Reading, Gender, and Engagement : Lessons From Five PISA Countries

The authors, members of the PISA/PIRLS Task Force, provide a summary of major gender differences in performance found overall on PISA 2009, along with relevant trends since 2000. The five countries represented by the authors are highlighted in this summary, which includes findings related to the interaction of engagement and reading literacy achievement by gender. These data are foregrounded from PISA because they add further evidence of a serious global pattern of boys’ underachievement in reading and lower reading engagement relative to girls. This is followed by a discussion of what each of our five countries has done in response to the gender gap in reading literacy. The article concludes with guidelines for closing the gender achievement gap for boys, based on PISA results and any promising national initiatives.