Gender and literacy performance in Malaysian lower primary schools

Abstract

Differences in academic achievement between boys and girls have been widely reported. On the whole, statistics reveal that girls are doing better in school settings surpassing boys, and resulting in the use of various terms such as ‘boy gap’, ‘boy crisis’, ‘boys’ underachievement’ and ‘failing boys’ to discuss their educational achievement. Like other countries in the world, Malaysia is nationally facing similar issues of the underachievement of boys in academic, specifically in literacy. Employing a Mixed Methods Research (MMR) design, this study firstly looked into the literacy achievement of primary school students, utilising the national literacy scores of the Literacy and Numeracy Screening (LINUS) programme. The study also examined the feelings of 2,666 students toward reading in their L1 and L2, their recreational and academic reading attitudes in L1 and L2, and whether there are any variations according to gender. The study also sought to discover the language teachers’ perceptions toward their students as L1 and L2 readers. Findings were triangulated through the use of student questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, focus group interviews and teacher reflection journals. Overall, this study has shown the underachievement of literacy performance among boys as compared to girls in the primary school setting in Malaysia. The current study also revealed that students held positive attitudes toward reading both in L1 and L2. From the calculation of 99% confidence intervals, the researcher found that the true percentages of the population of boys and girls who like reading in Bahasa Malaysia and English are high. Nevertheless, the percentages of boys who like reading are lower than that of the girls, which also partly explains the higher literacy achievement among girls. The figures are also supported by the interviews with students and teachers, as well as the teachers’ journal entries. It is also found that there are significant differences between boys’ and girls’ L1 and L2 recreational and academic reading attitudes, whereby the latter scored significantly higher in all the categories of reading attitudes mentioned. In addition, the language teachers also feel that girls have more positive attitudes toward reading in comparison to boys. Several other themes have also emerged from the interviews and journal entries of the teachers, which include the gendered preference of reading materials, teaching strategies, school, family, and pupil factors. The current findings have shed some light on the issue of literacy achievement, reading specifically, with regard to its differences in gender.