Back to the future on gender and anti‐school boys: a response to Jeffrey Smith

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is an expression of working class counter‐school culture; (2) some teachers are ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing ‘hegemonic masculinities’ of anti‐school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these ‘cultural accomplices’ are an emerging response to recent moral panics and neo‐liberal managerialism concerned with ‘failing boys’ at school. It is suggested that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is not necessarily associated with anti‐school values in working class culture. Many working class boys might subscribe to ‘hegemonic masculinity’ without rejecting learning. Contrary to Smith’s emphasis on how working class culture generates anti‐school ‘hegemonic masculinity’, there is the possibility that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is fused with anti‐school values produced by organisational differentiation. The continuing commonalities between working class anti‐school boys and the ‘gender regime’ of some secondary schools for over 20 years implies something more enduring at work than recent moral panics.     

Playing the game: critical literacy,gender justice and issues of masculinity

This paper explores issues of critical literacy, gender justice and masculinity through ‘Mr A’s’ story. Mr A is head of English at ‘Grange College’ – an all boys’ school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). The paper highlights how the privileging of rationality, control and ‘the masculine’ within Mr A’s ‘teaching‐as‐usual’ discourse constrains his efforts to pursue gender justice through critical literacy. While Mr A scaffolds his students’ critical analysis of gender and power in texts, his investments in teacher/student binary relations draw rigid boundaries between himself and his students in ways that delegitimise the terrain beyond the rational and ignore a theorising of the self. Drawing on Mr A’s story within Davies’ theorising about the possibilities of critical literacy, this paper adds to key work in arguing the importance of teachers’ interrogating their classrooms as lived texts where the relations of domination and power that derail the social justice possibilities of critical literacy can be made both recognisable and revisable. Such interrogation is foregrounded here as particularly urgent within the current moment where rationalist discourses within and beyond schools are increasingly working to circumscribe and constrain teacher practice in ways that stifle transformative social agendas.     

Cool Guys,Swots and Wimps: the interplay of masculinity and education

Most educational work concerned with changes in gender relations has been addressed to girls, justified on ‘equal opportunity’ principles, and governed by ‘sex‐role’ theories. This framework is not very relevant to educational work with boys, yet gender issues arise here too. The paper presents retrospective data on schooling from the life‐histories of two groups of men, drawn from a larger study of contemporary changes in masculinity. Unemployed working‐class men recall ‘getting into trouble’, a process of constructing masculinity through conflict with the institutional authority of the school. Here, the school, as part of the state represents a power they cannot participate in. However, the school is also a site of the differentiation of masculinities. Some working‐class boys embrace a project of mobility in which they construct a masculinity organised around themes of rationality and responsibility. This is closely connected with the ‘certification’ function of the upper levels of the educational system and to a key form of masculinity among professionals. Some young men from this background, however, reject the connection with abstracted knowledge and bureaucratic authority, among them men interviewed who are in the environmental movement. A number of these men had encountered feminism first‐hand, for instance through feminist texts. Where there are low levels of literacy, especially political literacy, feminist influence on men is slight. On the other hand, a common reaction among men who do study feminist writing is a demobilising guilt. A major opportunity for educational action exists, but there are difficulties in designing it. Broadly, the strongest effects of schooling on the construction of masculinity are the indirect effects of streaming and failure, authority pattern, the academic curriculum and definitions of knowledge—rather than the direct effects of equity programmes or courses dealing with gender. This is a major strategic problem for reform. Two criteria for action can be suggested: curricula need to be designed to broaden boys’ sources of information about sexuality and gender; programmes need to be designed that allow for practical accomplishment on these issues, not open‐ended problem identification alone.     

What mothers do: everyday routines and rituals and their impact upon young children’s use of drawing for meaning making

This paper draws upon evidence from a three‐year longitudinal study of young children drawing across home, pre‐school and school. The study shows how the belief systems of significant adults and more able peers/siblings impact upon the child’s access to, use of and beliefs about drawing. Concentrating upon the children when in the Foundation Stage (aged between three and five), the paper highlights:

• the importance of the mother’s role in organizing the home space, the child’s time and his or her access to materials;

• gendered responses to an environment in which the mother is a constant presence in comparison with the limited presence of the father.

     

We don’t play with gays,they’re not real boys … they can’t fight: Hegemonic masculinity and (homophobic) violence in the primary years of schooling

Whenever masculinity and school violence are considered in South African research, the focus is often on the high school. In this paper, we consider a different direction by drawing on Connell’s (1995) concept of hegemonic masculinity to understand the workings of power and violence amongst a group of South African primary school boys. Little is known about how forces of hegemonic masculinity operate to shape every day gender relations amongst younger boys. Against this background, this paper focuses on a particular group of boys, between 10 and 13 years old, who attend a ‘black’, working-class primary school in South Africa. In addition, they identify themselves as ‘real boys’, where being a ‘real boy’ is inextricably linked to violent ‘performances’ of hegemonic masculinity on the school playground during break time. The paper explores how these boys use forms of violence to claim control of the playground space and to exclude, marginalise and denigrate the other group of boys whom they construct as ‘unmasculine’ and ‘gay’. The findings raise implications for ways of curbing the violence, such as working with the boys to promote non-violent interpretations of performing, being and becoming a ‘real boy’.     

‘I really want to make a difference for these kids but it’s just too hard’: one Aboriginal teacher’s experiences of moving away,moving on and moving up

This paper draws on longitudinal data to examine the changing professional identity of one beginning teacher over a three-year period. Using a post-structuralist framework and theories of social class and capital, I highlight the complexities, contradictions and impossibilities of new graduate, Luke, sustaining an identity as ‘Aboriginal teacher’ in Australian schools. I trace the shift in his commitment to working with underachieving Aboriginal boys in challenging school contexts at the beginning of his career, to his move into a middle-class white girls’ school towards the end of his third year of teaching. I suggest this was a result of the ongoing stress associated with the expectation that he take sole responsibility for the education of the school’s Aboriginal students, as well as his own upward social class mobility. The paper concludes by raising a number of concerns for education systems, including the retention of Aboriginal teachers in Australian schools.     

Socio-sexual education: a practical study in formal thinking and teachable moments

In this paper, the notion of ‘doing boy’ through performance is explored. The point is made that singing is a potential gender performance but the treble voice of the 8‐year‐old to 14‐year‐old boy is a biologically determined as well as socially constructed feature of young masculinity. A complication is the degree to which the boy's treble voice is traditionally associated with sacred music. Recent attempts at widening participation in singing by cathedrals are evaluated for their potential to increase male participation in the arts through more eclectic forms of repertoire and the sharing of musical expertise. The under‐representation of males is seen as a problem in the study and boys' choices not to sing during the 8–14 years because of uncertainty about the gendering of the high voice is presented as the major issue. Different sexualities can attach to vocal performance by young males, and these are explored. The changed voice of the ‘boy band’ is associated with explicit performances of heterosexuality in the tradition of hegemonic masculinity. The unchanged treble voice, through its strong association with sacred music, can represent innocence, but such innocence may be related to other forms of masculinity than the hegemonic type. This makes for continued ambivalence over whether boys' singing is a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ form of masculinity.     

Medical and Nursing Students' Development of Conceptions of Science during Three Years of Studies in Higher Education

This article is a presentation of current research on pupils’ experiences in encounters with their classmates in school. The starting point is the narratives of Loffa, a 25‐year‐old nursery teacher, telling us about her school experiences. She gives a picture of herself as a quiet and well‐behaved schoolgirl, and she talks about things such as the limited space she and a group of her classmates had in their classroom, about how they were regarded as ‘nerds’ by the other pupils and therefore had little to say in what went on in their classroom. Seen in the light of the political, social and historical context of the vision of a ‘school for all’ and of the principle of a ‘complex social environment’ this can be interpreted as one version of the specific expression in Lotta ‘s class of the built‐in conflicts of the comprehensive school, the conflicts between groups with different intellectual traditions and needs.     

Playing the field(s): an exploration of change,conformity and conflict in girls’ understandings of gendered physicality in physical education

This paper draws on data from a year‐long ethnographic study of a group of 12‐ to 13‐year‐old girls that explored the processes through which they negotiated gendered physicality within the context of physical education. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and social fields and McNay’s extension of his work underpin a discussion of three contexts where girls experience and process understandings of gendered physicality: football and curriculum; home/school; and (hetero)sexuality. Girls’ identification of inequitable practices, modifications of behaviours with regard to perceived norms, and reflections on inconsistencies within and across social fields indicated the susceptibility of the gendered habitus to subversions. The notion of regulated liberties rather than resistance captures girls’ more subtle negotiations of gendered power relations as well as the ambiguities most girls experienced. Implications for teaching include creating space for critical inquiry, incorporating inclusive practices, recognizing girls’ interests, and exploring the influence of peer groups and friends.     

Texts as Artefacts Crossing Sites: Map Making at Home and School

This article compares a child’s drawings at home with a child’s drawings at school. The drawings were of maps, which had been a school topic. As part of a longitudinal study looking at children’s text making at home and at school three particular homes were focused on for eighteen months. This article looks at one home – that of a six year old Turkish boy who lives with his mother and brother. The case study illustrates how children can take something learned at school and transform it at home. The article starts with discussing the text created in the home, then compares this to texts created at school. The point is made that children can activate meaning in a different way at home than at school. While this is one case study, it suggests that transforming artefacts across sites may be something children do that often goes undocumented.     

Issues of Power,Masculinity, and Gender Justice: Sally's story of teaching boys

Despite calls for a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and equity that recognizes how broader relations of gender and power continue to produce injustices for many females, essentialized accounts expressing concern about boys’ poor educational performance remain the most common refrain in dominant equity discourses across Western contexts. This common refrain characteristic of current large scale gender reforms, such as Australia's parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys, Boys: Getting it right, is driven by a standards rather than social justice focus and thus creates silences around issues of gender injustice, power, and constructions of hegemonic masculinity. In this paper, I present “Sally's” story as a disruption of these silences. Sally is a young English teacher at “Penfolds College”, an all boys Catholic school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). Her story, in illustrating how particular boys draw on broader discourses of masculinity to sexually harass and intimidate her, highlights the inadequacies of dominant public and policy discourse in terms of its failure to locate boys’ educational issues within broader contexts of inequitable gender relations.     

Societal and Organisational Factors of Stress on Students in School

In this paper an attempt is made both to discuss factors of stress in 14‐ to 18‐year‐old teenage students in and out of school and at the same time to point out the adolescent's own subjective perception of some of those factors by means of an empirical investigation. Factors external and internal to school must be seen as standing in a close relation of interaction to each other. The kind and intensity of mental and social stress is explained by combining an ‘objective’ analysis with a ‘subjective’ one. School is looked at both as a system of social order, organisation and interaction, and as a realm of experience and a social environment for students. On the basis of these considerations, the conception of ‘stress’ is discussed in the context of a meta‐theoretical model of the subject who is productively managing his or her reality.     

Language: an important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual context

This paper is based upon a case study in an all boys’ church comprehensive secondary school in Malta which explored teachers’ awareness of boys’ attitudes and interests. It uncovered a number of practices across the school’s official and ‘hidden’ curricula and at its administrative level, which, together with the student peer culture present on site, influence the construction of student masculine identities. This article argues that the decision by boys to speak one language rather than another in a bilingual context, is very much influenced by norms of masculinity. These are strengthened by the student peer group as well as by the male teachers within the institution and suggests that language is an important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual school, a masculinity which, in a post‐colonial context, is shown to be heavily linked to national pride and identity.     

Peeling Back the Layers of Policy and School Reform: Revealing the structural and social complexities within

This article explores the complex process of school change over a six‐year period in one high‐poverty, urban elementary school in a northeastern city of the United States. The school included in this instrumental case study was identified by its State Department of Education as “being in need of improvement” in March 2000. Findings suggest that creating opportunities for context‐based solutions, curricular coherence, and responsive and consistent coaching were the necessary means for leveraging change at this school. Further, responding to the layers and iterations of educational policy, and addressing the deeper social issues intimately associated with serving high‐poverty communities, was essential. We identify policy issues that contributed to the complexity of this school’s improvement efforts. Our analysis extends beyond surface‐level documentation of the school’s inputs and outputs, and illustrates what it means to meet individual students’ needs in complex social and institutional spaces. We also discuss social justice issues that are linked with current policies targeting improved outcomes for all children.     

Finding communalities,making differences,performing masculinities: reflections of young men on military service

In Finland more than 80% of the male population participates in military service. Going to the army is an important step in the transition to male adulthood and a period for further education. This paper explores reflections on the army of 20‐year‐old men, some of whom have it already behind them and some others with their military service forthcoming. The focus is on exploring the kinds of masculinities that are constructed when talking about experiences or expectations. The paper suggests that, when talking about the army, male bonds are established which unite men from different cultural, educational and social backgrounds, as well as different generations. This communality is discussed in relation to differences. I concentrate on the making of differences due to the formal hierarchies within the army, between men and the women who participate in military service and between Finns and immigrants in the army. The final discussion is on attitude, endurance and the construction of ‘proper’ masculinity. The paper draws from interviews of 21 young men conducted in a longitudinal, ethnographically grounded study on youth transitions.     

An exploration of young children’s ethnic identities as communities of practice

This study is concerned with experiences of ethnic identity amongst a group of three‐year‐old and four‐year‐old children, four‐fifths of whom are of Pakistani heritage and the remainder of white indigenous heritage. Focused on a nursery school in the United Kingdom, the study explores the relationship between the individual and the social and cultural, initially in the home and then as the children start nursery school. An ethnographic approach is used to record the children’s daily experiences and relationships as contexts where they reveal, shape and reshape who they are. Children’s ethnic identities are explored in relation to boundaries where different communities of practice collide, alongside other aspects such as gender and sexuality and under the influence of factors such as power and religion. What appears to emerge is a sense of ethnic identity as social practice and performance rather than as the result of maturation or of internal cognitive development.     

Is every child's voice heard? Researching the different ways 3‐year‐old children communicate and make meaning at home and in a pre‐school playgroup

This ESRC‐funded study explores how 3‐year‐old children use a range of ‘voices’ during their first year in pre‐school, investigating how they make and express meaning ‘multimodally’ through combinations of talk, body movement, facial expression and gaze in the two different settings of home and playgroup. Using longitudinal ethnographic video case studies of four children, two boys and two girls, the study identifies patterns in the children's uses of different communicative strategies that relate to the dynamics of the institutional and immediate contexts in which they are situated. The findings imply that the current focus on talk in the early years may be detracting from the diversity of ways children make and express meaning.     

Primary Boys and Hegemonic Masculinities

This paper explores the relationships between primary‐aged boys, hegemonic masculinities and sexualised/violent behaviours in the school setting. The data for this paper arise out of a year‐long ethnographic study of two primary schools in the North‐East of England. The aims are twofold: to explore the way in which heterosexual harassment features in the particular hegemonic masculinity of each school; and secondly, to consider the extent to which primary school boys of different ages and social class backgrounds draw upon sexually harassing/violent attitudes and behaviours as one of the key processes in defining their male identities within their peer groups.     

Father's Impact on Son's Gender Role Identity

The study investigates the similarities between the gender role identities of 12 year‐old boys and their fathers. An attempt was also made to determine the influence of father‐son interaction on the specific nature of these similarities. The study was carried out in Jyväskylä and the subjects comprised 113 12 year‐old boys and their fathers. The sex role orientation of fathers and their sons was measured by a sex role inventory designed for the study. Father — son correlations were studied in relation to the frequency and quality of father‐son interaction, especially with regard to the paternal warmth and paternal control involved. The son's masculinity correlated positively with the father's masculinity and negatively with the father's femininity. Both the warmth of the father‐son relationship and paternal control strengthened these associations. The femininity of the son did not correlate either with the femininity or the masculinity of the father.     

Urban neighbourhood quality and school leaving age: Gender differences and some hypotheses

This study used longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to examine the role of neighbourhood quality, assessed when cohort members were aged five, in boys’ and girls’ school leaving age. It was expected that, since context is in general more strongly predictive of boys’ rather than girls’ behaviour, neighbourhood quality would be more strongly related to men’s than women’s school leaving age. Results showed that, as expected, even after controlling for cognitive ability, parental socio‐economic disadvantage and social class, family structure, and maternal education, age and depressed mood, neighbourhood quality was more strongly related to men’s than women’s school leaving age. To rule out the possibility that neighbourhood quality is simply picking up individual level social class the study also explored the interaction of neighbourhood quality with parental social class. It was found that, compared to cohort members of high social class groups, cohort members of lower social class groups were less likely to stay in education after the minimum school leaving age in both neighbourhood groups, but being in the lower social class groups was more of a disadvantage for children living in well‐to‐do rather than average or poor neighbourhoods at age five.