Dr Bonny Hartley, School of Human Sciences, at the Centre for Inequalities; Centre for Vulnerable Children and Families; and Centre for Thinking and Learning at the Institute of Lifecourse Development (ILD). Dr Hartley joined the School of Human Sciences as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2015. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Kent and has previously held positions at Plymouth University.
Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals:
Bonny's work supports SDG's 4 - Quality Education and 5 - Gender Equality.
Gender equality in education
Dr Bonny Hartley’s interdisciplinary research focuses on gender stereotyping and barriers to girls’ and boys’ educational achievement. She studies gender stereotypes and norms about academic effort, achievement and intellectual ability among school children and adults. She is particularly interested in the development and self-fulfilling endorsement of such beliefs and attributions; their effects on effort, achievement, motivation, behaviour, and peer relations; and interventions to reduce such stereotypes and their negative effects.
Some of her work has addressed paradoxical findings in previous research showing that boys are stereotyped as lower achieving, less hard working, and even less able than girls, but also that intellectual brilliance is ascribed more to boys; her findings resolved these issues by considering differences between associations with effortful versus effortless achievement. Dr. Hartley’s current programme of research examines masculinity norms and boys' academic underachievement, funded by a prestigious British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. This work involves working with schools to better understand and challenge stereotypes and norms surrounding girls’ and boys’ achievement.
As this research continues, collaborating schools intend to implement interventions based on the findings. This research has also been noted in the national media, with reports in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, BBC Radio London, BBC Radio Kent, and BBC Newsround.
