FEATURE FOCUS: MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING
The difference between boys and girls: relational cultures and how they affect everything else in schools
conversations that take place within the boy and girl cohorts in a year group.
The nature of these conversations and interactions lies on a spectrum between being consistently supportive, compassionate and respectful at one end, and mean, harsh and aggressive at the other end. But is it the same for girls and boys?
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n our second feature this month looking at mental health and wellbeing we speak to Andrew Hampton, author of “When Girls Fall Out” and “Working with Boys – Creating Cultures of Mutual Respect in Schools”, who talks about his work in schools, looking at the relational cultures of both girls and boys.
‘Relational Cultures’ is a very useful expression which refers to all aspects of the way pupils in school relate to each other. The most obvious and easily observable cultures are those which manifest in the friendships, interactions and
If you ask both boys and girls that question they will tell you that friendships are formed very differently. There is much to be gained by explicitly acknowledging the differences when forming policy to support both genders. In their book The Incredible Teenage Brain, Hohnen, Gilmour and Murphy conclude something we tend to take for granted: the absolute imperative for most children and adolescents to form strong social connections. When a child tells the grownup at home the story of their day, they tend not to talk about what they learnt but about the social interactions they had with their peers.
Given that the quality of their social connections is key to their happiness and fulfilment, it is no surprise that I advocate a far greater focus by schools on pupils’ relational cultures than is the norm.
Friendship: an existential imperative for girls There is an existential imperative for every school-
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aged girl, throughout the world, to have at least one friend, in their year group, in their school. If a girl comes to school and walks into Registration only to realise that she has no one to sit next to – that can be utterly devastating for that girl; she can feel like she just wants to return home. When girls fall out with each other the conventional response from schools is to use a ‘justice tools’ approach.
In other words, alongside mediation and restorative practice, teachers interview and probe for the truth in the hope that they will get to the bottom of what caused the friendship turbulence. They assume that finding the truth will enable them to dispense justice that will be accepted by all and that, after some sanctions and/or firm words, things between the girls will return to normal.
The problem with this approach is that it rarely, if ever, works. In fact, if you ask the girls whether things get better or worse when the adults (teachers or grownups at home) get involved in their friendship issues, 99% will tell you (with some emphasis) that things get considerably worse.
The answer is simple but also very nuanced. In a nutshell, teachers should stop taking written statements and trying to mediate – and instead use an empathy-based approach which is strictly non-judgmental, non-didactic and which uses a
September 2023
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