University of Western Ontario

Martino (2008) observed that not all boys are underachieving or „at-risk‟, and maintained that “educators and policy makers need to address the question of which boys require help becoming literate and what kind of help educators need to provide” (Martino, 2008, p.1). He rejects the belief that learning styles are influenced by gender and that employing more male teachers will improve boys‟ academic performance, but that good pedagogical approaches and respectful relationships had greater influence on raising achievement among boys. Martino highlights the conclusion of Warrington , Younger and Baerne (2006) that schools that were able to raise the performance of boys used “strategies which work to reduce constructions of gender difference” (Warrington , Younger and Baerne, 2006, cited in Martino, 2008, p.3). He advises that educators need to get boys to think about what being a boy involves by:
1) “developing a critical literacy approach that encourages boys to question taken-for-granted / common – sense notions of what it means to be a boy
2) “using texts in the language arts classroom to raise questions about the effects of stereotypes”
3) “having an understanding of the social