![[Translate to English:]](/storages/ifs-ep/_processed_/8/5/csm_AdobeStock_412860748_0b10ceda9c.jpeg "[Translate to English:]")
SpraGe - Language and Gender
Language and Gender investigates possible differences in the quality of vocabulary knowledge of girls and boys. Using empirical analysis, presumed advantages girls have with words with female connotations and boys with words with male connotations will be investigated.
Funding
Own funds Professor McElvany
Project description
Language and Gender empirically tests whether boys and girls in primary and the beginning of secondary school (10 to 14 years) have systematically different vocabulary knowledge of words with male, female, or neutral connotations. Scholastic success is built upon comprehensive language skills, the basis of which is vocabulary. Findings from developmental psychology suggest that boys and girls develop different interests and prefer different activities. Accordingly, they are likely to come into contact with different words in their everyday lives. As a result, systematic differences could develop in the quality of their vocabulary knowledge.
The project is based on a variety of data sources and ages, and different samples (e.g., fourth graders) and instruments (e.g., verbal KFT scale) are used. Using theory-based ratings the relevant words are categorized as having masculine (for example, "profit"), feminine (as "intimately"), or neutral connotations (for example, "heat"). Rating conformity is empirically verified. Relative strengths of a gender group with gender-conform connoted items are tested using a Differential Item Functioning analysis (DIF), allowing for both quantitative and qualitative differences between students to be analyzed depending on the connotation of the words. Subsequently, it is checked whether the expected gender patterns are present in different cultures coming from children immigrant backgrounds.
Results
The analyses of the solution probabilities of the FALKE vocabulary test items showed no quantitative vocabulary differences depending on the gender of the children in the third grade. However, the DIF analyses confirmed qualitative differences: boys had relative advantages for words with male connotations, girls for words with female connotations. This was also true when controlling for central social background characteristics.
The results make it clear that boys and girls of primary school age know better those words that describe something from the stereotyped world of their own gender group. For the school, this means the pedagogical task of arousing the children's interest in topics and activities that are otherwise often attributed to the other gender in everyday life, in order to support all learners as individually as possible, regardless of their gender.
Lead researcher at IFS
External project partners
- Prof. Dr. Ursula Kessels (Freie Universität Berlin)
Search & People Search
Cafeteria menus
Location & approach
The most convenient highway exits are on the B 1/A 40 (Dortmund-Barop) (closer to the North Campus) and on the A45 (Dortmund-Eichlinghofen). The university is signposted at both exits. In the local road network you will find signs to Campus Nord, where the Campus Treff is also located. From Emil-Figge-Strasse, entrance no. 18 and from Vogelspothsweg entrance no. 23 lead to parking spaces near the venue.
From Dortmund main station, take the S-Bahn "S1" in the direction of Solingen on track 7 to the stop "Dortmund-Universität" (price level A). The S-Bahn runs every 15 minutes during peak hours on weekdays and takes about 6 minutes. From Düsseldorf, the S-Bahn runs every 30 minutes. Directly at the S-Bahn station you will find the CDI building, which houses the Center for Research on Education and School Development.
One of the university's landmarks is the H-Bahn, which has two terminuses on the North Campus. One is located directly above the S-Bahn station and is easily accessible from it by elevators. The other is located in the center of Campus North at the bridge between the University Library and the Mensa, right next to the Audimax. The H-Bahn runs from here to the South Campus and the Eichlinghofen district.
Dortmund has an airport connected with some destinations in Central Europe. There are regular flights, for example, to Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Katowice, Krakow, Leipzig-Halle, London, Munich, Nuremberg, Paris, Poznan, Stuttgart, Vienna and Zurich. For the approximately 20 kilometers from the Dortmund airport to the campus, you can take the bus to the main train station and from there the S-Bahn. Faster is usually the use of a cab. Far more international flight connections are offered by the Rhine-Ruhr Airport in Düsseldorf, about 60 kilometers away, which can be reached directly by S-Bahn from the university station.