Elsevier

Learning and Individual Differences

Volume 23, February 2013, Pages 234-240
Learning and Individual Differences

Macho-man in school: Toward the role of gender role self-concepts and help seeking in school performance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2012.09.013Get rights and content

Abstract

This study seeks to understand boys' lower academic success by analysing the relationship between sex, gender role self-concept, help seeking attitudes, and school performance in a sample of 182 German 11th grade students (83 girls, 99 boys), age 16. Grades at two points in time, intelligence test data, help-seeking attitudes, gender role self-concept (including socially desirable and socially undesirable masculine and feminine traits) were assessed. Controlling for intelligence, girls achieved better grades than boys. Girls reported more positive attitudes towards help seeking than boys. Positive femininity related positively, negative masculinity negatively, to help seeking. Negative masculinity mediated the relation between sex and grades. Mediation analyses focusing on change in school performance revealed that the influence of negative masculinity on boys' impairment in grades was partly explained by negative attitudes toward seeking help. Results are discussed with regard to the impact of a masculine gender role self-concept on academic help seeking.

Highlights

► Boys seek less help at school than girls. ► Masculinity is related to help seeking attitudes and grades. ► Masculinity mediates the relationship between sex and grades. ► Help seeking attitudes mediate the relationship between masculinity and grades.

Section snippets

Academic help seeking

Students are seen as self-regulated learners to the degree that they are meta-cognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally active participants in their own learning process (Zimmerman, 1986). Because students inevitably encounter difficulties in their schoolwork, seeking help from peers or adults is one important self-regulatory strategy (Karabenick and Sharma, 1994, Newman, 1994). Even though some studies demonstrate that help seeking behaviour is not related in a consistent and linear way

The gender gap in academic success

As male students in many countries lag behind female students on important indicators of academic success (e.g. Burns and Bracey, 2001, Clark et al., 2008), the gender gap in academic achievement is now a major topic for discussion in both the media and the scientific literature. In the U.S., boys achieve at lower levels than girls across most school subjects, earn lower grades, and exhibit higher school dropout rates (e.g. U.S. Department of Education [DOE], 2004). Similarly in Great Britain,

Possible reasons for the gender gap in academic success

Many different explanations for the relatively lower academic success of boys compared with girls have been discussed (for an overview see Clark et al., 2008). Generally, these explanations focus on characteristics of the teaching system or of the learner. When focusing on characteristics of the learning environment, the lack of male role models at school has been discussed as fuelling the widening gender gap in favour of girls. Recent studies, however, provide no evidence for the assumption

Hypotheses and aims of the present study

Specifically, we test the following hypotheses: Girls are expected to have a more positive attitude towards help-seeking than boys (Hypothesis 1). Attitudes towards help-seeking are expected to be related to gender role self-concepts, with socially desirable feminine self-knowledge being positively related to help seeking attitudes and socially undesirable masculine self-knowledge negatively related to help seeking attitudes (Hypothesis 2). No direct hypotheses are formulated for how help

Participants

The sample was recruited from two schools preparing for university (Gymnasium) in two mid-sized towns in Germany. Two complete 11th grades were tested. Participation was voluntary. We received signed adolescent assent and parental consent forms (by 98% of the investigated population). On the day of the testing, about 6% of the students were ill and could not participate. With regard to background variables, the sample is typical of the population from this type of school in Germany (i.e., the

Results

Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all variables are reported in Table 1. Sex differences in the gender role self-concept scales are demonstrated in Table 2. All sex differences were in the expected direction with girls having higher scores in both femininity scales and boys having higher scores in both masculinity scales.

In Hypothesis 1 we postulated that help-seeking intentions would differ between sexes. We performed a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with sex

Discussion

In an effort to contribute to the explanations for why boys – on average – achieve worse grades in school than girls, we analysed sex differences in attitudes towards academic help seeking in a sample of upper secondary school students. As expected, girls reported better overall attitudes towards help seeking than boys. Specifically, girls indicated a higher general intention to seek needed help and a lower intention to avoid needed help. Girls perceived lower psychological costs when asking

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