Both boys and girls can struggle with self-esteem issues during the middle school years. How each group learns can impact this area. According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, girls tend to do better in school than boys as measured by report cards, but girls also tend to set higher standards for themselves. Girls who consistently do well in school may have lower self-esteem because they tend to be excessively critical of their academic performance. On the other hand, boys at the middle- school level tend to have an inflated view of their accomplishments and abilities, which can have a negative impact on their self-esteem at report-card time if they are surprised by their grades.
The differences in what motivates boys and girls when it comes to learning can also have an impact on learning styles. The NASSPA points out that educational psychologists have found girls to be more interested in pleasing adults during the elementary and middle-school years. For girls, getting good grades equals making teachers and parents happy. Boys are more motivated to study and excel if the subjects they are learning are interesting to them.
Most boys tend to be visual learners, and for many, the middle-school years can be turbulent from an academic perspective. This may be due in part to increases in reading requirements, the changes in homework styles from elementary school to middle school and the need to spend more time in traditional classroom learning. J.L. and G. Cook for Education.com suggest that differences between boys and girls in the areas of visual and spatial learning (the ability to visualize how an object would look from a different angle) tend to widen throughout adolescence.
Girls tend to be auditory learners. Although hormonal and bodily changes are many during middle school, the switch from elementary classrooms to traditional reading and lecture-style classrooms are not as disruptive as they are for boys. According to J.L. and G. Cook for Education.com, auditory learning and language development are the most consistent gender differences between boys and girls. Girls tend to speak earlier, have larger vocabularies and put words together into sentences at earlier ages than boys. Some of the language differences between boys and girls get smaller during middle school, but girls consistently outperform boys in the area of writing.