What techniques can be introduced to improve behaviour and concentration amongst boys? Mat Harman, Year 5 Teacher and Mathematics Co-ordinator, Oakridge School Introduction Our school target this year is to raise achievement in writing in all subjects so that children make at least expected progress. It has become apparent, not just in my class but others too, that boys appear to be less engaged in their learning and I wanted to find out the reasons for this, and try to implement new strategies to increase their behaviour, concentration and participation in all lessons. Boys are generally less motivated to work hard at school than girls and this is typical in a British school, but why is this? Could it be that the way we teach in primary schools is more girl orientated? Or are boys really just not interested in learning and therefore have no motivation to work hard. Collins, N (2013), wrote an article for The Telegraph, stating ‘Official figures have shown that boys begin to lag behind girls by the age of five, with past research blaming the "gender gap" on biological differences, different learning styles, teachers' attitudes, a lack of male role models and even the "feminisation of the classroom".’ My main concern as a class teacher is, if the boys in my class are not motivated to learn, how can I engage them and help them want to achieve the grades and make the progress that they require? My chosen area of focus is looking into how boys can be motivated in a primary setting and the impact that a successful intervention will have upon boys’ attainment.
Research In carrying out a review of current literature on the topic of getting boys to be motivated and concentrated, strategies such as using extrinsic rewards is appropriate for primary school children. Within the primary setting, it is important that motivational techniques are of the extrinsic nature as research shows these work best. Intrinsic motivation is embedded in most children during certain tasks, subjects or activities and, as a teacher, we want all of the children we teach to have a certain degree of intrinsic motivation, as we want children to just want to do well. This is not always the case and children need something external to give them that extra motivation to succeed. ‘While most people would suggest that intrinsic motivation is best, it is not always possible in each and every situation. In some cases, people simply have no internal desire to engage in an activity’ (Cherry, K; 2015). I decided to give my class golden time as a reward for working hard, being polite and following instructions. The condition of this golden time was that it had to be earned; this would be done by gaining cubes each time the class had done something well. This would give the children, as a collective, 1 minute per cube towards their golden time. This would be the extrinsic reward that the boys would, hopefully, need to be motivated to want to work hard. For my study I used five boys with motivation, behaviour and/or concentration issues alongside boys of similar level, age and issues from the parallel year 5 class to give a comparison to validate my research. Through conducting a questionnaire, it was clear that these boys did think that they were lacking in motivation and concentration and choose their preferences on how they thought they would be motivated best. This was how the golden time idea came about.