while the opposite was true for females in the study.

Adolescent boys are also known to be especially keen on nonfiction and informational books (Herz & Gallo, 1996). For most males, however, nonfiction experiences in school consist almost exclusively of reading the textbook, which has been found to be a principle culprit in creating disaffection with reading for boys and girls alike (Clary, 1991).

J.H. Students in general often struggle to read content literature, especially in an unfamiliar subject area. What are some ways to help students, especially males, read unfamiliar or difficult material?

B.B. Given evidence that males prefer informational prose to fiction, there is a good chance that with the right texts at the right levels offered in the right ways males can develop necessary reading and thinking skills for disciplinary learning. The ultimate challenge for content area teachers, especially in high school and beyond, is finding ways of working within a required curriculum and with required texts while meeting the interest and ability levels of their students, particularly young men.

Scaffolding is needed to support understanding of content topics. This can be achieved through lectures enlivened with multimedia, interactive learning strategies that capitalize on active student participation and involvement, and modified texts on topics and themes covered in the required, core textbook but more accessible to striving male readers.

J.H. A good number of our students come directly from inner-city public high schools. How could the community college collaborate with local high schools to better prepare these future students, many of whom are African-Americans, for success in their English courses?

B.B. Alfred Tatum’s work with urban, African-American adolescent males strongly points in the direction of building close personal relationships with these youths as a context for their skill development. College students can be teamed with teens to act as mentors and reading buddies who can demonstrate the pleasures and personal power of literacy. Furthermore, through relationship building others can come to appreciate the lifeworlds of urban youth of color and gain critical insights into what texts, topics, and activities may capture their imaginations and sustain their effort.

For Additional Reading

Brozo, W. G. (2002) To Be A Boy, To be a Reader: Engaging Teens and Preteen Boys in Active Literacy. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Brozo, W.G. (2005). It’s okay to read, even if other kids don’t: Learning about and from boys in a middle school book club. The California Reader, 38, 5-13.

Brozo, W. G. & Simpson, M. L. (2002). Readers, Teachers, Learners: Expanding Literacy Across the Content Areas (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

Brozo, W.G., & Simpson, M.L. (in press). Content literacy for today’s adolescents:Honoring diversity and building competence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

Brozo, W.G., & Schmelzer, R.V. (1997). Wildmen, warriors, and lovers: Reaching boys through archetypal literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 41, 4-11.

Tatum, A. (2005) Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap, Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Sturtevant, E., Boyd, F., Brozo, W.G., Hinchman, K., Moore, D., & Alvermann, D. (2006). Principled practices for adolescent literacy: A framework for instruction and policy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

References

Alexander, P., Kulikowich, J., & Hetton, T. (1994). The role of subject matter knowledge and interest in the processing of linear and nonlinear texts. Review of Educational Research, 64, 210-253.

Alloway, N. & Gilbert, P. (1997) “Boys and literacy: Lessons from Australia.” Gender and Education, 9(1), 49-58

Baker, L., & Wigfield, A. (1999) “Dimensions of children’s motivation for reading and their relations to reading activity and reading achievement.” Reading Research Quarterly, 34(4), 452-477

Browne, R., & Fletcher, R. (Eds.) (1995) Boys in schools: Addressing the real issues—behaviour, values, and relationships. Sydney: Finch Publishing.

Bugel, K. & Buunk, B. P. (1996) “Sex differences in foreign language text comprehension: The role of interests and prior knowledge.” Modern Language Journal, 80(1), 15-31.

Cassidy, J., Garcia, R., & Boggs, M. (2005). The SIQ-III Test: Gender issues in literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49 (2), 142-148.

Childs, H.T. (1995). The need for male role models in elementary education. New York: Bank Street College of Education.

Clary, L.. (1991) “Getting adolescents to read.” Journal of Reading, 34 (5), 340-345.

Crain, R.M. (1996). The influence of age, race, and gender on child and adolescent multi- dimensional self-concept. In B.A. Bracken (Ed.), Handbook of self-concept: development, social and clinical considerations. New York: Wiley.

Daly, P., Salters, J., & Burns, C. (1998) Gender and task interaction: Instant and delayed recall of three story types. Educational Review, 50(3), 269-275.

Glasgow, J. N. (1996) “Motivating the Tech Prep reader through learning styles and adolescent literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 39(5), Feb 1996, 358-367.