Girls negotiating sexuality and violence in the primary school

Girls’ vulnerability to sexual violence and harassment is a recurrent theme in much of the literature on schooling in sub‐Saharan Africa. Within this research, girls are often framed as passive victims of violence. By drawing on a case study, this paper focuses on 12 to 13‐year‐old South African school girls as they mediate and participate in heterosexual cultures that are simultaneously privileging and damaging. Set against the wider social context where violent gender relations are key to the building blocks of patriarchy, the paper examines how heterosexuality underscores the formation of femininity as girls engage with and participate with each other and boys in informal school relations. To this end, Butler's concept of the ‘heterosexual matrix’ is deployed to examine how girls navigate the wall of male power, where the ‘real’ expression of femininity is embedded within heterosexuality. The paper explores girls’ investment in heterosexual cultures in the school playground and on ‘dress‐up Friday’ to examine how gender power inequalities and violent relations manifest. In expanding the analysis of heterosexuality to primary school contexts, the paper broadens the focus of school‐based gender and sexualities research in sub‐Saharan Africa to address a neglected area of younger girls’ femininity and their active agency. The paper argues for the importance of addressing primary school girls, femininity and the power of heterosexuality through which relations of inequalities operate.     

Young children,gender and the heterosexual matrix

In this paper I consider the adult focus of current mainstream gender theory. I relate this to how the concept of the heterosexual matrix originates in a social contract which excludes children from civil society. I argue that this exclusion is problematic both for theoretical reasons and from the perspective of children themselves. I start by discussing the nature of the heterosexual matrix and its foundations. I consider the implications for participation which arise from being named as a child, how that affects children's attempts to claim participation in civil society, and how this is related to children's naming of themselves as gendered. I then briefly consider the possibility that, because of their exclusion, children might also be considered to be exempt from the heterosexual matrix. However, I argue, there is considerable evidence that children are actively sexual beings who also work hard to claim inclusion in local practices of heterosexuality. I end by suggesting that there are three key reasons for this: that the discourses of normative sexuality provide children with a language to express sexual feelings; that self-insertion in the heterosexual matrix is a way for children to claim rights to participation; and that taking up heterosexual formations is a means whereby children can experience the power of naming themselves as part of the social world.     

Peer regulation of teenage sexual identities

This article examines the teenage policing of heterosexuality in schools and contributes to debates about teenage sexual moralities and heterosexual male agency. It reports on a qualitative study in England of the collective sexual values of 12‐ to 13‐year‐olds and 14‐ to 15‐year‐olds. Focus group interviews indicated that pupils developed a consensual sexual morality through collusive sex talk. Homophobic and misogynistic views and verbal abuse were found to be key instruments of teenage peer regulation of sexual identities crossing class and ethnic boundaries. We found that the ‘official’ discourse of sex education did not relate to teenage lives. Anxieties about heterosexual masculinity and girls' sexual agency were conveyed by some boys through verbal sexual harassment—a form of behaviour regarded as intimidating yet normal. While white and Asian boys were more conservative in their views about marriage than girls, white and Asian girls struggled to resist heterosexual masculine power through career aspirations, by questioning marriage and being informed about sexual issues.     

Do you like dogs or writing? Identity performance in childen's digital message exchange

Over a number of years we have been investigating ways in which e‐communication can contribute to children's writing development and how new technology re‐frames our understandings of writing in the classroom (Merchant, 2003; Burnett et al, 2004; Burnett et al, 2005; Merchant, 2005). Here we analyse the digital writing of pupils from two linked primary school classes (Year 3–5) in the North of England. Part of the project involved the pupils in communicating about themselves and their interests to email partners of the same age. In this article, we track children's identity performance in informal message exchange and show how this contributed to a final knowledge product. We explore how work that had its origins in representing children's lives and identities reflected their position in wider cultural worlds. This perspective causes us to question whether there are there sufficient opportunities for pupils to explore and express ‘who they are’ in the current content‐driven curriculum where public genres are central and personal voice is peripheral.     

Parents' representations of their children's mathematics learning in multiethnic primary schools

There is a growing concern that governmental calls for parental involvement in children's school mathematics learning have not been underpinned by research. In this article the authors aim to offer a contribution to this debate. Links between children's home and school mathematical practices have been researched in sociocultural studies, but the origins of differences within the same cultural group are not well understood. The authors have explored the notion that parents' representations of school mathematics and associated practices at home may play a part in the development of these differences. This article reports an analysis of interviews with parents of 24 children of Pakistani and White origin enrolled in primary schools in England, including high and low achievers in school mathematics. The extent to which the parents represented their own school mathematics and their child's school mathematics as the ‘same’ or ‘different’ are examined. In addition, ways in which these representations influenced how they tried to support their children's learning of school mathematics are examined. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of the study for education policy.     

Children's perceptions of primary science assessment in England and Wales

This study builds on and contributes to work on assessment of children in primary school, particularly in science. Previous research has examined primary science assessment from different standpoints, but no studies have specifically addressed children's perspectives. This article provides additional insight into issues surrounding children's assessment in primary school and how the assessment of science might develop in England after the science SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) were abolished in 2009. Some research suggests that primary science assessment via SATs is a major reason for the observed decline in children's engagement with science in upper primary and lower secondary school. The analytic focus on engaging children as coresearchers to assist in the process of gathering informed views and interpreting findings from a large sample of children's views enables another contribution. The study, based on a survey of 1000 children in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, reveals that despite being assessed under two different regimes (high‐stakes national tests in England and moderated teacher assessment in Wales), children's views of science assessment are remarkably consistent. Most appreciate the usefulness of science assessment and value frequent, non‐SATs testing for monitoring/improving science progress. There was a largely negative impact, however, of science assessment on children's well‐being, particularly due to stress. The paper demonstrates that children provide an important perspective on assessment and that including their views can improve policy‐making in relation to primary science assessment.     

Discursive construction of Pakistan's national identity through curriculum textbook discourses in a Pakistani school in Dubai,the United Arab Emirates

This study investigates Pakistan's secondary school children's constructions of their national identity in a Pakistani school in Dubai by drawing on data collected from students and teachers from the case school and analysing national curriculum textbooks used in the school. Informed by Foucault's concepts, the article problematises how the curriculum textbooks are employed as a technology of power for inculcating national consciousness in the students. The findings suggest that Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks deploy a specific version of Islam as a major technology, which then influences other national identity signifiers in the textbooks for shaping students' national identity. The school affords a crucial space for the complex interplay of these technologies, which construct students' ethnocentric national identities, encouraging social polarisation. This has implications for Pakistan's national social cohesion as well as the potential for subverting international peaceful coexistence and working relationships, particularly in the selected overseas study context.     

Gender/Technology Relations: Complicating the gender binary

This article is concerned with gender and technology relations in education. More specifically, it focuses on assumptions made about girls' and young women's developing identity within the context of the computing and/or technology classroom in primary and secondary schools. The article argues that we must explore what is invisible yet taken for granted in social-constructionist analyses of gender-technology relations: that these relations are situated within heterosexual social norms. Research studies in computing and technology classrooms are considered in detail in order to explore questions concerned with girls' constructed 'incompetence'. The article concludes that there needs to be an analysis that considers the interrelationship between computing and gender and heterosexuality in the classroom to help broaden our understanding of how girls and women might develop knowledge and skills in locations that are gendered masculine.     

Is Schooling a Risk? Gender,Power Relations,and School Culture in Uganda

This article relates a study of AIDS education in Uganda which used an ethnography of school culture to explore the contradictions in curriculum intervention. The school was found to be a site of an extensive set of gendered practices which constituted a risk in themselves in terms of sexual health. Four forms of control are examined in this article: hegemonic masculinity, gendered discipline patterns, sexual harassment and 'compulsory' heterosexuality. Male domination and power imbalances in the school encouraged attitudes and practices with regard to sexual relationships which negated the official messages of the AIDS curriculum.     

Exploring identities to deepen understanding of urban high school students' sexual health decision‐making

Sexual health is a controversial science topic that has received little attention in the field of science education, despite its direct relevance to students' lives and communities. Moreover, research from other fields indicates that a great deal remains to be learned about how to make school learning about sexual health influence the real‐life choices of students. In order to provide a more nuanced understanding of young people's decision‐making, this study examines students' talk about sexual health decision‐making through the lens of identities. Qualitative, ethnographic research methods with twenty 12th grade students attending a New York City public school are used to illustrate how students take on multiple identities in relation to sexual health decision‐making. Further, the study illustrates how these identities are formed by various aspects of students' lives, such as school, family, relationships, and religion, and by societal discourses on topics such as gender, individual responsibility, and morality. The study argues that looking at sexual health decision‐making—and at decision‐making about other controversial science topics—as tied to students' identities provides a useful way for teachers and researchers to grasp the complexity of these decisions, as a step toward creating curriculum that influences them. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:742–762, 2010     

Children's agency during transition to formal schooling

Children's transition to school is a key issue in early years of education. Research in this field points to the counterintuitive possibility that the transition to school may actually lead to a reduction rather than a facilitation of children's agency. The paper presents findings of a longitudinal comparative ethnography on children's transition from fields of early childhood education to primary school in England and Germany. Building on theoretical concepts of the sociology of childhood, the study uses the concept of children's complicity to explore how children's agency is embedded in institutional, interactional orders and how it changes during transition. The findings indicate the importance of the structure of keeping the group of children together during transition. Not only is children's participation in the new social situation in school mediated by peer cultural routines. The paper presents the argument that the complicity children develop with their teachers' expectations takes different forms when they can rely on peer cultural routines.     

BRIDGING SOCIAL JUSTICE AND CHILDREN'S RIGHTS TO ENHANCE SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY SCHOLARSHIP AND PRACTICE

This article describes the overlap between the common goals of social justice and children's rights advocates as applied to scholarship and practice in school psychology. We argue that these frameworks overlap a great deal, with a primary distinction being the roots of each approach. Specifically, the origins of social justice movements in school psychology can be traced to multicultural school psychology, whereas the roots of school psychology and children's rights stem more from broader international movements. The potential implications of the similarities and differences are explored through a case study. Finally, recommendations for the next 25 years of social justice and children's rights scholarship and practice are provided.     

‘Ye've got to ‘ave balls to play this game sir!’ Boys,peers and fears: the negative influence of school‐based ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing hegemonic masculinities

The ongoing moral panic surrounding adolescent boys continues to cause concern, proving pivotal in popular discourses centring on the ‘problem of youth’. Drawing on ethnographic data from a large co‐educational secondary school, this paper illustrates how school outcomes are adversely affected by working class boys' investments in peer regulated ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Echoing traditional working class masculine identities formed in relation to the physical requirements of industrial labour, these performances reject associations with activities constructed as ‘feminine’, leading to disaffection with schoolwork. The paper argues that, in a school culture of pervasive homophobia, some teachers paradoxically acted as ‘cultural accomplices’, naturalizing compulsory heterosexuality in engaging alienated and disruptive young men. Moreover, evidence suggests that this is an emerging response to managerialist pressures to ‘continuously improve’ grades by adopting ‘boy friendly’ approaches. This renders questionable strategies predicated on naturalizing assumptions about boys and makes problematic calls for more ‘role models’ without investigating how gendered pedagogies affect schooling for girls and boys.     

Parental Sexual Orientation and Children's Psychological Well-Being: 2013–2015 National Health Interview Survey

Debate persists about whether parental sexual orientation affects children's well-being. This study utilized information from the 2013 to 2015 U.S., population-based National Health Interview Survey to examine associations between parental sexual orientation and children's well-being. Parents reported their children's (aged 4–17 years old, N = 21,103) emotional and mental health difficulties using the short form Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Children of bisexual parents had higher SDQ scores than children of heterosexual parents. Adjusting for parental psychological distress (a minority stress indicator) eliminated this difference. Children of lesbian and gay parents did not differ from children of heterosexual parents in emotional and mental health difficulties, yet, the results among children of bisexual parents warrant more research examining the impact of minority stress on families.     

HOMOSEXUALITY AND NORMALITY: BASIC KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR SCHOOL CONSULTATION

In the United States, controversy persists regarding what it means for heterosexuality to be the norm, or more pointedly, what it means for those not strictly heterosexual to be outside the norm. It is important that consultants in schools be aware of the current state of research bearing on homosexuality. Consultation provides a viable approach to assist educators with the questions that students, parents, teachers, and administrators themselves may be asking: What is homosexuality? Is heterosexuality the only natural sexual orientation? Can lesbian, gay, and bisexual people be psychologically healthy? Are the children of lesbian and gay parents “at risk”? Can one become ungay? What about a gay or lesbian teacher? This article explores these questions with particular attention to how consultation may be used to promote educational practices that foster positive school environments for all students.     

Constructions of childhood in school: Power,policy and practice in Irish education

This article considers the structuring of adult/child relations in Irish primary schools in terms of the absence of children's voice in much school practice. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Giddens, the article highlights how teacher constructions of childhood are framed within a 'needs' discourse, which precludes consideration of children's rights and status within school. The extent to which children accept or resist such construction is mediated by their age, gender and social class. Policy in relation to according children greater rights of consultation in school, as recommended in recent Irish legislation, will only be effective where teachers and children are afforded the opportunity to consider their relationship in terms of the exercise of power generally between adults and children, with implications for the rights and responsibilities of all parties in the educational encounter.     

Drawing digital pictures: An investigation of primary pupils’ representations of ICT and schools

The relatively restricted nature of children's use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) inside the school setting has long been noted by researchers. With this in mind, this article offers a grounded analysis of drawings collected from 355 primary pupils (years three to six) from five English primary schools depicting desired future forms of school ICT provision. The article contends that the nature and content of these future orientated pictures reflect many of the tensions underlying children's current engagements with ICTs in school. Specifically the article discusses how the drawings offer valuable insights into the issues underlying pupils’ understandings of ICT and schools, not least: the restrictions of the school as organisation; the oppositional relationship between the ‘work’ of learning in school and the ‘play’ of using digital media at home; the unequal power relations that exist between pupils, schools and teachers. The article concludes that rather than accede to demands for free and unfettered use of game consoles and portable devices in the classroom, schools should instead concentrate on fostering informed dialogues with young people about the potential educational benefits of school ICT use.     

Test Anxiety in Elementary and Secondary School Students

In this article., we review the literature on the development of test anxiety in elementary and secondary school children. Recent theoretical conceptualizations of anxiety are presented. Anxiety is posited to be a multidimensional construct that has roots in how parents react to children's early achievement strivings. Its ontogeny is tied to children's developing capacity to interpret their school performance relative to their previous performance, to the performance of other children, as well as to the increasingly strict evaluative practices children encounter as they move through school. Intervention strategies for alleviating anxious children's poor performance in evaluative situations are discussed. Important issues for future anxiety research are presented, including the need for new measures of children's anxiety and for a more thorough assessment of both individual differences in how students experience anxiety and the developmental course 0f the components of anxiety.     

Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The complications of young men (re)negotiating heterosexualized identities

Drawing on a larger ethnographic study of four high school young men, this paper foregrounds high school male–male friendships as a context for examining how heterosexism and homophobia operate to limit and delimit the ways masculinities are constructed. I begin this article by first highlighting an inconsistency between recent school initiatives aimed at “helping boys” improve literacy scores and emerging safe school initiatives that recognize and support a diversity of gender identities in Canadian schools. I move from this point to illustrate how compulsory heterosexuality emerges when high school young men attempt to develop male–male friendships. The final section describes the fear and homophobia that restrict and confine relationships among high school young men. In the light of the complex ways masculinities are negotiated among and between young men invested in friendship practices that transgress a dominant normative masculinity, the article concludes with a call to develop and ensure safe spaces exist for all students.