Are Boys Left Behind at School? Reviewing and Explaining Education-Related Gender Disparities

根据申请人的研究方法“儿童和青少年的学业发展是身份发展”，先前的研究项目通过使用实验和准实验设计研究，测试了男孩相对较低的学业成功的几种不同的可能解释。我们的研究结果表明，首先，男孩的刻板印象，男孩作为“学业失败”的刻板印象，在刻板印象的女性学校科目（如德国）的成绩较低，但在同一时间，在刻板印象的男性学校科目的动机较高。其次，我们没有发现迹象表明学校和男孩的女性气质之间自动或隐含的联系，而是他们在学校明确和有目的地制定男性气质与学校的要求相冲突。在提交的研究提案中，我们的目的是描述、分析和测试在学校故意自我表现为男性的影响，其中包括一整套我们称之为“表现男性”的态度和行为。我们认为，在学校扮演男性角色对学业动机和学业成就有影响。具体来说，我们计划研究两个不同方面的男性行为：男孩试图避免在学校的努力投资的印象（研究块Ia）和男孩试图把自己呈现为自主的人，不受教师的控制，不关心他们的赞赏（研究块Ib）。其他研究正在测试可转化为学校干预措施的治疗方法，旨在使男孩在学校扮演男性角色在心理上是多余的，或减少扮演男性角色对男孩学习动机和成绩的负面影响（研究模块二）。

Based on the applicants' research approach "Academic development as identity development of children and adolescents", the prior research project tested several different possible explanations for boys' relatively lower academic success by using experimental and quasiexperimental design studies. Our results indicate firstly that boys react to the stereotype of boys as "scholastic failures" by lower achievements in stereotypically female school subjects (like German), but at the same time with higher motivation in stereotypically male school subjects. Secondly, we did not find indications for automatic or implicit associations between school and femininity in boys, but rather that it is their explicit and purposeful enactments of masculinity at school which clash with scholastic demands. In the submitted research proposal we aim at describing, analysing, and testing the effects of a deliberate self presentation as male at school which encompasses a whole cluster of attitudes and behaviours that we call "acting male". We propose that acting male at school has effects on academic motivation and achievement. Specifically, we plan studies regarding two different aspects of acting male: boys' attempts to avoid the impression of effort investment at school (Studies Block Ia) and boys' attempts to present themselves as autonomous persons who are not controlled by teachers and do not care about their appreciation (Studies Block Ib). Additional studies are testing treatments that can be translated to interventions at schools which aim at making acting male at school for boys psychologically superfluous or at reducing the negative effects of acting male on boys' academic motivation and performance (Studies Block II).