Becoming Ryan: lines of flight from majoritarian understandings of masculinity through a high school reading and mentoring program. A story of possibility

Within literature relating to the broad field of boys’ education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of “the boy problem” and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are ‘really’ like and, by extension, what they ‘really’ need. While these deterministic interventions have been widely critiqued in academic literature they nevertheless continue to dominate school and media based discussions about how to best support alienated, disengaged and at risk boys. This raises questions about the extent to which anti-essentialist approaches can be made more accessible and meaningful to teachers in schools. It further suggests the value of developing detailed accounts of real world interventions that have had a demonstrably positive impact upon the boys involved without reinforcing essentialist notions of masculinity. Adopting an attitude of “educated hope” (Giroux, http://www.units.muohio.edu/eduleadership/anthology/OA/OA03001.html, 2003) and drawing upon the resources of (Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987), this paper examines one such case of anti-essentialist reform involving three Australian schools. It explores one particular boy’s experience of an intervention known as Boys with Books and argues that Ryan’s journey can be conceptualised as a line of flight away from traditional forms of masculinity: a journey in progress that has impacted positively upon his relationships with peers and teachers and changed his beliefs about his possible future options. The paper, therefore, illustrates the capacity for teachers and schools to display anti-essentialist understandings about masculinity while responding in practical and ‘do-able’ ways to the needs of at risk, alienated and underperforming boys in schools.     

What’s the body got to do with it? Exploring embodied,political readings in the classroom through poetry

ABSTRACT

This essay attempts to explore the links between politics, poetry, and collective, embodied readings and discussion in the classroom. When my Year 12 class were asked ‘What is Poetry?’, their answers suggested something in the Romantic tradition – of poetry as expressive, individual and emotional. My experience studying poetry with my Year 9 class suggests something altogether different – that studying poetry allows students to have an embodied and collective reading. In the sense that politics concerns the control of bodies, poetry allows the class to read in an embodied sense, thus politically, in a way that assessment criteria and the demands of high-stakes testing, with their focus on individual understanding, do not. Thus, I argue for the study of poetry as essential in terms of recognising students’ political agency – not primarily as exam-takers but as citizens of a country and an Earth they will, to put it grandly, inherit.     

Boys negotiate violence and masculinity in the primary school

Abstract

In this paper, we contribute to the understandings of young masculinities by turning attention to the South African schooling primary school context. In the context of scarcity of interventions around violence in the primary school, we focus on how young boys construct, negotiate and experience violence. Notwithstanding dominant discourses around childhood innocence we argue that young boys are active participants in violent gendered cultures at school. We show how boys’ bodies are key sites for the enactment of violence and is especially a valuable resource in the context of food insecurity. The paper also shows the fluidity of masculinity as boys who are regarded as ‘victims’ can also defend and resuscitate masculinity that endorses violence. Implications for addressing young masculinities in the primary school within local context are considered in the conclusion of the paper.     

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.     

Constructing dominant masculinity and negotiating the 'male gaze'

One of the suggested strategies for tackling boys' underachievement is for primary schools to recruit more men teachers to provide boys with positive male role models. However, little is known of how those men teachers already working in primary schools contribute towards the construction of dominant modes of masculinity in schools or how girls engage with those dominant forms. This paper sets out to explore the ways in which two male teachers of one primary class contributed towards the development and maintenance of a particular mode of masculinity. It will be shown that male teachers'attitudes and behaviours were crucial to the construction of a mode of masculinity framed around white, middle-class values (‘intelligence’ and ‘proficiency’) and contextualized within an environment reminiscent of an exclusive men's sports club. It will further be shown how, during the course of the year, the girls devised strategies that challenged the heterosexualized behaviours of one of their male teachers by reversing the ‘male gaze’.     

Readers building fictional worlds: visual representations,poetry and cognition

This article explores the complex nature of the literature classroom by drawing on the cognitive linguistic framework Text World Theory to examine the teacher's role as facilitator and mediator of reading. Specifically, the article looks at how one teacher used visual representations as a way of allowing students to engage in a more personal and less teacher‐driven transaction with a poem and to encourage them to reflect on their own roles as active makers of meaning and knowledge in the classroom. The article shows how teachers can be mindful of the various contextual factors that can privilege and legitimise certain kinds of response in the classroom and be wary of external factors and pressures that can promote the idea of preconceived knowledge. The teacher in the case study presented was able to both facilitate the experience of reading poetry in an unmediated way and also develop her students' metacognition in relation to the reading process itself. The article shows how Text World Theory's status as a socio‐cognitive grammar may be of benefit to teachers in understanding the nature of communicative interaction and literary transaction.     

Getting boys’ education ‘right’: the Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics

This paper focuses on the Australian federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education, Boys: Getting it Right, which is shown to be an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. The paper demonstrates how, through a variety of rhetorical strategies, its anti‐feminist politics are masked and how the report works with essentialised differences between boys and girls. The argument is demonstrated through a focus on a number of the report’s recommendations, including the call for a recasting of current gender policy, the need for creating so‐called ‘boy‐friendly’ curricula, assessment and pedagogical practices, and for employment of more male teachers. The report draws on populist literature and submissions from the boys’ lobby, as well as practice‐oriented submissions to the neglect of theoretically oriented and (pro‐)feminist work. As such, the significance of the construction of masculinities to boys’ attachment to and performances in school is totally neglected, limiting the value of the report’s recommendations for improving schooling for both boys and girls.     

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.     

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.     

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’.     

Conformity to masculinity ideology,a predictor of academic‐related attitudes and behaviors

Masculinity ideology is argued to be associated with academic outcomes. However, relatively few studies have examined these associations. This study examines the associations between masculinity ideology and academic skepticism, self‐presentation of low achievement, academic engagement, academic initiative, and self‐regulation, above and beyond academic self‐efficacy, among a diverse sample of urban youth. With a sample of 135 eighth‐grade students from a Northeastern middle school, 5 separate multiple hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine whether students’ endorsement of masculinity ideology predicted the criterion variables above and beyond academic self‐efficacy. The sample was comprised of 54 girls and 74 boys ages 12–14 years (M = 13.14; SD = .37). Results showed academic self‐efficacy significantly predicted academic engagement (B = 1.26; β = .53, p < .001; f² = .39), academic initiative (B = .98; β = .37; p < .001, f² = .16), and behavioral regulation (B = .61; β = .24; p < .05; f² = .09) and explained an additional 8 and 10% of the variance in self‐presentation of low achievement (B = .54; β = .33; p = .001; f² = .14) and academic skepticism (B = .56; β = .35; p < .001; f² = .15), respectively, over and above academic self‐efficacy. Gender, which was dummy coded and entered as a covariate, only predicted self‐presentation of low achievement. Findings from this study point to the need to foster positive academic outcomes through bolstering academic self‐efficacy and, perhaps more important, addressing masculinity ideology.     

‘The boys’ present… Hegemonic masculinity: a performance of multiple acts

This article explores the performance of masculinity(ies) within the classroom site. Drawing upon research conducted in two co‐educational secondary classrooms, it examines the ways in which two groups of boys took up positions of dominance within their respective classrooms and, more specifically, focuses upon the ways in which they came to construct themselves, and perform, as embodied masculine subjects. In doing so, it examines the gendered and sexualized discursive knowledges and practices mobilized by these boys. Furthermore, it illustrates the ways in which these performances are constituted by, and constitutive of, versions of hegemonic masculinity while demonstrating the range of ways of ‘doing’ hegemonic masculinity—the various performance techniques available to do this ‘work’. The article also examines how these boys' performances served to position their peers within the classroom and, furthermore, explores their intra‐group interactions and the ways in which they came to position each other.     

Learning crafts as practices of masculinity. Finnish male trainee teachers' reflections and experiences

Craft education in Finland has long gendered traditions that effect the present situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the processes of learning the interlinking of crafts and gender. The analysis concentrates on male trainee teachers' experiences of craft education in comprehensive schools in Finland. Data were collected through memory work and autobiographical writing. The analysis revealed how the boys had linked the term ‘technical crafts’ with masculinity, (1) as part of their upbringing at home surrounded by the gender order of their childhood families; (2) following the school model that technical crafts are a masculine sphere for boys; and (3) the importance and pressures of the boys' peer culture. Through learning crafts, the boys were learning the masculinities of their local ‘communities of practices’. The prospective teachers' reflections revealed the importance of studying gender issues in teacher education.     

Masculinity,inequality and post-school opportunities: disrupting oppositional politics about boys' education

Popular discourses about ‘boys' education’—both in Australia and internationally—have often been drawn from oppositional storylines that construct ‘boys’ at school as a new disadvantaged group. This paper rejects such a construction, arguing that it fails to take account of the economic and social advantages that boys, as a single group, still experience in the post-schooling years; that it fails to differentiate within the category of ‘boy’, to examine how particular groups of boys fare far less well than do other groups of boys; and that it neglects the impact of constructs of masculinity upon boys' lives at school. The paper considers four issues of significance for boys at school: narrow and stereotypical subject choice; unruly and risk-taking behaviours; poor literacy achievement; and low school retention rates. However, it demonstrates that these issues predominantly affect boys who are unprotected by economic and social privilege.     

‘Signs of progress’: reconceptualising response to children's poetry writing

Poetry writing is felt by many primary teachers to be an important part of children's early language and literary development. It is also considered by many teachers to be very difficult to assess, due in part to the subjective nature of much poetry. Therefore poetry writing in schools enjoys both high and low status. If practice of teaching this genre is to develop it is necessary for teachers to have a clear view of what children are able to achieve within it. By looking at examples of children's poetry writing, my aim in this paper is to demonstrate how it is possible for primary school teachers to identify features of children's poetry writing which they consider to be of value. I shall argue, from the basis of an empirical research study, that teachers can, therefore, promote and encourage progression in poetry writing by their classes; but that to do so is to challenge views of poetry writing by children promoted in current orders and recommendations.     

Boys, Poetry and the Individual Talent

This article provides an explicit critique of existing poetry teaching practices which illustrates how adolescents, particularly boys, develop antipathy to this genre. Having established the need for alternative pedagogy, the theory and practice of ‘responsive teaching’ is described. The term ‘responsive teaching’ has been coined because it denotes teaching founded upon readers' responses which is informed by elements of reader‐response criticism. Selected findings are reported from a three‐year action research investigation examining how keen readers of pre‐twentieth‐century poetry can be fostered. Examples are given of dramatic improvements in certain boys' attitudes and attainment. It is suggested that such transformation can occur when the personal reading styles of pupils are allowed to flourish. The implications for teaching are considered.     

The ‘outdoor industry’ as social and educational phenomena: Gender and outdoor adventure/education

Abstract

This paper discusses social and cultural theory and tracts the ways in which gender has been conceptualised. It argues that the ‘outdoor industry’ in its various manifestations constitutes an aspect of society that can not be ignored. It suggests that outdoor adventure/education, like other dimensions of society, can usefully be subjected to critical examination. Having discussed perspectives surrounding the social construction of gender, the paper draws attention to classic work that has explored ideologies of femininity and the implication for women and men. The paper then goes on to argue that the more recent interactionist theories and cultural studies offer less deterministic and more insightful approaches to exploring people's experiences of outdoor adventure/education. The concept of hegemonic masculinity is drawn upon to examine ‘the outdoor industry’ in light of the current ‘crisis of masculinity’. Finally, the paper raises further questions regarding outdoor adventure/education as a site of alternative femininities and masculinities and as counter-culture.     

Masculinity and violence: Gender,poverty and culture in a rural primary school in South Africa

This qualitative study draws from focus group discussions with primary school boys,girls and their teachers to examine how violence is experienced at a rural school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study draws attention to ‘amaphara' masculinity’ as conceptualized by Hunter (2021) and stick fighting as key to understanding the local expressions of violence and its problematic relationship with girls and 'other' boys.Examining these practices, and the wider sociocultural contexts in which they are embedded, we argue is vital for gender violence prevention in rural schools.