The article that stood out to me in May's addition of the Psychologist was 'Failing boys, failing psychology' written by Marc Smith. It is of great interest to me why many boys do not chose to study psychology and those who do, achieve significantly lower results on average than girls. Naturally, this poses the question why this is the case. Boys appear to be more attracted to science based subjects and since 2008 psychology has been classified as a science but it seems it is an exception to the trend. Interestingly, boys represent the majority in physical education and sports science which significant amounts of the course are based on psychology such as personality and motivation. Rowley and Delgarno (2010) surveyed A-level psychology teachers in an attempt to understand how psychology is taught in schools. Nearly 80 per cent of those who responded to the survey were female creating the feeling psychology is a majority female subject. The overall popularity of psychology as an A-level subject is rapidly increasing but unfortunately only the minority of the students studying it are boys.
