Boys Gender and Schooling > Issues for schools > Lifting literacies >

Advice for school action on literacy

Early literacy problems are concentrated among particular groups rather than with individuals: lower socioeconomic groups; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups; boys. Consider how these factors combine to affect literacy achievement and participation. When issues revolve around particular groups, individual literacy remediation may not address the core issues. Assist teachers to identify particular groups of boys and girls who are experiencing difficulties and develop programs to meet their needs.
Consider a lack of achievement and participation in English as a reflection of a broader problem - gender-based selection of subjects. Boys' reticence in crossing the gender divide is reflected in their relative under-participation in the broad range of humanities subjects. The reasons for this need to be explored because skills such as working in cooperative teams and relating well to diverse people (skills enhanced by the humanities) is an important dimension of work in a global society.
Show boys how literacy can make their lives fuller and richer. Explore the costs and benefits of dominant forms of masculinity.
English teachers cannot work in isolation - a whole-school approach is necessary. Because boys' acquisition of literacy involves a network of wider social and cultural practices, other areas of the curriculum need to assist boys and girls to consider how gender impacts on their lives. The link between low levels of literacy and behavioural and social problems is established. There is also a link between violent antisocial behaviours and low academic achievement and low self-esteem.
Teachers need pre-service and in-service education that helps them understand the impact gender, poverty and ethnicity.
Schools need access to professional development resources that explore the impact that widespread macho messages have on boys' achievement and participation in school literacy practices.
We need to broaden what counts as school-based literacy and include literacies which boys embrace, for example computer-based literacies. The issue of girls' engagement with information technology also needs to be addressed.
Encourage students to bring diverse home and community literacies including peer literacies into the classroom. Value and build on these literacies in the classroom.
Successful literacy involves the reader undertaking four roles - code breaker, participant, text user and critical analyser of text. Teacher pre-service and in-service education about this reading pedagogy (See Literate Futures) will benefit all students
In working productively with boys, teachers also need to be mindful of issues for girls, because
- girls' greater success in English is not reflected in better post-school options such as full-time employment
- literacy may be devalued if it's seen as a feminised subject
- like boys, some groups of girls may also feel that the subject of English is disconnected from their lives, interests and experiences
- both boys and girls need opportunities to challenge narrow, stereotypical views about gender
- genres of writing and speaking that are popular with girls may be culturally devalued
- girls have less access to remediation in reading and writing
- girls as a group are not engaging well with technological literacies.
The following Education Queensland initiatives will assist schools working to improve literacy:

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