1. Think back to when you were in Grade 7 or 8.
Picture the most
disengaged student in your class.
What is this person doing/not doing?
Why?

2. Young Architects
Engaging Adolescent Male Students in the
Middle Years Classrooms of the 21st Century
By Brent Galloway
Brent Galloway,
Middle Years Program Coordinator, Red Deer College
agallowa@ualberta.ca
MiddleYearsGuy@Twitter.com
http://gallowayprofessionalpresentations.blogspot.ca
Used with permission, Clive School
WinWin Program, 2002
Used with permission, Clive School
WinWin Program, 2002

3. •I was a middle years student (grade 6-8)
•I was a middle years teachers (grades 6-9)
•Father of two boys who experienced
challenges/opportunities in the middle years
•Administrator of K-9 schools who designed “WinWin”
Program for unsuccessful students (mainly boys)
•Administrators Book Study Group: “Boys and Girls Learn
Differently”
•AISI Coordinator (Strategic Instructional Design to
Engage Students)
•Coordinator/Instructor for UofA Middle Years
Education Degree at Red Deer College
•And now a doctoral student
“’At risk’ students are those who leave school before or after
graduation with little possibility of continuing learning”
…Roland Barth
Retrieved from
http://www.michaelgurian.com/
My Background

4. Middle Years,
High SchoolPrimary
How do students learn? How do teachers teach?

6. My Ten Year Journey Begins
Dr. Michael Gurian, author of Boys and Girls
Learn Differently, believes “that many poor
learners can be turned around if we just
acknowledge the differences between boys and
girls and re-educate ourselves on how to help
them thrive.”
Used with permission, Clive School, WinWin Program, 2002

7. What is in the Title?
Fostering a Love of Reading in Boys
Are Schools Failing Our Sons?
Boys in Crisis
How Can Teacher-Librarians Help Make
Reading a Guy Thing
Meeting Boys‟ Needs
Why Boys Fail
Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys
Why Boys Need Parents
How to Fix Boys

9. EDES 340: Active & Interactive Curriculum
EDES 440: Curriculum Integration
EDPS 310: Managing the Learning Environment

11. SIDES:
Strategic Instructional Design to Engage Students

13. 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Why are these
rated as less effective?
Do we abandon these or
just do them better?

14. 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Why are these
rated as less effective?
Do we abandon these or
just do them better?

15. Used with permission, Speak Out,
Wolf Creek Public School Division, 2010

17. Retrieved from “What did you
do in school today?”, Canadian
Education Association, 2009

18. • Current Canadian research on student education states that students
start to become “intellectually disengaged” in the middle years of their
education (What did you do in school today. 2009). This disengagement
is even more pronounced amongst male students.

19. What is
happening
here?

21. Turn & Talk at Tables
Hypothesize:
1. Why do students start to become
disengaged starting in the middle
years grades? (Grade 5, 6, 7)
2.What leads disengaged students to
drop out of high school?

23. The PROBLEM is that many young adolescent males are intellectually disengaged as
students in the middle school classrooms of today. There is little evidence as to
how to instructionally design quality learning that will engage them deeply in ways
that will allow them to construct their own meaning while acquiring the learning
competencies needed to be successful in the 21st century.
 Boys are 5 times more likely to have
learning disabilities and 3 times more
likely to require speech pathology.
 Boys receive a majority of all school
suspensions
 Boys are 4 times more likely to
“complete” suicides
 85% of homeless people are males.
 Boys are diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Disorder almost 10 times as
often as girls
 Most people with drug addictions are
male (70% of serious drug/alcohol
problems)
 Twice as many boys as girls are kept
behind a year at some point in their
education
 Boys make up 2/3rds of the learning
disabled and 90% of the behaviourally
disabled; they number 100% of the
most seriously disabled.
 Boys are four times more likely
than girls to be prescribed Ritalin,
commonly used to treat
hyperactivity and attention-deficit
disorders
 Boys achieve 10% less than girls on
the highest levels in standardized
reading and writing tests in grades
3 and 6
 Boys are disciplined 5 to 10 times
more often than girls in elementary
and middle school.
 Boys are 90% of the discipline
problems in High School and 80%
of the dropouts
 Fewer boys than girls go on to
college, and the number of boys
seeking higher education degrees
has dropped drastically
 In the past four years, the
unemployment rate for young men
has risen more than women
 Boys are more likely victims of
violence on school property by a 3
to 1 margin.

24. Digital and
Technological
Fluency
Communication
Social, Cultural,
Global and
Environmental
Responsibility
Creativity and
Innovation
Critical
Thinking,
Problem Solving
and Decision
Making
Collaboration
and Leadership
Lifelong Learning,
Personal
Management and
Well-Being
Alberta Education defines a “competency” as “an interrelated set of attitudes,
skills and knowledge which are drawn upon and applied to a particular context for
successful learning and living” (Alberta Education, Framework for student
learning, 2011, p. 1)
In 21st century learning, the student is the center versus the curriculum, and
the student acquires competencies as they explore 21st century themes &
problems (Trilling & Fadel, 2011)
Today‟s students are defined as “digital learners” who experience learning
differently because they have “grown up surrounded by digital media” (Trilling &
Fadel, p. 27).
Trilling & Fader, 2011.

25. Intellectual engagement: “A serious emotional and cognitive
investment in learning, using higher-order thinking skills
(creating, analysis, evaluation) to increase understanding, solve
complex problems or construct new knowledge”
(What did you do in school today, p. 7, 2009).

27. Flow Theory
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) uses the word “flow” to
describe learning activities that “have as their primary function the
provision of enjoyable experiences” (p. 72). When one is in the “flow zone”,
a student‟s skill level is matched with the level of challenge in the activity,
so that a student experiences positive emotions rather than those such as
anxiety or boredom, and becomes “fully invested” in the activity.

28. High Yield Instructional Strategies
Where do students “construct” their own meanings?
Where do students “direct” their own learning?
Cooperative Learning
Jigsaw/Community
Circle/Task Rotation
Advance Organizers
Graphic Organizers
Complex Organizers
Visual Organizers
Non-linguistic representations
Drawing and Artwork/Visuals
Visual Representations/Mind Maps
Mind‟s Eye
Summarizing and Note-taking
Summarizing and Note-making
Place Matt, Fish Bone, etc.
Window Notes/New American Lecture/Direct Instruction
MARZANO
TATE
BENNETT
Academic Games
Movement/Games/
Role Play/Drama
Active Participation/
Role-playing
Teams/Games/Tournaments
Friendly Controversy
Debates/Problem
Based Learning
Academic Controversy
Mystery/Inductive
Learning/Decision
Making
SILVER Similarities/Differences
Simile/Metaphors
EBS/PMI/Inductive Thinking/
de Bono‟s Thinking Hats
Compare and Contrast/
Concept Attainment/Metaphor
Pattern Maker

29. What‟s Missing?
• Research on specific instructional
strategies suitable to boys in the
middle years classroom
• Research on specific instructional
design decisions that will
intellectually engage male learners
• Research on how boys, as digital
learners, experience learning in the
middle years classroom of today

30. YOUNG
ARCHITECTS
How do boys experience learning in the middle years
classrooms of the 21st century?
How do boys construct personal meaning while acquiring the necessary
competencies to be a successful 21st learner
As teachers, how can we instructionally design learning to intellectually
engage the boy learners of the middle years classrooms?
How can we integrate curriculum to better engage the digital learners in
today’s classrooms?
How can we use active/interactive curriculum principles to engage students?
How can we integrate the 21st century learning competencies into student
learning?
How can we move to a more student-centered, curriculum?
My Learning Continues…..
My Future Research:
INTERPRETIVE INQUIRY

31. Purpose of the Research
• This study will be to investigate and interpret
the stories and backgrounds that young
adolescent males have had in experiencing
learning in a middle school environment. This
study will attempt to better understand the
reasons for their disengagement in school, and
how we, as teachers, can design learning that
will better engage these learners with deep,
powerful learning experiences centered on the
21st century learning competencies, and the
current digital literacy skills that these
students possess.

32. Methodology and Methods
METHODOLOGY: Interpretive Inquiry
I hope to use interpretive inquiry interviews including
the use of a pre-interview activity, a student focus group and 2
to 3 interviews throughout the research process
METHODS: I wish to use a multi-methods approach to my
research that will include the following:
QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTION
I wish to approach this problem by examining three
perspectives: that of the young adolescent male student, that
of the teacher of these students , and that of other
researchers (this will be accomplished through my literature
review)
QUANTITATIVE DATA COLLECTION
Teacher survey (Instructional design, student engagement)
Student survey (Demonstrating learning, Digital literacy skills)

34. Wise Words
“If we want to have engaged brains in the
classroom, we have to have an interactive
environment” … Spencer Kagan
“Fairness is everyone getting what
they need in school”
…Martha Kaufeldt
“All kids in our society are at risk
…Dr. Martin Brokenleg
“We have school-induced ADHD because
schools aren‟t brain compatible with the
brains of today‟s children”
…Dr. David Sousa
“Educators often lack understanding of
„typical boy‟ traits such as physical
aggression, verbal and emotional reticence,
and interest in objects moving through
space”. – Michael Gurian
“Are we training kids to write tests for life,
or are we training kids for the tests of life”
….Art Costa
“‟At risk‟ students are those who leave
school before or after graduation with
little possibility of continuing learning”
…Roland Barth
“The way North American schools
teach boys puts them at risk of
underachieving”
– Michael Gurian, author of Boys and
Girls Learn Differently
“The average boy is quite different
than the average girl, and that‟s due
to nature, not nurture.”
– Gabrielle Bauer, “Boys Must be
Boys” Canadian Living
There are no „bad‟ kids, just
kids with „bad‟ problems”
…Harold Brathwaite

35. Young Architects
Engaging Adolescent Male Students in the
Middle Years Classrooms of the 21st Century
Brent Galloway,
Middle Years Program Coordinator,
Red Deer College
agallowa@ualberta.ca
MiddleYearsGuy@Twitter.com
http://gallowaybookreviews.blogspot.ca/Used with permission, Clive School
WinWin Program, 2002
Used with permission, Clive School
WinWin Program, 2002