Gender Differences in the Behaviour of Lower Secondary School Students

Gender Differences in the Behaviour of Lower Secondary School Students The school classroom is among the most fundamental social units of a student and is the place where they spend a significant portion of their life. Here, they encounter serious social relationships and situations that are sources of both positive and negative stimuli, as well as a range of personal problems and conflicts. In the school environment, students and teachers must understand that others have unique properties that distinguish them from one another. They also need to understand that others independently think, feel, and know different things. However, the truth is that behavioural problems among today's students are increasing rapidly. There is a rise in negative social phenomena, not only among boys (Hanish, Guerra, 2004; Schwartz, 2000), but also among girls (Crick, Bigbee, 1998). The manifestations of students' behaviour in the school environment can be considered a reflection of the internal processes of each student. Therefore, we focus on the cognitive dimension, which concerns the student's opinions and thoughts, the affective dimension, which is oriented towards feelings and emotional reactions, and the behavioural dimension, which relates to tendencies toward conduct and action. Within this context, we examine gender differences in the manifestations of school behaviour in the lower secondary school environment.

MANIFESTATIONS OF SCHOOL BEHAVIOUR

A number of factors contribute to the emergence and persistence of negative forms of behaviour that escalate into behavioural disorders: personality traits of the child, family environment factors and the broader social environment, i.e., peer groups, the class collective, and the school (Leskovjanská, 2010). Among these factors, we focus on biological factors — sex. These can increase the probability of the emergence and development of behavioural disorders (Vágnerová, 2005). Behavioural disorders occur far more frequently in males than in females. Among the reasons is, among other things, the greater tendency toward aggressive modes of behaviour in males, in relation to the male sex hormone testosterone (ibid.). Grusec et al. (1990) present arguments that traditional male and female roles establish certain boundaries that are markedly restrictive. This concerns above all the fact that different requirements are placed on girls and boys from childhood. Parents and teachers often prefer certain patterns of behaviour that include strict ideas about appropriate modes of behaviour for girls and boys. Boys are encouraged from an early age to engage in physical and motor activities, and greater aggression is expected of them, whereas girls are expected to display gentler, quieter, calmer behaviour and to express themselves more verbally rather than through physical or motor argumentation (Shieman, 2005).

We also consider social factors to be significant within the school environment. Social groups can negatively affect students, most commonly peer groups — classmates — particularly if they represent an antisocial clique with specific norms and values. For the development of a child's personality and behaviour, the peer group exerts a stronger influence than other social factors (Vágnerová, 2005). The influence of peer groups and cliques can equally become a factor affecting the tendency toward behavioural disorders. For this reason, it is necessary to draw attention to the manifestations of students' school behaviour. Based on an analysis of educational and behavioural problems of students in primary and special schools, carried out in 1991 (In Mezera, 1999, 2000), it was found that the school activities and behaviour of maladjusted students, as a particular set, also manifested in the items sociability, negativism, and emotional lability. Orienting towards the educational environment and the peer group, sociability — the ability to create, maintain at a high level, and develop interpersonal relationships — is undoubtedly one of the most important social competences of a student, and plays a key role in an individual's socialisation (ibid.). If it is not sufficiently established and reinforced, neither prosocial effort nor prosocial attitudes towards the surrounding environment are expressed. Sociability, to a certain extent, characterises the quality of direct relationships between students of the opposite sex and the forms of communication in the educational group or school classroom. Here, the student encounters situations that may encourage rejecting reactions manifested through defiance and resistance to activities. Among the negative manifestations of school behaviour between girls and boys, we classify negativism, which is characterised by a tendency to negate the activity currently being carried out. It is necessary to distinguish manifestations of social negativistic behaviour from simple disobedience. This rather straightforward distinction is associated with the occurrence of a range of social phenomena, whereby disobedience — as a non-specific behavioural disorder — is not characterised by deliberate or involuntary negation in the student's behavioural manifestations, but rather the negating and intentional neglecting of instructions, directives, or school activities to which the student is insufficiently motivated for various reasons. The last significant area of a student's manifestations in the school environment is emotional lability. It accompanies the student in experiencing and acting; it may play a motivational role, but more often it underlies imbalance and fluctuations of the most various degrees. Emotional lability can be considered a direct consequence of social influences that lead to emotional developmental disorders in girls and boys, or even to their social exclusion (Guralnick, Neville, Hammond, Connor, 2006).

The manifestations of students' school behaviour that we encounter at school require considerable attention. In light of the above, our aim is to identify the manifestations of school behaviour among girls and boys in the school environment. The objective of our research is to determine in which variables (sociability, negativism, emotional lability) the students in question differ statistically.

RESEARCH SAMPLE

The research sample consisted of 105 respondents in the lower secondary level of education, i.e., students in the 9th grade aged 14 to 15 years. Of the total number of respondents, 44 (42%) were boys and 61 (58%) were girls. The research sample was composed of students from Slovak mainstream primary schools in Nitra and Košice. The research was carried out between October 2015 and November 2015.

METHOD

The School Behaviour Scale Questionnaire (ŠDŠS) according to Mezera (1999, 2000) contains items that can be considered indicators of individual behaviour. The following were assessed in the research: Sociability, Negativism, Emotional Lability. The individual items relatively objectively capture observable manifestations of individual or group student behaviour, as well as interactions between the student and classmates in the classroom. The subscale consisted of three items for Sociability, five items for the variable Negativism, and six items for Emotional Lability. During administration, students answered the questions using a Likert-type agreement scale consisting of five levels. The reliability of the instrument, measured by the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the entire instrument, was satisfactory (α = 0.716).

RESULTS

The results of the statistical analyses are presented in Tables 1 and 2. Statistical analyses were performed using the IBM SPSS 20 and STATA 13 statistical programmes. The examination of differences in the variables of the ŠDŠS questionnaire (Sociability, Emotional Lability, Negativism) from Mezera (1999; 2000) among students in the respective categories was carried out using Student's t-test for two independent samples.

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics of Research Data

Note: N — number of cases; Min — minimum score obtained in the respective group; Max — maximum score obtained in the respective group; M — mean; SD — standard deviation; SEM — standard error of the mean; Skewness — skewness of the distribution; Kurtosis — kurtosis of the data set

Table 1 presents descriptive data on the intensity of the individual variables examined. The mean score for both research groups in the variable Sociability is M = 11.52 with a standard deviation of SD = 2.42; in the variable Emotional Lability, the mean is M = 18.97 with a standard deviation of SD = 4.740; and in the variable Negativism, the mean for both research groups is M = 19.06 with a standard deviation of SD = 3.553. Based on the skewness and kurtosis of the data distribution, we can state that the data meet the criteria of normality, with the exception of the variable Negativism, where the kurtosis moves outside the interval (−1 to +1). We supplemented the analysis with the Kolmogorov–Smirnov R coefficient, on the basis of which we confirmed the symmetry of the data set (R = 1151; p = 0.142), and parametric tests were chosen for further analyses.

Table 2 Gender Differences in the Variables of the ŠDŠS Questionnaire

Note: N — number of cases; M — mean; SD — standard deviation; df — degrees of freedom; t — Student's t-test; p — level of statistical significance

When evaluating behaviour among students in the respective research categories in the variables of the ŠDŠS questionnaire, we found a statistically significant difference (at the 0.05 level) in the variables Emotional Lability (F = −2.088; p = 0.039) and Negativism (F = 2.767; p = 0.007). In the variable Emotional Lability, girls showed a higher mean score by 1.93 points compared to boys. On the other hand, in the variable Negativism, boys showed a higher mean score by 1.89 points compared to girls. In the variable Sociability, no statistically significant difference was found (Table 2).

Figure 1 Gender Differences in Emotional Lability

Figure 2 Gender Differences in Negativism

Figures 1 and 2 present a graphical representation of the differences in the variables where the research groups differed statistically significantly. In the variable Emotional Lability, girls' scores are distributed around the mean, while boys' scores are concentrated in the range from 15 to 30 points. In Negativism, girls achieved a higher mean score on average; however, in both sexes, we observe negative skewness of the data distribution, meaning that the scores of both research groups are predominantly above the mean (Figure 1; Figure 2).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

We examined manifestations of school behaviour among girls and boys. We found a statistically significant difference (at the 0.05 level) in the variables Emotional Lability and Negativism. In the variable Emotional Lability, girls showed a higher mean score by 1.93 points compared to boys. In the variable Negativism, boys showed a higher mean score by 1.89 points compared to girls. Similar findings were reported by Sobanski, Banashewski, Chen et al. (2010). The study shows that a significant degree of emotional lability occurs in some, but not all, children and adolescents with ADHD. On the other hand, more severe emotional lability was found in somewhat older children and more frequently in girls than in boys. In this context, behind the actual developmental differences between boys and girls, we can understand subtle overlapping gender differentials — for example, a higher level of aggression in boys and a more pronounced dominance hierarchy in boys' groups (Langmeier, Krejčířová, 1998). In several studies (Keane, Calkins, 2004; Taylor, Liang, Tracy, Williams, Seigle, 2002), greater sensitivity in girls and greater aggression in boys are confirmed, which may later lead to problem behaviour. We recognise that defining the boundaries of problem behaviour and manifestations of students' school behaviour undoubtedly requires more attention, as the dynamics of students' school behaviour are determined by a range of factors. Indeed, the results we interpret in this study can be considered a problem that may have consequences for the healthy development and formation of young people's personalities. In order to prevent this phenomenon, or to eliminate problem behaviour in the school environment, it is necessary to focus — in both girls and boys — on the development of social competences, among other things. These can significantly influence not only the social position of students in the classroom, but also their behaviour. Through the development of social competences, we aim toward healthy mental and social development, and thus can help students cope with various challenges in their lives (Elias, 1995).

Authors: Mgr. Eva Lörinczová Mgr. Robert Tomšik The authors work at the Department of Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

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