And while it’s clear a global gender gap exists, the remedies for narrowing it are less obvious. According to PISA data, girls report enjoying reading more than boys—so is making reading more fun for boys the answer? Using an index that measures changes to survey results boys provided on how much they enjoy reading, Loveless shows that between 2000 and 2009 PISA scores for boys in Germany grew by 10 points in the same period the country saw a slight gain the reading enjoyment index. In France, however, reading enjoyment among boys grew slightly in the same period that their scores on PISA dropped by 15 points. Ireland’s boys reported enjoying reading more, too, though its actual scores fell 36 points in that same period, Loveless writes.

Several authors and scholars have tackled the causes behind the male malaise in the classroom, pointing to Canada and Australia as countries that have made strides in closing the gender gap in reading. These countries too have witnessed declines in male PISA reading scores, Loveless notes.

Still, perhaps the attention paid to the lag between boys and girls is overblown: On a reading assessment issued to adults in 2012, male and female scores were even by adulthood.

* * *

Lifting motivation among students in math is no recipe for good results, the Brookings report shows. Students in developing countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Tunisia demonstrated some of the highest self-assessment scores for feeling motivated about going to school to learn math, even though their actual math results were some of the lowest of the several dozen countries that participated in PISA. Students in academic juggernauts Korea, Finland, and Japan measured much lower on the motivation index yet tend to lead the globe in educational achievement.

"It’s just fascinating—countries that do very well on PISA in mathematics, countries like Finland, Korea, Japan, and Netherlands, they score terribly on this motivation index," Loveless aid. "Kids don’t look intrinsically motivated at all."

Accounting for the discrepancy, Loveless writes in the report that given the lower standard of living in the developing countries listed, "students who sat for PISA may be an unusually motivated group" and "may be deeply appreciative of having an opportunity that their parents never had."

Lifting motivation actually may not be a worthwhile policy goal. Loveless analyzed the intrinsic motivation data released by PISA between 2003 and 2012 and found that in numerous countries, as motivation went down, scores rose. "The answer is the opposite of what you’d expect," said Loveless. "There were eight countries where motivation went down—they actually gained [an average of] 10 points on the PISA."

American PISA takers, for what it’s worth, tend to look forward to math courses more than students in most other PISA-participating countries, though they are less likely to enjoy math than students in other countries. A recent report by the National Association of State Boards of Education made the case for increasing student engagement to improve their scores.

Within middling and top-performing countries, the students who self-reported enjoying math scored higher than those who did not—creating a trend that ran opposite to what happens when Loveless compared countries to each other. In the U.S. more motivated students scored higher than their less motivated peers.

This post appears courtesy of The Educated Reporter.

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