It is a much-studied phenomenon that boys underperform when compared with girls at many levels of education. Particularly noticeable, however, is the underachievement of boys at secondary level, more specifically, in GCSE English. Contrasting data between boys and girls shows that boys underachieve substantially. The published GCSE English Language results for summer 2020 demonstrated that whilst 78.7% of girls achieved a C grade or lower, only 64.8% of boys achieved the same (JCQ, 2020). Adding to this, whilst 25.1% of girls achieved an A grade or below, only 13.2% of boys reached this level (JCQ, 2020). In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with student grades being provided by means other than traditional examinations, it may be pertinent to look also at the previous year’s data. This, however, further exemplifies this issue, with the summer 2019 results showing 70.5% C grades or below for girls, as opposed to only 54.2% for boys in English (JCQ, 2019).
With this wider context in mind, this thesis aims to investigate methods and strategies can be developed and adopted in a secondary school curriculum to address this problem. I will also examine the impact of participatory-based approaches, and the effect they have on closing the gender gap between boys and girls in GCSE English. The work of Matt Pinkett & Mark Roberts around boys’ achievement in their 2019 book Boys Don’t Try? provides the theoretical framework on which this thesis is based. This dissertation will examine four specific case studies, based around the application of drama pedagogy that has a direct impact on these exact outcomes. The first of these studies, by Will Barlow, explores the impact of drama education on children from looked-after backgrounds, mirroring the research of Pinkett & Roberts around disadvantaged students. The second, conducted by Richard Sallis, examines the concept of a boy-friendly drama classroom and the underlying approaches to fostering such an environment in order to allow exploration of masculinity. The third and fourth studies, by Bleach and Iamsaard & Kerdpol respectively, investigate the impact and perception of incorporating drama-based learning into a secondary-school English curriculum, and provide an insight into the effect that adopting such approaches has on student attainment and subject perception. This dissertation argues that drama classrooms which allow boys to explore masculinities and aim to teach a variety of curricula in different ways have been shown to positively impact boys’ attainment in a number of ways.
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