To best educate girls, one has to know girls—their motivations and their development—and then use the knowledge to establish curriculum and programs that provide them a space to best support how they learn. While it’s no secret boys and girls are different from each other, brain studies over the last 20 years definitively prove biological differences—developmental, structural, chemical, hormonal, and functional—between the male and female brains.
In fact, PET scans of girls’ and boys’ brains reveal just how differently those brains are set up to learn, according to Dr. Michael Gurian. One teacher involved in his research noted, “Looking back, I’m amazed that [we] were never taught the differences between how boys and girls learn.” At GPS, our faculty have known for decades that our girls thrive in an environment designed to challenge their innate curiosity while fostering a love of learning.
While there are exceptions, the majority of research notes key distinctions with girls: maturation and development of verbal skills occurs sooner in adolescence. Yet across all developmental stages, girls are highly relational and more emotionally and socially perceptive and expressive than boys.
In his book Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, Author Leonard Sax, Ph.D., writes, “Girls’ friendships are face-to-face, two or three girls talking with one another, while boys’ are shoulder-to-shoulder, boys sitting next to each other looking out at some common interest.” He suggests that because of this, small group work is more effective in how girls learn than boys. Forming relationships and the preference for face-to-face interaction holds true not only with peers but also with teachers.
We know at GPS—through our conversations, community service, and curriculum—girls are also more empathetic in their educational and personal approaches, largely because they live outside of themselves, as well as for themselves. They are also overwhelmingly more interested in and focused on people and relationships. All of these factors are considered in GPS’s learning environment.
“We readily think of girls being at an advantage in language arts, and certainly the female brain in general shows that advantage; but how often have we lost our girls to boredom because they are reading yet another book about males and men?” writes researcher and neuroscientist Douglas D. Burman, Ph.D. To not only further a girl’s learning but also to keep it relatable, more intentional choices—in materials, process, and expectation—need to happen with girls in mind.
