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Page 1: The Closing Gap in Attitudes Between Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal study

This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University]On: 20 December 2014, At: 14:59Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational Psychology:An International Journal ofExperimental EducationalPsychologyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedp20

The Closing Gap in AttitudesBetween Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal studyJulie Davies a & Ivy Brember aa University of ManchesterPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Julie Davies & Ivy Brember (2001) The Closing Gap in AttitudesBetween Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal study, Educational Psychology: AnInternational Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology, 21:1, 103-114, DOI:10.1080/01443410124899

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410124899

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Page 2: The Closing Gap in Attitudes Between Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal study

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Page 3: The Closing Gap in Attitudes Between Boys and Girls: A 5-year longitudinal study

Educational Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

The Closing Gap in Attitudes Between Boysand Girls: a 5-year longitudinal study

JULIE DAVIES & IVY BREMBER, School of Education, University of Manchester,

UK

ABSTRACT The attitudes of Year 2 boys (388) and girls (364) drawn from ® ve randomly-

selected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) towards school and

school activities were measured using the `Smiley’ instrument. The same measure was given to

the children 4 years later to explore the effect of experience on infant children’s attitudes. Using

sex and occasion as the independent variables, a repeated measures two-way analysis of

variance was performed for each of ® ve scale scores plus the total score. Between Years 2 and

6 the sample became signi® cantly more negative towards the curriculum, interaction with the

teacher and discipline (at the 0.001% level) and happier about interacting with peers (at the

0.5% level). While the boys were signi® cantly more negative towards the curriculum on both

occasions, the girls’ negativity grew faster in the junior years and was catching up with the

boys’ mean score by Year 6.

Introduction

Attitudes can be viewed as both determinants and consequences of learning experiencesand as being directly related to learning [Assessment of Performance Unit (APU),1981; Rye, 1983; Wade, 1986; Mortimore et al., 1988; Saracho & Dayton, 1991;Johnson, 1995]. Attitudes develop as a result of the satisfying or frustrating nature ofour learning experiences and, once established, they facilitate or impede furtherlearning and thereby become self reinforcing (Mouly, 1960). They are also related tosuch features as self-concept, parents and home environment, age, sex, socio-economicstatus and children’ s interests (Wiener, 1980). Attitude change is of signi® cant interestto educationists. The development of positive attitudes towards school and the curricu-lum is important as an educational objective yet primary children’ s attitudes have notbeen the focus of much research. This, of course, could be due to a recognition that themeasurement of young children’s attitudes using questionnaire methods is problematicrather than due to disinterest in the area (West & Sammons, 1991). How and to what

ISSN 0144-3410 print; ISSN 1469-5820 online/01/010103-12 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/01443410020019876

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104 J. Davies & I. Brember

extent teachers can effectively in¯ uence pupils’ less positive attitudes by changing theirbeliefs, values and behaviour through persuasive communication and group dynamicsis an important area of study. However, in order to plan for intervention in negativeattitude development, it is necessary, ® rst of all, to ® nd out whether, over time,children’ s attitudes do, in fact, become less positive.

Research into this area in primary education is fairly sparse and con¯ icting. Twostudies of junior age children came up with remarkably similar ® ndings even though theinstruments used were different. Sharples (1969) noted that at three different age levels(9, 10 and 11 years), younger groups tended to view all activities more favourably thanolder groups, and that art and PE were viewed more positively than reading, writingand mathematics. The large scale longitudinal Junior School Project (Mortimore et al.,1988) examined 2000 children’s attitudes at 8, 9 and 10 years old. It was found that,as children got older, they viewed all subjects less favourably with the exception of topicwork, which grew in popularity each year, that boys were more likely to be disenchantedwith school and that the one curriculum difference between the sexes was the morenegative view of the oldest boys towards reading. A study by the present authors on theeffects of gender and experience on Year 2 children’s attitudes indicated the sample hadan enthusiasm for all subjects of the curriculum and that the pattern of signi® cantgender differences in curricular preferences were largely maintained as the children gotolder. The ® nding that attitudes between the sexes were not signi® cantly different for63% of the items suggests that boys and girls at 7 and 9 years are a more homogeneousgroup than might have been expected (Davies & Brember 1994a).

In Britain, the educational achievement of boys has become the focus of growingconcern recently with the publication of national test results which reveal girls outper-forming boys at age 7, 11 and 14 in English and mathematics (DfEE, 1996ab, 1997ab).The narrowing of the gap between boys’ and girls’ in reading national tests in 1999 wasa great cause for celebration (DfEE, 1999; Hacket, 1999; O’Leary, 1999; Thornton,1999). However, fewer than half of all boys reached the target level in writing comparedwith almost two-thirds of girls, a continuing cause for concern. Recent evidence, frombaseline assessment studies, indicates that twice as many boys as girls fell into thebottom category, failing to reach acceptable standards on their entry to school (Ghouri,1998). Concern about boys’ achievement across the compulsory schooling phase hasresulted in curricular and pedagogic recommendations [Quali® cations and CurriculumAuthority (QCA), 1998]. The rationale for these is that a co-ordinated approach toboys, under-achievement is vital if thousands of young men are to be saved from a bleakfuture of unemployment.

The growing body of research which catalogues the differences between boys’ andgirls’ attainments, learning styles and teachers’ perceptions and management of themacknowledge that sex-stereotyped attitudes to the curriculum by children plays a partin all this (APU, 1981; French & French, 1984; Bennett, 1989; Morgan, 1989;Fennema et al., 1990; Ramsden, 1990; QCA, 1998). At the secondary level, there areseveral studies supporting the view that school subjects are perceived as male (forexample, science) and female (for example, art, languages) and that these views areassociated with sex-stereotyped attitudes towards occupations and roles (Kelly, 1988;Colley et al., 1994, Hendley et al., 1995; Lightbody et al., 1996; Whitehead, 1996). Atthe primary level, research studies indicate that girls have a more positive attitude toreading and to writing than do boys at all ages (Gorman & Kispal, 1987; White, 1987).Boys have been shown to have more positive attitudes to mathematics and science thando girls though the research evidence is more strongly based in secondary schools

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Differing Attitudes in Boys and Girls 105

TABLE I. Composition of sample

Cohort Boys Girls Total

1 78 64 1422 71 67 1383 86 80 1664 65 80 1455 88 73 161Total 388 364 752

(Archer & McDonald, 1991; Archer & Macrea, 1991; Archer, 1992; Johnson, 1995).In addition, there is evidence from research detailing the differential effect of sex ofteachers on pupils, indicating that the pupils’ response to the teacher differentiatesalong sex-role lines (Wilkinson & Marrett, 1985; Brutseart & Brack, 1994). Somestudies have pointed at the increasing feminisation of primary education and its possibledetrimental effect on boys (Sexton, 1969; Lee, 1973; Piche & Plante, 1991). Thedetrimental effects, it is posited are the product of the lack of same-sex role models, andthe incompatibility boys experience between male sex-role standards and the pupil’ srole as de® ned by their (feminised) school setting.

The Investigation

Primary children’ s attitudes in the years of the national tests (Year 2 and 6) have notreceived much attention to date. It seemed an important addition to knowledge in thisarea to carry out a study which would provide some empirical data which might thenbe used subsequently as the basis for further in depth qualitative investigations. Itwould be useful to see what changes in attitudes occurred between boys and girls overthe curriculum, discipline and teacher and peer interactions.

Sample

All Year 2 children within ® ve randomly chosen primary schools from one LocalEducation Authority (LEA) were involved and the data was collected over 5 years. Thesecond set of data was collected four years later when the children were in Year 6. Atthe ® rst administration of the test there were 949 children, but only 752 of thesechildren ® lled in the questionnaire 4 years later. This means that 21% of the originalsample had either changed school or were absent when the second questionnaire wasadministered. The composition of the sample is shown in Table 1. The mean age at® rst testing was 7.32 years with a standard deviation of 0.30. The schools varied in theircatchment areas from suburban to poor urban and each had very few British Asian orBritish Afro-Caribbean children on roll.

Procedure

The `Smiley’ self-report measure was used because it has been developed speci® callyfor use with younger children by the Junior School Project (JSP) team to measurechildren’ s attitudes towards different aspects of school life and the curriculum (Morti-more et al., 1988). The JSP team based it on the attitude to learning scales devised by

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106 J. Davies & I. Brember

Hunter± Grundin (1979) and items were selected on the basis of interviews with juniorschool children. It is easily administered and enables attitudes to be assessed even whenchildren are not ¯ uent readers (West & Sammons, 1991). It is a useful tool whenintensive interviewing of large numbers of children is not feasible. It consists of a5-point scale, represented by ® ve faces, ranging from very happy to very sad.

A reliability and validity study found that when some items were recorded so that ascore of 1 always indicates the most positive attitude to school, all the items correlatedpositively and signi® cantly with the total score for the thirty eight items (Davies &Brember 1994b). The split half reliability was 0.820 (n 5 1231), which we consideredsatisfactory in view of the age of the sample. The Smiley scale was re-administered to327 Year 2 and Year 6 children after an interval of a week and the correlation betweenthe two occasions for every item was signi® cant at the 0.001% level. In order to test theconcurrent validity of the scale, the teachers were asked to ® ll it in for 339 Year 2 andYear 6 children. The correlations between the children’ s and the teachers’ responsewere not so satisfactory with only 16 out of the 38 being signi® cant, but in view of thetest-retest reliability we felt that these disappointing results may well be due to theteacher’ s not knowing their pupils attitudes to school. These results are, we feel,positive enough to justify the use of the Smiley Scale as a measurement of children’sattitude towards school though it should be borne in mind that the construction of thescale was not done in the usual way of testing an extended bank of items and rejectingsome of them after statistical analysis.

The instrument was administered as a group test to each of the Year 2 classes at theend of the summer term by the researcher in order that the presence of the teacherwould not inhibit the responses of pupils (Pumfrey & Dixon, 1970). The procedure wasrepeated 4 years later when the children were in Year 6. The administration of `Smiley’followed the same pattern for all groups (West & Sammons, 1991).

Scoring the Smiley Form

The ® rst two items are practice items. All items were scored as follows: most positiveresponse, score 1; fairly positive response, score 2; neutral response, score 3; fairlynegative response, score 4; most negative response, score 5. All the items except the lasttwo on the questionnaire are directly concerned with school and can be divided intofour broad groups. Twenty directly refer to the curriculum (C), seven to matters ofdiscipline (D), four refer to interaction with teachers (IT) and ® ve refer to theirinteraction with other children (IC). The items on the questionnaire and the categoriesare shown in Fig. 1.

Analysis

The means and standard deviations for boys and girls on both occasions are shown inAppendix 1. The totals for each of the four scales previously mentioned in addition toa questionnaire total (excluding the ® rst two and the last two items) and a scale whichonly contained the items relating to the core curriculum core were then computed. Thescoring in items such as being told off were reversed so that a low score always indicateda positive attitude to the scale being examined, i.e. a score of 1 on the item doing mathsindicated the child felt very happy about doing maths, while a 1 on the item breakingschool rules meant that the child felt very unhappy about doing this. The means andstandard deviations of the scale scores are shown in Table II.

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Differing Attitudes in Boys and Girls 107

How do you feel about television,spiders (practice items)

How do you feel about (C) maths?(C) doing sums?(C) doing things with weighing and measuring(C) PE on apparatus?(C) cooking?(C) playing games in PE like rounders,(C) doing movement or drama?(C) painting and drawing?(C) modelling and making things?(C) singing?(C) sewing?(C) doing music with instruments?(C) reading to your teacher?(C) reading to yourself?(C) listening to your teacher read stories?(C) writing stories?(C) writing poems?(C) writing about other things?(C) doing project work?(C) doing science?(IC) going on outings or visits?(D) school rules?

How would you feel if (D) you broke a school rule?(IT) you were sent to the head to show good work?(D) you were sent to the head for bad work or being naughty?(D) the whole class was told off by the teacher?(D) the teacher told you off?

How do you feel about (IT) the teacher being pleased with you?(IT) showing your work to the teacher?(IT) asking the teacher for help with your work?(IC) working with other children?(IC) going out to play?(D) getting into arguments or ® ghts at school?(D) doing what you’ re told to in class?(IC) school?(IC) school holidays?

Which face is you most of the time?How do you feel about doing this?

FIG. 1. Attitude scaleÐ Smiley items.

A repeated measure two-way analysis of variance was performed for each of the scaletotals. The factors are Sex and Occasions, and in this design individuals may beconsidered to de® ne a third factor. This factor is crossed with occasions but nestedwithin sex. In designs of this type, the main effects of the Sex variable are confoundedwith differences between groups. On the other hand, the main effects of Occasions, aswell as Occasions 3 Sex interactions are free from confounding (Winer, 1971). Thisdesign produces two error terms: Individuals within Occasions and Individuals 3 Sexwithin Occasions. The analyses were used to examine the null hypotheses that, inrespect of any of the six scales:

· there would be no signi® cant difference between the mean scores on the t;

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108 J. Davies & I. Brember

TABLE II. Means and standard deviation of scale scores

Scale B G Y2 Y6 BY2 GY2 BY6 GY6

Total 85.64 83.24 82.63 86.33 84.52 80.62 86.71 85.86Maximum 180 14.01 10.39 15.18 16.94 16.57 13.29 18.98 14.48

Curriculum 45.19 41.88 42.05 45.12 44.36 39.60 46.03 44.16Maximum 100 9.24 6.88 10.88 10.75 11.94 9.03 11.88 9.32

Core subjects 24.58 24.27 22.98 25.89 23.51 22.42 25.66 26.13Maximum 50 5.30 4.08 6.17 6.28 6.76 5.43 6.85 5.62

Teacher interaction 7.29 6.68 6.68 7.31 6.96 6.38 7.62 6.99Maximum 20 2.16 1.75 2.71 2.62 2.94 2.40 2.84 2.32

Children interaction 8.38 8.17 8.45 8.11 8.56 8.33 8.20 8.02Maximum 25 2.23 1.91 3.11 2.47 3.24 2.96 2.56 2.36

Discipline 14.40 14.08 12.85 16.70 13.39 12.27 17.42 15.89Maximum 35 3.60 3.07 4.00 5.06 4.11 3.81 5.26 4.72

B 5 boys; G 5 girls.

· there would be no signi® cant difference between the mean scores of boys and girls;· there would be no interaction between the two independent variables of Occasion

and Sex in relation to each of the items tested.

Results

There were 388 boys and 364 girls in the sample, and the F values and theirsigni® cance for each factor for all the scales are shown in Table III, which also indicateswhich group had the more positive attitude on that scale.

What must be emphasised from the results of this study is that overall, the childrenin the sample have a positive attitude to school. This is clearly demonstrated by the sizeof the mean compared with the maximum score for the scale. All of the means are lessthan half the scale total. This is also clearly indicated by the means of individual itemswhich are shown in Appendix 1. The scoring scale of 1± 5 has a midpoint of 3 and itcan be argued that this indicates neutrality. All but three of the curriculum items havemeans below three on both occasions, indicating a positive attitude by the children inthe sample. The exceptions are `writing stories’ which has a mean above 3 for both boysand girl on both occasions, and `sewing’ and `reading to the teacher’ which have meansof 3.15 and 3.00, respectively, on Occasion Two. With one exception the other itemswith means greater than three relate to being in some sort of trouble. The exception wastheir attitude to s̀chool rules’ which had means of 3.13 and 3.25, respectively, on

TABLE III. F values and probabilities for two-way analysis of variance on scale scores

Scale Gender Occasion Gender v Occasion

Total 6.81 (G)** 24.96 (Y2)*** 3.95*Curriculum 29.98 (G)*** 37.68 (Y2)*** 8.08**Core subjects 0.77 (G) 97.31 (Y2)*** 6.81**Teacher interaction 17.16 (G)*** 23.46 (Y2)*** 0.03Children interaction 1.83 (G) 5.90 (Y6)* 0.23Discipline 27.87 (G)** 289.19 (Y2)*** 0.78

*p , 0.5; **p , 0.01; ***p , 0.00

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Differing Attitudes in Boys and Girls 109

TABLE IV. Correlated t-tests between occasions

Boys Girls

Total 1.98* 5.35***Curriculum 2.16* 7.07***Core subjects 4.90*** 9.36***

*p , 0.5; **p , 0.01; ***p , 0.001.

occasions one and two. On all six scales the girls have a lower mean than the boys andon all but one scale (Interaction with children) the sample had a lower score in Year 2than in Year 6, indicating that generally girls are more positive than boys and childrenbecome less positive to school as they go through the junior classes. To see if thesedifferences are statistically signi® cant we need to examine the results of the two wayanalysis of variance which are show in Table III.

Examination of Table III shows that there is a signi® cant interaction between Sex onthree of the six scales, these are Total, Curriculum and Core Curriculum. Thisindicates that the pattern of change between occasions was different for boys and girls.In order to investigate these changes t-tests were run separately for each gender. Theresults being shown in Table IV.

These results clearly indicate that while both boys and girls became less positive toschool and the curriculum between Year 2 and Year 6, the changes displayed by thegirls were more signi® cant than those displayed by the boys. For the all three scalescores the differences for the girls were signi® cant at the 0.1%, while for two of thethree changes for the boys were only signi® cant at the 5% level. The third one CoreCurriculum was also signi® cant at the 0.1% level, but the F value is considerablysmaller than that for the girls.

The analysis of variance for the other three scales do not have signi® cant interactions,but all have signi® cant differences between Year 2 and Year 6, and Teacher Interactionand Discipline have signi® cant differences between boys and girls.

Discussion

This study has raised some signi® cant points about primary children’ s attitude develop-ment. It must be said, ® rst of all, that the children were largely positive towards theirschool experiences. With the exception of three items, all the means were below threeon both occasions, indicating a positive attitude. However, when the items are groupedunder the headingsÐ curriculum and core curriculumÐ the Year 6 children aresigni® cantly more negative towards them than they were in Year 2 (at the 0.001%).This ties in with Sharples’ work and Mortimore et al.’ s research. When the items areexamined individually interesting patterns emerge which indicate that not all subjectswere regarded more negatively in Year 6 than 2. In fact, on 13 of the 38 items thechildren were more positive towards them at 11 than they were at seven. This echoessome of the ® ndings of earlier research by Davies and Brember into changes inchildren’ s attitudes between 7 and 9 (Davies & Brember, 1994a). Two items whichmerit some discussion are `reading to oneself’ and `writing stories’ . `Reading to oneself’is a more highly regarded activity by the children when they are 11 than when they were7. This seems to mirror the natural progression of readers from dependence on adult

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110 J. Davies & I. Brember

guidance, teaching and praise to independence in reading which allows choice ofmaterial and method of reading. The school timetable has encouraged this aspect ofreader development by having set times for uninterrupted, sustained, silent reading.However, the present pressures being put on time to cover the numeracy and literacyhours in the morning, and all other subjects in the afternoon means that silent readingis under threat. This area would be a fruitful one for further research. It is signi® cantthat `writing stories’ is the most disliked of all activities. It is the only item with scoresabove three across occasions and gender. It does become more popular in Year 6 thanYear 2Ð a predictable outcome, perhaps, given the increasing ease of writing in olderchildren. This is a signi® cant point of interest at the present time as children’ s writingat Key Stage 2 is being highlighted as an area of great concern in the light of the latesttest results. These indicate that Year 6 boys are catching up with girls at reading, butfewer than half of them reached the target level in writing compared with almost twothirds of girls (O’Leary, 1999). What is interesting about this present study is that boysand girls both dislike story writing, yet the girls overcome this dislike in the testssuf® ciently to do much better than the boys at writing. It would be useful to investigatethis ® nding further to see how deep the feeling against story writing is felt in the girlscompared to the boys. There are signi® cant gender differences in attitudes found in thisstudy. The ® ndings reveal that the pattern of signi® cant gender differences in curricu-lum preferences is largely maintained as the children got older. What is revealed, too,is that the girls’ level of negativity increases by much more than the boys in the junioryears. The girls have almost caught up with the boys’ negative attitudes the girls. Inaddition, the attitudes of Year 7 and 8 girls would merit attention to look for anychange between them and the ® ndings of this Year 2 and 6 study. Concern about boys’negative attitudes towards discipline and their relationships with teachers, which hasbeen part of public domain discussion, in terms of `lad culture’ , in recent months isreinforced by this study. Girls are still signi® cantly keener on using the teacher as alearning resource and as an authority ® gure to respect than the boys. Boys, on the otherhand, are less concerned about breaking school rules, being told off, individually orcollectively in public by the teacher and head teacher and getting into arguments and® ghts. The differential effect of the sex of the teachers on pupils could be investigatedfurther. In this sample, four of the ® ve schools had female heads and, out of a totalteaching staff of 56, six of the teachers were male. One of the Year 6 classes was taughtby a male teacher, others by female teachers. All Year 2 classes were taught by femaleteachers. The lack of same-sex role models for the boys may be an issue. The otherissue which needs investigating is whether there is an incompatibility between the malesex-role model of independence, activity, assertiveness and dominance in young boys,and the docility, con® dence and submissiveness which some researchers say is pro-moted in primary schools, and whether this displays itself in boy behaviour (Lee, 1973;Brutsaert & Bracke 1994).

This study has added more evidence about children’ s attitude changes between 7 and11. In order to understand and in¯ uence the educational pathways of girls and boys, itis important to monitor their perceptions of the curriculum and to investigate furtherthe in¯ uence of personal characteristics and educational variables. The practical exam-ples of ways in which boys can be motivated to higher achievement in English (QCA)need to be supplemented by carefully devised policies to inform practice, whichencourages boys to be as positive as girls towards the hidden curriculum of disciplineand authority on which successful school life depends. The ® nding that story writing isthe most disliked area of the curriculum is important and needs further investigating.

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Differing Attitudes in Boys and Girls 111

Similarly, the worrying speed with which girls are catching up with boys in their morenegative views of the school curriculum needs addressing.

Correspondence: J. Davies, School of Education, Humanities Building, Universityof Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: [email protected]

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Appendix 1: Smiley itemsÐ means and standard deviations (below) for each

group

Occasion Boys Girls

Question Boys Girls O1 O2 B1 B2 G1 G2

Maths (c) 2.44 2.31 2.07 2.70 2.27 1.86 2.62 2.751.11 0.88 1.42 1.31 1.58 1.18 1.36 1.25

Doing sums (c) 2.44 2.37 2.29 2.52 2.36 2.22 2.52 2.511.04 0.81 1.32 1.18 1.40 1.24 0.30 1.03

Weighing and measuring (c) 2.24 2.69 2.46 2.66 2.50 2.42 2.39 2.961.05 0.92 1.44 1.23 1.49 1.38 1.19 1.21

PE on apparatus 1.34 1.39 1.24 1.48 1.25 1.24 1.43 1.530.60 0.56 0.77 0.84 0.77 0.67 0.82 0.85

Cooking (c) 2.01 1.48 1.86 1.64 2.14 1.55 1.87 1.400.96 0.69 1.28 1.01 1.45 1.00 1.16 0.76

Games in PE (c) 1.30 1.48 1.52 1.26 1.44 1.60 1.16 1.360.57 0.61 0.95 0.69 0.93 0.97 0.59 0.77

Movement or Drama (c) 2.42 1.81 2.31 1.95 2.64 1.97 2.22 1.660.97 0.76 1.39 1.14 1.48 1.19 1.26 0.90

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Painting and drawing (c) 1.67 1.58 1.61 1.63 1.70 1.52 1.62 1.64

0.78 0.67 1.04 0.93 1.13 0.93 0.98 0.88Modelling (c) 1.46 1.56 1.59 1.43 1.58 1.60 1.35 1.52

0.68 0.64 1.00 0.78 1.07 0.93 0.76 0.78Singing (c) 3.04 2.30 2.69 2.69 3.13 2.22 2.98 2.38

1.13 0.94 1.55 1.40 1.61 1.33 1.43 1.30Sewing (c) 3.26 2.31 2.44 3.15 2.96 1.90 3.54 2.72

1.16 0.95 1.57 1.42 1.67 1.24 1.43 1.27Music and Instrumental (c) 2.09 1.72 1.90 1.93 2.12 1.67 2.08 1.76

0.98 0.74 1.24 1.11 1.39 1.00 1.22 0.95Reading to Teacher (c) 2.64 2.46 2.11 3.00 2.14 2.07 3.13 2.86

1.04 0.96 1.38 1.34 1.43 1.32 1.41 1.25Reading to Self (c) 1.97 1.79 2.04 1.73 2.07 2.00 1.88 1.58

1.00 0.76 1.38 1.06 1.46 1.29 1.19 0.88Listening to the teacher read (c) 2.11 2.16 1.79 2.48 1.86 1.72 2.39 2.58

0.93 0.82 1.15 1.26 1.23 1.06 1.26 1.24Writing stories (c) 3.36 3.58 3.57 3.36 3.42 3.31 3.73 3.42

1.16 0.97 1.55 1.40 1.67 1.46 1.42 1.32Writing poems (c) 2.74 2.39 2.44 2.70 2.66 2.20 2.82 2.56

1.12 0.96 1.49 1.39 1.61 1.32 1.42 1.35Writing other things (c) 2.67 2.45 2.38 2.74 2.50 2.26 2.82 2.64

1.07 0.88 1.43 1.25 1.52 1.31 1.35 1.13Project or topic work (c) 2.09 2.02 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.03 2.12 1.00

0.92 0.91 1.39 1.14 1.40 1.37 1.16 1.12Doing Science (c) 1.87 2.19 2.02 2.04 1.92 2.13 1.83 2.27

0.93 0.96 1.36 1.22 1.36 1.34 1.12 1.27Outings or visits (ic) 1.18 1.13 1.19 1.12 1.22 1.16 1.14 1.09

0.49 0.37 0.69 0.48 0.72 0.66 0.57 0.34School rules (d) 3.40 2.97 3.13 3.25 3.36 2.89 3.44 3.04

1.16 1.03 1.66 1.38 1.69 1.59 1.42 1.30Broke school rule (d) 3.72 4.30 4.11 3.87 3.83 4.42 3.59 4.17

1.10 0.79 1.53 1.15 1.68 1.28 1.26 0.94Sent to head/good (it) 1.39 1.30 1.35 1.34 1.41 1.29 1.37 1.32

0.70 0.61 0.98 0.86 1.05 0.88 0.92 0.80Sent to head bad (d) 4.24 4.67 4.44 4.45 4.22 4.67 4.25 4.67

0.96 0.66 1.22 1.06 1.39 0.97 1.19 0.85Class told off (d) 3.62 4.03 3.93 3.71 3.68 4.19 3.57 3.86

1.02 0.77 1.42 1.11 1.55 1.20 1.20 0.98You told off (d) 4.08 4.47 4.20 4.33 4.03 4.39 4.11 4.56

0.98 0.74 1.30 1.16 1.43 1.12 1.28 0.96Teacher pleased (it) 1.41 1.23 1.32 1.33 1.41 1.22 1.41 1.24

0.64 0.53 0.91 0.73 1.02 0.76 0.81 0.62

Show work to teacher (it) 2.09 1.84 1.79 2.15 1.87 1.71 2.31 1.990.86 0.70 1.07 1.09 1.14 0.98 1.19 0.96

Ask teacher for help (it) 2.45 2.32 2.26 2.51 2.33 2.19 2.56 2.470.91 0.80 1.23 1.05 1.31 1.13 1.11 0.99

Working with others (ic) 1.86 1.78 1.94 1.69 2.00 1.87 1.70 1.680.89 0.74 1.30 0.90 1.40 1.18 0.97 0.82

Going out to play (ic) 1.40 1.71 1.69 1.40 1.56 1.83 1.23 1.580.60 0.77 1.09 0.86 1.02 1.14 0.68 0.99

Arguments or ® ghts (d) 3.36 4.10 3.75 3.68 3.37 4.16 3.33 4.051.17 0.86 1.56 1.34 1.67 1.31 1.43 1.12

Doing as told (d) 2.52 2.18 2.22 2.48 2.42 2.02 2.62 2.331.00 0.87 1.44 1.20 1.54 1.28 1.23 1.16

School (ic) 2.77 2.30 2.31 2.80 2.53 2.07 3.04 2.541.16 1.01 1.56 1.49 1.66 1.41 1.53 1.40

School holiday (ic) 1.20 1.31 1.39 1.10 1.31 1.48 1.08 1.120.58 0.66 1.03 0.55 0.91 1.13 0.56 0.53

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Which face is you 1.96 1.70 1.80 1.86 1.98 1.60 1.94 1.780.93 0.67 1.20 0.91 1.34 0.99 1.01 0.78

Feel about this 1.76 1.54 1.61 1.70 1.70 1.51 1.81 1.570.92 0.67 1.14 1.08 1.27 0.97 1.25 0.84

B 5 boys; G 5 girls; O1 5 Year 2; O2 5 Year 6; B1 5 boys Year 2; B2 5 boys Year 6; G1 5 girls Year 2;G2 5 girls Year 6.

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