Boys versus Girls

 The hippocampus (another memory storage area in the brain) works differently in boys
than in girls. Boys tend to need more time to memorize classroom items- especially
written items- than girls. However, because the male hippocampus favors list making,
boys tend to succeed well in memorization when greater amounts of information come in
a list organization, and in listed substrata of categorization (point, sub-point, sub-point).
This could be a reason why I like bullet points…
 Girls’ frontal lobes are generally more active than boys’ and grow at earlier ages. For this
reason girls tend to make less impulsive executive decisions than boys. Impulsivity used
to be much more useful and desirable in learning, especially when children did more of
their learning outdoors and independently.
 Girls tend to get earlier and more advanced development of the Broca’s and Wernicke’s
areas in the frontal and temporal lobes- these are the main language centers of the brain.
In general, the female brain utilizes more neural pathways and brain centers for word
production an expression of experience, emotion, and cognition through words.
 Girls have more estrogen and oxytocin than boys. These chemicals have direct impact on
the use of words. Boys have higher levels of testosterone (the hormone closely
associated with sex and aggression) and vasopressin (which relates to territoriality and
hierarchy). Oxytocin rises when girls communicate verbally with a friend or family
member. Boys, with less oxytocin in the bloodstream and less verbal emphasis in the
brain, do not learn as much through sitting and talking. Their formation of learning often
develops through action-response, hierarchical competition, and aggression nurturance.
 Boys compartmentalize brain activity (that is they use less of the brain- no comments
ladies), their brains operate with 15% less blood flow than girls, and they are structured to
learn less with multitasking. Boys therefore tend to do better when focusing for long
periods on one task in which depth of learning takes place; they do less well when
required to move from one task to another very quickly. One primary brain response to
the over stimulation of doing many things at once is frustration (a swelling of the
amygdale, which is an anger and aggression center in the brain and has a significantly
higher volume of tissue in boys). Gradually increasing frustration levels leads to
heightened levels of stress hormone (cortisol), which also links to heightened adrenalin-
thus it ought not surprise us that males create more discipline problems in classrooms.
 The male brain is set to renew, recharge, and reorient itself between tasks by moving to
what neurologist Ruben Gur has called a “rest state.” The boys in the back of the
classroom whose eyes are drooping, his mind ready to doze off, may have entered a
neural rest state. The rest state, which MRIs have now discovered to be essential to male
brain activity, can create big problems in a classroom. Boys make up the vast majority of
students who drift off without completing assignments, who stop taking notes or fall
asleep during a lecture, and even who begin to tap pencils, or fidget in order to self
stimulate. With greater blood flow to the brain, girls and women tend to recharge and
reorient neural focus without pronounced rest states; thus a girl can be bored with a
lesson, but nonetheless keep her eyes open and take notes. Ruben Gur has observed,
“In a resting female brain, we find just as much brain activity as in a male brain that is
solving problems.” The female brain does not really go into a rest state in a way a male
brain does.
 Boys tend to have more dopamine in their bloodstream which can increase impulsive risk
behavior and they process more blood flow in the cerebellum (part of the brain that
controls “doing”). These factors are believed to contribute to boys’ tendency to learn less
well than girls when sitting still or being sedentary. Boys are more likely to attach learning
to physical activity. Movement is in fact often crucial to male brain learning.
 A boy’s corpus callosum (the connecting bundle of tissue between brain hemispheres) is
a different size than a girl’s. Researchers have shown that the female corpus callosum
allows more crosstalk between hemispheres than does that of a male. One of the obvious
behavioral differences that grows from higher levels of crosstalk is the greater ability to
do more than one task at a once with equal success (multitasking). On average, girls test
out better at multitasking.
 Girls have, in general stronger neural connectors in their temporal lobes than boys do;
these stronger connectors appear to facilitate more sensorially detailed memory storage
and better listening, especially for tones of voice. Boys in general pick up less of what is
aurally going on around them, especially when it is said in words, and need more
sensory-tactile experience than girls in order for their brains to light up with learning.


 Trusting relationships are at the heart of keeping adolescents learning and engaged at
school. Deci (1995)
 Adolescents withdraw personal effort from learning when they perceive that school
curricula and systems do not reflect their own aspirations and culture or help them fulfill
their own purposes. Ogbu (1997)
 Research has shown that when students are provided with opportunities to make
connections between real-world activities and their academic course work and when they
have the freedom to explore issues that interest them, they retain what they learn, put
more effort into school work, and are more engaged in school. Thomas (2000)
 Project-based learning also allows “for alternative approaches that address students’
individual differences, variations in learning styles, intelligences, abilities, and disabilities.
Solomon (2003)