This article, based on a 3 year study in East Anglian schools, draws on a range of evidence pointing to different attitudes of girls and boys to General Certi cate of Secondary Education (GCSE) work. Suggestions are made to account for these differences, with particular emphasis being placed on peer pressure, image and social groupings. Although these are relevant to both sexes, it was found to be more acceptable for girls to work hard and still be part of the 'in crowd', whilst boys were under greater pressure to conform to a 'cool', masculine image, and were more likely to be ridiculed for working hard. The article concludes by suggesting that one approach to closing the current gender gap may be to enable boys in school to move beyond the stereotypical image of the macho male. 8 (online)/00/030393 -15 Ó 2000 British Educationa l Research Association 394 M. Warrington et al. MethodologyThe article is based on a 3-year study of the gender gap in schools in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, and we draw here mainly on focus group interviews with groups of girls and boys in four comprehensive and four selective schools, and on lesson observations and teacher interviews in four of the schools where the focus group interviews had been carried out (two selectives and two comprehensives). A full discussion of the research framework and focus group methodology can be found in Warrington & Younger (1999).Overall, 41 lessons were observed and each school was visited for a period of 3-4 days. The schools were asked to draw up a convenient timetable that included a mixture of subjects, student ability groupings and male and female teachers of varying ages. Class sizes varied, as did the gender composition of the class and the year groups. Rather than being representative, the lessons sampled maximised the potential sources of variance in terms of school type, different teachers (gender, age, experience), different subjects, different students (gender, ability) and differences in any one student over time. The female observer made both qualitative and quantitative observations (Furlong & Edwards, 1989;Kelly, 1988;Taber, 1992;Boostrom, 1994), and tried to make herself as unobtrusive as possible, although inevitably her presence did have some impact on classroom dynamics.A systematic observation schedule was designed for the observer to record the frequency of pre-speci ed types of public teacher-student interaction in year 11 classrooms. Since the focus of the research was in part to gather data on relative frequencies, a category system was used to ensure that all instances of the pre-speci ed public interaction were recorded (see Wragg, 1994). Event recording was used for the same reason and also for its advantages over other systems (Anderson & Burns, 1989;Wragg, 1994). The following variables were scored: students' responses to questions put to the class; whether the responses were called out; instances when the teacher put a question to a speci c student; teachers' public praise or reprimand of individuals; stud...

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In 1990s Britain girls consistently outperform boys in examinations at 16 1 . This achievement, however, has taken place in a context where many of the concerns voiced by writers in the 1970s and 1980s have not been resolved. It is argued that there is another side to the so-called 'gender gap': drawing on data from 20 schools in eastern England, it is suggested that girls still feel alienated from traditionally 'male' subjects, that career aspirations are still highly gendered, that boys still dominate the classroom environment, that boys' laddish behaviour can have a negative effect on girls' learning, and that some teachers have lower expectations of girls and nd boys more stimulating to teach. In short, the gender debate has been captured by those concerned predominantly with male underachievement, leaving girls to make the best they can in what often continues to be a male-dominated environment.