Question four asked students, “Is success different for boys than it is for girls?” According to Weiss (2004), males tend to view school as a feminine undertaking. This question sought to determine if this group of males had this perspective. Using a matrix in Table 15, themes that surfaced during the interviews were charted. An X was placed in a theme according the grade point average range that spoke about it. This allowed a comparison to be made of whether males at different grade point average ranges have different perspectives or thinking that may contribute to their academic success.
Table 15. Is Success Different by Gender?
Success different for boys than for girls
Response 1.0- 1.99 2.0- 2.49 2.5- 2.99 3.0- 4.0 Total MS LAS AS HS Responses Yes 2 1 0 1 4 No 1 5 7 7 20
Themes X= when a participant
mentioned a particular theme Examples Goals, Future,
College, Work XX
X
Leo (18, HS) I think everyone has the same goal when it comes to success. It has to do with being wealthy, well-educated uh having a job after college.” Friends good and
bad/ Popularity in and out of school (socializing)
X Don (15, HS) Umm in most cases, hence society success can be determined to be different ah from sex to sex but in all actuality since we all are equal ahh I wouldn’t say there should be too much of a difference between how success is measured between women and for men”
Applying oneself/ working hard Motivation
X X Leo (18, HS) It depends on the person. In my opinion, it’s the same for everybody. It’s just their motivation.”
Focus & drive vs. Distraction & laziness
x X Greg (18, LAS) Especially during these years because it’s far easier for a female to focus because they’re usually intertwined socially and if you’re social network is intertwined scholastically then you’re pretty much tied right in while guys seem to be completely distracted and preoccupied with females more than females are occupied with males.
Race/ Stereotypes X X Xavier (18, MS) I would say no, like, because I think it’s the same. But by race, it would be different. Not gender.”
Athletics popularity
and distractor X
Hal (18, LAS) If people, you want people to know you. And if you get- if you’re known in school, then you’re popular. And usually people that’s real known, the majority, I’m not going to say everybody, but the majority /them are the ones that don’t go to college.
Male Dominance/
Typical male roles X X
Greg (18, LAS) The view of success- I would say it is universal, but the way we view success does differentiate greatly, greatly because there’s a natural /??/ to the male success. It’s very domineering, opposed to women want to be usually just adored. Girls as equal to boys or same as XX X XX XX XX
Don (15, HS) Umm in most cases, hence society success can be determined to be different ah from sex to sex but in all actuality since we all are equal ahh I wouldn’t say there should be too much of a difference between how success is measured between women and for men.
Females more intelligent and/or focused
X X
x XX X Vince (18, HS) Because of the negative stigma attached to men and women in education, such as women are generally smarter than men, and that men often get into more labor intensive jobs, things like that” also a traditional view. Traditional Male
female roles X XX
XX X
Craig (17, HS) …how a lot of the girls in my grade and coming up in my generation have a very, very strong independent view on life. And um like how you see in the movies how girls say this isn’t back then you don’t always have to open a door for me and pull my chair out anymore an treat me like a girly girl.” Example of a challenge to traditional view.
For a girl, she can like, she can do that or she can find a man and you can do that for her and she can start off on that too.” Example of traditional view.
Across all the grade point average ranges males tended to believe that academic success was not different for males and females. It was when arriving at the responses of the average success and high success students that you hear them talk about girls as being equal or the same as males or success for girls as being equal or the same as boys. It should not be assumed that males in the minimal success and low-average success student groups did not share this belief.
explicitly by this group. However out of the nine students in the minimal success and low- average success group, six believed that success was not different for males than for females. One thing of particular interest that arose was this notion of traditional male/female roles. Females were seen as more focused on school and males were seen as domineering. Within the high success student group there were three participants that talked about females challenging traditional roles. In the minimal success and low-average success student responses, females were seen as pretty and wanting to be adored.
It should be noted that the interviewer was a female. Participants may have felt it rude to answer this question in the negative because of the interviewer’s gender. To further explore the topic of gender differences in education it might be helpful to have male interview male participants. One might get a more candid response by having a male student or peer interview male participants.