The Closing Gap in Attitudes Between Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal study

Abstract

The attitudes of Year 2 boys (388) and girls (364) drawn from five randomlyselected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) towards school and school activities were measured using the 'Smiley' instrument. The same measure was given to the children 4 years later to explore the effect of experience on infant children's attitudes. Using sex and occasion as the independent variables, a repeated measures two-way analysis of variance was performed for each of five scale scores plus the total score. Between Years 2 and 6 the sample became significantly more negative towards the curriculum, interaction with the teacher and discipline (at the 0.001% level) and happier about interacting with peers (at the 0.5% level). While the boys were significantly more negative towards the curriculum on both occasions, the girls' negativity grew faster in the junior years and was catching up with the boys' mean score by Year 6.