12S

Boys and Girls Learn Differently:
A Guide For Teachers and Parents

By
Michael Gurian
with Patricia Henley and Terry Trueman
(Jossey-Bass, Publishers)

Teachers and parents alike have long intuited that boys and girls learn differently. In this book, renowned educator and bestselling author Michael Gurian provides the brain-based research to prove it, and shows the reader how to improve a child's education by knowing the very nature of his or her mind.

In Part 1, combining the fields of neurobiology, anthropology, educational psychology and sociology, Gurian shows the reader how the growing child's brain works, how girls' and boys' brains work differently, how hormones affect these differences, and how acculturation influences the biology. Because Gurian's research stretches to all continents, readers will be intrigued to discover how worldwide are the gender learning differences in the brain, and in homes and classrooms. Part I also looks at areas of learning difficulty boys and girls suffer as distinct groups.

Part 2 provides solutions and applications. Gurian features innovations from around the world, but focuses especially on innovations developed by teachers in six school districts in Kansas City, Missouri, in which the Gurian Institute trained staff to help boys and girls learn differently.

Learning improvement in these school districts was marked, and their innovations fascinating. By the end of BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN DIFFERENTLY!, teachers, parents and others have a brain-based understanding of the child they are educating, and know how to apply what they know to distinct improvements in not only a child's general education, but also in areas of difficulty related to being a boy and being a girl.