What is going on in art and design with boys underachievement?

There are some fundamental problems here with the expectations we may hold about how art and design should be taught. These really are gender specific and may cause us to impose inappropriate expectations on some students, not because of attitude or ability, but because they are boys. Let us explore why this might be?

Many boys think and work creatively in a different way to girls. We can say that girls are more mature at this age and we can identify the willingness girls demonstrate to research thoroughly and be painstaking in the development of technique and ideas. We also know that most girls will select, mix and use colour with great care, they will develop pattern and create wonderfully decorative sketchbook pages. They will also search thoughtfully for examples of images to inform their ideas and then respond to the work of artists very positively, incorporating what they see and learn in the making of their own work. All of this seems true, perhaps it is a stereotypical representation, but we do know that many boys will be far less interested in taking this approach, not all, but most will. This may also seem the convention and expectation of the GCSE art and design specification, but it is NOT the only expectation, and it is NOT the only way that artists work. Many male artists and perhaps some female artists do not do these things or do them in this way. This is an interpretation of the specification. Changes in recent years to the Assessment Objectives and AO4 in particular were made precisely to address this and enable students (boys) to work in ways more suited to their personalities and gender preferences. Let us just explore what these differences are.

What do boys like?
They like:
learning by doing and making things;
being physical with their art and design;
tactile processes and consequently working more directly with physical or technical media;
using computers creatively or they can seem 'obsessive' in their interest in some by specific aspects of using ICT;
Designing for a purpose;
building a sense of value and meaning through direct engagement with the media;
making things - and using approaches that result in a tangible outcome that appears to have a real impact on their lives eg problem solving;
researching less, until they know the purpose driving their investigations and intentions;
not having to completely plan it before doing it;
starting with an outcome and allowing creative outcomes to actively gestate.
working out how to do it, with the resources and equipment to do the job;
guidance on 'how to', with specific examples of distinctive ways of designing, that they can choose to read when they are ready;
To be shown how artists and designers plan, draw and create in the way that they do, but to be able to make their own choices about how they use this information.

Most boys don't like:
A linear process that is over intellectualises things ie art for arts sake;
A lack of craft skill  ie interestingly, they don't see drawing for fine art as craft activity;
Designing several compositional, colour or technique studies prior to beginning an outcome;
Having to work out every aspect of their design, before they are allowed to begin to create or make their practical outcome.

Also:

Boys don't always want to engage with a thoughtful, investigative, ideas focused research and development phase prior to making.  Boys like to learn by doing and to grow ideas from the experience gained through the craft of making process. They want their ideas and understanding to be wrought from the physical act itself. This may seem like a caricature, but for many, it is true. They want to cut, tear, rip, shape, glue, fix, staple, join, form, build, cast, assemble, stack, pour, mark, outline, photograph, illustrate, capture, layer, animate, film, present, alter, design, solve problems, originate, show... Not that girls don't do this, but boys have to learn by doing it, not thinking about and planning how and when to do it. It is the physical act of doing these things that they enjoy. It makes sense to them.
Boys do not usually want to seek artistic references until they have tactile experiences that help them identify and clarify their ideas.  Otherwise ideas incubated too early tend to be superficial. Boys like process and enjoy the structure of a design process where the stages are made explicit, they welcome the strictures of the steps in a design and making process.
Girls on the other hand tend to enjoy a more abstract way of thinking, using references to artists work early in the development process to inform their visions for the outcome.  They are happy to leave their options open longer, enabling them to be more creative in the idea. They also tend to take greater care in the development and execution of their ideas, thereby improving their skills.
Girls also seem able to infer or deduce how to approach drawing and designing for specific purposes from a more limited amount of information provided to them by teachers.
Girls will also seek out the right materials to select and use for a designing or drawing activity, buys will not bother and will often use what is to hand. Teachers have to make boys use particular media and approaches to drawing/design, in order to get them to understand (through the experience) why this approach is better, or more successful. Girls are more willing to give it a go, and exercise greater discrimination in their choices.

Facts and speculation:
In 2011, girls achieved nearly 20% more art and design GCSE passes than boys.
There are predominantly more women teachers in art and design departments these days.
Many departments are now staffed entirely by female art and design teachers.
More girls opt for and take L2 and L3 courses in art and design than boys (over 60% of students are female).
Boys may need more male role models as teachers;
The art and design curriculum would seem to contain less design and craft now than at any time in the last 40 years.
Despite the world changing developments in digital media touching on every aspect of our daily visual lives, a high percentage of art and design departments still do not reflect these changes.
We may have an art and design curriculum that favours the interests and preferred learning approaches of girls rather than boys?
Many female art and design teachers are less interested in digital media, or in teaching heavy duty sculpture techniques.
We may be interpreting Assessment Objectives in a way that values characteristics more prevalent amongst girls than boys?
Women teachers probably teach differently to male teachers? And, as there are more of them, this may just be shifting the perceived expectations of what achievement and creativity should look like, or it may just be actually changing the emphasis on specialist activities within the curriculum.
In the same way that the lack of male role models has impacted adversely on boys reading, female art and design teachers may not be engaging boys in ways that promote and support their interests.
Boys might just be starting to believe the art curriculum is becoming feminised?
Boys need to be shown and made to try to work in particular ways.
Girls can respond to spoken guidance or provision of materials and invited to try it out.
Boys need convincing
Girls are willing to take a risk
Boys allow pride and previous success to get in the way of new developments
Girls are prepared to take risks in order to learn new approaches and progress in their ability.
Girls like - Interesting, engaging, motivating, stimulating, inspiring, exciting, motivating, 
Boys like -Physical, direct, immediate, worked, make, wrought, explore,  research, produce, model, investigate, experiment.

Other issues:
If we examine a benchmark in art and design achievement such as the GCSE qualification. We know there are many specialist endorsed and unendorsed variations on this qualification, including fine art, art and design, photography, applied art and design, lens and light based media, and graphic communications to name but a few. All of these courses use Assessment Objectives criteria to determine national standards and expectations, which should mean we share a national benchmark in art and design. But this is surely not true as we are aware of variations in emphasis between different Examination Boards and very significant variation in expectation across these different specialist courses. This is surely right as we cannot expect the same standard of drawing from a student achieving a B grade in Fine Art compared with a student gaining an equivalent B grade in Lens and light based media. These are different courses with subtlety different expectations..
One issue we face then, is whether our boys are entered for the correct qualification? Are they following the course the department offers, or are they taking the qualification they could achieve most highly in? We might also ask if this is a curriculum for the promotion of achievement of the student or the convenience of the school?
These questions are hard to answer in a period of diminishing option numbers for art and design and limiting school budgets. It would be tough to expect art and design teachers to teach their GCSE group with two or more options running concurrently, or would it? course entries do not need to be defined until the Autumn of the second year, so students could follow a generic programme with flexible opportunities to work in different media enabling them to define their interests and preferences. Then entered for the most suitable course within a limited range. If teachers have several option groups, then some degree of specification could be made to group options across the different groups, enabling teachers to teach to their specialist strengths, wherever possible.

What are the expectations for the range of a teachers skills in the subject?
Teachers are expected to be able to cover a wide range of specialisms in art and design. Our subject is a wide ranging one, encompassing art, craft and design. We have had nearly 500 different specialist degrees available in the subject over recent years Needless to say, the larger the art and design team you work in, the more specialised you can be and consequently, if you work in a team of 2 or 3, you are expected to be a bit of a generalist and able to cover all specialist areas up to year 9, and at least a couple of specialisms after that. If you trained in painting and drawing, you are expected to be able to teach 3D, graphics and textiles and digital media for example, and perhaps to cover a few of these at GCSE. If you don't feel sufficiently skilled, then what has your team done to request professional development for you? Or what have you done to skill yourself up?

This may sound tough, but it equates well with what has happened in most other subjects in the curriculum. We also know that the principles of creative and design working is consistent across the art and design specialisms. Being a degree qualified illustrator does not mean that you will only have to work within two dimensional media, you are employed as teacher of art and design and this includes - potentially, everything!

We also have both a problem and a blessing associated with our creative training. The rather mixed blessing is that we are all taught to be independent and individual. This is fantastic training for creativity, but does tend to mean we learn what we need and personally value for our own work. Our training is also more akin to the old style apprentice model and can be 'knowledge lite' This settles us into our own 'groove' and limits the broader training we could have gained in a more didactic course. This also means we can study one area throughout a 3 year degree and leave as a very specialist practitioner. The main downside to this experience is that it does not prepare us to be as broadly skilled as we need to be as a teacher of art and design. The other downside, is that our personal interests drive our creative interests and this can dictate to some extent what we provide as an experience for our students. Combine this with a lack of direction and specification within the KS3 scheme of work and content of our GCSE course, and we have a recipe for personal preference by the teaching team for the subject matter, media and focus of our courses. We must question whether what we teach is what interests and engages boys? And does the way we teach it engage and motivate them?
One question we can all ask ourself is:
If you were a 15 year old boy, would you enjoy your course?

The sketchbook orthodoxy results in a creative process, with thinking imaginatively as earlier steps, which girls seem to prefer doing but many boys struggle with, as their creative imagination has not fully been activated by the making process - this is why digital is good! It allows experimentation and modelling of ideas, which can be kept, saved and scrapped as you go.

For boys, talking with teachers about their ideas is a problem at early stages. They prefer to have tangible evidence of an outcome, which is why boys tend to insist on a single idea whereas girls opt to keep options open until ideas crystallise. This enables them to experiment and develop multiple options earlier.
Caricatures or true!

Design drawing is also a problem. Boys tend to apply existing approaches to drawing to all forms of design. So they will employ an approach suitable for observational drawing, when developing studies for large scale sculpture. This causes them to miss the physical and the kinaesthetic engagement necessary from the physical feedback from the experience of drawing on a large scale with chunky charcoal sticks or blocks on A1 scale. Girls will see the relevance of this approach more rapidly and with less direction than boys. Similarly with drawing for design. Boys prefer to be physical with the media, but have to be convinced that this is right before they will commit to it.

Ged Gast February 2012