TY - JOUR A1 - Quenzel, Gudrun A1 - Hurrelmann, Klaus T1 - The growing gender gap in education T2 - International Journal of Adolescence and Youth N2 - Young women, and not young men, acquire the privileged diplomas offered by the educational system, and it is they who obtain the more promising career prospects. In this paper, we seek to identify factors that account for the declining school performance of boys and young men. After reviewing and analysing the international literature on gender and education, we integrate various explanatory approaches into a comprehensive socialisation model. The model focuses on the developmental tasks young men face during adolescence. Our central thesis is that the declining school performance of young men cannot be fully explained by their failure to cope with the developmental task ‘qualification’. Rather, the three other central clusters of developmental tasks – ‘social attachment’, ‘regeneration’, and ‘participation’ – have to be incorporated. The crucial implication is that supporting young men at school will show only limited results. Rather, to improve the school performance of young men, it is also necessary to address their deficits in coping with the other developmental tasks. KW - Gender gap KW - Education KW - Development Y1 - 2014 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/frontdoor/index/index/docId/957 SN - 0267-3843 VL - 18 IS - 2 SP - 69 EP - 84 PB - Taylor and Francis CY - Abingdon ER -