the gender gap

As a part of Bowling Green State University’s Honors College, each student must complete an Honor Project. This capstone venture displays the student’s learning throughout their time in the Honors College and ideally contributes to a field in which they are interested.

 

As a result of my combined passions for literacy and gender studies, I quickly became curious about boys’ underachievement in literacy.

 

Given its complexity, depth, and longevity, there are many different lenses through which scholars and researchers have approached this issue, how to explain it, and how to solve it. A few examples include a focus on biology, psychology, our education system, and, in the case of my research in particular, societal constructions of gender. In order to contribute to the present field of study in a way that I feel is most productive and most interesting to me, I will be discussing only the societal causes and their respective responses.

 

As I continued my research, many queries came up. Why are boys falling behind in reading and writing? How long has this been going on? Is it occurring outside of America? How are we attempting to close this gap? Why are we unsuccessful? The answers and responses I found to these questions are found here in this website.

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My hope is that pre-service, current, and veteran teachers will find this resource useful, informative, and motivating, eventually narrowing the gender gap in literary achievement and providing a classroom where boys feel welcome and excited to read.