Through the 20th century, girls achieved lower educational levels than boys. This may be explained by the general notion at the time that an investment in girls’ education had no merit. However, girls benefited immensely from the educational expansion that proceeded in the 1960s. Girls and young women rapidly caught up to boys in degree and grade achievements. In some European countries, girls are now more likely to transit to upper secondary schools and demonstrate higher performances than boys in some subjects and overall results. This change in gender variations in achievement has been so dramatic that the underachievement of boys is of high concern in the public discourse. The aim of this research workshop is to discuss approaches and evidence regarding girls’ and boys’ educational success. It will be particularly focused on explicit and implicit gender images and attitudes that function as subjective theories within the classroom. It is assumed that these implicit gender images and attitudes at school have a direct influence on classroom management and didactical practices of teachers as well as influences motivation, social and learning behaviour of students and considerably effect their educational success and school performance. Attempting to shed light on these gender variations in school achievement, our starting point will be a critique regarding the currently widely spread assumption that boys are subtly discriminated by female teaching staff (Diefenbach/Klein 2002). Instead, we will question the notion that boys’ performance in school is lower in all subjects and take a more detailed look at the facts of school achievement. We will focus on effects of gender concepts and stereotypes to explain assumedly new differences in educational success between boys and girls. Following Cornelissen et al. (2003), boys who inherit traditional gender roles and who devalue gender neutral or female attitudes and behaviours will experience more difficulties in school than boys who exhibit more gender neutral values. Weinert and Helmke (1997) diagnose a „lazybones syndrom“; boys demonstrate less effort and have a lower sense of obligation towards school related tasks than girls. It may also be asked, if the behaviour of boys with traditional gender attitudes negatively influences their integration into the school environment and therefore their educational success. Another issue to explore are expectations of teachers towards boys and girls. If these expectations are gendered, this may be another reason that there is a rather persistent gender gap in educational success.

Qualitative and quantitative analyses of data that address the described research topics will be presented and discussed. The project „Lazy boys and ambitous girls“ in Berne and the project on gender-specific school achievement in Berlin focus on 14 year old students of all school types. In Switzerland, 800 students have been interviewed regarding psychological determinants of school achievement, subjective well-being, values, gender role attitudes, educational success (marks), as well as demographic variables (education of the parents, economic capital of the parents, etc.) using a standardised questionnaire. In addition, the project group also carried out video observations and qualitative group discussions on factors of educational success in the class room. The Berlin counterpart will present pilot data of a similar methodology (e.g., standardized questionnaires and video observation) thereby focusing on gender sensible pedagogy.

Preliminary results in both countries indicate that girls and boys differ in their school marks less than expected. However, as expected educational success is influenced by gender role orientations of boys and girls and that boys have more traditional gender role attitudes than girls, which hinders their integration into the school system.. This applies in particular to boys from a educationally-distant families.. Girls rather prefer values of prosociality which in turn support their integration into school and therefore lead to a higher educational success. Girls are also more future-oriented than boys which may be an additional reason for their motivation to perform well at school.