Boys and Schooling: Contexts, Issues and Practices

Boys and Schooling Beyond Structural Reform

Bob Lingard, Wayne Martino and Martin Mills

Boys and Schooling

Also by Bob Lingard TRANSFORMING LEARNING IN SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES (co-edited) THE ROUTLEDGE FALMER READER IN EDUCATION POLICY AND POLITICS (co-edited) EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND THE POLITICS OF CHANGE (co-authored) THE OECD, GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION POLICY (co-authored) MEN ENGAGING FEMINISMS: Profeminism, Backlashes and Schooling (co-authored) LEADING LEARNING: Making Hope Practical in Schools (co-authored)

Also by Wayne Martino THE PROBLEM WITH BOYS’ EDUCATION: Beyond the Backlash (co-edited) GENDERED OUTCASTS AND SEXUAL OUTLAWS (co-edited) BEING NORMAL IS THE ONLY WAY TO BE: Adolescent Perspectives on Gender and School (co-authored) SO WHAT’S A BOY? Addressing Issues of Masculinity and Schooling (co-authored) BOYS’ STUFF: Boys Talk About What Really Matters (co-edited) WHAT ABOUT THE BOYS? Issues of Masculinity and Schooling (co-edited)

Also by Martin Mills TROUBLING GENDER IN EDUCATION (co-edited) TEACHERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE (co-authored) TEACHING BOYS: Classroom Practices That Work (co-authored) CHALLENGING VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS: An Issue of Masculinities (authored)

Boys and Schooling Beyond Structural Reform Bob Lingard The University of Queensland, Australia

Wayne Martino The University of Western Ontario, Canada

Martin Mills The University of Queensland, Australia

© B. Lingard, W. Martino and M. Mills 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–51701–1 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–51701–3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lingard, Bob. Boys and schooling : beyond structural reform / Bob Lingard, Wayne Martino, Martin Mills. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–51701–1 (alk. paper) 1. Boys—Education. 2. Education and state. 3. Sex differences in education. 4. School management and organization. 5. Educational change. I. Martino, Wayne. II. Mills, Martin, 1957– III. Title. LC1390.L56 2009 371.823—dc22 2008030093 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

Acknowledgements

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1 Introduction: Beyond Structural Reforms

1

2 Education Policy, Gender and Boys’ Schooling

27

3 Boy-Friendly Schooling

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4 Single-Sex Classes and Schools for Boys

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5 The Male Teacher Debate

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6 Boys’ Peer Group Relationships in Schools

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7 Conclusion: Beyond Recuperative Masculinity Politics

181

References

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Index

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v

Acknowledgements The three of us would like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council for funding the research upon which this book is based. We also acknowledge Lori Beckett’s work on that research project. We would also like to thank our respective universities for providing environments conducive to doing such research and for completing this book. We would also like to thank Palgrave Macmillan for all of their support and patience in relation to this book. Bob would like to acknowledge the ongoing support of Carolynn and Nicholas for all of his academic work, including the production of this book. He would also like to thank his colleagues at three universities, namely Queensland, Sheffield and Edinburgh, where the writing was done. In particular, Bob would like to thank his colleagues in the Scottish Independent Schools Project for their support and contribution to his ongoing thinking about gender and schooling, particularly Gaby Weiner and Shereen Benjamin. Wayne would like to acknowledge the support of his partner, Jose Medeiros, which, on so many levels, was instrumental in the writing of this book. He would also like to thank Professor Allan Pearson, former Dean of Education, Faculty of Education, The University of Western Ontario, for creating the conditions that enabled and facilitated the production of this book. Martin wants to thank Glenda, Tara and Ali for their love, patience and all that they have taught him. He would also like to acknowledge how significant his research students are in his ongoing learning. You know who you are. Thank you. He would, though, in this instance, particularly like to thank Malcolm Haase for his thoughtful comments, thorough editing and reference checking of the final manuscript, and Emma Charlton, who worked as a research assistant on this project. Thanks also to colleagues, including Amanda Keddie and Maria Delaney, for the conversations that have helped to shape his views on the topics contained within this book. Bob, Wayne and Martin acknowledge the support of each other in the research on which this book is based and in the writing of it. They also note that the authorship of the book is listed simply in alphabetical order.

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Introduction Since the early 1990s through to this moment, in the nations of the global north issues on boys’ education have been placed firmly on the policy agenda, as well as exercising the minds of many practitioners and parents. Such concerns have not been restricted to these nations (see, for example, Jha and Kelleher, 2006), despite the clear issues for girls in all countries, but especially so in many countries of the global south. There are many similarities that cut across the various boys’ agendas in the global north and south. However, this book is concerned with the ways in which the boys’ debate has led to various structural reforms in English-speaking countries. The reforms in these countries are not identical, though, there are specificities connected to the histories and cultures of national and local systems and schools, policies and practices. For example, Australia, where since the 1970s there has been significant state engagement with gender equity, has seen a policy refocus on boys to the neglect of girls. Furthermore, in contrast to the largely symbolic, albeit important, girls’ policies of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the various national boys’ policies have been supported with substantial federal government funding. However, in Canada, which also has a federal political structure, education remains the jurisdiction of provinces, which has led to a more piecemeal approach to the emerging issues in boys’ education, while many of the issues confronted have been the same. In the US the boys’ agenda has largely been one of race, while the issue of boys’ education generally has had little impact upon policy development. Unlike Australia and Canada, where there has been some concern over boys’ social outcomes, in England the agenda has been very much concerned with boys’ achievement in national tests 1

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and external exams. However, in all of these locations there has been a concern over boys’ literacy performance, reflecting the contemporary fetish of education systems with literacy testing as an outcomes accountability measure of school performance, what Comber and Hill (2000) have called the literacization of contemporary education policy. There has also been an almost universal concern about boys’ behaviour in school reflected in data on high rates of misbehaviour, dropouts, expulsions and suspensions in schools. Interestingly, the various engagements with the boys’ debate have often received bi-partisan political support in many countries. However, despite these variations on a theme, most of the responses to the boys’ agenda in these countries have been focused on implementing structural changes in systems and schools. For example, systems have sought to develop specific boys’ policies and to attract and recruit more male teachers, whilst schools, often in response to their readings of policies or media constructions of boys’ issues, have instigated ‘boy-friendly schooling’ and implemented single-sex classes in co-educational schools. Rarely has there been a focus on pedagogical practices that recognize the connections between performance and the construction of gender (Keddie and Mills, 2007), whilst the focus on male teachers has tended to emphasize the embodied presence of males rather than the significance of their pedagogical practices (Mills et al., 2004). The focus on male teachers has also moved attention away from the gender-segmented nature of teaching and leadership in schools and education systems with men still dominating leadership positions and men in female-dominated segments often experiencing a glass-escalator effect in terms of careers (Williams, 1992). There has also been a neglect of subject choices, which remain highly gendered with more, mainly middle–class, girls now studying maths and sciences at senior levels, but boys still choosing subjects associated with masculinity and technicalrational epistemologies. Furthermore, many of these responses have been grounded in a competing victim syndrome and a recuperative masculinity politics, both of which in simplistic fashion essentialize the binary categories of boys and girls. The competing victim syndrome works to marginalize and silence issues of concern about girls’ educational experiences, while constructing boys as the new disadvantaged. Recuperative masculinity politics fail to problematize dominant constructions of masculinity, and indeed perpetuate them. Such a politics also works against a recognition of the differences amongst boys related to the social organization of masculinity, which Connell (1995) has described as the interplay of hegemonic, complicit, subordinate and

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marginalized masculinities. Issues of poverty, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability matter for boys and girls; their intersections also need to be considered and taken account of in relation to systemic and schoolbased responses to the boys’ debate (Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003). We not only recognize the significance of strategic essentialism (Spivak, 1992), unifying the category of women, in the construction of the feminist agenda around the structural inequalities facing girls and women in schools, but also realize that a similar discursive strategy of strategic essentialism has been used to different ends in the boys’ debate, within which boys have been constituted as a single undifferentiated disadvantaged category. This discursive work, which essentializes boys and men, has occurred at a time when more individualized politics have been ascendant, associated with the self-responsibilization and self-capitalization of neo-liberal politics (Rose, 1999). We would also note that there was by and large a neglect of homophobia in the earlier feminist-framed interventions, as well as a silence about these matters in contemporary concerns about boys. Just as the focus on girls’ schooling was linked to a feminist agenda, the concern for boys in schools is also linked to a broader men’s movement. This movement is not one-dimensional, but involves a range of groups such as the mythopoetic, men’s rights and pro-feminist groupings, who have concerns over different aspects of gender politics and its impact on the well-being of boys and men. The mythopoets have tended to focus on archetypal and ‘deep’ masculinities, which they argue have been thwarted by feminism and industrialization and need rejuvenation through male bonding and homosocial connectedness. The men’s rights movement sees men as victims of feminism, specifically affirmative action, and also of the legal system, especially in relation to child custody and access after divorce. Related to both the mythopoetic and men’s rights movements have been moral concerns and panics about absent fathers and single mothers, with the call for more male teachers sometimes being a response to such expressed anxieties, a chromosomal response to deep cultural changes. In contrast, pro-feminist politics is built on a male alliance with women in addressing misogyny, sexism, homophobia and femophobia, with the additional requirement for men to engage in some reflexivity about their complicity in an oppressive gender order. Differences within pro-feminist politics turn on whether or not the focus is on working with women or changing men (Connell, 1995; Seidler, 2006) and on which feminism to be ‘pro’ (Lingard and Douglas, 1999).

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There are also structural contexts to these men’s movements, including the complex interplay of the global and the local in economic and political terms. Here we see an emergent global economy with new relations between the so-called ‘knowledge economies’ of nations of the global north and the relocation of many manufacturing industries to the developing nations of the global south. The knowledge economy and enhanced service sector within Western nations have seen increased demands for different skills developed through education, often encompassing enhanced literacy skills or multiliteracies and emotional intelligence, dispositions most often associated with femininities in dominant gender orders, nationally and globally. Such changes have been associated with a perceived ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Weaver-Hightower, 2003a). These structural changes in labour markets and economies are most often bleached from considerations of men’s movement politics, and also from public policy responses to boys’ education. Significantly, and in contrast to the crisis of masculinity in the nations of the global north, for many nations of the global south, gender equity remains focused on girls and access to primary education as manifest in the Millennium Development Goals of the UN (see Unterhalter, 2007). However, as Jha and Kelleher (2006) indicate in their report on boys’ underachievement in British Commonwealth countries, concerns about boys are increasingly evident in countries as diverse as Australia, Jamaica, Lesotho and Samoa. The so-called ‘New World order’ post September 11 has also had serious implications for gender politics, globally, nationally and locally, helping to instantiate a new (re)masculinized world gender order (Connell, 2005) and making us aware of the global and diasporic relations of gender. More specifically, US unilateralism has manifested in a hyper-masculinized diplomacy (Ducat, 2004) in respect of the othered Muslim world and, in the process, intensified a new Orientalism towards both Muslim men and women (Massad, 2007). This has venerated a kind of whiteness and Western constructions of hegemonic masculinity. Accompanying this veneration has been a tendency to accentuate racialized femininities, as well as to simultaneously elide and intensify constructions of racialized masculinities, while at the same time demonizing both. For instance, this has been manifested in media constructions of veiled Muslim women as victims of Islamist patriarchy. It has also resulted in the demonization of Muslim men. This relates to an enhanced fear of difference, encapsulated in contemporary critiques of multiculturalism, in the UK especially in relation to the so-called

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‘home-grown’ terrorists, and less space for reinvigorated anti-racist policies in education. This raises important questions about masculinities and race more broadly. For example, in the UK, Canada, France and the US there has been a concerted public panic about gang-related violence and crime amongst African and African-Caribbean boys. One outcome has been the demonization of Black boys, demonstrating yet again another failure to deal with the construction of masculinities and complex class-based dynamics surrounding gang-related activities and violence in urban and edge city settings. What often gets emphasized as the source of the problem is the absence of male role models in these boys’ lives (absent fathers and absent male teachers), rather than a complex and nuanced analysis of the intersections of race, class, masculinities and sexualities. And in the English context the achievement fetish of education policy and school practices inhibits the capacity to engage in such analysis and implement effective change on the basis of it. Interestingly in Australia, the federal government’s Success for Boys programme does make mention of the oppression that Indigenous boys face within the current Australian context. We would stress, though, that it is imperative to address the dire educational experiences of Indigenous girls as well and thus reject a competing victim syndrome approach. Recognition of these emergences has been tellingly absent from the boys and schooling debate and policy-related discourses. Here there has been an almost obsessive focus on oppression in othered communities within Western nations and in the Muslim world at large, in the process denying the realities of ongoing and new forms of sexism and misogyny in the West, a category also requiring persistent deconstruction. Postcolonial analytics have to be added to the tool kit for understanding the emergent global gender order and changes in national gender orders as a necessary precursor to the construction of effective policies and practices in education for addressing the educational needs of all boys and girls (Martino and Rezai-Rashti, 2008). Clearly, to be effective such polices and practices need to take a ‘Which boys? Which girls?’ stance, acknowledging differences amongst both boys and girls. We note our vehement rejection of the stance of Boys: Getting it Right (House of Representative Standing Committee, 2002) report in Australia, which somewhat acerbically observed that feminist and pro-feminist scholars, along with certain policy makers and the teacher unions, had used this approach to deny that boys were experiencing any problems in school, thus rejecting the ‘common sense’

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assumption that boys are essentially different from girls and that they were in trouble in education. This report, alongside other discourses in other countries of the global north, has also overstated many of the gains of the feminist movement’s agenda in education (see AAUW, 1998; Bouchard et al., 2003; Francis and Skelton, 2005). This is not to say that that agenda did not impact positively upon education. It did. However, the main beneficiaries of this feminist agenda in education have been middle-class girls, who now compete effectively with middle-class boys for top school results and in universities, where now approximately 50 percent of students in medicine and law are female (Collins et al., 2000). We note, though, that talk of the feminization of university education sometimes fails to acknowledge the gendered impact of the inclusion of teacher and nurse education in universities on reforms over the last 20 years or so. While there has been some convergence in the educational careers of middle-class girls and boys, there has been a divergence between such girls and boys and those from less-privileged backgrounds, with teenage mothers from working-class backgrounds often experiencing many disadvantages when compared with their middle-class counterparts at university (Walby, 1997), thus reinforcing the need for a ‘Which boys? Which girls’ perspective in considerations of education policy and practice (Collins et al., 2000; Lingard et al., 2002). We would note, though, that this convergence has not translated into comparable incomes and career opportunities for young men and women post education and that child bearing and rearing still impact in much greater ways on women than on men. Further, we would also stress these changes have not necessarily addressed issues such as racism, sexual harassment, sexism and homophobia in schools and universities (Dorais, 2004; Macgillivray, 2004; Noguera, 1997, 2008). Despite these continuing gender-based inequalities, there is also a way in which an emergent post-feminist politics evident within, for instance, raunch culture and new versions of girl power (Levy, 2005) constructed as emancipatory for women does not necessarily work in the interests of girls and women. For example, women’s bodies and desires continue to be commodified and constituted by the male gaze (Tincknell et al., 2003). This is not to deny girls’ and women’s agency, but highlights the extent to which residual, dominant, emergent and contested masculinities continue to surreptitiously shape and affect both men’s and women’s lives in the New World gender order. This illuminates the importance of recognizing that boys’ educational issues are relational with those of girls. Thus, there has to be a recognition, often ignored within most sections of the boys’ lobby, that boys’ educational issues are

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entwined with those of girls’. In a more theoretical way, we would also note the relational character of masculinities and femininities. These complexities are rarely represented in media coverage of men’s and women’s issues. The media has played a significant role in popularizing girl power and representing this as evidence of girls’ emancipation within a postfeminist politics. At the same time, the media has also been central in the construction and take-up of the boys’ debate in education, helping to create a moral panic and concern amongst politicians, parents, policy makers and pedagogues. Stories about boys’ education circulate and flow across the globe through syndicated columns and concentrated media ownership. Such flows can be seen to be part of what Bourdieu (1998) calls ‘circular circulation’ to refer to the way a story represented in one media outlet is taken up by others, for example from newspaper to newspaper, to radio and TV, within and across nations. In Australia prior to the Boys Getting it Right report (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002) a policy vacuum saw media constructions about boys’ education almost assume the status of de facto policy, especially given restructuring and devolution in the state schooling systems and weakened central policy articulations about gender equity (Lingard, 2003). The media stories, while of course not all of a piece, tend to push a competing victims account and a construction of boys as the new disadvantaged in schooling, and often articulate a men’s rights and mythopoetic politics, while also speaking of a postfeminist era. At the same time, policy development processes themselves in education have become more ‘mediatized’ (Fairclough, 2000; Lingard and Rawolle, 2004), with policy release becoming synonymous with media release and the implied readership of policies being the general public rather than the profession, perhaps limiting the opportunity for serious engagement with such complex issues as those associated with the boys’ debate and taken up in this book. Across the nations of the global north a consultancy industry has also grown up around the boys’ agenda, demanding its continuation because of a vested interest in it. A number of what Mills (2003) has called ‘backlash blockbusters’ such as Bly’s (1991) Iron John, Gurian’s (1999) A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators can do to shape Adolescents, Biddulph’s (1997) Raising Boys, Pollack’s (1999) Real Boys Rescuing our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, Kindlon and Thompson’s (1999) Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys and Hoff Sommers’s (2000) The War against Boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men have also helped to construct the boys’ agenda and at the same time

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served to shore up this consultancy work and the demand for it, as have the media stories referred to above. More recently the work of Leonard Sax (2005, 2007) in the US and Canada has been appropriated in much the same way where concerns about the boy crisis and boys’ at risk status vis-à-vis their participation in school continue to garner media attention (see Tyre, 2006; Weil, 2008). At times, some of this work has had effects in the nations of the global south, for example in the participation of Caribbean principals in the professional development work on boys’ education of the Gurian Institute at Harvard University. This industry has also focused on independent, sometimes elite, all boys’ schools, which have used the boys’ issue to remarket themselves in a time of consumer choice and competition between schools (see Mills, 2000a). Some independent all girls’ schools have likewise used the ‘boys as trouble’ discourse to market themselves as havens for the education of girls (see Mills, 2004). Within heavily marketized schooling systems such as that in England, girls are often seen as more attractive to government schools which are positioning themselves in a competitive performance market. Girls’ better behaviour is also seen as a plus in the image management of schools in such markets (Francis, 2006; Gewirtz et al., 1995). This marketization also legitimates the boys’ consultancy industry. The above concerns have been remarkably absent in the take-up of the boys’ debate at policy level and in schools. A purpose of this book therefore is to demonstrate the shortcomings of approaches which are not cognizant of these issues and which focus on structural change alone – for example boys’ policies, more male teachers, single-sex classes and boy-friendly schooling – which is not to say that new policy frames are not required. In our view, the boys’ education debate demonstrates yet again the significance of social class and poverty to educational opportunities for both boys and girls. Indeed, in this age of the so-called ‘evidence-based policy’ in education, it is important to note that the debate has not precipitated a refocus on poverty or race in education and when it does, as is the case with media-driven representations of black boys in the US and Canadian contexts, it is often plagued or fuelled by a recuperative masculinity politics which fails to address complex issues related to intersections of class, race, gender and sexuality in the lives of minority students of both genders. This, perhaps, once again demonstrates that policy is not so much based on research evidence but is an articulation of particular, often unsubstantiated, value systems. Our call for a politics of recognition and one of redistribution (Fraser, 1997) has implications for both policies in education systems and for practices in schools. In particular, it requires more sophisticated knowledges about

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gender, and the politics of difference and redistribution, which policy makers and those working in schools need so as to be able to address adequately educational issues for boys (and girls) in socially just ways. We have referred to these elsewhere as ‘threshold knowledges’ (Martino et al., 2004) and see them as central to effective policy and practice for policy makers and practitioners. Indeed, Kenway et al. (1997) have drawn attention to the pivotal role of teacher knowledges in gender equity reform, as well as the necessity for these matters to be part of the curriculum of schooling: Knowledge is the core work of schools. Teachers are expected to know their subjects and to know about knowledge, learning and learners. Fundamentally, the teacher’s job is to enable students to become knowledgeable. But what do we mean by ‘know’ and what do we mean by ‘knowledge’? And what do they have to do with gender reform? What knowledge about gender are our students supposed to acquire and how are they to acquire it? And what do teachers need to know and do in order to assist in this process? What do students do with what we teach them in school? What do we teach them about gender that we don’t know we teach? (Kenway et al., 1997, p. 66) One goal of this book, thus, is to address the significance of knowledge about gender in relation to its impact upon educational policy, and pedagogy and practices within schools. The book also raises important questions about the purposes of schooling and its role in transforming society and the gender order in socially just ways. Our underpinning desire in this book is for the promise of schooling to align with the reality and experiences of all girls and all boys. Our locations across three nations at the time of writing this book have strengthened our awareness of the need to ‘deparochialise’ (Appadurai, 2001) our perspective and knowledge about boys’ education, as well as about theory and research. We are aware of the close interdependence of nations in this era of globalization, the circulation of globalized policy discourses and flows of media stories about boys, and the related need to reject implicit assumptions that the social today is simply synonymous with nation. We also understand how new technologies which overcome space and time constraints allow the play of the imagination linked to the construction of identities, which today are not necessarily grounded within the confines of the nation (Appadurai, 1996). Our approach in this book then has been informed

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by our various locations and histories, our recognition of the multiple changes wrought by globalization, as well as our previous collaborative research projects. On our collaborative research, we would make specific mention of our federal government–commissioned research, published as Addressing the Educational Needs of Boys (Lingard et al., 2002), and our Australia Research Council Grant, Productive Pedagogies, Schools and Gender Reform. This book is an outcome of that latter research project. Marcus Weaver-Hightower (2003b), in an extended and critical literature review of materials relating to what he calls the ‘boy turn’ in educational research, policy and practice, has classified this literature into four categories. These include what he classifies as the ‘popularrhetorical literature’ to refer to Mills’s ‘backlash blockbusters’ mentioned earlier and some media representations; ‘theoretically oriented literature’, which encompasses Mac an Ghaill’s (1994) and Connell’s (1995) ground-breaking work on the social construction of masculinities; ‘practice-oriented literature’, which he suggests is responsive to practitioner and public concerns and which tends to be less theoretical in orientation; and ‘feminist and pro-feminist’ approaches, including Epstein et al. (1998), Lingard and Douglas (1999) and Mills (2001), which critique the moral panic about boys and the backlash, antifeminist character of the popular-rhetorical writings. Our stance is to reject the popular-rhetorical literature not only for being, as WeaverHightower (2003a, p. 474) puts it, ‘frequently essentialist’, ‘prone to antifeminism and conservative politics’ and also ‘prone to biological determinism’, but also, in our view, for failing to take account of differences and inequalities within the categories of boys and girls, as illustrated by the work of McCreedy (2004) and Kumashiro (2001) in the North American context. Furthermore, its recuperative character is anathema for a socially just gender reform agenda. We utilize the theoretically oriented literature, as well as feminist and pro-feminist work, while also seeking to contribute to better practices in relation to pedagogies and assessment and policy development. We recognize, as Weaver-Hightower (2003b) suggests, that both the theoretical and the (pro)feminist literatures do not really engage with practitioner concerns in a direct way – we seek to overcome this shortcoming. However, our stance is not one of tips or quick fixes for teachers or, for that matter, tips or quick fixes for policy makers; rather we hope we contribute to the necessary threshold knowledges for both in relation to both policies and pedagogies for achieving better educational outcomes for all boys and girls and for a more socially just gender order. As

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Raymond Williams (1983) insightfully put it, such a progressive project is about making hope practical, rather than making despair convincing. In our view, research and theory can only ever inform policy making and practice, rather than tell both what to do. We need to understand the local specificities of practice. This is why we prefer ‘evidence-informed’ to ‘evidence-based’ to refer to the research/practice relationship in both a pragmatic and a normative sense and why we see professional conversations about the matters raised in this book as important to better policies and practices.

Background to the ‘boy turn’ Globalization has been mentioned to this point or at least alluded to. This is a complex phenomenon, often inappropriately reified in social science explanations of multifarious contemporary social change. Suffice to say here that, in the context of a post–Cold War world and the collapse of the socialist command economies, globalization has most often manifested as neo-liberal market economics globally with resultant effects on inequalities between and within nations. As a consequence, the post–Second World War welfare state has been reconstructed as a post-welfare or competition state (Cerny, 1990), largely seeking to ensure national economies are competitive globally. Education has taken on particular policy salience here, as has a new individualism which amongst other things is also attached to globalized consumer capitalism, which works with, reflects and helps to constitute new masculinities and femininities. As Edwards (2006) and Connell (2005) both note, globalized consumer capitalism has supported the rise of the new lad and to a lesser extent the new man through magazines and other media. In this global setting, the nation state has been restructured under new public management, which now sees the state in the nations of the global north, in policy terms, steer at a distance through centre/practice relationships of strategic plans and indicators. We need to recognize that the state has a gender regime and gendered divisions of labour and power, and it both constitutes and regulates gender, as well as being a site of political mobilizations around gender (Connell, 2002, pp. 103–104). As Connell (2002, p. 8) notes, the movement of greater numbers of women into the public sphere as an outcome of second wave feminism has occurred just when the state sphere itself is being reduced through privatizations, public/private partnerships and other such public sector reforms. These ‘reforms’ have had serious gendered effects.

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Connell, for instance, states that ‘Neo-liberal economic strategies, deregulating markets, reducing taxes and government services, and transferring resources to private businesses have meant a major relocation of power into corporations and market mechanisms dominated by men’ (2002, p. 8). The new centre/school relationships in education systems, part of state restructuring, also have gendered effects (Blackmore, 1999; Lingard and Douglas, 1999), with a (re)masculinization of the centre and feminization of what we might inappropriately describe as the periphery, that is the core practice of education – teaching in classrooms. This structural backlash (Lingard and Douglas, 1999) has also had effects on women who achieve senior positions at the policy-making centre (Blackmore and Sachs, 2007) and also enlarged the emotional labour demands upon those at the periphery, as devolution – central to the restructured state – has constituted education as a ‘greedy institution’ (Franzway, 2001). The new performative state has also witnessed the rise of a whole audit industry of quality assurance, performance indicators and test measures (Power, 1997), with and through which the ‘centre’ in education departments and ministries steers professional practice at school sites. These developments have been described as ‘policy as numbers’ (Rose, 1999). In those education systems which have also introduced parental choice and quasi-markets, this mode of steering has been intensified, sometimes leading to ‘performativity’, impression management, being seen to perform and the thinning out of school purposes and professional practices (Ball, 2006). At the same time, there has been a literacization of education policy, with a ‘back-to-basics’ or ‘forward to fundamentals’ approach, which prioritizes literacy and numeracy, particularly at the primary level. These policy developments and plethora of performance, achievement and attainment data, set against broader gender politics, have been one central factor in the boy turn, as such data across the nations of the global north tend to document the negatively skewed results of boys and the positively skewed results of girls. In terms of literacy, and its centrality to the new knowledge and/or service economy, boys also do worse than girls with negatively skewed results. The nations of the global north have developed large service sectors and seek to become knowledge economies with gender almost irrelevant in a sense to employment and with a need for multiliteracies, with manufacturing being moved off-shore to the global south, where wages are lower. Other factors such as social class, ‘race’ and ethnicity interweave with gender to complexify the data picture available to the performative state. Our position would be that such data really once again demonstrate the

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salience of social class as a/the major determinant of school performance on all of these measures. Policy for a number of reasons has picked up on gender and focused on boys, while we would argue that such genderdisaggregated data have simultaneously confirmed and challenged the view of failing boys. We would also raise the issue of ‘which boys and which girls’ so as to avoid gender essentialism. As already noted, education has become central to national economic policies, while the economic well-being of nations is today often measured and assessed through comparative global measures of the quality of school systems, universities and other educational institutions and of comparative educational performance across nations (Brown et al., 1997). This global context has also witnessed the rise of global measures and indicators of performance of various kinds, which also contributes to debates around gender, schools and schooling policies. Educational indicators at the European level linked to the Lisbon Declaration of 2000 of Europe’s goal to be the strongest knowledge economy on the planet by 2010 are a good case in point. These developments can be seen as policy as numbers globalized and are complementary to national performativities already discussed. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is perhaps the best known of globalized policy as numbers developments, but even the OECD has a range of other indicators used for comparative measures of education and training systems across its 30 member nations. In the 2006 PISA, 57 nations participated in tests of literacy, numeracy, science and problem solving taken by students at the end of compulsory schooling, at about age 15 years. The tests are created by commissioned expert agencies and are (supposedly) non-nationally curricula bound. Rather, PISA purports to measure the capacities of a sample of students at the end of compulsory schooling to apply school knowledges in a number of real-life situations, framed by OECD’s policy commitment to lifelong learning. In the 2006 PISA, 27 nations in addition to the 30 OECD member nations participated. It appears that in the next scheduled PISA in three years about 100 nations will participate, thus demonstrating its enhanced significance and global reach. Now, this is not the place to debate PISA, but rather to recognize that it appears to constitute the emergence of a global space of equivalence and a commensurate space of measurement of school performance, and has become a powerful policy tool within participating nations in the context of globalization and emergent knowledge economies. PISA also collects background data on students’ schools and families, including socio-economic status (SES). PISA results allow systems to

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be classified as to their ‘quality’ in terms of actual comparative performance, and how equitable they are in terms of the distribution of scores and in relation to the effects of social class on performance. All of this is done comparatively on a global scale, well illustrating Novoa and Yariv-Mashal’s (2003) point about comparison as central to new forms of governance and also their point that today the ‘global eye’ assists the ‘national eye’ in such governance. All of this can be seen to be a part of what Nigel Thrift (2005) has described as ‘knowing capitalism’, the use of social science and management theories and methodologies to help run the contemporary world. Of course, such knowledge utilization is mediated by power and vested interests, which is very evident in the usage of data in relation to issues of boys’ education. To date PISA results have demonstrated that the Scandinavian countries, particularly Finland, Iceland and Sweden, have high quality and equitable systems. PISA data can also be disaggregated according to gender with some significant gender differences across nations. To hugely oversimplify, the Scandinavian countries with strong welfare states and low Gini coefficients of inequality do well in terms of quality and equity, while the Anglo-American style systems are quite inequitable in terms of social-class effects, with reasonably high quality outcomes. In Iceland, girls performed better than boys on all measures, including all measures in maths – the only society to do so (Jóhannesson, 2006). There was also a significant performance gap between boys and girls in maths in rural areas in favour of girls (see Jóhannesson et al., 2009), provoking speculation as to explanations concerning changing and developing national and micro gender orders. Finland, in the three PISAs to date, has demonstrated high quality and equity, but the disparities that exist are ones linked to ethnicity and gender, so that ethnic-minority boys and girls in the rural and isolated north perform much worse than boys and girls in the metropolitan cities. The PISA data and analysis of it are most useful in a number of ways. The data clearly demonstrate the need for both redistributive and recognition polices in schooling (Fraser, 1997); that is, policies which not only target social-class based inequalities, but also recognize differences across the categories of girls and boys, such as their inflection by ethnicity. The data also demonstrate the specificities of national gender orders and the interplay of the global, national and local (Connell, 2002). All such data, at both national and global levels, allows the category of boys to be made visible and the plurality of masculinities within these gender orders made evident, a point to which we will return.

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All of these developments adumbrated to this point have affected and reflect changes to what Connell (2002, 2005) has called ‘the gender order’, including the gendered division of power, the gendered division of labour, emotional/sexual relations (cathexis) and symbolic politics related to gender. Masculinities and femininities as socially constructed have been destabilized, as have sexualities, in a mix of contested gender and sexual politics. In Giddens’s (1990) account, detraditionalization has occurred, which has challenged dominant constructions of masculinities and femininities and the family. Beck (1992), in talk of ‘choice biographies’ for the privileged of the nations of the global north, linked to a rampant individualism in a context of risk, also indicates another aspect of the destabilizing of traditional practices of masculinity and femininity and of sexuality. Retraditionalization has, of course, been one defensive political response to this situation and, as Faludi (2007) has shown, 9/11 worked against feminism in media responses seeking to reinscribe older, more traditional constructions of gender, of both masculinities and femininities. Faludi describes older frontier masculinities and nurturant, dependant femininities. But, of course, there is much contestation around these matters. In this complex and contested context, in the nations of the global north men’s politics of various kinds, both pro- and anti-feminist, have arisen and feminism has bloomed into various kinds, despite some talk of a post-feminist era. It is in this complex and contested context that the boy turn in schooling has occurred. These changes have been accompanied as well by changes in theorizing about and understanding the gender order and masculinities and femininities, both globally and nationally, and the associated gender regimes within various institutions, including the state and schools. We recognize, though, that theoretical and empirical work on the relationships between the global and the construction of gender, specifically masculinity, is in its early stages (Kenway et al., 2006). Kenway and her colleagues (2006) have written at length about how the mobilities and flows of various kinds associated with globalization have affected local lives and identities, helping to reconstitute masculinities beyond the metropolis. In their analysis, they recognize the reconstitution of space and place in the context of globalization and also recognize the need for research methodology cognizant of new globalized spatial relations and thus draw upon Burawoy and colleagues’ (2001) work on global ethnography, which recognizes methodologically the need to eschew the assumption of the social as synonymous with nation state and to consider the interplays of global forces, connections and imagination.

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Kenway and her colleagues also work with a concept of globalization as the stretching out of social relations. Globalization theorists such as Appadurai (1996, 2006) and Castells (1996) have argued that mobilities, networks and flows are central features of contemporary social relations and need to be a focus of analysis. These concepts have implications for the nature of power, which Castells suggests is now located, rather than situated or pinned down, in flows , and for understanding changes to the gender order. He suggests capital now exercises power through flows and networks, while labour tends to be more place dependant and thus in a weaker position vis-a-vis capital. There are gendered aspects to these flows and mobilities, as well as to locatedness within the local, perhaps somewhat akin to older gendered public/private divisions. Mac an Ghaill and Haywood (2007) have surveyed these social changes in what they call, after Giddens (1990) and Beck (1992), ‘late modernity’ and considered the necessary theoretical and epistemological responses for understanding gender, as well as documenting the nature of the empirical changes globalization and late modernity have provoked. Here we note that talk of a gender order and a pro-feminist politics are for them associated with modernism and the gendering of modernity, as is also implied by Edwards (2006). Seidler’s (2006) position is similar in his critique of Connell’s structuralist account of the gender order and masculinities, which he argues denies the politics of the personal to men. The Seidler/Connell division here turns on Seidler seeing the need for men to work on changing themselves, what Connell sees as a ‘therapeutic approach’, and Connell stressing the need for men to support women to change the gender order, while seeing dangers in a male-focused men’s movement. Aspects and residues of the modernist gender order remain, but a new order is also emerging. In this context, Mac an Ghaill and Haywood see gender as a central lens to make sense of the huge social changes accompanying globalization and the condition of late modernity, what some others would call ‘post-modernity’ (Harvey, 1989; Lyotard, 1984). Indeed, they state, ‘We suggest that at this current historical juncture the category gender has become a lens to make sense of wider social transformations’ (p. 4). They speak of a ‘cultural flashpoint’ to encapsulate the tensions, the interweaving between the gendering of modernity and that of late modernity, and identify two elements of this cultural flashpoint. The first element refers to the transformations being experienced and which talk of a ‘masculinity crisis’, a ‘backlash against feminism’ and a ‘politics of recuperative masculinity’. These are matters

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we have written about at some length in relation to gender and schooling (Lingard and Douglas, 1999; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003; Martino and Meyenn, 2001; Mills, 2001). The second element recognizes that the crisis referred to in the first is actually ‘perceived and mediated’ through gender. Thus Mac an Ghaill and Haywood (2007, p. 4) note, ‘In other words, the language of gender is increasingly used as a central means by which men and women articulate their understanding of being subjects in and objects of a world in flux’ (p. 4). Thus they argue that ‘in the twenty-first century, gender and sexual identities have come to speak a wider sense of social (dis)location in globally-based, post-colonial, (de)industrializing societies’ (p. 5). Gender has entered everyday, everynight discourses, while the changes that this lens seeks to clarify require new theoretical approaches. In terms of this new theory, Mac an Ghaill and Haywood juxtapose materialist and post-structuralist theoretical approaches. The first might also be described as structuralist, as evidenced in Connell’s concepts of gender order and gender regime to refer respectively to the gendered configurations of societies and organizations. Materialist or structuralist theory sought to understand structured, centred, almost fixed and stable ‘bases of social power’, for example talk of a patriarchal gender order. In contrast, post-structuralist theory identifies the limits of fixed gender categories of men and women, masculinities and femininities and seeks to deconstruct and inflect them through considerations of their intersection with social class, ‘race’, ethnicity, disability and sexuality. We would also suggest that these intersections or inflections need to be seen globally, such that global flows of people or diasporas also result in hybrid ethnic identities, which also inflect masculinities and femininities in particular ways. As Bauman (1998) has suggested as well, mobility/immobility has today become another dimension of inequality with the privileged able to move the disadvantaged located in or bounded to one place. This dimension also has a gendered element to it. Mac an Ghaill and Haywood see the categories of difference (social class, ‘race’, ethnicity, disability, sexuality) as inflecting each other, rather than accumulating. It is this recognition of difference which provoked the development of the concept of ‘strategic essentialism’ developed by the post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak (1992). She recognized that politically at times it is necessary to speak of ‘unified’ categories, for example the category of women, to make political claims on the state. It is interesting that on the anti-feminist, men’s rights side of contemporary men’s politics such strategic essentialism has also been utilized effectively in a political sense (Robinson, S., 2000). Post-structuralist

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theorizing also works with a concept of power more derived from Foucault than from Weber and Marx, which tends to underpin structuralist theorizing. This Foucauldian account sees power as relational and distributed, rather than as so much centred and possessed, and in the context of globalization can also be seen to be linked to flows and mobilities across national borders. Our theoretical position is aligned with that of Mac an Ghaill and Haywood in that we see the need to work across both theoretical conceptions, structuralist and poststructuralist, as a way to understanding contemporary social changes to the gender order. In seeking to work together structuralist and poststructuralist theorizing, we also recognize that ‘post’ is a precocious prefix (Gregory, 2004) with multiple meanings, as is so evident in the ambivalence of the concept of postcolonialism. We would make the point, though, that this synthetic theorizing raises some difficulties for the state and the politics of policy making in respect of gender. The more complex the theory, the more difficult is the translation, if that is an appropriate descriptor, of research and theory into policy and practice. We consider it to be the case that there have been some educational advances made for girls in the global north, including Australia, during the last few decades (Arnot et al., 1999; Collins et al., 2000; Lingard et al., 2002). These have resulted from the engagement of second wave feminism with polices, pedagogies and other practices in education and should be recognized and celebrated. These advances are reflected in the enhanced retention of girls in upper secondary schools and enhanced participation in universities, with the numbers of girls in both upper secondary schools and universities now exceeding boys. However, we would stress that these increases in numbers have not made either schools or universities more ‘female friendly’, nor have they drastically altered the gendered curriculum or eradicated sexual harassment, and girls’ participation is still heavily gender inflected; that is, females dominate the numbers in languages and humanities subjects in upper secondary schooling and education, nursing and arts degrees at universities. There is some evidence to suggest that girls are challenging boys to top academic performance across most subject domains, including now maths and sciences, while boys’ overall performance tends to be negatively skewed and girls’ positively skewed in most subjects. Girls now choose a wider range of subjects in the senior years of schooling than do boys, whose subject choices still seem to be circumscribed by certain subjects being regarded as masculine. This change for girls

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reflects the success of the earlier feminist-inspired ‘girls can do anything’ project. In our Australian research (Lingard et al., 2002) we found one private all boys’ school which recognized boys’ narrowed subject choices and thus required all boys in senior schooling to choose across a range of humanities and sciences subjects as part of, they claimed, a broader project of remaking masculinity in the context of broader social changes, including those precipitated by globalization. We acknowledge that the picture of this gender change becomes more complex when one considers the intersection of gender with a range of other factors such as social class and ethnicity. Indeed, the evidence is that boys from low socio-economic backgrounds, and especially Indigenous boys in Australia, are doing poorly in educational terms. We note here the poor educational performance of boys of African-Caribbean descent in the UK as well, and also the low school achievement of poor black boys in the US, where boys and schooling tends to be a ‘racialized’ issue (Ferguson, 2001; Lopez, 2003). The significance of social class to school performance appears to be the case across the nations of the global north. For example, in contemporary Scotland there is a targeting of a so-called NEET group in public policy, young people (both male and female) not in education, employment and training, in recognition that such young people come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and tend to be ‘reproduced’ into such circumstances. We also note that poor and Indigenous girls in Australia are not doing well at school. We also recognize that advances for girls and women have been much greater for those from middle-class backgrounds and as yet have not resulted in women having equal pay with men, nor similar career opportunities. What we have is something of a ‘gender convergence’ (Walby, 1997) amongst middle-class girls and boys in educational but not in income and career terms, simultaneous with some increased polarizations within both genders (Walby, 1997). For example, teenage mothers from poor families remain very disadvantaged in respect of education and labour markets and Indigenous girls in Australia are not doing well. In terms of gender differentiation post school, there is actually some evidence from Australia that male/female pay differentials have worsened over the last decade or so (Summers, 2003). Additionally, women are still outnumbered by men in governing positions and also in leadership and senior positions in big firms, with labour markets remaining heavily gender segmented. The gains in schooling for middle-class girls have not as yet converted into gender equalities in respect of post-school opportunities, incomes and careers (Collins et al., 2000). There appears to be more post-school gender equality in those societies which have

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instigated family-friendly employment policies and paternity as well as maternity leave, as is the case, for example, in contemporary Iceland and some other Scandinavian countries. However, advances for some girls and women have sparked an interest among the global northern nations in raising boys’ achievement in relation to that of girls in a context of the so-called ‘post-feminism’ (Brooks, 1997) and a backlash against feminism (Faludi, 1992; Lingard and Douglas, 1999). Here we need a nuanced account of backlash – there have not been univocal backlashes to such changes and many, both men and women, see equal opportunities in education and the workplace as important and progressive political gains (Connell, 2005). However, such policies have also been rearticulated in a more individualistic fashion under pressures from neo-liberalism writ globally and from new state structures. As Connell (2005, p. 254) observes, equal employment opportunity under such pressures has become an ‘individualizing principle rather than a principle of group advancement’. Some time ago now, Goode (1982) spoke of the ‘decreasing marginal utility of males in the labour markets and economies of western nations to pick up on the changed skills sets of jobs emphasising “brain” over “brawn”’. Non-nuanced backlash arguments can also be used to suggest the earlier gains of feminism were easily achieved. This is patently not the case. As Jill Blackmore (1999) has argued, opposition to feminist politics and gains for women has always been there, but is less apparent at a time of strength of feminist politics, and comes to the fore again in times of resentment and rapid change, risks and insecurity, as we would suggest is the case in the present globalized post-9/11 world. And as Sally Robinson (2000, p. 4) notes, when suggesting that backlash is perhaps too oversimplified a concept, current gender politics are as much about the ‘power to represent the normative’ in the context of the rise of identity politics. The rise of recuperative masculinity politics (Lingard and Douglas, 1999) of particular kinds – which seek to reconstitute male as norm and return to a pre-feminist gender order, and consist of mythopoetic and men’s rights strands (Connell, 2005; Kimmel, 1995) – has in some ways epitomized ‘backlash’ politics. These forms of backlash have read small gains for women and girls as large gains (Faludi, 1992), while seeking to constitute men and boys as the new disadvantaged. In a most insightful analysis, Sally Robinson (2000) has written in the US context about how what she calls an ‘identity politics of the dominant’ was utilized by white men in response to perceived challenges to male dominance by a range of identity politics movements to do with women, sexuality, ‘race’, ethnicity, disability and so on, to name

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and mark white men as disadvantaged, and which in so doing paradoxically helped to further unmask the invisibility of male power. This backlash, and in particular the mythopoetic strand of it, found fertile soil in middle-class homes, where men did feel challenged by feminism; in households where single mothers were unsure about how to engage with their sons; amongst some feminist women who wanted their sons to change; and amongst middle-class and working-class men alike, whose jobs or career preferences were being challenged by women and equal opportunity legislation. The impact on education of this identity politics of the dominant in Australia, North America and the UK can be seen in the movement to increase the numbers of male teachers in schools through affirmative action, to recognize that boys and girls have essentially different learning styles and needs, and in the desire to remasculinize classrooms and pedagogies in boy-friendly directions (see Sax, 2005, 2007). But why are middle-class girls now doing better in the global northern school systems and seemingly, on the surface at least, outperforming boys? Educational factors have contributed here, as well as broader social changes and politics (Arnot et al., 1999; Arnot and Miles, 2005; Mills et al., in press; Weaver-Hightower, 2003a). We contend that the impact of the feminist movement has been one very positive contributor in the advances to date, through raising teachers’ awareness that gender and its construction have to be the key concerns at all levels of schooling, from policy through to practice. However, the impact of feminism in schooling has worked in multiple ways through policy and various commitments within schools with changing emphases at various times and in various places, even in the same country (Cohen, 1998; Hayes, 1998, 2003; Kenway, 1990). As Kenway and her colleagues (1997) noted in an Australian study of policies for girls in schools, such policy implementation often included a focus on boys as well. Similarly, we have found that some schools in their localized practices have taken a nuanced ‘which boys, which girls?’ response to the contemporary policy focus on boys. Policy intention has been mediated at local sites, a confirmation perhaps of a view of policy refraction in implementation as a positive sign of progressive professional mediation. Unfortunately and inappropriately in our view, though, much contemporary educational policy today throughout the nations of the global north works with the assumption that the feminist project has been completed, and in some more rabid arguments that it has ‘gone too far’ (Yates, 2000), and that boys are the new disadvantaged in schooling. Amongst those arguing boys as the new disadvantaged there

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is a tendency not to disaggregate the performance and achievement data – politically their position is one of strategic essentialism. However, we can confidently say that there is overwhelming evidence that middleclass boys are still doing well in school and certainly still doing very well after graduation from university in labour markets and have good career opportunities and that it is boys (and girls) from poor families who are the most disadvantaged in education. This picture is complicated when we also take account of ethnicity and ‘race’. There is also a global and gendered dimension to these differing career opportunities. This class-based differential in education and career opportunities appears to be the case, inflected in specific ways, in most nations of the global north. Now, while this has always been the case, the situation has probably been worsened by changes in labour markets, the complexifying of transitions to jobs, increased school retention and credentialism, and the implementation of neo-liberal competitive and individualistic educational reforms as education policy responses to globalization. Many of Paul Willis’s (1977) working-class boys now learn not to labour in countries such as Australia. Further, we acknowledge that the negative evidence regarding boys and schooling, such as boys’ levels of suspensions, expulsion, bullying, disruptive behaviours of all sorts, does need to be addressed in both education policy and schooling practices (Jóhannesson, 2004; Keddie, 2003, 2006; Martino and PallottaChiarolli, 2005; Mills, 2001). These behaviours have negative effects on other boys and girls in school and are often expressed through misogyny and homophobia. It is also important to draw attention to how zero-tolerance approaches to creating safe schools in Canada and the US have resulted in further discriminating against and demonizing minority boys (see Solomon, 2004; Verdugo, 2002). These social changes considered so far have affected schooling and gender policies in nations around the globe and across the north/south divide, but always in vernacular ways, reflecting specific histories, cultures and politics generally and in relation to gender.

Conclusion and structure of the book In this introduction we have traversed many of the factors contributing to the take-up of boys’ education in both policy and practice since the early 1990s. We embrace Weaver-Hightower’s (2003a) assessment of the ‘boy turn’ in gender and education research. We agree with him that the role of both media representations and popular-rhetorical books mentioned earlier and parental concerns and pressures can be

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exaggerated in understanding contemporary gender politics in education, but note the salience of the media in the Australian context in the responses of many schools located in systems which have evacuated social justice policy concerns and devolved more authority to schools. Interestingly, Weaver-Hightower also argues that feminist examination of the social construction of gender precipitated concern about masculinities. This development is very obvious in the work on gender theorizing of Connell (1987, 2005). Weaver-Hightower also suggests that the policy focus of feminist-inspired school reform on the performance gaps for girls, especially in maths and science, subsequently contributed to a concern over boys’ performance. We would suggest that this was also a result of the narrow definition of success implicit in the earlier programmes. New Right and neo-liberal reforms in government have also contributed to the boy turn according to Weaver-Hightower. This is especially so in England, where market reforms have established a quasi-market in schooling which has been accompanied by league tables of performance as a guide for the exercise of parental choice. These data have demonstrated the negatively skewed performance of boys on literacy measures and in related subjects. We would also see these developments as linked to new public sector managerialism, which steers at a distance through performance measures. Weaver-Hightower also lists explicit backlash politics as an important factor, often associated with the ‘crisis of masculinity’ discourse. Success of second wave feminism in respect of equal opportunity and affirmative action legislation also contributed to the rise of backlash politics. Finally, he outlines how economic and workforce changes, manifest as expanding service and declining manufacturing sectors in the nations of the global north, have also contributed to a perceived ‘crisis of masculinity’ in their demand for new kinds of skills and dispositions and framed the boys in education debate. We agree with Weaver-Hightower’s exhaustive adumbration of the etiologies of the boy turn. Our agreement here means that policies and practices geared to more gender just schooling and society need to be underpinned by an understanding of these interwoven etiologies. There are thus no quick fixes to the issue of boys’ education and we must work to keep issues of girls’ education on the agenda as well, while recognizing the different educational experiences and opportunities of different groups of girls and boys. These differences need to be understood in relation to the complex intersections of race, class and sexuality in addressing questions related to structural inequality and disadvantage in terms of how they impact on students’ participation and engagement with schooling.

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We move next in Chapter 2 to a consideration of the current policy context around boys’ schooling in many countries of the global north; we include Australia here. We show how the policy uptake has not been consistent amongst these countries. However, the boys’ agenda in many of these countries has bitten and is showing signs of becoming regarded as a legitimate concern for schools. We illustrate how this concern is tied to a broader phenomenon of a politics of resentment, which includes a masculinist resentment towards feminism, and perceived feminist successes, for example changes in family law, girls’ education and so on. We argue that these have been over-read in terms of exaggerating feminist achievements in transforming public institutions, such as schooling, and as having being achieved at the expense of addressing the needs of men and boys. This over-reading has worked to fuel concerns about the feminization of men and boys, that is that men and boys have become too like women and girls and that men no longer know how to behave as their moorings to traditional forms of masculinity have been severed. Within this notion of crisis there are romantic notions of what it once used to mean to be a man. Removed from these discourses is any analysis of issues of differences amongst men and boys which prevents a more complex understanding about the social relations and practices of masculinities. In analysing the various policy contexts of these countries we pose the question ‘Who wins and who loses from this current policy moment?’ This question also helps to frame the other chapters in this book which focus on the various ways in which the boys’ agenda has been taken up in schools. We identify a number of key issues in boys’ schooling, for example boy-friendly curriculum, single-sex classrooms and male teachers, and provide an analysis of these in terms of the ways in which they further or hinder a gender justice agenda. In so doing we overlay our analyses with a multidimensional framework. This framework engages with empirical research into effective pedagogies, analytic perspectives on anti-oppressive education, and understandings of power relations and gender theory. In Chapter 3 we explore the implications of the calls for more boyfriendly schooling. We show how schools are already very ‘boy-friendly’ and that such approaches often work with essentialist notions of masculinity. We argue that such approaches can have negative impacts on girls and some boys in schools. We note how many of these approaches also work with a deficit model of boys and that such a model is likely to hurt the already most disadvantaged boys in schools. We pay particular attention here to attempts by schools to keep boys active, to

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‘masculinize’ the so-called ‘feminized areas’ of the curriculum and to reculture the schooling environment to make it more boy-friendly. In Chapter 4, along similar lines, we show how some schools have instigated single-sex classrooms as part of making schools friendlier to boys. Where this has occurred there have often been attempts to provide boys with a pedagogical approach that is grounded in normalized constructions of masculinity. In this chapter we identify the ways school-based structural reforms of this kind, which are based upon a particular construction of masculinity, work against the interests of gender justice, including the interests of some boys, and against the interest of girls and women. A further suggestion for making schools friendlier to boys has involved attempting to recruit more male teachers into schools, in particular into primary schooling. We take up this issue in Chapter 5. Our particular focus here is on policy responses to this concern. We suggest that many of the claims on the male teacher debate are grounded in a form of masculinist politics that claim that boys can learn what it means to be a man only from other men. Again, in unpacking these debates we are confronted with limited understandings of being a man. The calls for more male teachers construct male teachers in essentialist terms. Hence, male teachers are expected to provide boys with models of what it means to be a normal boy. Such expectations demonstrate limited understandings of gender theory and power relations within particular contexts. We show in this chapter the impact that these calls for more male teachers have on existing male teachers, female teachers and students, both boys and girls, in schools. Throughout the early chapters in this book we demonstrate the problems of working with essentialist and homogenized understandings of masculinity. In Chapter 6 we provide a more nuanced analysis of how masculinities are performed and constructed by examining boys’ peers groups. In this chapter we show the diverse ways in which boys engage with each other, with girls and the schooling process in general. We suggest in this chapter that any work with boys that is likely to produce gender just outcomes has to have an understanding of the ways in which various masculinities and femininities are positioned against and alongside each other. The book concludes with suggestions for a way forward through the boys’ debate that recognizes that some boys do experience particular forms of oppression, albeit not as boys but as particular kinds of marginalized boys, and that recognizes the importance of challenging dominant constructions of masculinities for girls and female teachers.

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We argue in this chapter that in challenging such constructions of gender pedagogy matters, and we make suggestions as to what an anti-oppressive pedagogy might look like within the context of boys’ education and that will simultaneously work in the interests of all students. In presenting our arguments in this book, in some places we construct narratives about the issues concerned. (Charlton et al., 2007; Lingard et al., 2002, Martino et al., 2004; Martino et al., 2005 In the construction of these narratives we draw upon our vast experience of working with schools; observing teachers; interviewing principals, teachers, students (boys and girls of a variety of ages), policy workers, parents and other stakeholders; delivering in-service programmes in schools; and working in the policy domain. These narratives are a composite of this work. They tell a story of the attempts that some schools have made to address issues of boys’ education and of the efforts of those who have sought to resist the excesses of such reforms. These composite narratives allow us to explore many of the issues in depth in ways that show the breadth in which the boys’ agenda has been taken up in schools. Elsewhere we have written about individual schools and some of the ways in which the boys’ debate has impacted upon them (see Martino et al., 2004, 2005; Mills et al., 2004; Charlton et al., 2007). Whilst these schools, primarily Australian schools, have provided interesting case studies in and of themselves, they are also indicative of more widespread practices occurring in schools in our various locations in North America and the UK as well as Australia.

2 Education Policy, Gender and Boys’ Schooling

Introduction As noted in Chapter 1, there is now a globalized educational discourse about ‘failing boys’ circulating in the privileged nations of the global north – what Marcus Weaver-Hightower (2003a) has called the ‘boy turn’ in gender policies in schooling and in associated politics and theorizing. Weaver-Hightower uses the evocative concept ‘boy turn’ to encapsulate two aspects of contemporary gender politics in schooling, namely to depict the turn away from a girls’ focus, and secondly to capture the anti-feminist stance which suggests it is time for boys to have a ‘turn’ in respect of policies and funding. This boy turn works with an essentialized category of ‘boys’, and indeed of ‘girls’, rather than working with and recognizing various and variegated practices of masculinities and femininities. In our view what is required instead is a more complex ‘post’ approach to policy production and practice which would recognize the complexity of both the categories of boys and girls, or rather practices of masculinity and femininity, and acknowledge as well other factors such as social class, poverty, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and so on. While we recognize globalization and its impact upon nation states and the associated global flows of discourses about gender and schooling, we focus in this chapter on Australian policy on gender and schooling, traversing a transition from a focus on girls’ disadvantages through schooling (mid-1970s to mid-1990s) and, in the broader gender order, through gender equity (mid-1990s), to the recent plethora of federally funded policies for boys’ schooling created by the former conservative Howard federal government (1996–2007). While the focus is Australia, we acknowledge the specificities of such policies amongst nations of the 27

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global north and are also aware of the global north/global south divide regarding such gender policies in schooling. We use gender here because such policies often focus on both boys and girls or at least have implications for both. As Unterhalter (2007) has so thoroughly documented drawing on a wide range of UN data, questions of gender equity in the global south are still largely questions of girls’ disadvantage, even in respect of access to full primary schooling and participation, let alone in relation to achievement, outcomes and career options. These are matters of central concern to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and the Education for All global movement. We recognize, though, that with the enhanced flows of policy ideas and policy makers, issues of boys’ education have also come onto the agenda in some nations of the global south. This is evidenced in the Commonwealth Secretariat Report Boys’ Underachievement in Education (Jha and Kelleher, 2006), which while noting that 35–40 million of the worldwide figure of 65 million girls out of school are from Commonwealth countries also notes that where gender parity in access has been achieved, boys’ underachievement has now come onto the agenda in some global south Commonwealth countries, for example Jamaica. Indeed, the Secretariat’s Report was a response to the issue which was raised at the 15th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers held in Edinburgh in December 2003. We are also aware of the impact of globalization, read performatively as neo-liberal economics (Bourdieu, 2003), on global and national economies and cultures and the ways in which flows of globalization – specifically here the ‘mediascapes’ (Appadurai, 1996) – have seen gender politics, feminist, pro-feminist and anti-feminist flow across the north/south global divide with mediated effects in all nations. While we need to be aware of the global gender order and changes to it, we are thinking here of the impact of, for example, 9/11, so effectively illustrated by Susan Faludi in her book The Terror Dream (2007). She documents the conservative effects of the so-called ‘war on terror’ on the gender order, and masculinities and femininities in the US with the re-articulation and re-representation of protective men and dependant, nurturing women, each nation and locale has its own specific, indeed, idiosyncratic gender order and gender politics. Globalization has also seen the emergence, according to Connell (2000), of a new form of global hegemonic masculinity, what he calls ‘transnational business masculinity’, which refers to the practices of international businessmen, politicians and policy makers. While the use of the descriptor ‘complex’ can often be used to eschew or elide proper analysis, we would describe contemporary

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global and national gender orders and their interrelationships as very complex. This is manifested in a contested politics over masculinities and femininities and the interplay of what we would see as residual, dominant, emergent and contested practices of both. And of course practices of both need to be conceptualized in relation to each other, locally, nationally and globally. We would also add that there is a parallel global sexual order framing competing and contested politics of sexuality and heteronormativity, globally and locally (Altman, 2001), which adds to the complexity of contemporary gender and sexual politics. The purpose of this chapter then is not only to document the complexity of contemporary gender politics through the example of Australia with a particular focus on the boy turn, but also to draw out some broader more generalizable insights about gender and schooling. It is in the detailed specifics of a given case that we can come to understand both the constraints and the possibilities in the contemporary situation. We conclude the chapter by arguing the need for a renewed feminist and pro-feminist agenda, based on revitalized theorizing working together structuralist and post-structuralist accounts and supporting a range of policies in education geared to the establishment of a more equal gender order and one free of homophobia. This requires a challenging of dominant constructions of masculinity, a rejection of gender essentialisms, working with both boys and girls, implementation of re-distributive policies, working with differences across gender categories and taking account of the specificities of gender policies in particular national locations set against a nuanced analysis of globalization. Recognition of the homophobia associated with dominant constructions and policing of masculinities is also necessary, as is a challenge to implicit heteronormativity. This challenge also requires a global disposition and an awareness of the hidden nationalism of much social theorizing, which assumes the global north as the location of the only sites for theory production (Appadurai, 2001; Bourdieu, 1998; Connell, 2007; Lingard, 2007). As Kenway, Kraack and Hickey-Moody (2006, p. 12) observe, today we need a ‘global analytic’ for effective theorizing. This is the case in respect of understanding gender today in relation to schooling and also using gender as a lens to understand broader changes. There is clearly contestation at all levels of gender policies in schooling from the local through the national to the global. This is paralleled by competing theoretical and practice-based approaches in the boy turn in education as Weaver-Hightower (2003b) has documented. Further, as with all effects of globalization, there are national and local factors

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involved in the specific ways in which the boy turn is manifest, resulting from local and national politics. This is what Appadurai (1996) has called ‘vernacular globalization’, the interactive relationships between global, national and local factors, all mediated by new communication technologies (ICTs) and provoking potential for a more cosmopolitan imagination, a necessary disposition of the research imagination today. These play out in respect of schooling, education policy, gender and gender policy, and specifically in relation to the boy turn. In our analysis, we are attempting to make a progressive pro-feminist contribution to these politics, while recognizing Edwards’ (2006) well-made point that profeminist men’s politics was a progressive theoretical response to second wave feminism, which now needs to be augmented by what he calls third wave ‘post’ feminisms and masculinity studies. We strongly believe that participating in the political and discursive struggles that the term ‘boy turn’ signifies is important for us as educators, and that the political and academic participation in these debates is an endeavour that must be constituted across national borders, contributing to a progressive global ideoscape, as well as progressive local and national policy making in education. In so observing, however, we duly recognize that policy and practice can never be simply read off from research, but both are always mediated by values and other knowledges. On this point, and as we have argued elsewhere (Martino et al., 2004), we would see understanding of and engagement with the matters raised in this chapter and in this book as important to the necessary threshold knowledges of contemporary policy makers and practitioners. Our concern here is over both policy and practice: for us, quality pedagogies underpin effective schooling for boys and girls from various backgrounds, but particularly for those from what we might classify as disadvantaged backgrounds. This is a point we will return to in the concluding chapter of this book. We also recognize both the structural and the deeply personal and individual aspects of gender relations and politics; this is why structuralist accounts of the gender order and the like need augmentation. As Connell (2002, p. 138) observes, ‘Gender politics almost always has this dimension of intimacy, as well as involving larger social relations.’ This is why debates about the boy turn in schooling policy evoke such trenchant and acrimonious debates. We were never so aware of this as when we were commissioned by the federal government in Australia to look at how schools were addressing the educational needs of boys (Lingard et al., 2002), when there was intense pressure upon us in terms of designing the research study, collecting data, analysing, theorizing

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and writing the report for the federal bureaucracy. There was a very real attempt to ‘police’ our research and report, an experience which was indicative of the personal aspects of contemporary gender politics and the rejection by some, not all, policy makers (both male and female) inside the bureaucracy of our pro-feminist stance and our claim of the necessity to disaggregate the category of boys and to work with the concept of the social construction of masculinities and femininities. This pressure was brought to bear by those inside the federal bureaucracy who were trying to second guess the stance of the Minister and pre-empt policy development without bureaucratic input. There was a complex gender politics involved, demanding much emotional labour, which Connell (1987) would see as an aspect of cathexis, one element of the societal gender order and of the state gender regime. One of us conducted research interviews with femocrats (see below for further discussion) at state and federal levels in the early 1990s in Australia, when the policy agenda was still largely focused on girls. Two of us subsequently supervised a PhD thesis early this century on the changing place of boys in gender policies in education in Australia. This research involved interviews with many policy makers inside a state education bureaucracy, some of whom were involved in interviews in the earlier study. In the more recent study, these policy makers were much more cautious and wary in their research interviews than they had been when the earlier research was conducted. This caution and real care about choice of words and what could and could not be quoted in the research write-up was in stark contrast to their earlier, more open and more confident positioning. We see this change as indicative of the new policy climate and the politics of contemporary policy making in respect of gender. These femocrats in the state bureaucracy, who were attempting to take a ‘which boys, which girls?’ policy stance, were very much on the defensive in the context of federal focus shifting to boys. Some also now had broader equity policy remits.

Gender policy in education in Australia: From girls to boys There are some particular features of Australian gender policies in schooling that have attracted attention, including the effective engagement from the mid-1970s of feminism with the state, resulting in a raft of progressive polices for girls and women both in education and in other domains of social policy. The second wave of the women’s movement coincided in Australia with the election of the progressive, social-democratic Whitlam government in 1972, which immediately

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appointed a women’s adviser to the prime minister. This feminist engagement with the state and bureaucracy saw the creation of an Australian neologism, ‘femocrat’, to describe those feminists appointed within the bureaucracy to oversee the development of women’s policies and policies for girls in schooling, with feminist politics part of the job description (Eisenstein, 1996; Yeatman, 1990). Eisenstein (1996) referred to femocrats as ‘inside agitators’. This state-centric political engagement has been contrasted by Eisenstein (1991) with the much more academic orientation of political feminism in the US. In comparing the boy turn in England and Australia, Pat Mahony (2003) also has noted the absence of the ‘femocracy’ in England, while Arnot et al. (1999) have demonstrated how feminist-influenced school policies for girls in England were constituted at the Local Authority rather than national level. Canadian federalism, in contrast with the more centralized and vertically imbalanced Australian version, has seen gender policy located more at the provincial rather than national level. the Australian approach has historically been more akin to the state feminism of the Scandinavian countries, but has been weakened considerably in more recent times by neo-liberalism. In Australia, femocrats in both the federal and the state bureaucracies were responsible for the development of a range of progressive girls’ and schooling policies, reaching its apotheosis in the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools (Australian Education Council, 1987), the first national policy on schooling in what is a federal political structure with constitutional responsibility for schooling located with the states. Productive relationships with academic research and feminist scholarship were another important feature of this policy work, with changing policy frames reflecting developments in academic theorizing (Yates, 1993). As the policy focus in Australia moved from girls to boys, femocrats inside the state moved onto the defensive, attempting to deflect the worst aspects of recuperative masculinity politics, whilst seeking to protect gains for girls and to utilize social constructionist frames to explain and understand boys and schooling. A conservative federal government (1996–2007), however, provided political opportunities for recuperative masculinity politics to have its day, as it were, in policy terms in Australia. This trend was mediated by State Labor governments, by femocrats inside the state linked to feminist and pro-feminist scholars in academe, and affected by the inevitable refractions of policy as palimpsest in schools and classrooms. This idiosyncratic Australian state-centric approach has also been reflected in the boy turn in federal and state policies and in both critique and activism towards policies for boys in education. As already noted,

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from the early to mid-1990s, femocrats were on the defensive in the face of men’s politics framed by backlash conceptions of feminism and gains for girls in education and women in the labour market (Lingard, 2003). Men’s politics of both a mythopoetic kind, which see men as damaged by a range of contemporary social and political changes, and men’s rights groups, which argue a more virulent anti-feminism, received considerable media coverage. Indeed, one of us has argued that for a time in the mid-to late-1990s in Australian schooling the media constitution of the boy turn worked as de facto educational policy (Lingard, 2003), given the policy vacuum from the mid-1990s until the more recent flurry of policy developments for boys at the national level, which will be adumbrated in the next section of this chapter. This was particularly the case as the restructured state evacuated strong commitment to central social justice policies and gender policies, and more was devolved to schools, which thus became significant sites of policy production in education as well as of implementation (O’Donovan, 2006). The Boys: Getting it Right Report (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002) from the federal Parliament, controlled by a conservative government, was the policy turning point in relation to boys’ education. Subsequently, a number of federal and state polices have focused on boys. These will be the focus of the next section of the chapter. Thus, a second significant feature of gender policies in Australia has been the role of the media in supporting, facilitating and giving a voice to backlash politics expressed by a range of men’s groups, which have been an important part of the political and policy landscape in Australia in respect of gender and schooling since the mid-1990s. This is related to a broader phenomenon which Fairclough (2000) has referred to as the ‘mediatization’ of contemporary politics and policy making (also see Lingard and Rawolle, 2004; Rawolle, 2005). Connell (2005) has added a fourth element to his earlier consideration of gender orders and gender regimes, namely what he calls ‘symbolism’, which amongst other things includes media representations and constructions of gender and involvement in gender politics. This symbolism through the media has been important in the boy turn in Australian education policy over the last two decades or so.

Background to the parliamentary enquiry into boys’ education in Australia The primary documents that arose from feminist engagement with the national state from the mid-1970s and reflecting the second wave

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of the women’s movement were the 1975 Girls, School and Society (Commonwealth of Schools Commission, 1975), the 1987 National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools (Australian Education Council, 1987), the 1991 Listening to girls, review of the National Policy (Milligan et al., 1992) and the 1992 National Action Plan for the Education of Girls 1993–97 (Australian Education Council, 1993). The last significant policy document that developed from this period was Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (Gender Equity Taskforce, 1997). Gender Equity marked what Ailwood and Lingard (2001) referred to as the ‘end game’ for specific girls’ policies in Australian schools, discursively speaking, with gender indicative of a new focus on both girls and boys. Throughout the document there is the presence of what Foster (1994) has referred to as ‘presumptive equality’, that is the assumption that both boys and girls face similar disadvantages in schooling. This document is a classic example of a policy ‘settlement’ between competing interests, in this case suturing together feminist and pro-feminist concerns with mythopoetic and men’s rights positions, resulting in a heteroglossic text. Even within the document itself, there is a tension between the first policy section, which constitutes boys as a disadvantaged group, and the supporting papers contained in the second part, which provide a more complex analysis of gender relations in Australian schools from both feminist and pro-feminist perspectives. It is perhaps its attempt to appease two camps that caused Gender Equity to draw the ire of both feminists and recuperative men’s groups. For instance, feminist scholar Leonie Daws (1997, p. 105) observed, ‘So far, satisfactorily incorporating boys’ issues under the banner of gender equity, without diminishing the emphasis on the continuing challenges facing girls, has eluded the Gender Equity Taskforce.’ Richard Fletcher, an influential advocate for boys’ schooling and part of a consortium commissioned by the conservative Howard government (1996–2007) to undertake a major rewrite of this policy document, was also dissatisfied with the policy. In his submission to the House of Representatives Inquiry, Fletcher stated, While there has been a genuine attempt to broaden the gender framework from one focussed exclusively on girls to one addressing the needs of both girls and boys, the current policies and supporting research have serious limitations. A number of assumptions developed during two decades of activity in girls’ education

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have been uncritically carried forward into the renamed gender strategies (House of Representatives, Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 62) Subsequent to the policy vacuum following the end game of Gender Equity – a vacuum filled to some extent by backlash media representations – the House of Representatives Inquiry into boys’ education produced a significant text in 2002, Boys: Getting it Right, that has had a major impact upon the boys’ debate in Australian schooling. This policy turning point was also positioned against arguments and opposition from many feminist and pro-feminist academics, femocrats inside the state, women’s groups and some politicians. Thus, just as feminist gains were resisted, so too was the boy turn, and in education this resistance manifested at various levels across education systems and their contexts. Boys: Getting it Right (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002) was heavily influenced by the boys’ lobby and the stance of recuperative masculinity politics and is analysed in some detail in the following sections of this chapter. It has been responsible for justifying a review of Gender Equity to make it more inclusive of boys and of setting in train federally funded projects aimed to improve the quality of education for boys in Australian schools. The outcome of the review of Gender Equity was never made public or transformed into policy, basically because of opposition from State Labor governments to some of the directions the reframed policy was taking.

Getting boys’ education ‘right’: An exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics Backdrop As in most other Western countries, the moral panic about boys’ education in Australia led to a variety of media-generated school-based responses to the ‘boy problem’ resulting in a ‘boy turn’. These mediadriven discourses have been able to take hold in many schools due to the policy vacuum created as a consequence of federal and state governments’ failure to implement Gender Equity. In that context, Boys: Getting it Right is a highly significant and influential document in terms of defining the limits for ‘recasting’ and determining the terms of reference for a new gender equity framework for Australian schools. The context of emergence of the Report can be understood as involving the mobilization of a neo-liberal politics and a New Right agenda

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(Apple, 2001) committed to the remasculinization of boys and schools in response to the apparent and supposed increasing threat of feminization (Martino and Berrill, 2003; Martino, 2004). In the absence of specific policies related to addressing complex issues of masculinities and schooling, Boys: Getting it Right represents an official stance on boys’ education – we can regard it as a de facto policy, accepting Ozga’s (2000, p. 33) observation that policy can be seen as any ‘vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy message’. As such, it legitimizes a number of conservative school-based responses to the educational needs of boys. The document has taken for granted the notion that (all) boys are unquestionably the ‘new disadvantaged’ in school and that this is related to essentialized notions about boys’ learning styles, which have not been accommodated by schools. In this sense, the Report works with the trope of males as the new disadvantaged, or what, as already noted, Sally Robinson (2000, p. 3) insightfully calls ‘an identity politics of the dominant’. Many of the Report’s recommendations feed off this ‘truth’ in ways that potentially work to disadvantage female students and female teachers, and which may well exacerbate the existing problems of boys who are struggling with contemporary schooling. This policy message is mediated through the deployment of various rhetorical and reiterative strategies that mask its anti-feminist politics. As with all policy documents, a politics of discourse is involved and the problem to which the Report is a putative solution is ‘constructed’ in a specific way (Yeatman, 1990). Throughout it is asserted that a focus on boys’ education does not necessarily translate into neglecting the educational needs of girls. Indeed, the Report suggests what is needed now is an approach to gender equity which is committed to identifying ‘their common and separate educational needs’ (p. xviii). Through such rhetorical ploys a common-sense understanding about essentialized differences between boys and girls can be identified as central to the formulation and conceptualization of gender equity as constituted by the Report. Our argument is demonstrated through focusing on a selection of the Report’s recommendations, including the need to ‘revise and recast Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools’ and those recommendations relating to creating ‘boy friendly’ curricula, assessment and pedagogical practices in schools, and the need for employment of more male teachers. At the same time, we recognize that some of the Report’s recommendations, for example those related to reducing class sizes and improving teacher salaries, are positive, and if taken up by the State systems would contribute to improved schooling for all students.

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We also need to recognize, however, that such matters of class sizes and teacher salaries, lie outside the political jurisdiction of the federal government and are the responsibility of the States in the complex federalism surrounding Australian schools. The critique of Boys: Getting it Right is offered as a warning to education systems about the danger of vacating the gender equity territory to a sole focus on an essentialized category of boys and of allowing populist responses, unsupported by research evidence, to address educational issues and frame policy and practice. In a policy context of a demand for the so-described ‘evidenced informed policy’ much more is required. However, this specific case well illustrates that policy is the authoritative allocation of values as articulated by Easton (1953) and as such research evidence mobilized in support of policy recommendations is framed ideologically. Boys: Getting it Right very well illustrates this truism of education policy. The Inquiry In March 2000 the conservative Liberal–National Party Coalition Commonwealth Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs charged the Employment, Education and Workplace Relations Committee with the task of investigating issues surrounding boys’ education. The Inquiry committee, which consisted of parliamentary members from all major political parties, was, as indicated by its Terms of Reference, specifically asked to • enquire into and report on the social, cultural and educational factors affecting the education of boys in Australian schools, particularly in relation to their literacy needs and socialization skills in the early and middle years of schooling; and • enquire into the strategies which schools have adopted to help address these factors, those strategies which have been successful and the scope for their broader implementation or increased effectiveness (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xi). The original chair of this committee was the Liberal Party member Dr Brendan Nelson – a medical doctor – who after the 2001 election became the Commonwealth Minister of the renamed Department of Education, Science and Training. As Minister he took a special interest in the education of boys, seeking to establish his reputation around this

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agenda. After the 2001 election, Mr Kerry Bartlett, also a Liberal, headed the standing committee conducting the Inquiry. The people either appearing as witnesses or submitting written submissions represented a diverse group. There were union representatives, school-based personnel – teachers and principals – educational bureaucrats from the state and independent sectors and from State and federal bureaucracies, academics, parents’ and citizens’ organizations, educational consultants, religious and community groups (for example, the Festival of Light, Scouts Australia and the Lone Fathers’ Association), non-education organizations (such as the Victorian Police, the Australian Association of Social Workers’, Australian Capital Territory and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, New South Wales) and a number of interested individuals. Common sense versus research Common sense as opposed to research is one frequent theme in the Report. Thus Boys: Getting it Right tends to reject academic research findings and theory in favour of ‘common sense’ assumptions and understandings about gender and boys’ schooling. For instance, there is an assumption that there are different learning styles (albeit with some commonalities) for boys and girls (pp. 77–79). Interestingly, even where boys and girls are claimed to have similar learning styles, generalized gender differences are noted. The Report uses the following quote from a submission by a Mr Greg Griffith from Victoria to demonstrate this: An example may be male and female students exhibiting similar verbal linguistic preference. The girls would probably exhibit better ideational fluency, have better verbal memory, have quick verbal responses under pressure, use longer sentences, have a better vocabulary, verbalise thoughts and feelings, use intonation to express ideas and take poetic licence, talk more about relationships and people and read fiction. While the boys with a similar learning style will tend to write and speak in shorter sentences, ask more questions of their teachers, talk more about sport and politics, read to follow instructions rather than listening to follow, use vocabulary competitively and will read more non-fiction. (p. 78) Such understandings of gender can also be found within numerous populist recuperative texts on men (see, for example, Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Gurian, 1999; Pollack, 1999), whose arguments stand in stark contrast with research that has highlighted the significant impact of the social

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construction of masculinities on both boys’ social relationships with other boys and girls, and on their attitudes to learning, teachers and school in general (Collins et al., 1996; Francis, 2000; Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2001, 2003; Martino and Meyenn, 2001; Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). The Report ignores this research which, for instance, highlights the effects of bullying on the social and educational well-being of students at school and which draws attention to the racialized, sex- and gender-based dimensions of harassment. However, the Inquiry team was not unaware of this particular theory of gender. For instance, in its response to The Australian Education Union’s submission in relation to calls for more male teachers, the Report states, The Australian Education Union argued that excellent teaching style ‘is not dictated by gender’ but a range of attitudes and abilities including an ‘understanding of gender construction and its impact on students and teachers’. The Union also argued that effective male teachers ‘need to understand the construction of gender and motivations for violence, and be trained in ways to intervene to deal with inappropriate behaviour’. Even if this is true it places too much emphasis on gender theory and too little on the importance of the relationship between teacher and the student which is the foundation of good teaching. (p. 160) This attitude towards ‘theory’ highlights the Inquiry’s denigration and refusal to acknowledge the impact and effects of the social construction of gender, despite the evidence to support the significant ways in which the social construction of gender affects curriculum, pedagogical practices and relations with and between students in schools (Alloway, 2000; Collins et al., 1996; Connolly, 2004; Keddie, 2003; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2001, 2005; Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). This research indicates that the manner in which boys patrol the boundaries of what are acceptable masculinities through the use of homophobic abuse has a significant impact upon the ways in which some boys engage with the academic curriculum. This leads Epstein (1998, p. 97) to suggest that on occasions ‘The rejection of the perceived “feminine” of academic work is simultaneously a defence against the “charge” of being gay.’ Hence, a more nuanced analysis of gender relations and the factors influencing boys’ and girls’ educational outcomes and social relations in terms of their capacity to impact on their learning at school needs to be

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undertaken in order to understand the complex issues facing both in schools. Boys: Getting it Right rejects such an analysis by suggesting that a ‘which boys, which girls’ approach has been utilized by academics and bureaucrats as a surreptitious form of ‘resistance to addressing boys’ education issues’. It suggests that such an approach has washed gender out of the picture and replaced it with class (and we would argue that class has been neglected in contemporary educational policy in Australia). In order to reinstate a focus on gender, the Report argues that a concentrated effort to improve the education of boys is justified because ‘for almost every socio-economic group, boys are underachieving compared to girls’ and that this ‘disparity is greatest in the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups’ (p. xvii). These arguments are valid, and a positive in the Report. Indeed in this chapter there is a special section on Indigenous boys, which notes the disadvantages also facing Indigenous girls. However, interestingly and perhaps not surprisingly, it does not emphasize the evidence that there is less of a gap in the educational performance of boys and girls from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Teese et al., 1995). It is this complex picture which indicates that taking a ‘Which boys, ‘Which girls?’ approach, or utilizing a ‘gender jigsaw’ account (Collins et al., 2000), is necessary for understanding the disaggregated educational performance data of males and females in school. It is our view that current gender debates in schooling should be utilized to reinstate a concern over social class and its affects on boys’ and girls’ schooling and to reject essentialized accounts of boys and indeed girls. As already pointed out in Chapter 1, Weaver-Hightower (2003a) suggests that there have been four main strands to the debate and research on boys’ education. He classifies this literature into the popularrhetorical, the theoretically oriented, practice-oriented and the feminist and pro-feminist. The Report appears to deal with and take seriously only the popular-rhetorical and practice-oriented literatures and submissions, while rejecting the theoretical and feminist and pro-feminist accounts through both omission and off-hand dismissal. This means that the issue of the dominant construction of masculinity is elided in the report. It seems to us that schools need to deal with the construction of various masculinities and their relationships with femininities to really move schools towards gender equity for all (Connolly, 2004; Lingard and Douglas, 1999; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003; Mills, 2001), as well as focusing on girls’ schooling and the effects of social class, ‘race’ and ethnicity. As Paul Connolly (2004) has noted in a review

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of the performance data of boys compared with that of girls in the UK, ‘the key factor to address in terms of boys’ poor educational performance is masculinity itself’ (p. 61). This is the position we adopt on the basis of the research evidence; it is a position ignored by the Report.

Gender equity framework The first recommendation of the Report calls for a rewriting of Gender Equity to take account of both boys’ and girls’ interests. Like many of those with a recuperative bent in the boys’ lobby who protest that they are not against girls or women, Boys: Getting it Right states that it has to be acknowledged that boys are disadvantaged, but that responses to this should not mean failure to address girls’ educational needs. This constitutes one of the rhetorical ploys used within the Report to assert that a focus on boys’ education does not necessarily translate into a failure to address the educational needs of girls. However, its anti-feminism surfaces when it critiques former approaches to gender equity; for example, ‘The assumption in recent decades appears to have been that girls have urgent educational needs to be addressed and that boys will be all right’ (p. xv). Implicit within this statement is a suggestion that there has been a denial of the reality of boys’ educational and social disadvantage in schools. Hence, the Report attempts ‘to set the record straight’ by announcing that ‘there is justification for many of the concerns about boys’ education’ (p. xv). Thus, in response to many of the feminist and pro-feminist critiques of the populist boys’ debate, the Report seeks to convince its readers that (all) boys are underachieving and are disengaged from learning. The Report is very critical of Gender Equity. This is ironic given that it has also been criticized for its failure to adequately address the educational needs of girls and for its non-implementation, while also attempting some focus on boys and masculinity. According to the Report, what is overlooked in the current gender equity policy is ‘the longer term impact of low achievement and the resulting restriction of some males to lower skilled employment’. The suspicion with which the Report treats Gender Equity may well stem from the Framework’s development from both the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools and the National Action Plan for the Education of Girls 1993–97, which grew out of the 1991 Listening to girls review (Milligan et al., 1992) of the National Policy. Gender Equity was developed as a companion to the National Action Plan. Whilst it is critical of some of these policies, as are the other sections

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of the ‘boys’ lobby’, for their apparent negative construction of boys or for ignoring boys, it is interesting to note that these earlier girls’ policy documents have also been critiqued by feminists. For instance, Kenway (1990, p. 68) argued that the National Policy ‘paid insufficient attention to the connections between masculinity, sexuality and domestic and other violence’. This is a point echoed by Yates (1993, p. 25), who in her examination of the influence of feminist theory on educational policy in Australia, in particular the 1975 Girls, Schools and Society and the 1987 National Policy, stated that If we look back on the recent decades of Australian government policy on girls and schooling, the ‘noise’ of the entry of new issues and demands for schools is apparent. But what has changed relatively little is the education of boys: the skills they get, the subject-matter they learn and the ways they are permitted to act in school. Putting boys on the agenda is of course not necessarily anti-feminist, for, as Jane Kenway (1996, p. 447) has stated, ‘Most feminists want boys and men to change so that they cause less trouble for girls and women and themselves, so the sexes can live alongside each other in a safe, secure, stable, respectful, harmonious way and in relationships of mutual lifeenhancing respect.’ Boys: Getting it Right acknowledges that there ‘appears to be widespread support among State and Territory education departments, Catholic Education authorities, teachers’ unions, principals’ associations and academics for the existing gender equity policy framework’ (p. 61). However, it claims that a separate boys’ education strategy had been advocated within this existing gender equity framework document by the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council. The logic governing the Report’s direction from the outset is once again identified here – the need for a gender equity policy to outline a separate boys’ education strategy. It also seeks to distance teachers from their unions and departments by constructing the latter as divorced from the ‘real world’. For instance, it asserts that while many teachers who contributed to the Inquiry appear eager to address boys’ education as a part of their overall commitment to improving the quality of schooling for all students, this does not appear to be the case at the official institutional level of education departments and unions: . . . it is difficult to avoid the impression that some gender equity units in education departments and education unions, generally,

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have been reluctant to openly confront boys’ under-achievement and disengagement as an issue, perhaps for fear of undermining ongoing support for strategies for girls (p. 61). The Report also notes that opinions among academics are divided, with some supporting Gender Equity and others seeing it as ‘too narrowly based on the issues that drove reform for girls’ and that Gender Equity inadequately addresses boys’ needs (p. 61). The Report claims that Gender Equity is grounded in concerns about girls’ education and thus fails to adequately address the educational issues affecting boys’ schooling, participation in the labour market and wage-earning capacity. It states, for instance, The Gender Equity Framework, built as it is on the prior work for girls, does not separately research and identify boys’ needs and it sets boys’ needs solely in the context of what still needs to be achieved for girls (p. 64).

Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment The Report promotes ‘boy-friendly’ practices in schools and draws on the claim of Trent and Slade (2001) that boys are very reactive to poor teaching and irrelevant curriculum. This research, in conjunction with some submissions, led the Report to state that boys need to be provided with a relevant curriculum that is connected to the world beyond the classroom. This, it is acknowledged, is also important for girls, but according to the Report there are groups of boys who are more likely to disrupt classes and the learning of others when not provided with such a curriculum. The Report refers to a number of innovative curriculum approaches that have been working to make the curriculum more relevant and connected to the experiences of students. The Report also recognizes that many Australian curriculum innovations have been accompanied by a concern over improving pedagogical practices. However, the Report’s focus regarding pedagogy is on issues of learning styles, arguing that some are favoured by boys and others by girls, again adopting an essentialized account. For instance, drawing on the work of Howard Gardiner on multiple intelligences, it is suggested that learning styles associated with verbal linguistic activities and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are favoured by girls, whereas boys are

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supposed to prefer activities associated with mathematic logical learning styles, spatial intelligence, kinaesthetic learning and naturalistic intelligence. The evidence used to support these gender preferences for particular styles of learning is primarily drawn from transcripts from educators in schools and one conference paper delivered at the Teaching Boys, Developing Fine Men conference in 2000, which was partly funded by the federal government. From this ‘evidence’ are made the following claims about what boys need in terms of the provision of quality teaching and learning designed to address their educational needs: • boys tend to need more explicit teaching than girls and tend to prefer active, hands-on methods of instruction; • structured programmes are better for boys because they need to know what is expected and they like to be shown the steps along the way to achieve success; • while girls more readily respond to content, boys respond more to their relationships with teachers; • activities help boys establish rapport with their teachers; and • boys respond better to teachers who are attuned to boys’ sense of justice and fairness and who are consistent in the application of rules (p. 78). Boys: Getting it Right thus claims that for boys more attention needs to be directed to implementing a relevant curriculum that accommodates their essentialized interests and orientations to learning and that focuses on positive relationships between boys and their teachers. While the Report does argue that this is equally important for girls, it asserts that boys need to be accommodated due to their apparent refusal or resistance to engage in learning which, it is implied, is somehow related to their natural predisposition on the basis of their sex. As it states, Of course having a relevant and interesting curriculum that is taught well is just as important for girls as it is for boys. However boys are more likely than girls to respond to dull subject matter or uninspiring teaching in an overt and challenging way that will disrupt their own and others’ learning (p. 72). Moreover, the Report claims that curriculum content and delivery also need to be varied to suit the needs of students, but more specifically to

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‘suit particular groups of boys and girls’ (p. 75). Thus there are constant slippages in the discourse that resort to reaffirming what by implication are simply natural predispositions or learning behaviours and orientations for boys and girls. The rhetorical ploy is one which operates at the level of asserting that both boys’ and girls’ educational experiences need to be taken into consideration, while simultaneously establishing that they have different needs on the basis of simply being boys and girls. This discourse of sameness and yet difference is governed by problematic liberal humanist notions of subjectivity and equity (Lather, 1991; Weedon, 1997) that fail to pay heed to the complex ways in which intra-group differences for both boys and girls affect their social and educational outcomes (Collins et al., 2000; Teese et al., 1995). This is evident in the Report when it states that some boys will prefer learning styles favoured by most girls and vice versa, while at the same time arguing that there are definite orientations to learning which are the specific domain of boys, as opposed to girls. To some extent there is evidence to support these claims with regard to boys being more disruptive in class (although the document is critical of earlier policies that were ‘negative’ about boys’ behaviours) and that boys do gravitate towards maths and science more often than girls and so on. However, the only possibilities found throughout Boys: Getting it Right that suggest reasons as to why this might be the case are biological essentialist notions of what it means to be a boy. Indeed when issues of the social construction of gender, which is referred to as ‘gender theory’ throughout the Report, are raised by various submissions, they are, as indicated above in relation to the Australian Education Union submission, dismissed (for example, see p. 160). The Report lists a number of strategies that various researchers have concluded work for boys. These strategies include support for the development of literacy across the curriculum, early diagnosis of literacy underachievement, greater focus on teacher-directed work rather then group work, more explicit instruction, short challenges, frequent change of activities, positive reinforcement for quality work, interviews to determine goals and the provision of meaningful work experience. They then suggest, drawing on Drs Ken and Katherine Rowe’s submission, that there are three principles that work for boys and girls: • focus on support for literacy across the curriculum, remembering that girls typically respond to the personal, whereas boys are more likely to respond to the physical;

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• provide frequent changes in structured activity: verbal for girls, visual for boys; • Boys respond positively to structured challenges and encouragement, while girls respond positively to encouragement and popularity.

There is little recognition in the Report that the anti-school behaviours of some boys, to which such pedagogical approaches are a response, is actually a playing out of dominant constructions of masculinity and that such constructions often have a detrimental impact on the learning of both boys and girls (Connolly, 2004; Epstein et al., 1998; Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). There is a need in schools to ensure that curricula and pedagogy are connected to students’ worlds, and to recognize that good relationships between teachers and students, along with explicit forms of teaching, are important for student outcomes, and that this is especially the case for underachieving students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, there is also a need to reject deficit models of students by providing all students with intellectually challenging classrooms, which connect subject matter to students’ interests and biographies and to the world beyond the classroom (Darling-Hammond, 1997; Delpit, 2006; Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard, 2007; Lingard et al., 2000, 2003b; Lingard and Mills, 2007; Newmann and Associates, 1996). The Report recognizes that assessment is also interrelated with pedagogical and curricular issues. It claims that different methods of assessment favour and disadvantage particular groups of boys and girls. It suggests that it is generally understood, referencing the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training submission and evidence, that tests and examinations suit boys, whilst continuous assessment is better for girls. At the same time it recognizes that this is not true for all boys or all girls. The Report also stressed the need to have assessment tasks linked to real-world problems, but wanted these tasks to be such that they were attractive enough to help boys overcome their unwillingness to engage with the language and social demands of such tasks. There are a number of dangers with the suggested approaches, which the Report fails to acknowledge. First, the focus on giving explicit instruction to boys may mean that some underachieving girls are ignored. The productive pedagogies research (Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2001, 2003a; Lingard and Mills, 2003) has demonstrated the significance of direct pedagogy to successful teaching for all students. Such directness and explicitness are necessary to ensure that implicit

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cultural capital does not become the misrecognized factor in determining student performance (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Lingard, 2005, 2007). In terms of assessment practices, providing students with explicit criteria as to what is expected from them in the classroom is necessary for all students who struggle with understanding the expectations of teachers (see, for example, Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2006). Secondly, dismissing the importance of relationships in the teaching of girls may mean that quieter girls are not provided with those kinds of relationships that foster a love of learning, as opposed to acquiescing in a sometimes irrelevant curriculum. Thirdly, a focus on relationships for boys may come at the cost of providing an intellectually challenging classroom – challenging content and positive relationships with teachers are important for all students. Again, though, good student/teacher relationships are a necessary, but not sufficient basis for productive pedagogies for all students. Fourthly, in a context where boys are affected by the pervasive backlash against feminism, their ‘sense of justice and fairness’ may slip into a ‘competing victim syndrome’ (Cox, 1996; see also Mills, 2001). This needs to be challenged. The Report, quite rightly, although perhaps overstating the case, recognizes the importance of the teacher in providing students with high-quality education. For instance, the chapter on pedagogy and curriculum addresses the structural issue of single-sex classes as a strategy for improving students’ learning. We have dealt with this issue in some detail in Chapter 4. However, the Report neither advocates nor rejects this as an approach for improving student outcomes. It stresses that any structural change has to be accompanied by pedagogical and curriculum practices that recognize boys’ learning needs. The Report also stresses that the sex of the teacher is not as important as the quality of the teacher and of the pedagogies. We would agree with this emphasis upon pedagogies, as opposed to an emphasis upon structural changes or the sex of the teacher. Our own research has confirmed as well that young people in school see the quality of the pedagogies and good relationships with teachers as more significant than the sex of the teacher (Lingard et al., 2002).

Male role models Boys: Getting it Right expresses a concern about the lack of male teachers in primary schools. The Report indicates that the reasons given for the lack of male teachers include the status of teaching, salaries,

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career opportunities and child protection issues. Elsewhere, we have been critical of the focus on these kinds of reasons for suggesting a lack of male teachers (Martino, 2008a; Mills, 2004; Mills et al., 2004; Roulston and Mills, 2000), as they often do not take into account the ‘glass escalator’ effect (Williams, 1992), the ways in which men are often privileged in early childhood (King, 1998, 2000; Murray, 1996), the masculinized nature of school structures and practices (Skelton, 2002) and the feminist struggles to get child protection issues onto the educational agenda. We have also been critical, and would apply our critique to the Report, of the silences regarding the ways in which homophobia and misogyny work to keep men out of primary school teaching and early childhood teaching in particular (Connolly, 2004). Within sections of the men’s rights lobby there has been much said about the lack of father input into the raising of children. Some of the literature suggests that men need to take greater responsibility for the raising of their sons (one never knows whether they are supposed to take a similar responsibility for their daughters), whilst some blame mothers for either ‘smothering’ their sons or denying separated fathers access to their children (for example, Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Bly, 1991; Farrell, 1993). However, in each case there is an expressed concern about absent fathers (in both nuclear and single-parent families) and the lack of male role models in boys’ lives. Boys: Getting it Right sits comfortably alongside such literature, despite its reluctance to ‘blame’ single mothers or female teachers for boys’ ‘problems’. It acknowledges, for instance, that single-parent families cannot be held responsible for underachievement and that the impact of ‘father absence’ on boys’ welfare has not being ‘thoroughly researched’. It also states that The level of public and media interest in the gender balance of the teaching force and submissions to the inquiry indicate a high level of concern about the decline in the proportion of men in teaching, and in primary teaching in particular. The Committee shares this concern but rejects any suggestion that there is widespread discrimination by female teachers against boys or that female teachers cannot be excellent teachers for boys (p. 155). The Report also noted that it was in agreement with the position that ‘the quality of the teacher is more important then the gender of the teacher – the position consistently taken by education departments,

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school principals and teachers’ unions’ (p. 162). However, drawing on anecdotal evidence from submissions, it states that the negative impact of a lack of male role models for boys is ‘generally accepted’ (p. 58). In fact, the Report contends that the situation of the absent male role model is made worse by media representations of men, Connell’s symbolic dimension of the gender order. It thus suggests that intervention through the school system is important, given the increasing numbers of boys who lack adult male role models or have limited experience of men in their lives. The Report argues that such boys are less likely to identify with positive male images and are more likely to identify with stereotyped media images. The Report thus states in relation to male teachers that ‘An understanding of gender issues is important but the role modelling and teaching by males whose relationship and commitment to boys is genuine is the most important factor’ (p. 161). For the Report, male bodies matter more than the knowledges underpinning practice. However, what a ‘genuine commitment’ to boys might look like is not made clear. The Report contends that in the absence of male role models boys are more likely to identify with ‘unbalanced models of masculinity’ that portray and valourize ‘restrictive emotionality, concern with power and status, excessive self reliance, homophobia, anti-authoritarian bravado, anti-intellectualism and non-relational attitudes towards sexuality’ (p. 67). Thus failure to be exposed to male role models leads to boys’ inability to develop the necessary emotional and communicative literacies and skills required not only for their active participation in a changing labour market, but also in terms of the development of their psychological and emotional well-being as active citizens. However, many of the common reasons suggested as to why more male role models are needed indicate that it is very traditional men who are wanted. For instance, men are being sought to control unruly boys, to take school sport, to be able to identify with boys, to be accepting of schoolboy humour and so on. Indeed, non-traditional men are often rejected by boys in schools. Thus, non-traditional men who do not cut a ‘masculine’ enough figure may well experience oppression in schools from male students (as well as from other teachers), rather than providing alternative ‘models’ of masculinity (see Martino and Frank, 2006). Others may even emphasize traditionally masculine attributes in order to dispel any questions about their adherence to a ‘normal’ masculinity and/or sexuality (see, for example, Francis and Skelton, 2001; King, 1998; Roulston and Mills, 2000). Thus, when the Report states that ‘many teachers recognize the positive effect that the

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right kind of men can have when they work with boys, but the emphasis is always on the right kind of men’ (p. 162), there is no clear indication as to what these ‘right kind of men’ might be like. The problem with the kind of logic underpinning the role model theory used is that it fails to acknowledge the all-pervasive culture of masculinity in boys’ lives and the role adult men and institutionalized sport in schools play in reinforcing and validating the very masculinity that gets represented in the media and popular culture. The Report fails to acknowledge the investment that men and many schools have in maintaining such a system of gender, with homophobia often functioning as a gate-keeping mechanism of an oppressive normalization in boys’ and men’s lives.

Policy developments subsequent to Boys: Getting it Right The Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools (BELS) Project was the Howard government’s immediate policy response to Boys: Getting it Right. Dr Brendan Nelson, the federal minister for Education, Science and Training at the time and now federal opposition leader after the defeat of the conservative government in 2007, stated about this project that ‘I initiated the Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools Programme in direct response to both the Report and the concerns of parents’ (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2003). In the first stage, in 2003, 230 Australian schools received grants to document their successful practices in educating boys. Their documentation was used to produce Meeting the Challenge. Subsequently, the Commonwealth developed the 2005 Success for Boys Project, funded at $19.4 million. In total, federal grants for boys’ projects in schooling under the Howard government totalled about $27 million. This is well beyond the levels of funding ever made available under federal policies for girls, even when femocrats were in the ascendancy in policy production terms. Earlier girls’ policies worked through persuasion as much as funding and were effective to the extent that they articulated the emergent gender politics of their time and worked through the incipient feminism of the teaching profession. It is interesting then that boys’ policies have been funded exceedingly well and well beyond the preceding girls’ policies which they sought to counter balance. The federal government’s subsequent Success for Boys Project can be read as a further attempt to roll back the gains of the feminist movement in Australia by addressing the supposed structural imbalance that supposedly favours girls. The Success for Boys Project had a focus on

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improving literacy learning, providing boys with male role models and using ICTs to improve boys’ engagement. These key intervention areas were reflected in the modules Boys and literacy, Mentoring for success and Boys and ICTs, constructed to accompany a core module that provides a theoretical framework for the remaining modules. Importantly, the modules also included one particularly focused on Indigenous boys’ education. We welcome the concern that is given to the welfare of Indigenous boys. However, we are perturbed that there is a failure to recognize the severe disadvantages faced by Indigenous girls in Australia and specifically in relation to schooling. Further, we would note that funds from this project have also gone to some elite private boys’ schools, reflective probably of the electoral base of the government and a good example of the identity politics of the advantaged. In an era of limited funding for public education, especially in relation to disadvantaged communities where boys (and girls) are faring less well than their middle-class counterparts, this demonstrated the lack of a social justice agenda within the former Howard government’s policies on boys’ education. Following the change of government in late 2007, it will be interesting to see how the Rudd Labor government responds to Howard’s boys’ agenda, the most reactionary elements of which were resisted by some States and by some schools and teachers. However, indications are that the current focus on boys as a disadvantaged group in Australia is unlikely to fade away over the next few years. Indeed, the Labor opposition federally supported all of the policy developments adumbrated above. This poses major challenges for educators, in schools, in the bureaucracy and in academia, concerned about the harm that this focus does to gender equity.

Conclusion There are many ways of seeing and seeking to understand the complexity of contemporary gender politics and changes to gender orders and regimes, locally, nationally and globally, the essence of which this and the preceding chapter have attempted to encapsulate. In terms of the long duree, and drawing on Sally Robinson’s (2000) analysis of the ‘crisis of white masculinity’, we can see the boy turn in relation to changing Australian gender policies in education as representative of a longer-term political challenge to the unmarked and invisible male character of Enlightenment, modernist politics, where implicitly white male power was considered to be coterminous with the universal subject

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of history. Here a particular invisibility was central to male power, which was challenged by the rise of identity politics of various kinds from the late 1960s. As Robinson notes, one response from white men to this challenge, and she writes specifically about the US, was to construct an identity politics of the dominant. This politics was linked to a political contestation over the social construction of the normative, which had been challenged and destabilized, she argues, by a range of liberation identity politics movements to do with gender (women’s liberation), ‘race’, ethnicity, disability and sexuality (gay liberation). This situation – political contestation over the construction of the normative – can be seen to be manifest in Boys: Getting it Right, which at the same time opens the categories of boys and masculinity to possible deconstruction. This is the irony of course of this identity politics of the dominant, that is of ruling-class and middle-class white males – it opens both whiteness and masculinity to political deconstruction and contestation. Men and masculinity, as well as whiteness, become marked and thus visible. What is interesting here, and this becomes clear in the critique of Boys: Getting it Right, which we have sustained throughout this chapter, is that recuperative masculinity politics works with an essentialized category of boys (and girls for that matter), while our critique has been underpinned by a social constructionist perspective on gender, rather than an account of boys and girls; that is, we deal with masculinities and femininities, rather than with boys and girls. In dealing with boys and girls in this way, Boys: Getting it Right attempts to keep stable these categories, while also constructing boys as the new disadvantage in schooling. In contrast, we adopt Connell’s (2005) theorizing of gender as a structure of social practices and his analysis of power and hierarchical relations between hegemonic, subordinate, complicit and marginalized masculinities and the complementary, relational connections with various social practices of femininities, including emphasized femininity. Boys: Getting it Right, as we have clearly demonstrated, rejects such a theoretical stance, dismissing what it calls ‘gender theory’ for a more ‘common sense’ approach, linked to Weaver-Hightower’s (2003b) practice-oriented and popular-rhetorical approaches to boys and schooling, the latter of which are based on what Mills (2003) has referred to as ‘backlash blockbusters’. So the politics here can be seen to have a theoretical edge; we come to better understand why Boys: Getting it Right gives such emphasis to common sense over theory and research and for the talk being of boys and girls, rather than of masculinities

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and femininities. This trope – common-sense representations of boys – inscribes boys as disadvantaged, so as to re-inscribe privilege and the male as the normative. As an aside, we would see heteronormativity working in similar manner. In a sense, recuperative masculinity politics also works through strategic essentialism in constructing an identity politics of the dominant. As we have argued, however, contemporary neo-liberal politics has driven deeply individualizing processes. As we noted in Chapter 1, for example, affirmative action programmes for women have been replaced by more individualized equal opportunity polices. Rose (1999) has documented the rise in the context of globalization read performatively as neo-liberalism, of the self-responsibilizing individual, one responsible over the life span for investing in the self, almost as an entrepreneur of the self, to ensure career opportunities and material advancement. So men have or rather some men have constituted themselves as a disadvantaged category, and boys similarly, at the very moment of this new individualism and when group-based or collective politics is at its weakest politically, at least in the nations of the global north. The matters dealt with in this chapter are situated against these developments, and of course these developments are not all of a piece as we have attempted to show; they are contested in various complex ways by feminist and pro-feminist theory and politics and work in vernacular ways in the different nations of the globe, despite some convergence pressures. Giddens and Beck, for instance, would also argue there is some potential liberation in the new individualism and choice biographies, the new plasticity of the self, which have helped destabilize dominant and traditional constructions of gender and sexuality, but have perhaps overstated their claims (McLeod, 2006; McLeod and Yates, 2006). It is, of course, just such detraditionalization which has provoked retraditionalization which in turn has been augmented by global changes post September 11. In drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser (1997), we are arguing for a working together of a redistributive and recognition politics in relation to gender and gender policies in education, while acknowledging the difficulties of such a politics, given the seeming hegemony, amongst the political classes at least, of neo-liberalism. Furthermore, in the context of the rise of a ‘fear of difference’ post September 11 and spawned by defensive national politics of various kinds, we would argue the need for education policy as well to work with what Gilroy (2004) calls ‘planetary humanism’ and Said (2004) calls ‘democratic humanism’. This is a humanism which uses humanism against itself to critique a conception

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of human beings as unmarked by gender, ethnicity and so on, but which nevertheless recognizes some commonalities amongst all people. Moreover, in endorsing Mac an Ghaill and Hayward’s (2007) argument that the cultural flashpoints of the present have placed gender at the centre of contemporary politics and that, in the context we have adumbrated, they mean the need, in terms of theory and epistemology, to work together a structuralist and a post-structuralist stance. In terms of gender policy for boys and girls, the question becomes, how to convert or perhaps translate such theorizing into both policy and practice or, more accurately, how such theory and research can have effects on both? We recognize the differing or competing logics underpinning policy production and pedagogies in classrooms: the former seek universal application, while the latter work more contingently. All of this raises broader questions of how theory and research actually affect policy production and pedagogies, and how they ought to as well. We also recognize the reality that policy and practice are never only informed by theory and research, but also manifest values. At the risk of oversimplifying through the construction of a binary, we see Trowler’s (2003, p. 177) differentiation between an enlightenment and an engineering relationship between research (and we would add theory) and policy (and we would add pedagogies) as useful here. Research commissioned by governments and bureaucracies for policy purposes frames the policy problem in a particular way and usually seeks an instrumental, engineering relationship to such policy production. In a sense, our experience in doing commissioned research on how to address the educational needs of boys outlined earlier in the chapter demonstrates our rejection of such a research relationship to policy. We would take what Trowler classifies as an enlightenment stance, which argues that good research and theory, the necessary working today of structuralist and poststructuralist approaches and the deconstruction of gender categories today should inform policy and pedagogies through the edification of policy makers and practitioners. This gets to another set of questions concerning how new theory and research actually reach policy makers and schools and teachers. There is a lot to be thought about here and the need probably for academic researchers as well to take the stance of public intellectuals to contribute in a positive and progressive fashion to contemporary gender politics and the politics of policy production in education in relation to gender. These questions become even more pressing, given restructuring, which potentially thins out the policy remit of the state and which

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has devolved much to schools, which thus now have become sites of policy production in respect of boys and girls as well as in relation to the implementation of central policies. As O’Donovan (2006, p. 490) argues, ‘school’s newfound (relative) autonomy to identify suitable gender work programmes potentializes a significant new market for feminist and profeminist interventions’. Teacher education and continuing professional development thus become important in this context, while we recognize that they too have been affected by the changes we have been considering. Indeed, we have found in the boys’ policy context in Australia, and indeed elsewhere, that some schools and teachers have mediated essentialized concepts of boys and girls and worked in more feminist and pro-feminist ways. Central policy assumptions have been mediated or refracted in implementation. When we consider the global features of the contemporary gender order and gender politics, as well as devolution, we begin to grasp the complexity of the present in relation to progressive gender policies in education and face questions about how research and theory actually affect policy production and practice. This raises the normative question of how this relationship ought to work. We will return to a consideration of these matters in the concluding chapter of the book. Suffice to say here that we see the necessity of central gender policies in education, which deal with both boys’ and girls’ issues and which also recognize the need to work against homophobia, which is often linked to dominant constructions of masculinity and ways of being a boy. We also see the need for more progressive and effective pedagogical practices based on teacher threshold knowledges about gender and the matters raised in this chapter.

3 Boy-Friendly Schooling

Introduction Cathcart State High School is a co-educational government school situated in a beachside suburb of a regional Australian city. The school draws from a broad demographic. There are a number of wealthy established family groupings living in the area. However, the beach economy also draws on a number of transient families in search of better lifestyles and seasonal employment. The principal of this school has taken up the improvement of boys’ educational outcomes as a key educational issue for his school. He has taken as a truth that boys in schools are currently underachieving; despite evidence to the contrary, even within his own school significant numbers of boys have been displaying very good academic outcomes. Within the current ‘boys and achievement’ debate there have been strong suggestions that contemporary schooling has become feminized based upon a notion that current pedagogical and assessment practices increasingly favour girls. It is suggested, for example, that the requirement of the classroom, where boys are expected to sit for long periods of time, does not take into account boys’ ‘natural’ energy. Assessment tasks, it is also claimed, in an increasing number of subjects, even maths, require extended written responses, which are supposedly in conflict with boys’ preferences for short sharp right or wrong responses. Of particular concern has been the subject English, which is often identified as being a highly feminized subject (see Gurian, 1999; West, 2002). As schools and individual teachers have engaged in addressing the supposed educational needs of boys, there have been attempts to address this perceived feminization of schooling by making schools more ‘boy-friendly’. This is what occurred at Cathcart. 56

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Whilst there have been substantial numbers of texts that have made recommendations for how schools can become more boy-friendly (see, for example, Browne and Fletcher, 1995; Hawkes, 2001; Lillico, 2000a, 2000b), there has been little that has evaluated the effectiveness of such programmes. As Sukhnandan, Lee and Kelleher (2000), in regard to the UK context, have noted, ‘there has been little research, as yet, into the level of take-up of different strategies, the rationale behind the adoption of specific strategies, how various strategies have been implemented, and the extent to which the strategies have addressed gender differences in achievement’ (2000, p. 1). This was something that Sukhnandan et al. (2000) sought to address, and which we also seek to address in this chapter. The school-related sites that they identified as being those most commonly targeted for addressing gender differences in achievement in the UK were very much those that were the focus of the reforms at Cathcart State High School and which we discuss in this chapter. At this school there was a concern over teacher–student relationships, pedagogical practices and curriculum content. We explore the arguments for providing boys with this kind of schooling experience and the types of strategies which arise from such an approach to boys’ education. We contend that whilst curricula, for instance, do need to be connected to the interests of students (those of both boys and girls), many of the assumptions that underpin such an approach to boys’ education can have negative effects on the education of some boys and girls. We provide a detailed account of the efforts taken by this school that adopted such an approach. In particular, we focus upon the school’s attempts to integrate an ‘activities-based’ strategy across all areas of the curriculum to (i) cater for boys’ supposed orientations to learning; (ii) have teachers develop positive relationships with boys; and (iii) make English more ‘boy-friendly’. We also demonstrate that all teachers were not in agreement with this approach, and that it was also a divisive issue for some staff at Cathcart who refused to accept the direction in which the principal was taking the school. The gender reforms at this school raise important questions about teachers’ (and head teachers’) knowledges about gender and the politics of difference, as they impact on students’ lives in terms of race, ethnicity, social class and sexual orientation (see Kumashiro, 2000, 2002; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003; McCreedy, 2004). Here we are not constructing teachers as deficit, but recognizing that the demands of teaching are complex and that there has been a systematic failure by education departments to provide teachers with the opportunities for implementing complex responses to complex problems. We thus argue

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in this chapter that there is a need for schools and systems to support the development of teachers’ particular threshold knowledges in relation to gender and schooling, an area of current professional concern primarily informed by a range of populist texts, media-constructed accounts of the issues in boys’ schooling and limited policy approaches, rather than by substantive research-based knowledges. This chapter thus highlights the need to investigate further the impact and effect of teacher threshold knowledges and belief systems in terms of their capacity to reinforce problematic and restrictive notions of gender difference. Such teacher threshold knowledges would include subject discipline knowledge, knowledge of student development, understandings about the purposes of schooling, knowledge of educational policy and, we would contend, a knowledge and understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of gender and how these impact on students’ attitudes and learning (see Shulman, 1987). We will illustrate how in this case study school, knowledges about gender and schooling were based on problematic normalizing assumptions about boys as a group. Such assumptions construct boys as being predisposed to behaving, thinking and learning in particular ways as a result of simply being boys. In this sense, boys’ behaviour is explained in terms of brain-sex differences on the basis of their gender. Such understandings of gender often lead to particular pedagogical assumptions about how boys (and girls) learn and can play a role in reinforcing gendered expectations and orientations to learning (Francis, 2000; Martino and Kehler, 2007; Sukhnandan et al., 2000). This, in many cases, we would suggest, has led to the formulation of simplistic ‘tips for teachers’ approaches as a solution to addressing the complex issues and problems that boys are experiencing at school (see, for example, Bleach, 1998; Weaver-Hightower, 2003b). At the same time, those schools that have engaged in significant reform based on such knowledges may well be entrenching those very constructions of masculinity which cause some boys to be a problem to themselves and to others. The case study detailed here demonstrates that what is required is the bringing together of more sophisticated research-based knowledge for teachers about the ways in which gender construction affects schooling for both boys and girls, alongside relevant pedagogical and curricular knowledges (Murphy and Elwood, 1998). Underpinning the reforms at Cathcart was a concern that modern schooling was not aligned with boys’ supposedly ‘natural’ ways of learning and that the current ‘feminized’ nature of schooling had led to the alienation and disengagement of many boys. In explaining these

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natural differences, the principal drew on a mythopoetic style rhetoric shaped by ‘cave man’ discourses, positioning men and women within modern-day hunter and gatherer roles. In such roles men are deemed to be active and women passive. The consequence of this, he claimed, is that boys have to learn within an environment that values active styles of learning. These perceived gendered ways of learning, grounded in an essentialized biological determinism, suggest that schools, as they are currently structured, align with the needs of girls who are predisposed to sitting down and passively listening and writing. He suggests that changes resulting from a focus on girls’ education have had a negative effect on boys, even in subjects such as maths which have become more ‘girl-friendly’ with their focus on such practices as extended written assignments and group work. He was thus concerned that a supposed shift in the nature of curriculum implementation in schools ‘away from doing to thinking about and reflecting’ had resulted in boys’ underachievement relative to girls at school. It would be easy to caricature the reforms at this school as a simplistic backlash against the gains made by feminist movements in education. However, whilst many of the arguments used by the principal are shaped by popular discourses that homogenize boys and girls in constructing the former as the ‘new disadvantaged’, the principal demonstrated an awareness of how the contemporary moment does require changes in education. For instance, he claimed that some curricular changes were necessary due to the requirements of ‘the new work force’ that values ‘interpersonal, open-ended and reflective’ forms of labour (see McWilliam and Brannock, 2001). His concern was that pedagogical practices and school structures had not changed to meet these new times and that it was boys who were suffering as a result. Addressing this, he suggested, requires an approach that caters to the supposedly ‘natural ways’ in which boys learn, whilst training them to be more reflective and to develop the interpersonal skills needed for a changing world. Many of the reforms at the school were organized around attempts to address this problematic. It should also be noted that the principal was not simply responding to media claims about boys’ disadvantage. There had been some analysis of the school’s data, as the principal commented, Probably the thing that really got us involved was the analysis of student academic results and also the analysis of the number of boys/girls in any leadership positions, and even the very poor retention rate amongst the boys, just there are a lot of I guess measuring

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sticks there that indicated we were not doing a very good job with boys. And I guess I think at the time then it got a bit of, you know, Australian publicity and maybe world publicity and it’s a problem. We initially approached it from education for boys and what can we do for boys. In order to understand these data he had engaged with various texts dealing with boys’ education and had paid a number of different experts in boys’ education to visit the school to talk with staff about boys’ issues and to develop a school-wide response to boys’ education. However, he had only drawn on certain literature (for example, Biddulph, 1995; Gurian, 1999) and not on other research which documented the detrimental impact of dominant notions of masculinity and their impact on the social and educational outcomes of schooling for many boys and girls (see Dorais, 2004; Epstein et al., 1998; Francis, 2000; Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Goldstein et al., 2007; Jackson, 1998; Martino, 1999; Mills, 2001; Pascoe, 2007). This meant that within the school’s reform agenda there had been no consideration of the crucial effects and socializing influences of particular versions of masculinity, which actually encourage many boys to reject the feminine and expressive modes of relating and learning (Sukhnandan et al., 2000; Martino and PallottaChiarolli, 2003, 2005). Nevertheless, his engagement with the topic and his ability to articulate what he had found in a variety of texts about boys’ education had led to him being acclaimed within the local community as an expert on boys’ education. The reforms he had implemented at Cathcart had also led to the school being identified as an exemplar of a successful boys’ education programme. This had largely enabled him to take up this issue without being challenged in any significant way. In order to ‘sell’ his ideas, he worked hard at convincing both the parent community and the staff of the importance of having a school focus on boys’ education. Prior to implementing reforms within the school he held community meetings for parents, which were attended by some staff. In this way, he sought to justify the reforms he was planning on undertaking. He always began his presentations with anecdotes about his experiences as a principal and as a father of boys. He raised examples of the boys he had come across in his career who were boisterous, loud, cheeky and loved doing things with their hands, but who could not readily engage with the academic curriculum or the expectations of schooling that were required of them. He openly admitted that he, along with the rest of the educational community, had failed these

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boys. In his view, there was a degree of urgency and moral concern about the need to address what he presented as a major social justice issue. He would reinforce his anecdotal evidence with newspaper clippings that supported his contention that boys were underperforming at school and that this was a current crisis in education and, as he always stressed, for society as a whole. He also provided evidence to suggest that both major political parties in Australia at the time supported such a view. In an early presentation he showed a community meeting excerpts from speeches by both the former leader of the Federal Australian Labor Party, Mark Latham, and the former Liberal Party Federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, in which both expressed concerns about the dire state of boys’ education in Australia. Consequently, he would always conclude his presentations with the claim that it was a matter of ‘common sense’ that the school should address issues of boys’ education. As this was a co-educational school, he realized that he also needed to keep the parents of girls on side, and a part of what became a mantra for him was the claim that ‘what worked for boys also worked for girls’. He would state emphatically that improving boys’ education would make life better for girls. In other words, girls would be happier in a world where boys also achieved and did not misbehave. As parents, and sometimes teachers, listened to these presentations they would often nod their heads and could identify boys they knew who fitted this image. Of course many boys did fit this image. But why this was so was never questioned. Moreover, the consequences of these behaviours were never considered. Issues of class or race were never raised, there was a silence about homophobia and there was a failure to acknowledge that some boys did not perform their masculinity in these traditional ways. Numerous experts on boys’ education had been commissioned to give presentations to the staff about boys’ issues in schools. Teachers had been told that the various problems for boys, such as retention levels, academic outcomes and disengagement from learning, were unlikely to be remedied until schools, in the words of Pollack (1999), become ‘guyified’, have programmes that recognize ‘boy energy’ and begin to value masculinity. The teachers had also been informed that they needed to take into account the environment that boys learn in. For example, there had been suggestions that the walls be painted a lilac colour and that dimmer switches be built into all classrooms. Teachers had been provided with numerous ‘tips’, for example painting a hand on the doorway with which boys could give a ‘high five’ as they came into

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the room. Interestingly, the school did not take too seriously many of the ‘tips for teachers’ approaches to boys’ education, although in an environment where teachers were always pressed for time some suggestions were welcomed. However, there was recognition within the school that for any change to be long-lasting there has to be a cultural change that takes into account issues of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. The attempt to re-culture the school to make it more boy-friendly led to a number of reforms. The programme at the school followed a particular in-service for teachers held at the school. This was offered by a consultant who had been identified as a national expert on boys’ education. An outcome of this day was the development of a plan that would encourage the engagement of all boys in all curriculum areas by making them more boy-friendly. There were to be three aspects to this plan: a cross-curricula focus on developing classroom practices that catered to ‘boy-energy’; developing good relationships between teachers and boys; and improving boys’ literacy levels. As the staff had been informed on a regular basis that boys were naturally more restless than girls and had trouble focusing for long periods of time on any one task, it was decided as the first part of this plan to implement, despite the protestations of some staff, what came to be known as an ‘activities-based curriculum’ in the school’s middle years programme. This curriculum approach was to involve boys in fast-paced activities that kept them on the move and physically active. There were to be two aspects to it. In the first instance it was to be conducted as a whole school activity. In the second it was a consideration that was to inform every classroom in the middle school. The second component of the boys’ programme at the school was based on developing positive relationships between teachers and boys. From one of the talks given to the school by a boys’ expert, the principal adopted the mantra that improving boys’ educational experiences came down to three things: ‘Relationships. Relationships. Relationships.’ These relationships were to be developed with boys by having teachers engage with boys (and girls) in a variety of extra-curricular activities designed to appeal to boys. The philosophy underpinning this approach was that by developing positive relationships with boys in activities outside of the classroom, where boys did not feel threatened by or bored with what was expected from them, these relationships would then be carried over into the classroom. The third component of this programme aimed at improving boys’ literacy levels. As is the case in many high schools, the work of

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improving students’ literacy skills was directed towards the English department. Hence, much of the focus on improving boys’ literacy was to involve reforming the school’s English curriculum. Furthermore, whilst English has often been associated with literacy, it has also often been criticized as an area of the school curriculum that has been feminized to the extent that boys have been alienated from it. As the principal noted, In the English area, when, you know, we talk about the right model or best type of thing, I think one of the biggest issues in the English area is actually the syllabus and what we require. Thus, the reform efforts around English were also designed to make the subject more boy-friendly. These reforms were not accepted by all within the English department without significant resistance. We outline each of these three aspects of this boys’ plan at Cathcart State High School. Following this we provide an analysis of the effects of these reforms on students and teachers.

The boy-friendly approach at Cathcart The activities-based curriculum The focus of the activities-based curriculum at the school was on the middle school, that is students aged from 12 to 15 years. It had two forms. On the one hand, it involved introducing physical exercise into the classroom and the structure of the class day, while on the other it involved movement in the classroom whereby students were not expected to spend any great length of time on one particular activity. The justifications for this programme were that boys need to burn off excess energy at the start of the day, and during the course of the day, so that they do not misbehave in class, and that in the classroom, boys’ attention spans are limited and thus require refocusing from time to time and that physical exercise and movement helps with this refocusing. Whilst the focus was on boys’ education, girls were also subject to this curriculum. Each day began with students accompanied by one of their regular teachers having a walk around the school playing fields, sometimes with frisbees and tennis balls that they threw to each other. Teachers were expected to engage with the boys as they proceeded through their walk and play. The idea was that as well as getting boys to burn up some energy, this was also a good time for developing relationships with

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them. Thus, as they walked around the playing fields teachers chatted with the boys about various issues other than their school work. There was usually a reasonably positive atmosphere as the students engaged in these activities, although there were clear grumbles from different groups of boys and girls. It was clear that for some boys this was not a pleasurable activity, no matter how hard the teachers tried to engage them. Some of these boys grumbled, whilst others played up. Further, small groups of girls also seemed to resent the attention that was given to the boys during these sessions; they responded by either complaining in their groups or also misbehaving and trying to attract the various teachers’ attention away from the boys. As part of this focus on physical exercise, teachers had been told that it was not in the interests of boys (or of teachers and girls in the classroom) to have them ‘locked up’ for too long as they become restless and disruptive. This was reflected in one teacher’s comment: See, the other thing, you look to your primary school. Boys are being caged. They are kept seated, you know, the quiet classroom is the ideal classroom. Now the nature of adolescent boys and girls is different. I mean, girls like to chatter, but boys like to actually physically run around. They actually like to do things. They bump into things. They fall over things. Thus the approach at the school involved teachers giving students opportunities to run around the playing fields every 20–30 minutes to burn off excess energy, to ‘bump into’ and fall over’ things and to refocus their attention on the tasks at hand. Girls seldom took up this ‘opportunity’, some boys did and some teachers used it as a punishment for disruptive boys. The activities-based programme also extended into the classroom. Based on a widespread assumption that many boys have short attention spans (see, for example, West, 2002), teachers were instructed not to make students sit for too long undertaking one task. Boys, they were told, along the lines of West (2002, p. 132), are ‘action-orientated people’. As such, learning was to be broken up into small chunks, whereby students tackled small ‘achievable’ tasks after completing these they then could move on to the next task. Each ‘move’ was accompanied by physical movement that was supposed to help boys refocus on the next task. Each task involved students engaging in highly structured activities such as ‘filling in boxes’, undertaking cloze exercises and competitive quizzes.

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There was also an overall policy in the school that teachers must not stand up and talk to the students for more than 15 minutes and that structured activities needed to be developed, such as ones that required the students to fill in blanks or to tick boxes. It was the view that this kind of structured activity, with more reflective exercises following at the end, was what worked best with boys. There was a strong claim that learning for boys needed to be very structured and that open-ended tasks were not suited to boys’ learning styles. This is a perspective that has also been advocated in, for example, a parliamentary report on boys’ education in Australia by the Ontario Ministry of Education (2004) and various others in the US, such as Gurian (1999). The Australian report, for instance, has suggested that ‘Structured programmes are better for boys because they need to know what is expected of them and moreover, they like to be shown the steps along the way to achieve success’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 78). We note as well that this was a quite common view of teachers in research we conducted for the Australian Commonwealth government (Lingard et al., 2002). A further argument that the principal put forward for such an approach was that teachers have to keep boys moving at a fast pace. If boys have too much time to reflect and to agonize over open-ended questions, then they are more likely to misbehave and to disengage from learning. The idea that it is good to have boys compete with each other (and on some occasions with the girls) was based on the presumption that boys are naturally competitive and that this often brings out the best in them. In many of the classrooms where teachers took this approach seriously there was a lot of movement and noise, but students usually accomplished the work that had been set. As part of this activities-based curriculum teachers were also supposed to be integrating technology into the classroom more as boys, it was claimed, have a natural affinity with technology. As a result, students were often expected to complete various tasks on the computer, do web searches, draft e-mails to teachers, construct web pages and the like. Most students in the class engaged with these activities in positive ways. However, in many cases many boys seemed to dominate the computers and often appeared to be off task.

Positive relationships In line with the activities programme that encouraged teachers to develop positive relationships with students, teachers were instructed

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to work on developing good relationships with boys. In order to legitimate this emphasis on developing positive relationships with boys, the principal was again able to point to the Australian report on the education of boys, Boys: Getting it Right, which states, ‘While girls will more readily respond to content, boys respond more to their relationships with teachers’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 78). In order to develop these relationships, on two afternoons a week the last lesson of the day was devoted to an extra-curricular session. These were specifically created to cater to the interests of boys who might not engage with the school’s regular after-school sports programmes. The activities offered to students across the year included, aerobics, dance, weights, walking, running, surfing, bike riding, cooking, costume design, chess, debating, book club, the school musical and school magazine. Students usually selected their options along gender lines; for example, more girls than boys did aerobics, and more boys than girls chose surfing. However, there were some attempts to have students break out of traditional gendered activities. For instance, as part of the relationship building exercise, teachers were encouraged to talk with students about their options and to have them consider others. Interestingly, though, one deputy principal was unsure about the wisdom of this, because of boys and girls being distracted by the opposite sex and male teachers were put on the ‘masculinized’ activities as a way of having male teachers working with boys (see Chapter 5). As part of building relationships with boys, teachers were encouraged to consider the gendered ways in which they engaged with students in the classroom. In one in-service that the teachers undertook at the school, it was explained to them how many teachers are scared of boys because of the ways in which they take up space through their boisterousness and noisiness. As a result, it was claimed, many teachers use more authoritarian measures with boys than they do with girls as a means of controlling them. The constant reprimanding of boys, it was suggested, contributed to their alienation from school, and teachers, and contributed to their resistance to the academic curriculum. Hence, teachers were told that they needed to be much more accepting of boyish energy and that they needed to be able to see and take a joke in the spirit with which many boys delivered them. At the same time, though, teachers were told that boys respected firm discipline and that they wanted the rules to be clear and to be applied evenly to boys and girls. The suggestion that boys perceived that they were treated more unfairly than girls was something that teachers were told to specifically

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address in their classrooms in order to develop positive relationships with the boys in their classes.

English curriculum The English curriculum has been an area of concern for many working in the field of boys’ education (see, for example, West, 2002; Martino, 1994, 2001). The argument has been proposed that English is one of the most feminized areas of the school curriculum, and yet it is one of the most important. It is claimed that it is a feminized area of schooling because, for instance, teachers who teach the subject are usually female; the material often deals with issues of emotions and feelings; students are expected to engage in extended pieces of writing; being good at English requires a lot of time spent in one place either reading or writing; and the criteria in English are too vague for boys who require explicit expectations. This was reflected in the following comment of a male teacher: And when it comes to things like literature and when it comes to things in the English area, those things are just innately probably more able to be coped with by adolescent girls than they are by adolescent boys because the discussion of feelings and the discussion of emotions is part of an adolescent context. I’m again not trying to pretend that all boys are insensitive and all girls are highly sensitive, but I’m just saying in terms of the way adolescence projects itself, a lot of times, to get a boy to give a feeling and emotion about something is very difficult even if they feel it and then of course there is the way, ‘How do I express it?’ Because of the importance of English for matriculation in the senior years (alongside its links to students’ literacy skills), it is claimed that boys are severely disadvantaged by this feminization. As a result the principal of the school directed the English department to focus on making English more boy-friendly, and also to take into account the school’s activities-based programme and focus on building positive relationships with students. There was much discussion amongst the English staff as to how they might approach this directive. Single-sex classes were discussed, but rejected as too simplistic (see Chapter 4 for a discussion on single-sex classes). Instead, it was determined that the focus would be on the curriculum. For example, students would study shorter texts and novels

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that focused on boys’ interests; would undertake a series of real-life tasks, such as being a newspaper reporter; would study rock music in poetry; would engage with materials that raised issues of masculinity; and would have to undertake more content-specific short tests and quizzes, including grammar and spelling tests. For some teachers there was a sense that boys’ supposed inability to sit still and their lack of engagement with English went hand in hand. As one teacher indicated, With reading in particular, I think some of the current reading schemes and the stories tend to be too long, and I’ve always found boys are fellows who want it to finish quickly. Men tend to be that way inclined, and if they have to read a story that’s 14 pages long, (inaudible), whereas short, sharp stories, you know, well as I say with short, sharp, up to 3 pages and they can see. It was also claimed that many of the current texts dealt far too much with ‘emotions and feelings’ to be appropriate for boys. Many also believed that this was turning boys off English. It was thus decided that options needed to be included that appealed to boys’ interests, such as using texts that depicted action-orientated lead male characters engaged in boy-related activities and interests, such as sport and war. As one female teacher stated, Because girls are more naturally readers, from what I see, I choose texts with more of a boy focus to try and get the boys interested which works sometimes, doesn’t work all times. So we did an Alfred Hitchcock unit recently to try and get the Year 10 boys engaging with film. So in terms of the Shakespeare we choose Macbeth because the issues of power and violence and greed and stuff, which girls can relate to as well . . . In other areas of English it was decided that the curriculum could also be made more connected to boys’ worlds. Boys would thus be expected to engage in more real-life tasks. For instance, it was decided that students in grade 9 would work on a unit where they would develop a functional manual that would provide a set of instructions about how to undertake a task that was of interest to them. Many of the students engaged with this task enthusiastically. In the process of undertaking this task, students were expected to interview people, to search out information (for example, costs of materials) and to check for clarity of instructions

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and authenticity of expectations by having a variety of audiences read near completed drafts. The final products were impressive. They created manuals on how to fix bicycles, how to make web pages and how to build a ‘cubby house’ for a child. They also created some on how to plan for an overseas holiday, how to organize a birthday party and how to entertain an under 5 on a rainy day. However, the first set of manuals were created by boys, the second by girls. There were also to be some assessment reforms in English. The above manual was indicative of this in that it did not involve expressive writing, but a functional instructive genre. General claims have been made that girls have benefited from the inclusion of extended writing components in assessment items in many areas of the curriculum, even maths! The inclusion of such forms of assessment have been blamed for making a subject that once was the domain of boys something that they no longer could relate to. As one male teacher commented, You know, we talk about why is it that boys are better at manual sort of subjects than girls. When you start to look at those subjects, what you find is in many cases they are generally subjects where there is a clear process of accuracy, you know, right and wrong, that are generally divorced from really having to discuss or intrude things like emotions and feelings and how you feel. Like, for example, if the table is made correctly, it’s made correctly. You don’t really have to say why you feel that making tables correctly is important part of the course. I think that what we’ve probably got, and I’m not making any value judgment about it, is that we’ve got curriculums that have developed since the 70s that have placed increasing emphasis on the emotional response of the person to the content that is being delivered rather than a purely factual. In fact, we tend even today to look on the factual as being a base and emotional, you know, the sort of interpretive as being a higher level of understanding. Teachers and heads of department were thus encouraged by the principal to ensure that school-based assessment items included, as much as possible, short response items and fixed answers. Boys, they were told, struggle with those forms of task that have multiple truths. Thus, the English department also adapted a number of existing assessment items into ones that required only short answers. For instance, a test combining multiple choice and short answers was introduced into the poetry unit for grade 8. In this test students were, for example, expected to identify similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and oxymorons. They were

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also expected to be able to identify the names of poems and poets associated with particular lines of poetry. Another innovation has been an assessment approach that involved a quiz where students competed against each other. Teachers had been told that boys often construct tests as a competition between teacher and student and that they perceive that teachers have unfair advantages, and thus fail to engage. However, it was suggested that boys are much more prepared to compete against each other and thus quizzes are a better approach to get the best out of boys (see Carr-Greg, 2004).

Responses to the boy-friendly curriculum The teachers The reaction amongst teachers to the implementation of the boyfriendly curriculum at Cathcart was mixed. Many were convinced that boys’ interests do need to be catered to far more than they were at that time. They were also concerned about boys’ academic and social outcomes at the school. Some of these teachers were enthusiastic about the take-up of all aspects of the school’s approach to boys’ education. Others, whilst supportive of the boys’ agenda at the school, did not always meet all of the expectations of the school’s plan due to a variety of factors, such as time, conflict with their normal teaching approach and forgetfulness. There was a significant group of teachers who opposed the whole school’s approach to boys’ education. Some of these teachers still complied with the principal’s requests. However, some were more vocal and openly refused to take up this approach. This latter group was marginalized within the school. They were often characterized as ‘femi-Nazis’ who did not care about boys and would reject anything that did not focus on ensuring that the needs of girls were met at the expense of boys. As indicated in other research we have conducted, this was a most divisive issue within the school (Lingard et al., 2002). In response to the activities-based curriculum, many teachers told us that for them it worked enormously well. They stated that this ensured that the day started on a positive note, the teachers and students were able to talk about a variety of things that were of importance to the students, teachers could address concerns they had with particular students in a non-threatening environment, and sometimes the students managed to get their talking out of the way so that they could concentrate on their lessons. Other teachers complained that the energy involved in

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getting reluctant students to participate caused them all sorts of stresses in the morning. They noted that it did work for some students, but that many students, in particular the girls, resented this part of the morning. Many of these teachers were not in fierce opposition to this part of the boys’ programme, despite expressing some concerns that girls might feel antagonism towards the activities. This was related to the ways in which improving boys’ education had been marketed by the school principal. Interestingly, two of the most enthusiastic advocates for the boyfriendly approach at the school were two female teachers, Jane and Deborah. These two teachers, both of whom worked in the learning support department, were emphatic that positive relationships between teachers and students were critical for improving the outcomes of students who were not achieving academically. They thus lauded the principal’s efforts to introduce the activities-based curriculum and to recognize the relational dimension of pedagogies. Deborah was particularly enthusiastic about the morning fitness routine as it not only improved relationships, but also enabled boys to burn off excess energy before the start of the school. Jane and Deborah were also concerned about boys’ literacy levels. They suggested that boys have distinctive learning styles and that current approaches to literacy learning did not take into account the different ways in which boys’ and girls’ brains worked. For a number of teachers, though, many of whom supported the relationships and boys’ focus in the school, there was a concern about the extension of the activities-based curriculum into the classroom, where some teachers suggested that it disrupted their classes and did not allow students to develop the skills to engage in extended activities. A number of teachers did follow through on the intent of this programme and had students engaged in fast-paced activities that saw them moving from one activity to the next in quick succession and also included large numbers of cloze activities and worksheets that encouraged students to develop a knowledge of a vast array of facts. Some teachers also engaged enthusiastically with the activities sessions and had regular activities built into their classrooms that involved students doing work outside. Many of these teachers were able to justify their use of these pedagogical approaches by referring to various boys’ in-services that they had attended. However, generally there was a significant resistance to this approach. A large number of teachers felt that the principal’s attempts to tell them how to teach represented a lack of respect by the principal for their pedagogical knowledge and that his approach conflicted with their understandings of good pedagogy. Whilst many of these teachers were

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concerned about the way in which the focus on boys at the school could be harming girls, they also suggested that this approach was not doing boys any favours either. They suggested that regardless of the arguments that boys’ attention spans are not as developed as those of girls, boys do need to develop such skills. They also argued that boys, if they could not already do so, needed to learn how to write in extended and complex ways. Teachers in the main did not reject the focus on developing positive relationships with students. A common view, articulated this time by a male teacher, was that I think there is a lack of social skilling in a lot of boys because the social skilling is not a context that they find a lot of times at home. Most teachers thus argued that it is important for teachers and students to have mutual respect for each other. Some of the teachers who expressed concern over the boys’ approach at the school had offered to take on programmes that challenged stereotypic ways of being a boy or girl. For instance, as part of the extra-curricular activities some of these teachers offered cooking for boys and car mechanics for girls. However, students had not subscribed to these activities in the same numbers, as they had to the more gender conformist activities. A female teacher who had responsibility for this programme stated, I’m very conscious of the fact that in the whole time this has been going on, nearly 100% of woodwork has been boys. Nearly 100% of dance has been girls. Last year we had 2 boys out of 50 doing dance. This year I think there’s 5 out of 50. But they’re all Year 7. Last year the 2 boys were Year 10, so that was nice. . . . Last year I had one boy who did costume design in a class of girls and I talked to the Year 10 boy and he was fine, he said, ‘I have no worries’. It also appeared to be the case that many of the boys who struggled academically and who often had behavioural problems in the school were primarily enrolled in the very traditional masculine activities. Some teachers, mainly female teachers, pointed out that many of these boys seemed to have reasonably good relationships with those male teachers who demonstrated very similar masculinities as the boys, and that such relationships tended to reinforce rather than challenge these boys’ problematic behaviours (see Chapter 5). The teachers who were concerned about this approach to boys’ education were also critical of

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the way in which this focus on relationships privileged teachers’ relationships with boys over those of girls and suggested that this was a clear example of how the boys’ agenda at the school had the potential to do great harm to girls at the school. The support amongst the English staff for the boy focus in that subject was also mixed. Ian, the head of the English department, was supportive of the principal’s attempts to make English more boy-friendly. He was also welcoming of the extra funding that had come his way as a result of the school’s focus on literacy and English. As a result, he had been prepared to take on board the principal’s focus on boys’ education through the English curriculum. However, he was also resentful of the dismissive attitudes towards critical literacy that had accompanied the criticisms of the English department’s supposed failure to engage boys. He thus ensured that, whilst making concessions to more content-specific tasks, critical literacy remained a key aspect of the English programme. Indeed, he argued that critical literacy skills were imperative for undertaking the analyses of masculinity that were now to be part of the English curriculum. However, the principal’s efforts to encourage the English department to construct a more boy-friendly curriculum were not met with universal support amongst the English teachers. The English teachers at this school, as in many other high schools, were primarily female. However, they did not have a consistent view on the school’s approach to boys’ education. Mary and Sarah represent two distinctly different views on this issue. There were also other English teachers who either demonstrated a synthesis of Mary’s and Sarah’s positions or who were ambivalent about the school’s approach to the whole boys’ issue. Mary had been a driving force in the principal’s reform efforts. Indeed, like him, she had come to be known in the local area as an expert on the topic of boys and reading and had been invited to present workshops at a number of teacher conferences on boys and literacy. She coordinated the school’s ‘dads and lads’ evenings, where fathers were told about the importance of them reading at home and of sharing an interest in what their sons were reading. She was also instrumental in working on improving boys’ relationships; for instance, she talked about a camp she was involved in organizing for boys: Term 1 we do a Father and Son Weekend up at the school camp, which doesn’t attract a huge crowd, but that works in our favour. It’s usually about 12 boys and their fathers, and that’s a weekend away doing physical activity and usually with some kind of advocate to challenge us and to look at father/son relations, and of course, the

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sort of parents that you have come along to a weekend like that are people who are interested anyway. So it’s a bit like preaching to the converted, but we tend to do the Rock and Water programme, the one from the Netherlands. Mary also conducted a survey of all boys in the school about their reading interests and was instrumental in having a section of the school library being denoted as a boys’ reading area, where there were books for boys and where the noise limit was relaxed to be a few decibels higher than it was elsewhere in the library. Sarah, on the other hand, was very dismissive of attempts to make English boy-friendly. She had long been supportive of the feminist agenda in schools and was extremely concerned about the impact that this focus on boys was having on girls in the classroom. She also argued that it was hard to think of how the English curriculum could be made any more boy-friendly than it already was. She pointed out that the curriculum currently contains Shakespeare, and involves studying the media industry, documentaries and films such as Gallipoli. She stressed that Shakespeare was a well-known misogynist, that the media is run by men, that the documentaries they studied tended to be about men, that Gallipoli valourizes war, and that when they studied Indigenous writers these tended to be men. She also noted that even in poetry, the supposedly most feminized section of the English curriculum, the majority of poets they studied were men, hardly, she suggested, a feminized curriculum. She also pointed out, on a regular basis, that despite there being so many female English teachers in the school, it was interesting that it was a man who was their head of department. Sarah also argued that this constant focus on boys had not served English or boys well. She argued it led to a ‘dumbing down’ of the subject by suggestions that English needed to be more precise. In her view, there needed to be more testing of knowledge rather than expressive writing. At the same time, she suggested, English was a subject that could be of great benefit to boys by encouraging them to do the kind of reflective thinking about themselves, which was not being covered elsewhere in the curriculum. Overall, at Cathcart there seemed to be a polarization amongst the staff about the virtues of the boy-friendly curriculum at the school. This polarization was reflected in a comment from Mary: We’ve had a number of speakers in to talk to the staff with varying degrees of success. Some have had, we’ve had sort of outraged

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argument when we’ve had some speakers in initially. Yes, like yeah, people turning pink in the face and yelling at each other, that sort of thing. There was a significant group of teachers who were highly supportive of the programme and who claimed that it was improving the engagement of boys. They suggested that whilst the evidence was yet to demonstrate that boys’ academic outcomes had improved, they were confident that this would be the case, as anecdotally boys seemed to be getting better grades on their tests than they were on their assignments. Another group of teachers were far more critical. They suggested that while life at the school might have improved for some boys, this had come at a cost to the girls. They also claimed that it had not improved life for all boys. For instance, they pointed to the boys who did not demonstrate traditionally valued masculine behaviours and suggested the school had further marginalized them by homogenizing boys according to the traditional characteristics of masculinity. There were other teachers at the school who were not convinced of either position or who felt somewhat ambivalent about the whole debate and claimed that they treated all students as individuals and not on the basis of their gender.

The students As with the teachers, the students’ responses to this approach were mixed. Most of the students were unaware of the specifics of the boyfriendly curriculum at the school. However, they were very well aware of the school’s reputation as a school committed to meeting the needs of boys. Whilst many of the boys were supportive of this, there were some interesting complaints from some groups of boys. The older girls at the school were quite often resentful of this focus on boys. There were, however, some girls who either defended criticisms of masculine behaviours or sought to play a supportive role in helping boys to become ‘better men’. Many of the girls who were angry about this approach sought out, and often found, support from female teachers. Many of the boys at the school were quick to adopt the ‘boys as victim’ mantra, which underpins much of the current boys’ education agenda. They were able to point to the ways in which they believed girls at the school had been advantaged over boys. The number of boys who got into trouble in class was one source of evidence used to make their point, alongside the number of boys who were in the school’s behaviour management unit. They claimed that this was because teachers were less

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tolerant of boys and that girls either did not get punished or received lighter penalties for committing the same offence as boys, a not uncommon claim (see Myhill and Jones, 2006). They also claimed that girls were always believed by teachers over boys, that neither teachers nor girls could take a joke, that subjects such as English were for ‘poofters’, that school was irrelevant, and that teachers always picked on the boys who were good at sport. These boys claimed that the principal and many of the male teachers at the school were trying to make it better for boys at the school (they did not seem to recognize Mary’s efforts in the English department), but that there was still a long way to go and that most teachers’ attitudes to them had not changed. Interestingly, these boys did indicate that they preferred to discuss personal issues with female teachers and often those female teachers who were opposed to the school’s focus on boys’ education. Two groups of boys expressed concern about the school’s focus on boys. These two concerns are interrelated. One group of boys expressed great anger at the way in which boys’ results were contrasted negatively with those of girls. These were high-achieving boys, and had been so for most of their time at school. They felt like their achievements were not being recognized by the school and that they were doing just as well as the girls. Every time that they heard that the boys’ focus had been adopted because girls were doing better at school than boys, they felt insulted. The other group of boys were concerned that the approach that had been adopted at the school would have a negative impact upon their results when they entered the senior years. They were worried that they would not be able to concentrate for long periods and that they would be wanting to keep moving on to the next activity before they had finished the one they were currently undertaking. These boys wanted to do as well as the girls at the school and wanted to be given the kinds of teaching that worked for the girls.

From policy to practice It is perhaps no surprise that schools are engaging in boy-friendly reforms, a concept appropriated from earlier feminist-inspired demands for reform and ‘girl-friendly’ schooling. There has been widespread support for such approaches in a diversity of settings (see, for example, Jha and Kelleher, 2006). In Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Education (2004) and the Manitoba Ministry of Education (2004) have encouraged boy-friendly approaches to improving boys’ literacy skills. In Australia, schools like Cathcart were held up as exemplars of approaches to boys’ education by the 2002 Australian parliamentary Inquiry into

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boys’ education (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002). This report, echoing the principal at Cathcart, drew on the claim of Trent and Slade (2001) that boys are very reactive to poor teaching and irrelevant curriculum and hence justified tailoring the curriculum and pedagogical practices to the needs of boys. Hence, the argument was made in that report that boys need to be provided with a relevant curriculum that is connected to the world beyond the classroom. This, it is often acknowledged, is also important for girls, but according to the Inquiry, for instance, there are groups of boys who are more likely to disrupt classes and the learning of others when not provided with such a curriculum. The report thus made the following claims about what boys need in terms of quality teaching and learning designed to address their educational needs: • more explicit teaching than girls with more active, hands-on methods of instruction; • structured programmes because boys need to know what is expected and they like to be shown the steps along the way to achieve success; • while girls more readily respond to content, boys respond more to their relationships with teachers; • activities help boys establish rapport with their teachers; and • boys respond better to teachers who are attuned to boys’ sense of justice and fairness and who are consistent in the application of rules (p. 78). The reforms at Cathcart clearly resonate with these claims about what boys need. Similarly, the Inquiry’s concern about ensuring that curriculum and pedagogy work towards making school relevant to boys, because ‘boys are more likely than girls to respond to dull subject matter or uninspiring teaching in an overt and challenging way that will disrupt their own and others’ learning’ (p. 72), has been taken up at the school. Within this rationale, there is no engagement with the possibility that this ‘rebellion’ on the part of boys could entail the playing out of those dominant constructions of masculinity that often have a detrimental impact on the learning of both boys and girls (Connolly, 2004; Epstein et al., 1998; Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). Nor was there any focus on the ways in which, for instance, misogynist and homophobic practices amongst peer groups work to police the boundaries of normalized masculinities and femininities (see Chapter 6). Little consideration was also given to the ways in which teachers might also be complicit in the maintenance of such boundaries (see Chapter 5). Nor was there any

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recognition in these observations that some girls’ passive acceptance of poor teaching is not evidence of effective learning. Pedagogy was the key issue for the principal in terms of addressing the educational needs of boys. We agree with this view – good teaching does matter (Hayes et al., 2006; Keddie and Mills, 2007; Lingard et al., 2000, 2003b). However, what constitutes good teaching for boys is a matter open to considerable debate. In this school, what was considered to be good teaching and learning for boys was framed within normalizing assumptions about the way boys naturally are and how they actually learn. For instance, they were constructed as having simpler needs than girls, who ‘naturally’ collaborate with each other and are better at relating to the expectations of their teachers. There was also a sense of a gender-differentiated curriculum, both in terms of student participation in the various activities and specifically in the way, for instance, one of the deputy principals constructed dance as the domain for girls. Students, themselves, tended to self-select into traditional gendered activities and there was little attempt to address the ways in which, for instance, the pressures of femiphobia, misogyny and homophobia prevented boys from taking up these activities. Indeed, one deputy was disparaging of the efforts of some teachers to broaden boys’ and girls’ choices. This deputy talked explicitly about the need for boys and girls to be freed from ‘distractions’ in the activities-based curriculum. He thus claimed that it was better that boys did not do dancing and instead did weight training and cycling; likewise, it was better for girls to do dance than weights. For him, dance was constructed as a feminine activity and weights and cycling as masculine. This perhaps accounts for why he believed boys might be distracted from engaging in dance and highlights the extent to which such a curriculum does little to address the impact and effects of gender regimes on students’ lives and participation in a broader range of activities considered to be outside those narrowly defined by traditional notions of masculinity (see Gard, 2001). We acknowledge that there is a need for schools to ensure that curricula and pedagogy are connected to students’ worlds, and to recognize that good relationships between teachers and students, along with explicit forms of teaching and assessment practices, are important for student outcomes, and that this is especially the case for underachieving students. However, there is also a need to reject deficit models of students by providing all students with intellectually challenging classrooms, which connect subject matter to students’ interests and biographies and to the world beyond the classroom (Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2000, 2003b; Newmann and Associates, 1996). Ironically,

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within calls to simplify the curriculum for boys there is an implicit deficit model of boys that suggests that they are unable to cope with the demands of an increasingly complex world and cannot achieve at the same levels as girls in assessment that involves, for example, extended writing, a point not missed by some boys at Cathcart. One of whom stated that, . . . most of all, they say this and this or they’re (girls) getting, yes, they’re getting this, they’re getting that . . . I don’t think it does much for self-esteem. Consequently, many of the boy-friendly strategies that are being adopted by schools, by minimizing the demands on boys are unlikely to benefit boys in that many of the so-called ‘feminized aspects’ of the curriculum, for example the focus on communication skills, are increasingly necessary in the contemporary world, as acknowledged by the Cathcart principal. There were also a number of unacknowledged dangers for girls with the suggested approaches to boys’ schooling at Cathcart (see Kenway et al., 1997; Yates, 2000). For example, the focus on giving explicit instruction to boys meant that some underachieving girls were ignored, a concern expressed by some Cathcart teachers. The productive pedagogies research (Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2001, 2003b) has demonstrated the significance of direct pedagogy to successful teaching for all students. Such directness and explicitness are necessary to ensure that implicit cultural capital does not become the misrecognized factor in determining student performance (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Lingard, 2005, 2007). In terms of assessment practices, providing students with explicit criteria as to what is expected from them in the classroom is necessary for all students who struggle with understanding the expectations of teachers, as is scaffolding of what each task demands of them (Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2006). Dismissing the importance of relationships in the teaching of girls may also mean that quieter girls are not provided with those kinds of relationships that foster a love of learning, as opposed to acquiescence to a sometimes irrelevant curriculum and poor, non-effective pedagogies. We were also concerned with the ways in which students were engaging with this focus on boys. As with other research we have conducted (see Charlton et al., 2007), there was a sense that girls’ education was being sacrificed for that of boys. This may well lead to girls feeling resentful either towards the school and/or boys at the school. To some

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extent we saw this during the morning activities session with some of the girls. The Cathcart approach might also reinforce the views held by many that boys’ education is more important than that of girls. Whilst some boys were angered by the construction of them as failures, we were also concerned with the ways in which some boys at the school were taking on board the notion that they were underachieving in relation to girls, thus reinforcing a deficit construction of ‘boys’, whilst at the same time attributing this to the practices of women and girls. In a context where boys are affected by the pervasive backlash against feminism ventilated regularly in the media, this may well cause them to demonstrate a ‘competing victim syndrome’ (Cox, 1996). In regard to the relationships programme, the strong and committed focus on pastoral care and affirmation of students were clearly strengths of the school. We support the importance of teacher relationships with students, both boys and girls. Our own research has demonstrated unequivocally that young people see this as central to good pedagogies, perhaps the sine qua non of good pedagogies. However, these relationships can in some instances reinforce traditional constructs of masculinity and femininity. Indeed, one of the teachers who was supportive of the boy-friendly approach at the school, Jane, identified some of the male teachers at the school as a problem in terms of the ways in which they performed their own masculinities as teachers and how they treated students, boys and girls, and other teachers, especially female teachers. For instance, she suggested that some of the boys with the biggest behavioural problems were able to keep out of trouble due to their close relationship with the teacher who took the football team (see Chapter 5 for further discussion of this issue). Furthermore, focusing on relationships with boys and attempting to be accepting of ‘boyish energy’ meant that instances of bullying were not always addressed. Such behaviours were often constructed as just a way of boys being boys. As we know from a class we observed in research conducted elsewhere, boys may be joking around, but the consequences for the butt of their jokes, often influenced by homophobia, can be quite traumatic (Mills, 2001).The limits of such an approach relate to an avoidance of acknowledging or interrogating the gender regimes in which boys’ notions of masculinity get embedded and normalized (see Connell, 2000; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Martino and Meyenn, 2002; Renold, 2003). We were also concerned about the ways in which the claim that the daily fitness programme was significant in terms of catering to boys’ high energy levels and the claim that boys’ and girls’ brains work

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differently drew on essentialist views of gender, as demonstrated in one teacher’s observation about boys’ behaviours: I think it’s the nature of the beast. I reckon boys, if you look at horses, well if you compare stallions and mares, I reckon 15 year old boys are just full of testosterone and far more aggressive than girls of the same age. Such views suggest that boys have excess energy in relation to girls and that its release through physical activity will improve their ability to engage in learning (see Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Francis and Skelton, 2005; Petersen, 1998 for a critique of such a position). Problematizing these kinds of views about gendered behaviour is important in developing a gender-equitable approach to addressing the current ‘boy problem’. Such problematizing is important for both teachers and students. For students, such work usually takes place in curriculum areas deemed feminine, such as those dealing with human relationships, the social sciences and, in English-speaking countries, English. We were, thus, also concerned with some of the ways in which English was being reformed at the school to make it more boy-friendly. There can be a number of dangers associated with trying to masculinize areas of the curriculum deemed to be feminine (see for example, McGregor and Mills, 2006). Much has been written about the gendered nature of the academic curriculum, whereby the sciences are constructed as masculine and the humanities and languages feminine (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, chapter 11), with a parallel gendered division of labour amongst teachers. The construction of English as a feminine subject is due to it being regarded as a subject that deals with feelings and emotions and, whilst compulsory in many school systems in English-speaking countries, as such is devalued in relation to those subjects dealing with the concrete or located within more technicalrationalist epistemologies (see, for example, Martino, 1994). Attempts to ‘masculinize’ the English curriculum by making it more ‘functional’ can work to a continuance of devaluing and marginalizing ‘feminine’ attributes within the curriculum, as well as disadvantaging in terms of emergent labour market skill demands. It is these processes of devaluing and marginalizing the ‘feminine’ that have been integral to the reproduction of many gendered inequalities. A (hyper)masculinization of the English curriculum also fails to address the possibilities that a rich, critical, connected and productive engagement with contemporary popular culture offers students opportunities to experiment and

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perform various forms of gender that either do not oppress others or do not allow one to become complicit in the oppression of others or even oneself. Curriculum changes suggested by many within the boys’ lobby, who work with restrictive and essentialized models of masculinity, often serve to exclude girls and marginalized boys. A better approach to curriculum innovation that can support boys in subjects such as English would be one that makes gender explicit and facilitates boys’ and girls’ understandings of gender construction and the consequences of such constructions (see for example, Keddie and Mills, 2007; Martino, 2001).

Conclusion This chapter has raised questions about the desirable effects of attempting to construct boy-friendly schooling, a reform that has received significant support in a wide variation of locations. The chapter has demonstrated the need for the formulation of systemic educational policy grounded in sound research-based knowledge about the social construction of gender and its impact on the lives of both boys and girls. In the absence of such policy, media and populist accounts fill the vacuum that can lead, as at Cathcart, to practices that essentialize the categories of boys and girls. There is clearly a need for professional development on this issue, alongside issues relating to poverty, ethnicity, sexualities and their effects on the schooling experiences of both girls and boys. Key staff at the research school failed to interrogate the binary ways in which masculinity and femininity were constructed and how the ‘gender order’ is institutionalized in schools through a particular ‘gender regime’, which affects both teachers and students (Connell, 1995, 1996, 2000). This was not surprising given that there is a significant body of international popular literature on boys’ education which is focused on essentialized understandings of gender and dismisses or is often derogatory of theories relating to the social construction of gender (see Gurian, 1999; Gurian and Ballew, 2003; Hawkes, 2001; Kindlon and Thompson, 1999; Lillico, 2000a, 2000b; Pollack, 1999; West, 2000). This literature and such a view are also more likely to get airings in the popular media than more sophisticated sociological accounts. There is as well a tension between the theoretical literature and the practice-based, tips-for-teachers approaches. The activities-based programme at the research school, while clearly having certain benefits, was circumscribed by particular assumptions about boys’ supposedly ‘natural’ behaviours and orientations to learning. This was also the case when

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boy friendly curricular strategies were being discussed. Permeating many of the interviews with staff was a sense that boys as a group were perceived to be naturally more active in their learning than girls who were considered to be more reflective and more passive. The school thus only appeared to cater for certain kinds of boys. It espoused implicitly a particular kind of masculinity through its reinforcement of certain gendered binaries built around passive femininity and active masculinity. This was despite the principal’s concern that schools were not equipping boys well to cope with the demands of new times and required emotional capital as an element of the emergent form of valourized cultural capital. Thus, whilst there was some desire to problematize some forms of masculinity that were seen to be harmful to boys themselves, the various boy-friendly reforms implemented at the school did not in practice help boys to reflect on how their attitudes and ways of behaving were related to social expectations about dominant notions of masculinity (see Jackson, 2006; Keddie and Mills, 2007; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; Mills, 2000a, 2001; Pascoe, 2007; Salisbury and Jackson, 1996; Skelton, 2001). The school also tended to cater for a particular type of white middle-class boy – a perception confirmed by the principal. When asked about how the school was addressing the needs of diverse students, he replied that this was one of the areas that needed work. Other research we have conducted found in one elite all boys’ school that the principal’s project was one of attempting to remake masculinities and seeking to do so through a number of strategies (Lingard et al., 2002). These included challenging the dominance of certain sports within the school, ‘softening’ the landscape architecture of the school, by promoting women teachers and making a broad liberal education requiring the study of a social science subject and a foreign language compulsory in the senior years. The focus within the school was also on intellectually demanding, yet caring pedagogies. This project, in contrast to that of Cathcart seemed to be attempting to remake hegemonic masculinities of a more caring kind. While this project did not go unchallenged by the school alumni and by a small number of parents, there appeared to be a sophisticated understanding within the school of the social construction of masculinity (several teachers had written theses on the topic for higher degrees) and of some progressive and positive changes to the gender regime. It also did not seem to have had a significant influence on many of the boys who still displayed elitist attitudes and demonstrated a ‘born to rule’ mentality. What we are seeing in such elite boys’ schools then might be the remaking of

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hegemonic masculinity in the context of labour market changes and globalization (for a contrasting view of an elite boys’ private school, see Poynting and Donaldson, 2005). The paradox here, of course, might be that this school is further advantaging its boys in future labour markets, whereas many of the boys at Cathcart are having their practices of masculinity confirmed, not challenged, at the same time as rewarding work requires emotional literacy and capital, practices of extended literacy, and perhaps new masculinities. This raises interesting questions about the productive as opposed to reproductive role of schooling and how this links to questions of opportunity and social justice. Nonetheless, we support Cathcart school’s efforts, as others within which we have conducted research, that focus on pedagogy. This and other research (see for example, Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2000; Newman and Associates, 1996) have demonstrated the significance of teachers and their pedagogical practices in enhancing student learning and achievement. However, pedagogies need to be based upon appropriate teacher knowledges, including knowledge about the social construction of gender. Research-based knowledges about the latter would challenge some of the common sense assumptions that are underpinning ‘boy-friendly’ reform at Cathcart. The question of course is how do teachers get access to such knowledges. This segues into concerns about teacher education, dominant forms of on-going teacher professional development, and bigger issues about evidenceinformed policy and professional practice and how research and theory reach teachers and potentially affect their busy, practice-oriented lives. Attention needs to be directed to raising awareness of how the social construction of masculinities influences the social relations and practices of boys in significant ways to actively cultivate an anti-school attitude. The research has also highlighted, specifically in relation to the implementation of boy-friendly schooling, that more soundly research-based knowledge about the social construction of gender is required so as to open up spaces for boys to consider the effects of narrow definitions of masculinity and, hence, what it means to be a male. This is consistent with the research findings of Salisbury and Jackson (1996), Epstein et al. (1998), Pattman et al. (1998), Mills (2001), Gilbert and Gilbert (1998), Jackson (2002, 2006) and Keddie and Mills (2007). Francis (2000, p. 123) argues that ‘particular definitions of masculinity’ need to be the target of educational programmes designed to address the problems that some boys are experiencing at school. One of her significant conclusions is that in Britain ‘a culture of laddish masculinity

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remains largely unchanged in schools’ and that ‘it is important we do not simply sit back and accept this’ (Francis, 2000, p. 130). The problem, however, in the light of recent commentaries on boys’ education, relates to what knowledge and what research are being drawn on to establish certain truth claims about what works best for boys in schools. What our research has indicated is that teacher threshold knowledges about gender impact significantly on the execution of pedagogy, often with the effect of reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions about the ways boys as a group learn and behave. Such knowledges have a significant role to play in the formulation of policy, curriculum and the execution of pedagogical practices in classrooms. To silence or to deny the significant impact and effects of the social construction of gender on both boys’ and girls’ experiences of schooling, and how these are interwoven with other social influences such as class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, is to limit the possibilities for enhancing the social and educational outcomes for all students. The effects of an absence of such knowledges have been illustrated throughout this chapter in relation to the well-meaning reforms of the research school. The principal, along with many teachers at the school, has accepted that there is a truth that boys are the new disadvantaged in schools and they have sought to develop their knowledges about this topic through reading and employing external consultants. However, there is no acknowledgement that this is a contested truth and the knowledges that they have drawn on do not offer a sound basis for reform that is cognizant of gender theories, which recognize the complex ways in which gender is constructed and the ways in which multiple masculinities and femininities interrelate. Moreover, they do not provide nuanced analyses of the current ‘boy turn’ in education. As a result, this ostensibly co-educational school is rapidly becoming a boys’ school, as it attracts more male than female students because of its reputation regarding boys’ schooling. While this phenomenon suggests a hunger amongst parents for better schooling for their sons, we have argued that, while many of the school’s practices have positive effects, its failure to challenge dominant constructions and practices of masculinity (and femininity) means that their reform programme does not come to grips with the underpinning causes of the problems, which it is seeking to address. Indeed, the essentialist and biologically determinist knowledges about gender and schooling that are shaping the reform efforts at the school have the potential to exacerbate these problems.

4 Single-Sex Classes and Schools for Boys

Introduction Hallsview Public School of 950 students is a primary or elementary school which not only draws on a middle- to lower-middle-class population, but also has a significant number of students from economically disadvantaged families. While the students are mainly from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, there are a number of students from South Asian communities. This school had received particular attention in the local newspaper and also nationally for developing an effective single-sex programme in Years 6 and 7. The principal was the driving force behind the implementation of this programme. He believed that single-sex classes were an effective strategy for dealing with the ‘problem boys’ at his school. However, while he believed that the school could not take responsibility for the potential drug use and assaults of these ‘seriously naughty’ boys, he felt it was necessary to implement a behaviour management strategy. By removing these 25 naughty boys from mainstream classes, it was thought that some of their specific behavioural problems could be contained and addressed without necessarily impacting on other students. According to the principal the single-sex classes for boys were not based on anything ‘more scientific than that’. Riverfield High is a public secondary school of over 900 students that draws on a population of largely middle-class families, though there is a mix of students from neighbouring suburbs where there are government-supported housing developments. It is located in one of the outer suburbs of a major city. The head of the English department is very concerned about boys’ underachievement in English and is aware of benchmarking literacy test scores, which show that, overall, boys perform less well than girls on reading and writing measures. 86

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She has also noticed differences in performance and participation between boys and girls in English at her own school. Girls, in her view, are far more interested in English – they write more and are more avid readers. At Riverfield girls achieve more distinctions than boys and more boys achieve D grades than girls. The main rationale at the school for introducing single-sex classes related to concerns about the falling literacy standards of boys. Single-sex boys’ classes were conceived, within this context, as a means by which to enhance and facilitate boys’ engagement in English. Before actually implementing single-sex class for boys, the head of department had arranged a special professional development session for the English teachers which involved an outside presenter offering reasons for why boys were rejecting reading. These related mainly to the lack of male role models who were actively involved in reading in boys’ lives and to the failure of English teachers to cater for boys’ reading interests. This, the presenter argued, had led to boys ‘equating reading and writing as feminine’ and accounted for their rejection of these literacies. Both Hallsview and Riverfield High had received some attention for implementing single-sex boys’ classes in the public system. It is important to note that this was a strategy that the public media was promoting as a panacea for addressing boys’ educational and social needs, despite little or no attempt to systematically evaluate the strategy or to engage with the literature in the field regarding the effects of single-sex classes. As can be seen from both these cases, the rationale for implementing such a strategy was informed by concerns about boys’ failure or naughty behaviour in schools. Moreover, informing the rationale for single-sex classrooms was a deeply held belief about boys that was grounded in common-sense understandings about the need to cater for their distinctively gendered learning styles. Woody (2002), in writing about the single-gender academies established within the Californian public school system, argues that single-sex schooling ‘is grounded in a belief in boys’ and girls’ inherent (and different) qualities’ and in this sense relies on ‘limited conceptions of masculinity [that] do not provide a full representation of boys’ experiences in schools’ (p. 286). In this respect, it appears that such reform agendas are related to ameliorating the inimical effects of feminized school environments in terms of their capacity to inhibit boys’ ‘natural’ capacities and propensity for active learning. For example, Rowan et al. (2002) comment on this mindset within the context of their discussion with a member of the Australian Parliament who argued that boys

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. . . were being ‘sissified’ and expected to give in to the feminization of the world. What schools needed in response, he argued, was to get back to celebrating masculinity as it really is. And if we want to get boys reading, he claimed, then we need to get them reading things they are interested in. And if that means reading about violence, or sex, then that’s ok too (p. 31). Hence, it is possible to trace how the single-sex strategy becomes inextricably linked to the boy-friendly curriculum and the call for more male teachers. As we discovered in our own research, these strategies are frequently conceived as a means by which to rescue boys from the harmful effects of the increasing feminization of schools. But what exactly does the literature in the field reveal about the impact and effects of single-sex classes and/or schooling? How might a more researchinformed perspective guide the development and implementation of such a strategy?

A review of the literature on the impact and effect of single-sex classes Sex-segregated education can be used for emancipation or oppression. As a method, it does not guarantee an outcome. The intentions, the understanding of people and their gender, the pedagogical attitudes and practices, are crucial, as in all pedagogical work. (Kruse, 1996, p. 189, quoted in Datnow and Hubbard, 2002). The American Association of Women Educational Foundation AAWE (1998) published a report on the impact and effects of single-sex schooling/classes with the aim to ‘correct misperceptions’ and to outline areas needing further research in this field. The report was based on a round-table discussion among prominent educational scholars who were brought together to examine the research undertaken into singlesex education (K-12) spanning more than two decades (see Campbell and Wahl, 1998; Haag, 1998; Lee, 1998; Pollard, 1998; Riordan, 1998 ). The following key points emerged from this forum: • There is no evidence that single-sex education is necessarily or inherently better than co-education (see also Gray and Wilson, 2006; Harker, 2000; Marsh and Rowe, 1996; McEwen et al., 1997; Rowan et al., 2002).

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• Policy makers need to identify the components of a good education regardless of whether it is in a co-educational or single-sex setting (see also Hayes et al., 2006; Lingard et al., 2002). • Single-sex educational programmes appear to produce positive results for some students, but researchers question whether these positive effects are attributable to the actual programme itself or to other factors such as teacher and context-specific effects. • Long-term effects and impact of single-sex education on boys and girls are unknown (Gray and Wilson, 2006). • No learning environment necessarily ensures that sexism will be eradicated or addressed and there is evidence that single-sex classes and schools may lead to sex-role stereotypes being reinforced (see also Datnow and Hubbard, 2002; Gray and Wilson, 2006; Jones and Jacka, 1995; Lee et al., 1994; Mael, 1998; Willis and Kenway, 1986; Woody, 2002). In terms of what the ‘research tells us about single-sex classes’ there was some agreement among the assembled scholars that ‘examining singlesex education without regard to its social context within a classroom, a school, and the larger society is dangerous and can lead to short sighted solutions’ (AAUW, 1998, p. 13). In summarizing the research findings about single-sex classes the following issues were identified in the report. Despite the inconclusive effects noted by researchers at the round-table, there was an acknowledgement of the existence of an apparent qualitative difference in the single-sex class/environment which leads many girls to prefer it to a co-educational class environment (p. 14). This has been attributed to girls feeling safer and free from harassment by boys in a single-sex class/environment (see also Streitmatter, 1999). Rennie and Parker (1997), for instance, have also argued that in Australia Self-confidence, being hassled, and suffering put-downs was a big issue, particularly for girls, with 42% of them commenting on their self-confidence in single-sex classes compared with 1% in mixed-sex classes, about which 15% made negative comments. Twice as many girls (36%) commented on positive student relationships in their single sex class (18%). More boys (31%) commented positively on the mixed-sex classes than the single-sex classes (14%) (p. 267). Rennie and Parker also indicate, on the basis of their research, documenting students’ perceptions of single-sex and co-educational maths

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class, that girls tended to prefer the former, while boys the latter. Whilst 30 percent of girls preferred the single-sex classroom environment because they felt they worked better and learnt more, 32 percent of boys indicated that they preferred mixed-sex classes for these reasons (p. 266). In this regard, single-sex classes can be both ‘empowering’ and ‘oppressing’ (AAUW, 1998, p. 14). For example, some of the literature in the field has found that single-sex schools and classes provide a ‘safe space’ conducive to effective learning for girls, where they can be free to learn apart from the disruptive and harassing influences of boys in the classroom (see Rennie and Parker, 1997; Sanford and Blair, 2002; Streitmatter, 2002). Alternatively, as our research at Riverfield and Hallsview has revealed, such approaches to gender equity reform can also reinforce problematic gender stereotypes for boys and do not necessarily serve the interests of all boys (see Lingard et al., 2002; Martino and Frank, 2006). This is supported by Arnot (1984), who quotes a teacher in a boys’ school to emphasize that a culture of violence and harassment organized around a pecking order of masculinities often remains intact when boys are separated from girls: It seems to me that the boys create an inferior or outside group and level abuse at them that they would otherwise direct at the girls. The least ‘manly’ boys become the target and are used as substitute girls in a way. In an all boys’ school a group of ‘not real boys’ gets created. They are called the poofters and the sissies and are constantly likened to girls. The sexual hierarchy gets set up but some boys have to play the part that girls would take in a mixed school. But of course they are still boys and so the results of the pseudo-girls still stand as the result boys (1984, p. 48). On this basis, Arnot argues that . . . the problem of boys and for boys of existing definitions of masculinity cannot really be solved by arguing either for single sex or for mixed schools. The content of what is taught, school ideologies about the relations between the sexes (irrespective of whether they are both present or one sex is absent), the structure of classroom life and the sex of the teacher, all play a part in either contributing or challenging boys’ assumptions about sex differences and their own sexual identities (1984, p. 52).

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This is consistent with our research findings and also with those of Woody (2002) and Datnow and Hubbard (2002) in the North American context and Gray and Wilson (2006) in Northern Ireland. This research highlights that factors such as school culture, peer group, cultural and socio-economic background and teachers’ knowledge, values and pedagogical practices all have a part to play in influencing the social and educational outcomes for boys and girls in schools. Furthermore, as Harker (2000) points out, in reference to the work of Jones and Jacka (1995) and Byrne (1993), separating boys from girls can run the risk of seeing the student as the problem without necessarily investigating the effects and impact of teaching practices, as well as the gendered social and cultural contexts of the students themselves. Moreover, as Woody’s (2002) research in the US highlights, it can also lead to reinforcing or simply reproducing problematic stereotypes about boys. Woody, for example, found that the single-gender academies in California were committed to promoting ‘a way of thinking about gender that highlighted boys’ and girls’ differences’ and claims that ‘differences between boys and girls were made paramount to any commonalities’ (p. 286). This is consistent with our research at Riverfield High and Hallsview Public Elementary schools, where, as Woody also found, there was a tendency to emphasize ‘a universality of experience’ while ‘ignoring intragroup complexities’ (p. 286). Moreover, in line with Streitmatter’s (2002) review of some of the research-based evidence on single-sex schooling in the UK, we also found that the rationale for implementation of this strategy was grounded in a fundamental belief about the undisputed fact that boys and girls learn differently and/or that they need to be removed from distractions of the opposite sex (p. 214) (see Younger and Warrington, 2005, chapter 6, 2002). However, at Riverfield High and Hallsview schools, such beliefs were not supported by any systematic form of evaluation of single-sex classes and tended to be grounded in ideological claims about the nature of boys’ learning that were not substantiated by our research findings, which we will report on in this chapter. Sukhnandan et al. (2000), in relation to achievement, draw attention to research which highlights that single-sex classes, as a particular strategy, do not produce better results in comparison with co-educational settings (see also Harker, 2000; Jackson and Smith, 2000; Manger and Gjestad, 1997; Marsh and Rowe, 1996; McEwen et al., 1997). As these researchers point out, the better performance of students in these schools is mainly attributed to a combination of factors such as ability intake of students, their SES, the type of school and its ethos, and more significantly to a question of pedagogy and teacher values/beliefs

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about boys, as we found in our own research at both Hallsview and Riverfield High. Sukhnandan et al. (2000) conclude that ‘when these factors are controlled for, the academic differences between pupils in single sex schools and those in mixed schools are, in general, neither significant nor conclusive’ (p. 15). Rowan et al. (2002) also provide some important evidence-based research regarding the effects of specific pedagogical practices in singlesex English classrooms in co-educational schools. In drawing on an amalgamation of research over two years in a range of schools, they outline two specific cases in documenting the effects of single-sex classes as a strategy for addressing boys’ literacy underachievement in co-educational settings. Their focus is on investigating the particular mindset driving the implementation of this strategy. They discuss about one particular middle-class, culturally diverse school where a group of teachers had identified differences in educational outcomes between girls and boys. Recent analysis at the school had shown that, for Years 8, 9 and 10, the boys on average were scoring 9 percent lower than girls on testing associated with reading and writing. In addition, 33 percent of the boys compared with 18 percent of the girls were failing to reach the official Year 9 literacy benchmarks (p. 102). The teachers as a group were quite concerned and saw boys’ poor literacy results as impacting detrimentally on their post-school labour market options, which they believed would result in limited employment opportunities leading to ‘dead end jobs’ (p. 103). In fact, one male teacher was quite vocal that the school was discouraging boys from indulging in naturally masculine activities and that schools were ‘artificial places where only some male interests are valued and girls’ skills reign supreme’ (p. 103). In taking up such a backlash position or mindset, he believed that gender reform had gone too far and that boys had been neglected. This was similar to the rationale for implementing the single-sex classroom at Riverview High. The Rowan et al. (2002) research raises crucial questions about the problematic surrounding the push for single-sex approaches to addressing the literacy problem for boys in the absence of a critical focus on the impact of the social expectations of gender and other cultural influences on both boys’ and girls’ experiences of schooling (see Collins et al., 2000; Dorais, 2004; Francis, 2000; Lingard et al., 2002; Martino and Kehler, 2007; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; McCreedy, 2004). Moreover, this research highlights that any attempt at structural reform must always involve critical reflection on pedagogy and its effects in terms of essentializing and normalizing behaviour on the basis of gender.

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In this regard, it is necessary to attend to the kinds of pedagogies being deployed and the kinds of beliefs and values about boys that drive these pedagogies and text selection designed to cater for boys’ interests. Woody (2002), for example, found that in many of the single-sex academies for boys in the Californian public school system, there was a boot camp approach to disciplining boys, which was influenced by the teachers’ and principals’ assumptions regarding not only the gender of the students, but also their race and class. For instance, ‘at risk’ boys targeted for these academies were primarily from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and from African–American and Latino backgrounds. However, as Woody points out, their ‘at risk status was explained largely as a consequence of their bad behaviour, rather than asking issues of how race and class in California’s public schools contributed to these students’ risk’ (p. 286). Moreover, there was evidence of the bad behaviour of these low-income at-risk boys being attributed to the absent father and, hence, to the single-parent household with few male role models. This supported the rationale for such single-sex academies, which were intertwined with ideological beliefs and perceptions about the need for a more heavy-handed and coercive approach to teaching and disciplining problem boys in the single-sex classroom as a necessary step to ‘the development of their masculine identity’. Woody, for example, claims that ‘discipline was embedded within the predominant theory of teaching boys in single-gender academies’ with academy educators often espousing ‘a belief that the male students needed more discipline in becoming a man’. Moreover, she adds that ‘such beliefs are in line with current concerns about the feminization of teaching (and subsequent rationales for all male academies), including the lack of male role models to instil a masculinity ideology in boys’ (p. 288). This highlights the extent to which the single-sex strategy is often inextricably tied to invoking male role models as part of the reform agenda that is invested in the remasculinization of both boys and schooling (see Martino, 2008a). In one school, Woody found that the strict approach to disciplining boys only served to instil ‘a strong sense of male privilege and authority’, which tended to reinforce the notion of men as ‘the protector and provider or as predator’. This, she argues, placed women ‘either in need of assistance or in a position of sexual objectification’ (p. 288). Woody’s research cautions against the tendency to structure single-sex schooling ‘first and foremost by gender’ and provides evidence that this strategy resulted in a failure to reflect critically

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on the pedagogical implications for reinforcing hegemonic masculinity for boys: By separating girls and boys, gender became the primary marker of identity. Teachers and students were forced to think of boys as singular group and girls as singular group, homogenous and different from the other. Within the segregated school structure, any individual contradictions or complexities among boys or girls were lost under a dichotomous theory of gender (2002, p. 301). Our research, as we outline in the following section, supported such a conclusion. This is not to deny that there may be possibilities for implementing single-sex classes in ways that might enhance the social and educational outcomes of both boys and girls by challenging rather than reinforcing traditional notions of masculinity (see Datnow and Hubbard, 2002). This however, we believe, cannot be achieved without addressing important social, cultural and pedagogical considerations. This is further supported by Younger and Warrington (2006), who claim that ‘single-sex classes can have beneficial effects on students’ learning, motivation, and engagement but only when certain preconditions have been met’ (p. 614). When such strategies are implemented within a context of developing professional learning communities in which there is support and leadership from the administration, as well as a willingness to monitor and evaluate the single-sex approach within the context of a commitment to pedagogical reform that is not ‘rooted in stereotypical and essentialist assumptions about gendered learning styles and preferences’, single-sex classes have the capacity to contribute to raising the achievement levels of students (Younger and Warrington, 2006, p. 612). In this sense, the research literature does support the position that as a strategy in and of itself, single-sex classes do not necessarily ensure that the ‘boy problem’ will be solved and, in fact, has shown that it has led to reinforcing particular versions of masculinity, rather than ameliorating or interrogating their deleterious effects.

Hallsview Elementary Public School Hallsview exemplifies the problems identified in the literature that pose questions about both the rationale informing the implementation of the single-sex strategy at this public school and the modification of teachers’ pedagogical practices to accommodate beliefs about boys’ innate

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learning styles and essentialized differences. In Years 6 and 7 at this school (the final years of elementary or primary school), it had been decided that two gender-based classes would be developed and that there would also be a co-educational class. This was premised on providing choice for those parents in the community who did not want their children to be taught in single-sex classes. These choices were provided after the principal and Years 6 and 7 teaching teams had surveyed the parent community about their views regarding single-sex classes and some parents indicated their preference for co-educational classes for their children. However, the principal did talk at length about the way he marketed the single-sex strategy to parents. Information evenings were arranged for parents, wherein the strategy was presented primarily as a means by which the school would be able to cater more effectively for boys’ and girls’ different learning styles and needs in the classroom. And that’s what the parents were really hooked on, we tried to sell it to parents, it was just brilliant, it was like we acknowledge that boys and girls have got differences and it would be great for them to work but we don’t want them to be totally disconnected from each other. (Principal) One of the male teachers, Jefferey, who really supported the initiative in its early stages of development and implementation, had also undertaken some professional development which had specifically addressed issues in boys’ education. Over a 12-month period he had attended a series of seminars and workshops conducted by a well-known boys’ education consultant who had been commissioned by the Education Department and other professional organizations such as parent associations and teacher unions. He had also attended and encouraged his colleagues at Hallsview to attend professional development seminars about teaching boys provided locally by one of the Education Centres. This, according to the principal at Hallsview, gave the programme some credibility because, in his view, it provided a knowledge base for supporting the single-sex programme at the school, which was grounded in an understanding about the importance of the boy-friendly curriculum. Such understandings, in turn, were informed significantly by the work of psychologists such as Steve Biddulph and Michael Gurian (see Chapter 3). The brain-sex literature constituted what the principal considered to be a more ‘scientific’ approach to reflecting on and justifying the implementation of single-sex classes.

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It is important to stress that the impetus for discussions about implementing a single-sex programme at the school arose in response to concerns about a group of naughty boys who were very disruptive in class. They were posing challenges in terms of their anti-social behaviour outside the classroom. Jeffery proposed single-sex classes as a possible solution to addressing the problem. The knowledge about boys’ education that he had gained from attending professional development programmes about teaching boys had convinced him that these boys’ needs were not being adequately catered for. Jeffery saw these boys as being disruptive in a school environment that he believed was geared more to girls’ learning styles. In his view, elementary schools were much too feminized in that students were expected to sit still and write neatly, whereas Jeffery believed that boys needed a more active and hands-on approach and that a male teacher teaching boys in a single-sex class would be better able to cater for these boys’ learning needs. Jeffery was instrumental in convincing his colleagues and the principal that implementing a single-sex programme in the school was the answer to helping male teachers build a connection with these boys that would lead to addressing the problem of their anti-social behaviour. Other teachers at the school were only too happy to have these problem boys removed from their class. It meant that they could get on with the job of teaching the curriculum without having to manage these boys’ unruly behaviour. So Jeffery offered to take the first boys’ only class in Year 7 as a trial. Initially, he found it a real challenge, but other teachers talked about a real change in their classrooms. They talked about being able to cover more of the curriculum and that students were more willing to participate, particularly girls in the single-sex class, without having to feel embarrassed or worried about the naughty boys’ abusive behaviour in class. A different classroom climate and culture of learning were much more easily established, where students did not fear being put down or ridiculed by this group of boys. In this sense there were major benefits from the programme. Jeffery also appeared to be making progress with these boys. While it was difficult dealing with these students, what made the class work, according to the principal, was the forging of a particular relationship or bond with the boys. Jeffery, though, talked of a turning point in the building of his relationship with the boys. His brother-in-law had died tragically in a car accident and when he returned to school after a couple of days he remembered talking about his feelings and he how he had started to cry in class. Jeffery believed that this had a significant impact on the boys and led

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to consolidating a relationship with the boys built on trust and mutual respect. This was confirmed by the principal, who believed that this lesson apparently had taught the boys something about emotional literacy – what had been modelled was an emotional response to an intense and personal situation. Some months later, the principal reported, in that class, one of the boys’ father died and he linked the behaviours of the boys in the class and their responses to that event to what had happened earlier in the year in relation to Jeffery’s loss. One of the students in the class bought a teddy bear for the boy and organized for all boys to write a message on it; others organized a collection of money and put a death notice in the paper. The principal attributed the boys’ sensitive and empathic responses to the emotional impact that Jeffery had on these boys and the kind of modelling that he had provided for them. However, while it is suggested that the single-sex strategy permitted the facilitation and development of these sorts of pedagogical relationships conducive to enhancing boys’ emotional literacy, this did not necessarily inform a critical pedagogy designed to interrogate or challenge other behaviours associated with traditional notions of masculinity. The positive effects of developing such a relationship were measured by Jeffery and other teachers at Hallsview in terms of the reduction in behavioural management problems directly attributable to these naughty boys. This, the principal argued, had a whole school effect ‘because we didn’t have those twenty-five leaders modelling poor behaviour to the rest of the school, and pushing kids over when they ran past them and little kids too scared to go into that area [and as a result] the whole school changed’. So while the single-sex classroom headed by a male teacher might have some benefits in terms of building a bond with boys in the classroom that is conducive to establishing a certain sort of teacher–student relationship understood in terms of the impact of role modelling, this did not appear to translate into enhanced learning outcomes for these reformed naughty boys. Indeed, the principal noted that ‘some of them were still difficult and their learning problems still existed’. This is perhaps not unremarkable, given that some of these boys came from troubled homes and disadvantaged backgrounds and possessed neither the resources nor the cultural and social capital required to engage successfully in schooling. In short, there were wider systemic and economic forces at play in these boys’ lives, which intersected with their developing understanding of masculinity and what it means to be a boy that needed to be taken into consideration. However, the

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school tended to place too much emphasis on the male teacher and the single-sex strategy per se as a site for exposing these naughty boys to a certain sort of adult male-role-modelling behaviour that is invested with an idealized significance in its potential to transform these troubled boys’ lives (see Britzman, 1993). What is highlighted is the benefit of fostering particular sorts of pedagogical relationships with students. The problem, however, is that often these sorts of relationships are attributed both to the male teacher and to the gender-based strategy as necessarily leading to the desired outcome of creating the conditions to enable boys to develop and embrace a particular kind of emotional literacy. But, as Messner (1997) points out, simply enhancing boys’ emotional literacy does not necessarily mean that they will be encouraged to challenge traditional or idealized notions of masculinity, as Woody’s (2002) research has highlighted (see also Martino and Frank, 2006; Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). Many teachers at Hallsview confirmed that there were social benefits for the girls in being separated from these boys. Girls who were perceived to be overweight were said to feel ill at ease or intimidated in the presence of boys and were specifically identified as developing more self-confidence in their approach and in terms of their willingness to participate in class discussions and activities. However, while there were gains for the girls, both socially and academically, this strategy did not result in improved academic outcomes for boys. This is supported by the principal and other teachers who taught gender-based classes at the school. Talking with the students themselves also confirmed this. However, one of the major benefits of this strategy, according to the principal, was that it did lead to the boys adopting more positive attitudes to schooling and to learning. They certainly didn’t slip back so we said we didn’t lose anything by it, but what happened socially was those boys discovered that there’s lots of different ways to be males, as the girls did . . . And for the girls it was a lot of stuff like, okay well you haven’t started menstruating yet does that matter, and who feels stressed about it. (Principal) Thus, according to the principal, the gender-based classes can be of benefit to both girls and boys, particularly in terms of exploring and acknowledging different ways of being male and female, without necessarily feeling the need for self-censure and regulation that, it is implied, is about the imposition of norms and surveillance by the opposite gender. However, while teachers teaching the boys’ classes did indicate that

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they spent a lot of time modelling and teaching emotional literacy, there did not appear to be a lot of evidence of critical literacy work, for example, around why some girls might feel uneasy about being in a class with boys. However, the principal did indicate that Jeffery had done this kind of work with the boys when the gender-based strategy was first implemented at the school. But this sort of work seemed to be confined to teaching boys about how to be more comfortable expressing their feelings, without necessarily addressing how this is related to the constraints imposed by traditional notions of masculinity. More broadly, for both boys and girls there did not appear to be an explicit pedagogy designed to promote a critical understanding of the impact and effect of gender expectations on the students’ lives and relationships at school and in their lives outside school (see Francis, 2000; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005). However, one female teacher, in discussing issues such as menstruation in a single-sex class, did feel that it contributed to creating the conditions that were conducive to the girls feeling more comfortable at school and with one another. For the boys, according to the principal, teachers like Jeffery were able to provide the boys with a model of a different kind of masculinity – a sensitive man who was not afraid to express his emotions. The principal commented, I think what all of us sat back and saw was the relationship stuff and the understanding that it’s okay to be different and it’s okay to be some kind of male that doesn’t fit the normal stereotype. However, as we have already indicated, this did not necessarily translate into the boys reflecting critically on ‘lots of different ways to be male’. In short, it did not involve engaging the boys in addressing how they police other boys’ masculinities and girls’ bodies (Martino and PallottaChiarolli, 2005). The effects of both homophobia and sexism remained unchallenged at the school with no evidence that male teachers, such as Jeffery, were explicit in dealing with these issues in their classrooms or relationships with boys in their commitment to build and model emotional literacy for this targeted group. The principal, however, did suggest that only certain kinds of boys and girls would benefit from being in a single-sex class, such as those who ‘don’t have a significant male in their family’ and those ‘who need to be active’. This supported the notion of a particular kind of curriculum and pedagogy tailored to address the specific needs of this group of boys. For example, the principal argued that boys who are ‘sensitive, quiet and reserved’, as well as those who are more ‘creative’ and ‘would

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like to sit down and write an essay for two hours and just get lost in their own world’, are not suited to a boys-only class in a co-educational school. However, there was a strong sense that these boys who are creative and who like to sit still comprise only a minority of the population; this raises crucial questions about the assumptions and threshold knowledges driving the gender-based strategy and its capacity to be of benefit only to certain kinds of dominant boys exhibiting particular ways of being a male (see Martino and Frank, 2006; Woody, 2002). In fact, Year 5 teachers at Hallsview, as a team, would meet and decide who should go into a gender-based class. The selection process for choosing which boys and which girls would be suited to gender-based classes was based on what the principal termed an ‘intangible thing’ or some form of ‘gut feeling’ or knowing that appears to be informed by a ‘personal’ knowledge of the student, according to gender-marked behaviours. Over time, Hallsview became known for its commitment to implementing gender-based classes in the public school system. It was heralded in the media as leading the way in addressing boys’ educational needs and was presented as a model school. While Jeffery, with the support of the principal, had been a key player in promoting singlesex classes for boys, Hallsview was careful to market the strategy as also benefiting girls. Jeffery, however, became the catalyst for building a professional learning community in the school devoted to boys’ educational issues. He had first-hand knowledge of professional development around gender-based classes, and his enthusiasm and commitment were significant influences at Hallsview. In addition, the principal encouraged other teachers and supported them to attend conferences on boys’ education and workshops conducted by boys’ education consultants, all of whom had received considerable media attention. Such professional development and school-based support were identified by teachers at Hallsview as influencing their approach to teaching boys and, specifically, understanding of gender-based classes as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational and social learning needs. The principal acknowledged that teachers at the school had become recognized as experts and had presented a lot of professional development to other teachers. He also indicated that teachers at the school had the time to talk through their ideas and approaches with each other, which enabled them to clarify their own opinions. This was considered to be a very important aspect of professional development for teachers – ‘listening to other people but the other part is listening to yourself’. The problem was that other sorts of literature and perspectives on boys’ education were not being accessed or provided to stimulate critical

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reflection on both identifying the problem and understanding the role that hegemonic masculinities play in boys’ lives. A very specific kind of knowledge base informed the approach taken towards gender-based strategies at Hallsview, along with localized knowledge and discussion amongst the teachers taking the gender-based classes regarding what worked. When asked what kind of knowledge would be needed to teach boys in a gender-based class, the principal emphasized the relational dimensions of the pedagogy as a key aspect. It was not so much a specific body of knowledge, but about being ‘prepared to give of yourself personally’, which was identified as a key to the success of the gender-based strategy. However, a specialized knowledge about how ‘mainstream boys’ learn, and particularly those who had not succeeded in the system, appeared to inform teachers’ understanding of and approach to implementing single-sex classes. These kinds of boys, according to the principal and teachers at Hallsview, indicated that lessons needed to be short and sharp and that the boys needed to see an end point to what they were doing in the class to be engaged in the learning task (Lillico, 2000a, 2000b). This was because boys ‘in the mainstream’ were considered to be ‘very competitive’. This highlights how particular assumptions about ‘being a certain sort of boy’ informed the pedagogy that was being encouraged and supported in teaching gender-based classes at Hallsview. Based on what both the teachers and the students themselves said about their involvement in these classes, one of the effects of the gender-based strategy for boys was to reinforce particular understandings about being a boy and how boys learn. This was in spite of the claims made about the benefits of such a strategy in encouraging boys to reflect on and to celebrate that there are different ways of expressing and defining their masculinity, which, according to the principal, should be equally valued.

‘Testosterone surge sessions’ Andrew was another male teacher who replaced Jeffery as the Year 7 teacher of the boys’ single-sex class, once Jeffery had been promoted to the position of vice-principal at Hallsview. He was very committed to single-sex classes for boys at the school and, like Jeffery, stressed the importance of helping boys to develop their emotional literacy. His idea of addressing boys’ education was also informed by certain understandings about what it means to be a boy and how they learn. For example, he was committed to implementing an activities-based curriculum for

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boys which involved doing ‘hands-on activities’ (a common approach to boys’ education, see Chapter 3). At timed intervals small groups of boys would be granted permission to leave the class for three to five minutes at a time to jog around the oval. He referred to these as ‘testosterone surge sessions’ and claimed that this helped boys manage their high energy levels. He was also of the view that ‘boys are very competitive’ and ‘love sport’. They were also considered by Andrew to be more active than girls in their orientation to learning. He talked about ‘the specific needs of boys’ in terms of providing them with the opportunity to move around the classroom. He saw boys as naturally boisterous; they could not just talk with the person sitting beside them, but needed to also engage with the person two or three desks away. Andrew subscribed to a particular notion of boyhood that was firmly grounded in essentialist discourses about boys. For example, he claimed that boys and girls had different communication styles and that their approach to forming relationships was also very different: I suppose the boys are more animated, more action based in their communication. They want to be heard, where the girls tend to, well from my observation the girls appear more relaxed, more able to communicate. The boys want to be heard, they have to get their opinion across. Andrew’s observations raise questions about the impact of hegemonic masculinity on how boys learn and indeed how they are encouraged to assert themselves (Connell, 1995). The effects of such social training, however, are not acknowledged and there is a sense that such behaviours are simply a consequence of the way boys are. In other words, there is a strong sense that gender differences can be explained in terms of a natural predisposition that is grounded in biological sexed bodies. However, in talking about his experience of teaching girls in the single-sex class context, he reflected on how girls are more prepared to speak their mind and to be involved in activity-based tasks such as working with wood to build a chess piece set. He mentioned the confidence expressed by many of the girls in their willingness to ‘have a go’ and to cut the wooden blocks using electric saws, drills and sanders. In this sense, he believed that previously these girls had not been able to develop their confidence or skills due to the dominating behaviour of the boys who tended to take over in such circumstances. In this sense, it is not that this behaviour is not natural for girls; it is a matter of boys not allowing girls to develop these skills:

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The girls have, I suppose, developed a liking, have shown a liking for having a go at those manual things as well. I can’t say that all the boys would show their equal liking for sitting passively and colouring in and making the place look pretty. The boys want to get the job done as quick as they can, right let’s move on to the next one. Here Andrew raises crucial questions about pedagogical, social and policy initiatives which have somehow had an effect on shifting the ways girls respond and learn. As a consequence, they have acquired other valued skills and capacities deemed to be the domain of boys and men. However, at Hallsview it would appear that the converse is not being encouraged for boys, whose supposedly natural skills and capacities are being reinforced and reinscribed through the implementation of strategies such as single-sex classes for boys, which Andrew believes enable him to cater more for their distinctive learning needs. For example, he claimed that the all-boys class enabled him to develop a boy-friendly curriculum, which was more relevant to the boys’ lives beyond the classroom. This involved drawing more on technology – using computers – and a more hands-on approach, which involved boys using their hands to make models of a setting based on a short story that had been read to them in class. Andrew suggested that these activities were more conducive to engaging boys because many of them just did not like writing and, when asked to do so, struggled to write more than two or three sentences. Despite the limitations of Andrew’s conceptualization of the single-sex strategy as a means by which to facilitate the implementation of a so called ‘boy-friendly curriculum’, he was conscious of developing warm and caring relationships with his students and considered these to be central to facilitating learning. He talked at length about the central importance of the teacher building caring and personable relationships with students. For Andrew, this meant that teachers needed to be flexible, loving and prepared to go a bit further in their commitment to building these sorts of pedagogical relationships. However, as the productive pedagogies research has highlighted, clearly relating well to students is not enough (see Hayes et al., 2006; Keddie and Mills, 2007). Enhancing quality educational and social outcomes for boys requires that they are provided with the opportunity to develop higher-order learning skills in a safe classroom environment where teachers are aware of the limits imposed by hegemonic masculinity (see also Alloway et al., 2003; Dalley-Trim, 2007; Keddie and Mills, 2007; Kehler and Martino, 2007; Lingard et al., 2002; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; Smith, 2007).

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Our research demonstrated that both boys and girls wanted teachers with whom they could establish good relationships, with whom they could safely talk about a broad range of issues, who managed their classes effectively, who knew their subject areas and who were able to practise interesting, engaging, yet intellectually demanding pedagogies (Lingard et al., 2002).

The perspective of female teachers at Hallsview Some female teachers at the school expressed concerns about the singlesex strategy and how it was being implemented to supposedly address the problem with boys’ naughty behaviours and its impact on other students’ engagement with learning. While they could clearly see some benefit in these boys being removed and placed in a separate class, Anne, one of the vice-principals, felt that single-sex class, as a strategy, actually led to a particular form of gender blindness. In other words, she felt that it did not necessarily lead teachers to address the impact of gender stereotypes on students’ lives and was actually being used to perpetuate and/or reinforce traditional notions of masculinity (see Lingard et al., 2002; Martino and Kehler, 2007). Moreover, the single-sex class was not being used to address the sexism and homophobia that informed the way that boys were policing and asserting their masculinities (see Gray and Wilson, 2006). For example, Anne indicated that the boys did not appear to be required to reflect critically on their behaviour, particularly in terms of how they would often insult individual boys by calling them a ‘girl’. This highlights the need for further analysis, both in terms of the nature of the pedagogies executed in gender-based classes and in terms of their capacity to impact on the educational and social outcomes of students. This is consistent with Sukhnandan et al.’s (2000) research, which found that in the actual implementation of the single-sex classes many teachers indicated that they modified their teaching methods to accommodate the single-sex grouping of students. In addition, they claimed that one of the main reasons for favouring this approach was related to the belief that boys and girls interact differently with curriculum content and prefer different learning styles and approaches to teaching. This was confirmed by Karen, the Year 7 teacher who taught the gender-based class for girls, who stated that ‘it would be very easy to go into boys’ classes and do cars and continue to build and feed a macho image which I just think would be a disaster’. In this sense, she draws

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attention to the danger of implementing a single-sex strategy in terms of reinforcing gender stereotypes: I think there’s no point in creating boys classes if you go and hammer the stereotype and just don’t make any attempt to engage them in a different level, engage the emotions and get them into those things like valuing the group work and all those things. So I think again when you choose boy topics you have to be careful that that’s not what you’re doing, but having said that you can choose something like flight which is one layer of stuff and cover all different things through that innately interesting topic. It’s often I think as much the teacher and what they can engender in the kids as just simply saying, ‘Oh this is boys’ stuff, this is girls’ stuff and anyone can do boys’ stuff and girls’ stuff’. Thus, for Karen, the single-sex strategy is not simply a matter of curriculum relevance or tailoring the classes to the perceived needs of boys or girls. Rather, it must involve interrogating what she understands to be the socializing influences impacting on boys’ and girls’ orientations to learning: I think that’s the whole socialization situation for girls that you are brought up to be considerate and you’ve got to be the ones making sure everything is moving smoothly. I think that’s the way we socialize girls in lots of ways, that’s what they see girls doing in movies and all the rest. So that’s what they continue to do at school, they do the same as they’ve always done . . . They were more accommodating. If they didn’t understand something, they wouldn’t demand your time, they would still sit there quietly . . . . whereas boys that were perhaps struggling would immediately become more vocal, more behavioural problematically I guess so you tended to move across to them very quickly and perhaps deal with their concerns . . . I think sometimes that tends to happen because boys’ behaviour does demand that you get to them fairly quickly and girls have learnt to be more passive and quiet and just wait their turn . . . I mean not all girls obviously do. Susan, the Year 6 boys’ class teacher, however, adopted a pedagogy that was consistent with the principles of a ‘boy-friendly’ curriculum as outlined by both Jeffery and Andrew. She talked about a necessary modification of pedagogy facilitated by the single-sex class as a specific strategy conducive to addressing the distinctive educational needs of

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boys. Susan asserted that boys have completely different learning styles than girls: The boys just have to handle everything and get up and walk around with it and talk at each other across the room, whereas the girls will sit in a group and plan and whisper, so nobody else will get their ideas sort of thing. But the boys will shout, they don’t care who gets their ideas as long as they can handle the equipment and stuff. Susan also felt that she was able to modify her pedagogy to better suit boys’ distinctive learning needs in the single-sex class context. This enabled her to create a lesson that was more activity based and also fast paced. Susan did everything in smaller chunks. She felt that she needed to provide the boys with more explicit directions and that she had to articulate very clearly for them her purpose in developing specific learning tasks. In other words, instructions had to be clearly spelled out and the reasons for completing tasks clearly explained. She accomplished this by providing checklists so that the boys could tick a box once they had completed the necessary component leading to the completion of the overall task. These sorts of strategies, she contended, enabled boys to see that there was an explicit purpose to the learning tasks that they were required to complete and also a specified outcome. Many teachers in our research argued a similar case regarding the need for heavy structure and tightly managed slices of work in effective pedagogies for boys. This was an argument proffered by teachers in government schools located in poor communities and those working in elite all-boys schools (Lingard et al., 2002). Susan also often had boys physically moving or working with their hands. The physical activity for boys was important, Susan stressed, because of their limited concentration span and their tendency to have to get out of their seats and do something physical only after a matter of 15 minutes. For this reason, Susan explained, she avoided open-ended tasks and adopted what she identified as a more boy-friendly approach, which was informed by her construction of boys as having a particular orientation to learning. This notion of boys’ short attention spans was also reiterated by the fact that Susan believed that the only way to engage her male students was to provide them with fast-paced tasks that were punctuated with frequent games and physical outdoor activities. She also allowed the boys to play a ‘longer game outside’ after the lunch break ‘because they’ve lost it’ by the end of the morning. This suggests a ‘dumbing down’ of the curriculum, organized around problematic assumptions and beliefs

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about boys’ and girls’ inherent differences (see Woody, 2002). This is further highlighted when Susan spoke about the need to structure her pedagogy around the provision of competitive tasks for boys: Even getting them to move around and helping each other doing the cutting out parts of it is good, because then they can get up and move even though they are still doing it sort of thing. Not like girls, girls can sit there. They’ll sit there and they’ll do it because they really want to see an end product, girls, and they’re really concerned about what the end product looks like. Whereas boys just want to get to the end basically. Although that’s what the push has been over the last three terms I’ve had is to really foster this pride in what they’re doing. It’s really good, they’ve really, really come along. It’s because we put their stuff up and they get to talk about their stuff that’s up and have competitions. That’s a competition-design your best this, design your best, that and talking about why that one was good and that sort of stuff, and they really appreciate that so they really work towards it. This exemplifies the extent to which embracing the single-sex strategy for Susan is inextricably tied to adopting a pedagogy that is organized around problematic assumptions about boys’ and girls’ differences. The tasks are designed to promote a supposedly natural predisposition that boys have to compete with one another which, in turn, is tied to their desire for public recognition and validation. Alternatively, girls are constructed as passive in their approach to learning tasks, but intrinsically motivated, concerned more about process and committed to working carefully and, by implication, patiently to produce a polished product – ‘they’ll sit there and do it because they’re really concerned about what the end product looks like’. Boys, however, are more active and product oriented in their learning – ‘boys’ just want to get to the end basically’. This indicates that such a pedagogy, which becomes modified apparently to cater for boys’ perceived learning needs is a masculinizing practice designed to reinscribe what is constructed as a ‘natural’ masculinity. In short, rather than challenging traditional notions of masculinity as a basis for encouraging boys to develop a broader repertoire of skills, such as those involving collaboration, Susan merely reinforces gender stereotypic behaviour which is not necessarily in the best interests of her male students. Such a pedagogical approach clearly sets limits for boys in terms of broadening their repertoires of relating and learning and shuts down opportunities for helping them

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to develop invaluable interpersonal and relationship skills. As Woody (2002) highlights, at the basis of adopting a single-sex strategy is often the tendency to invoke a universal category of experience in terms of thinking about how boys learn and relate, with complex intra-group differences being eschewed. Karen, however, tended to disagree with this sort of approach and believed that rather than encouraging boys to be more competitive and to risk reinstating hegemonic masculinity, teachers needed to be committed to encouraging boys to cooperate with one another: I think you need to be helping boys so they can work as cooperative teams, that they can allow other people to have a go at leader, that they can build those skills of listening to others and working cooperatively. I think if they can do that amongst themselves without an added factor of what are the girls thinking or what are the girls saying, then you can make really good gains. Karen also argued that the single-sex class could be an effective strategy for dealing with girls’ social issues and problems pertaining to the effects of ‘bitchiness’ (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005). The absence of boys enabled her to tackle this problem more effectively. She attributed this to the fact that, in her experience, girls tended to engage in ‘a certain amount of self-censoring’ when boys were present. In our research, some boys and some girls said that the gender of the teacher was possibly significant when it came to talking about personal issues and problems with an adult other than parents. The perspectives of female teachers at Hallsview offer important insights into the implementation of singlesex classes as a particular gender reform strategy designed to address the educational and social needs of both boys and girls. They illuminate the extent to which specific teacher knowledges and beliefs about gender are crucial in assessing the implementation of such a strategy and in determining its limits and possibilities vis-à-vis addressing the impact of hegemonic masculinity on boys’ and girls’ lives in school. This illumination points out the significance of teacher knowledges and beliefs regarding gender to effective pedagogies.

Riverfield High School The head of the English department, Grace, was instrumental in the development and implementation of the single-sex strategy at Riverfield High. Like Jeffery at Hallsview, she was passionate and committed to

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addressing boys’ education. She had adolescent sons of her own and was concerned about their lack of interest in reading and their preference for playing sport and other apparently boy-related activities. However, her own personal experiences need to be understood or set against a broader context of moral panic and concern about boys’ failing literacy standards, fuelled by a media anxiety about boys’ poor performance in literacy relative to that of girls (see Froese-Germain, 2006; Martino and Kehler, 2007; Martino, 2008a; Rowan et al., 2002). For example, the local newspaper would report annually on the discrepancies in performance between boys and girls in university entrance examinations in English, reporting that twice as many girls were receiving distinctions as boys and that twice as many boys were failing. Given this context of moral panic, as well as her own personal experiences of teenage sons who did not feel motivated to read and to participate in English, it was not surprising that Grace turned to single-sex classes as a strategy for addressing what she considered to be fundamentally a boy problem. This strategy had also been introduced at a professional development seminar on boys’ education that she had attended, which had become the catalyst for introducing single-sex classes, as a means by which to address her concerns about unmotivated and underachieving boys in English. Grace arranged for a presenter to conduct a workshop for teachers in her department as a basis for building their knowledge and understanding about engaging boys more productively in literacy learning. The presenter, a well-known boys’ education consultant, outlined reasons why boys were rejecting reading. These related mainly to the lack of male role models who were actively involved in reading in boys’ lives. He also pointed to the nature of reading material presented to boys which did not cater for their particular interests. These factors combined, the presenter argued, apparently led to boys equating literacy to a feminized activity. Such a mindset about the links between sex role socialization and boys’ rejection of literacy was central to the implementation of the single-sex programme in the English department at Riverfield. In short, this idea of boys needing more male role models in English became central to the construction of literacy as a gendered or, more specifically, feminized domain in need of the masculinizing influences of men in boys’ lives. It became so closely entwined with how the single-sex strategy was conceived and justified as having a particular legitimacy that male teachers and the single-sex strategy were considered to be necessarily related.

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In the following section, teachers who were involved in the programme provide further insight into the rationale and effect of the single-sex strategy at Riverfield. In their evaluation of the effectiveness of the single-sex strategy at Riverfield, the following two dimensions of the implementation were identified by the teachers as significant: (i) capacity to improve the classroom learning environment and students’ self-esteem; (ii) modification of pedagogical approach and curriculum content.

Improving classroom learning and students’ self-esteem In discussing their perceptions of single-sex classes several teachers indicated that students appeared to feel more comfortable than in mixed classes. Paul, for example, who had been teaching for eight years, indicated that the boys worked well in small groups and that ‘the boys feel really comfortable in class’, without the girls being present. Sharon, on the other hand, also an experienced teacher, felt that in the girls’ class discipline was no longer such an issue and that she was able to get on with the lesson without having to deal with boys who were either off task, uninterested or in need of some ‘prodding’. As in the case of the single-gender academies in California, boys were often identified as the problem in terms of discipline issues they created for teachers, who often felt they were neglecting the learning needs of girls (Woody, 2002, p. 286). However, while noting the positive effects of not having to deal with the disruptive behaviour of the boys (Francis, 2000; Rennie and Parker, 1997), Sharon was conscious of the need to encourage girls to step out of the constraints of a passive femininity. Interestingly, Drew, an older male teacher who had just completed his second year of teaching, also indicated that he was experiencing ‘less behavioural problems and a greater sense of cohesion amongst the boys’, with the implication being that boys were no longer distracted by the presence of girls in the classroom. There was also a sense that single-sex classes enabled him to bond better with the boys and to relate to them, given that he was also interested in football. He felt that he was able to spend more time talking about football and other malerelated topics, as a means by which to engage boys in the classroom, without necessarily having to worry about also having to find a way to include girls. Moreover, being male, he felt that it was much easier for him to make these sorts of connections with the boys, given their avid interest in sport. In this sense, a dichotomous gender framework

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informed his thinking about the connection between single-sex classes and creating a learning environment that was conducive to building boys’ self-esteem. Many teachers at Riverfield did talk about their perception of the increased self-esteem for both boys and girls that the single-sex classes apparently provided. Paul, for example, drew attention to the freedom that the single-sex classroom environment afforded boys who were more expressive and eager to participate. He also mentioned that he felt the boys were more willing to take risks in their learning and seemed a lot more eager to respond in class. Paul also noted that the boys became more expressive in their response to texts and, overall, did not appear to be worried about expressing their feelings. Once again this apparently transformative space for boys in the single-sex English classroom was often attributed to the absence of girls. Alana, for example, also felt that the absence of girls enabled her to tailor lessons more to the boys’ interests. She felt it had the effect of creating a space where boys could be free from girls who might perhaps, she implied, snigger at the boys for talking about their interests in class. Paul even commented that the boys were intimidated by girls in class and presented a reversal of the perspective presented by boys in the research undertaken by Rennie and Parker (1997), who indicated their preference for co-educational classes. For example, he attributed the ways in which boys behave in co-educational classes to both their lack of maturity, which he claimed accounted for their need to show off in front of the girls, and to the fact that they feel ‘very intimidated by girls in the classroom’. This is interesting given the research which emphasizes the effects of the pecking order of masculinity on boys’ lives in schools (see Dalley-Trim, 2007; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; Smith, 2007; Walker, 1988). Researchers such as Jackson (1998) also have highlighted how many boys feel the need to prove that they are tough to their male friends and how public homophobic displays of masculinity are enforced by other boys (see also Frank, 1993; Martino, 2000). However, this appears to be refuted by Paul, who goes on to elaborate about boys feeling comfortable in his class to put the macho behaviour aside. This may be attributed to the effect of his pedagogy in the single-sex boys’ classroom, which appears to be driven by certain assumptions about boys’ behaviour: . . . . you instil a sense of equality and all that in the classroom, there is still sort of “I’m one of the boys’ class” actually which is in some ways quite good because it allows them just to be one of the boys and

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they can not be macho and all silly about it but just be concerned about possibly what they’re saying instead of who they’re saying it in front of. And I have found that to be a problem, especially for example you’ve got your theatre and boys don’t want to go and do a love scene with a girl in the class because it’s like oh well that must mean I like her or something. Whereas I’ve had kids doing love scenes this year and they’ve just been getting up and having a blast, you know, they’ve just been really getting into it. Really enjoying the actual process of doing it and eager to get up there and have a go. Apparently, with the girls being the problem, once removed, boys’ increased and active participation in class is one of the major effects. It is boys’ emerging heterosexuality that is identified as a central determinant in their behaviour in co-educational classes, which leads girls to be identified as the source of the problem for the development of boys’ self-concept and self-efficacy. According to Paul, the absence of girls has led to a 90 percent increase in boys’ participation rate in class discussion: ‘They really put up their hands and say pick me, pick me, I really want to answer this question.’ This is interesting given that identification of any sign of homophobia, sexism or misogyny underlying the boys’ behaviour appears to be erased from this teacher’s discussion about the boys’ participation in this class. Other significant research has highlighted the role that these factors play in how many boys learn to relate to one another (see Dixon, 1997; Epstein, 1998; Martino, 2000; Martino and PallottaChiarolli, 2003; Mills, 2001; Nayak and Kehily, 1996; Smith, 2007). Certain assumptions about boys are further highlighted when Paul comments on the ‘group mentality’, which, when contained in the single-sex classroom, he believes, leads to reducing the competitiveness amongst boys. According to Paul, the reason for this is that, apparently, boys feel the need to be more accepted and liked as part of a group and they are also very competitive. Furthermore, he believes that the presence of girls intensifies such feelings of competitiveness amongst boys because of their need to impress girls. Thus without girls, boys are able to gain a stronger sense of identification with other boys and, therefore, do not have to either worry about impressing girls and, hence, feeling that they are in competition for their attention, or fear being embarrassed by making a fool of themselves in front of the opposite sex: So now it’s more of a group effort, oh we’re the boys, let’s do this activity, this is our classroom, let’s really get into it. And that’s really

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promoted a much greater eagerness to look into the books, into the text and things. For Paul, the absence of girls, therefore, leads to a particular male bonding driven by what appears to be identified as a natural need to feel accepted and be competitive. This draws attention to normalizing assumptions driving the ways in which boys are constructed as particular kinds of subjects. Moreover, it highlights important concerns about the rationale informing the implementation of the single-sex strategy, which are related specifically to the impact of teacher beliefs and knowledges about gender, as they relate to creating the necessary conditions for improving learning outcomes for students. For example, the single-sex classroom could also be used to achieve quite different ends. Linda, another teacher at Riverfield High, who was in her second year of teaching and who had a background in feminist and critical theory, for example, felt that the single-sex class enabled her to work explicitly with boys to encourage them to reflect on and to challenge limiting gender stereotypes. It created a forum, she claimed, for not just talking about ‘certain things that they’ve done or said’, but to interrogate issues of masculinity underlying their behaviour and attitudes. In her classroom, she spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to be a man and how this was defined. This involved using texts in the English classroom to encourage boys to reflect on the social expectations of masculinity as they related to expressing emotion, acting in and looking a certain way and the consequences of failing to conform to certain norms. She also got the boys to use a journal and to write poetry about what ‘it means to be a man’. Thus, for Linda, her pedagogy was informed by a different set of beliefs about how to engage boys and, indeed, was governed by a commitment to encourage them to challenge dominant notions of masculinity. In this sense, she used the single-sex strategy to facilitate a very different sort of classroom dynamic conducive to creating the conditions for boys to reflect critically on issues of masculinity. This relates to the point already made in the literature about the potential for single-sex class to be used as a strategy for enhancing either emancipation or oppression (see Datnow and Hubbard, 2002). However, most teachers at Riverfield, including Linda, seemed to support the view that the absence of girls enabled a particular comfort level to be established or fostered among male students in the single-sex classroom. For Linda, it meant that she could foster a critical reflexivity, which she felt could be compromised by the presence of girls and their

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scrutiny of boys’ displays of vulnerability in talking about their feelings. Other teachers, like Paul, also felt that boys could be protected from the pressure of having to impress girls in the single-sex class. On both counts, what does emerge here is a particular heterosexist construction of boys (in that it is unequivocally assumed that they are all heterosexual) and a particular blind spot regarding the hierarchical nature of masculinity and its impact on boys’ lives in school (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005). For example, regardless of sexual orientation, those boys who fail to match up to the expectations of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity are more at risk from the harassing behaviours of other boys as opposed to their female peers (see Davison, 2000; Davison and Frank, 2007; Dorais, 2004; Martino, 2000; McCreedy, 2004; Mills, 2001; Pascoe, 2007). Moreover, what is illuminated here is the extent to which the teacher’s pedagogy is modified in terms of curriculum content and text selection to cater for the boys’ perceived interests. But, as indicated above, Linda appears to be deploying specific texts as a threshold to assist boys to interrogate notions of traditional masculinity and this is the difference in her pedagogical approach (see Martino, 2001; Rowan et al., 2002). Linda recounts one experience in her classroom with the boys, which she believes ‘wouldn’t have happened if there were girls in the class’, but which is equally about her own construction and expectation of boys according to her knowledge of public displays of hegemonic masculinity. One of the boys had asked if he could bring his puppies to class to show his friends and she agreed, but was ‘worried that a class of thirty odd boys would go crazy or scare the dogs’. She had the boys sit in a circle and the puppies were placed in the middle and she found that it really brought out their ‘soft side’, with the boys wanting to cuddle and kiss the animals. She felt that in the presence of girls, the boys would have been ashamed to express such emotion and would have policed their own behaviour to the extent that they would have felt compelled to project a tough, cool guise (Katz, 2002). There are a number of issues here which require some comment. The first is the teacher’s own construction of the boys as repressing a ‘soft’, ‘nurturing’ side of themselves. She attributes this repressive tendency, however, to the presence of girls rather than to some effect of a pedagogical practice driven by certain assumptions about boys and their behaviours. This situation may well have occurred in a co-educational English class, given the kind of work being done around addressing issues of gender, coupled with the kind of respectful relationships that this teacher fostered with her students.

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However, Drew did raise the whole issue of surveillance, which he believed produced a particular kind of classroom dynamics for boys when girls were present. He felt that the boys were more secure when they did not have to contend with the surveillance of girls. Drew was also of the view that the single-sex strategy was central to producing a classroom climate in which learning rather than girls becomes more of a focus for boys. Once again, this particular construction of boys is framed by a heteronormative mindset and the limits imposed by a system of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. The effect of such a mindset is that it creates a blind spot which prevents teachers from acknowledging or taking into consideration the policing of masculinity and the extent to which it is governed by, and the role that misogyny, femiphobia and homophobia play in, the establishment of hierarchies amongst different sorts of boys (see Martino and Pallottta-Chiarolli, 2003).

Modifying pedagogical approach and curriculum Sukhnandan et al. (2000) in evaluating single-sex classes as a strategy have pointed to the modification of pedagogy to reinforce gender stereotypes. This is borne out in the research undertaken at Riverfield High. One of the significant effects of implementing this strategy was to perpetuate particular constructions of active masculinity and passive femininity. Alana, a teacher with ten years of experience felt that the single-sex strategy enabled her to modify her pedagogy so that she could incorporate more physical, hands-on activities in her approach to dealing with texts in the English classroom. This involved getting boys to make plasticine figures of the characters in response to reading a story. It also entailed asking the boys to turn a story into dialogue and then to act it. In this sense, Alana saw herself as being able to build a physical component into most of her lessons, which in her eyes enabled her to cater for what she identified as their distinctive learning needs. While boys seemed to be enjoying English a lot more, these practices did not seem to be translating into better grades in terms of their writing performance. Paul also felt that having an all-boys class meant that he could actually cater more effectively for boys’ learning needs, which he defined in terms of active or hands-on learning styles. He also mentioned including sport as a particular topic of interest for boys in terms of content. He also saw himself delivering lessons that were fast paced because in his view boys needed to have some sort of result very quickly. Moreover, boys were used to engaging with computer games and other forms of

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multi-mediated texts which, in his view, were considered to be much more stimulating than the sort of reading and writing associated with the official English curriculum. So instead of getting boys to respond to a chapter by writing about the setting, he would have them work with clay physically to construct their idea of the setting for him. He indicated that boys really liked doing this sort of activity because it was so hands-on and more tangible in the sense that they ‘could feel what was really going on’. While the boys appeared to be really motivated, there did not appear to be any evidence that they were being intellectually challenged or that the task had enabled them to build a deeper understanding of the significance and function of a setting in a novel. In this sense, the extent to which the modification of his pedagogy to cater for boys’ distinctive learning needs was governed by norms about enforcing particular norms, rather than opening up questions of diversity amongst boys as a group, is highlighted. The tendency to modify pedagogy in single-sex classes was also accompanied by changes to content in relation to text selection (see also Rowan et al., 2002). As one teacher at Riverfield noted, the changes were often linked to reinforcing gender stereotypes and involved selecting reading content that dealt with war and guns and what she termed ‘cool tough things’. For other teachers like Linda, it also involved selecting surfing or sporting magazines, ‘or the type of thing which would be of particular interest’ to boys. However, she qualified this by adding that in a co-educational class she did not feel that she could always make this choice, which resulted in a ‘compromise’ and ‘having to go neutral’. This was because boys and girls are interested in different things. However, despite this assertion Linda was committed to using texts in the English classroom to encourage students to interrogate issues related to gender conformity and stereotyping. This raises important questions not only about text selection, but more significantly about how the text is used to encourage a critical literacy approach more broadly in the English classroom (see Comber and Simpson, 2001; Muspratt et al., 1997). This is highlighted further by Gail, who talked about the issue of text selection within the context of the single-sex girls’ class she taught at Riverfield. She mentioned that the programme was adapted to suit the interests of girls and talked about an explicit attempt to introduce texts which have a female protagonist. She also made reference to the commitment of the girls to writing and claims that ‘being girls they take a lot of pride in their work’. However, in her view, the ‘boys’ programme has been changed more dramatically than the girls’.

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Conclusion Our research at both Hallsview Public School and Riverfield High supports many of the concerns documented in the research literature regarding the effects of single-sex classes and schooling. Separating girls and boys will not necessarily ensure that gender equity is achieved for either boys or girls. There is also little evidence in these schools, despite claims from some teachers, that students’ results have improved. Interestingly teachers surveyed in a Northern Irish co-educational school, four years after the introduction of single-sex classes, claimed that the behaviours and grades of students had deteriorated since their introduction (Gray and Wilson, 2006). Thus, as we have illustrated in this chapter, the introduction of single-sex classes into co-educational schools may actually work against gender equity by leading teachers to reinforce gender stereotypes and may also fail to improve student outcomes. This is not to argue that single-sex classes may not be effective, especially for girls, in these regards. And, in critiquing the introduction of singlesex classes as a strategy for improving boys’ educational outcomes, we would not suggest that girls should be expected to play a civilizing role in relation to boys in co-educational classes, as has been suggested in some cases (see, for example, Charlton et al., 2007 for a critique). The problem with single-sex classes as a gender reform strategy for boys, which we have demonstrated through the research documented in this chapter, is that they fail to address the full significance of teacher beliefs about gender and how they inform pedagogical approaches. Moreover, there is a failure to engage with important research-based literature about gender and schooling and, specifically, about masculinity, which highlights the very significant impact of homophobia and misogyny on how boys/men learn to police their masculinities. This gap or refusal to acknowledge such literature has produced a particular blind spot in terms of how teachers and policy makers have approached the implementation of single-sex classes and more broadly boys’ education in terms of the potential and actual benefits of adopting such a strategy. Our research supports the need for critical reflection on the knowledge and beliefs informing the implementation of single-sex programmes designed to address the educational and social needs of boys and girls in schools. Such reflection and evaluation should be informed by engagement with existing research literature about both the effects of single-sex classes/schooling and the impact of masculinities on boys’ and girls’ lives in school. We have also been interested in how over the last decade or so, single–sex boys’ and girls’ schools have used the concern

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with boys’ education and ‘problem boys’ to ‘sell’ their schools and their educational provision in the educational market place. Most often, this marketing involves a partial reading of the research, rather than a critical engagement with it. At the same time, some quite privileged all-boys schools have attempted to challenge and reconstruct hegemonic versions of masculinity in recognition of changes in professional labour markets, which demand more emotional literacy and emotional capital, and in recognition of broader changes within the societal gender order, albeit in ways that work to privilege them further.

5 The Male Teacher Debate

Introduction Cave Street Primary is a government school with about 24 teachers, 5 of these being male. The principal and one deputy principal of the school are male and there is another female deputy. In the staff common room there is a long table, often covered in various pieces of literature from the department of education. There is also a small group of armchairs arranged in a circle in one corner of the staffroom not far from the fridge, kettle and coffee and tea making facilities. At morning teas and lunch the female teachers tend to congregate along the table whilst the men, including the principal and male deputy, often sit in the armchairs. There are variations on this: sometimes one of the male teachers, an early childhood teacher, joins the women’s table and on occasion some of the women will join the armchair circle. However, the staffroom organization very much signifies the table as a women’s space and the armchair circle as a men’s space. Smith Road Secondary School is a large school located in the heart of a major city. There are approximately 100 teachers in the school. There are slightly fewer male teachers than female, but the difference is not great. However, the subject location of the teachers in the school is highly gendered. For instance, there are larger numbers of male teachers in the sciences, physical education, manual arts and maths departments, whereas there are far greater numbers of female teachers in the English, humanities and arts and drama departments. Teachers tend to congregate in their own staffrooms rather than in the school common room located in the school administration building. These schools are not atypical. Throughout the English-speaking world, there are schools like Cave Street where there are relatively 119

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few male teachers, those that are at the school tend to be located in the upper school, and the principal, or head teacher, tends to be male. Likewise, Smith Road compares easily with numerous other high schools, where men tend to be located in certain sections of the school, such as the sciences and manual arts departments. As the boys’ debate has escalated in many Western countries so too has there been a concern about the presence, or lack thereof, of male teachers in primary schools, and certain areas of the curriculum in secondary schools. In many cases this concern has largely been demonstrated in sections of the media (ABC Online, 2004; Maloney, 2001; Milloy, 2003; Mitchell, 2004; Murray, 2003; Petrys, 2004; Sacks, 2002; Shaw, 2002; West, 2004), fuelled by a range of populist books on men and boys (such as Biddulph, 1997; Gurian, 1999; Hoff Sommers, 2000; Kindlon and Thompson, 1999; Pollack, 1999), and sometimes playing itself out in government-sponsored documents and policies (Canadian Teachers’ Federation, 2002; Education Queensland, 2002; Ontario College of Teachers, 2004; Teacher Training Agency, 1999). These various texts have all worked together to construct a ‘truth’ around the problem of a lack of male teachers. This ‘truth’ is that boys in schools are suffering from a lack of male role models and as a result are failing academically at school (or at least underachieving), having behavioural problems, becoming disconnected from school and/or at risk of having their self-esteem damaged by the female teachers who do not understand them. For instance, in an article in The Los Angeles Times, a prominent teacher who has apparently been named in ‘Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers’ twice, writes, . . . boys in particular need strong, charismatic teachers who mix firm discipline with a good-natured acceptance of boyish energy. Concomitantly, a sharp increase in the number of male teachers is also needed, particularly at the elementary level, where female teachers outnumber male teachers six to one. (Sacks, 2002). The employment of more male teachers is thus suggested as a way to re-masculinize schools so that they become more ‘boy-friendly’ and thus contribute to improving boys’ school performance. Many of the arguments about the damaging effects on boys of not having men, such as male teachers, in their lives have their roots in what has become known as the mythopoetic men’s movement (see, for example, Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Bly, 1991; Gurian, 1999; for a critique of this movement see

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Connell, 1995; Kimmel, 1995; Lingard and Douglas, 1999; Mills, 2003). This movement argues that for boys to grow into ‘normal’ ‘healthy’ men they need significant men in their lives to nurture that growth. Women are not seen as being appropriate for such a task as they are unable to understand what it means to be a ‘man’. Hence, for many within this movement the large numbers of female teachers in primary schools are portrayed as a negative for boys. The ways in which boys have been constructed as the new disadvantaged in schools adds weight to this claim. However, as we indicate throughout this book, there is a need for care regarding some of the current assumptions about boys. That boys are the new disadvantaged is a highly contentious presumption (see, for instance, Collins et al., 2000; Connolly, 2004; Epstein et al., 1998; Francis, 2000; Lingard et al., 2002; Martino and Meyenn, 2002; Skelton, 2002). There are some boys who are not achieving particularly well academically. There are also gender issues in terms of subject selection and participation. There are boys whose policing of other boys’ and girls’ behaviours is a major problem in schools. There is also amongst some boys an anti-academic culture. However, this is not the case for all boys. Hence, most academic researchers are asking the question, as we do in this book, ‘Which boys, which girls?’ (see Collins et al., 2000; Gorard et al., 1999; Lingard et al., 2002; Mills, 2000a, 2003; Teese et al., 1995). Neither boys nor girls are homogeneous groups. For instance, in the Australian and Canadian contexts, Indigenous students, both boys and girls, are the most educationally disadvantaged; girls in remote Indigenous communities are certainly not outperforming boys in middle-class urban areas. Thus, in aggregating data on boys’ and girls’ results and then comparing them against each other without nuancing the analysis by taking into account social class, ethnicity and race disregards the fact that many boys are doing very well at school (see Connolly, 2004; Francis, 2000, for nuanced uses of data in the UK). However, there are clearly some issues for some boys in schools that relate to issues of masculinity and the ways in which they engage with schooling processes. Some of these involve the ways in which school work within some communities has been constructed as ‘feminine’, causing some boys to be nervous that should they demonstrate an enthusiasm for school work they might be bullied or treated as a ‘girl’ (Martino, 1999; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005; Mills, 2001; Lingard et al., 2002; Trent and Slade, 2001). This of course has costs for these boys, as it does for the girls and other boys in their classes. For many of these boys, and the school communities within which they

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spend their time, there is a need to challenge dominant notions of what it means to be masculine. Many of the calls for more male teachers have been on the grounds that men are more likely to be able to educate, control and mentor these boys by providing them with ‘masculine’ ways of teaching and learning. However, such behaviours often reinforce the very constructions of masculinity that are a problem for the boys in the first place. Furthermore, the common argument that boys are better controlled by men reinforces constructions of men as authority figures in contrast to women who are portrayed as either ‘soft’ or ‘weak’. This account also fails to recognize the masculinization of leadership roles in schools, reflective of the gender segregation of teaching as an occupation. It also fails to acknowledge the role that some boys’ displays of hegemonic masculinity play in the harassment of female teachers (see, for example, Haase, 2008; Robinson, K., 2000). Hence, pandering to such arguments does not prepare boys well for a society that is seeking to prevent discrimination against women. Boys do need to be able to work for and with women. In this chapter we explore some of the reasons given as to why there are so few male teachers in primary schools. We outline some of the effects of these arguments. Drawing on the vast array of teachers we have interviewed and observed, we use a series of snapshots of teachers from schools like Cave Street Primary and Smith Road Secondary School to highlight aspects of this debate. Our analysis leads us to critique the notion that boys in schools need to be provided with male role models. We argue that the dominant constructions of masculinity implied within calls for more male role models for boys potentially denigrate the work being done in schools by female teachers, and may be harmful to girls in schools and to gender relations in general. However, we do suggest that there are some causes for concern about a lack of male teachers in primary school, especially in the early years. We do not suggest that this is because this ‘lack’ is damaging for boys, but that the discourses which restrict men’s entry into certain areas of the teaching profession harm girls, female teachers and marginalized boys and marginalized male teachers. We also note how the concern over the gender of the teacher neglects the most important factor about teachers, their pedagogies.

Where have all the men gone? Many reasons have been given for a lack of male teachers in schools, especially in primary schools. The status of teaching and salaries are

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often suggested (see, for example, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002). Men’s fears of being falsely accused of sexual abuse have also been raised on occasion (Budge, 1998; Times Education Supplement, 2002). Woven into this concern is the claim that the ‘feminisation’ of the profession is actively keeping men out (Jha and Kelleher, 2006). Hence, as the pre-service teachers in Skelton’s (2002) UK study observe, it is regularly argued that to increase the involvement of men in teaching, and in particular primary education, the status of the profession needs to be improved through higher pay levels and by schools developing a more ‘masculine’ – ‘male friendly’ – environment. These three reasons have all surfaced at various schools we have visited and researched. In a discussion with a group of teachers at Cave Street Primary, the teachers discussed the issue of teacher salaries and one made the following comment, which was supported by the other teachers: There’s another thing too with teaching: the pay is not as attractive. Some of the poor kids become teachers, and some of the starting salaries they’ve been on too – it’s not, I think it’s better than when I started, and it’s a big goal and it’s well paid, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not well paid compared to the years of study you have to do. Four years I think now, you do 4 or 5 in dentistry and those courses you know, and they get a lot more starting salary. In another interview at the school, a female teacher also spoke of the salary issue: Most of my friends who are male won’t go into teaching because they say the salary is not enough, they don’t see it . . . She then went on to link this to the notion of teaching being a caring profession, and perhaps as such a ‘feminine’ one: I think the profession is seen as a caring profession, so perhaps not getting the recognition. My (male) friends generally work in the private industry where they get more money, where they’re seen as being in management positions and where they see that there’s some kudos for that rather than teaching which they see as a nurturing profession. ‘It’s important, but it’s not for me because it’s, I can’t meet my role as family provider.’ But they’ll support it and say it’s an excellent thing to do.

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Fears of false accusations also appeared in various teacher interviews. For instance, it is reflected in a comment made by one of the male teachers who teaches in the upper grades at Cave Street. He makes the argument that there ought to be more male teachers in the early years’ classroom: I probably think that I don’t think that children have seen enough males in the lower school, but then again, having said that I think that’s a problem in the male teachers. I myself, I probably wouldn’t want to teach in the lower school with the new child protection policy and everything coming through. I think there’s a bit of inequality there with again how much affection a male teacher can show a student. At one small inner city primary school, where the female principal had actively sought a male teacher, she spoke of her need to ‘protect’ male teachers from such false accusations: The other big issue that there didn’t used to be is the issue of how easy it is for children to make allegations against teachers, particularly males. I mean, I have Julian up the end of my room so we can keep the doors open between, because there is constantly on my mind and on his mind that that is something we’ve got to watch because there are kids who get too much air time with the parents, and I don’t mean that they shouldn’t have the parents’ ear, but I mean that parents will believe a child over a teacher. Whatever the child says, the parent believes them, it’s a power sort of thing. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve seen people end up in court because of allegations that children have made. So I am really mindful about the responsibility you have as Principal with a male on the staff, responsibility to protect that male. We do not dismiss these concerns out of hand. We recognize that in teaching, like many other professions occupied primarily by women, such as nursing, salaries are lower than similar professions occupied primarily by men. We acknowledge that some men do articulate a fear of being wrongly accused of sexual abuse as a reason for being fearful of entering teaching, and in particular early childhood teaching. Further, the construction of teaching as a ‘feminized’ profession does keep some men out. However, rather than trying to ‘masculinize’ (or remasculinize) schooling to attract more men into teaching, we stress the importance of addressing issues of misogyny, femiphobia and homophobia within the discourses surrounding male teachers. For whilst to

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some extent many of the reasons given as to why there are fewer men in teaching do have some credibility, as many existing male teachers, prospective male teachers and men who reject teaching as a profession indicate (see, for example, Berrill and Martino, 2002), such causes cannot be understood without a consideration of misogyny, femiphobia and homophobia. We would contend that such discourses are integral to the devaluing of teaching and of the gendered construction of the teaching profession. Misogynistic discourses have been evident in the way that primary school teaching has been constructed as a ‘caring’ profession, in stark contrast with a construction, for example, as an ‘intellectual’ profession (King, 1998). Given that ‘care’ is associated with ‘feminine’ activity (Boler, 1999; King, 1998), this has gone some way to constructing primary school teaching, and in particular early childhood teaching, as ‘women’s work’ (for an incisive critique of the notion that as a result of the large numbers of women in primary schools, teaching is a ‘feminized’ profession, see Skelton, 2002). This has enabled many employing authorities to have the children for whom they are responsible educated ‘on the cheap’, for, as in many professions that are mainly occupied by women, the wages in teaching are low compared with those professions primarily occupied by men. As King (2000) has argued, maintaining this exploitative set of gender relations means keeping men out of the ranks. These low wages have a direct relationship with the status of teaching in that they are both a cause and a symptom of this low status of teaching compared with other professions. As the Australian House of Representatives Inquiry into boys’ education Boys: Getting it Right (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002) indicated, increasing the salaries of teachers may well improve its status and increase the numbers of men applying to become teachers. However, there is a need for care in the call for higher salaries for teachers in relation to the male teacher debate. Whilst there are grounds to recognize that teachers’ salaries in many countries are not commensurate with the responsibilities involved, to raise salaries purely for the purposes of attracting more men into teaching may reinforce, rather than challenge, misogynistic discourses generally. For instance, there have been suggestions that one of the reasons why men have not been attracted to teaching, but women have, is that teaching salaries represent a good income as a ‘second wage’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002; see also Skelton 2002), thereby reinforcing traditional heteronormative family

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formations, where women are treated as the ‘second wage’ earner and men as the ‘bread winner’. We would also note in relation to status and salaries that men who do enter teaching tend to ‘pass through the ranks’ quite quickly on what Williams (1992) has referred to as the ‘glass escalator’, for whilst women tend to occupy the majority of teaching positions, the upper echelons of the profession are filled by men. As Skelton (2002, p. 85) indicates in relation to data from the Department for Education and Skills in the UK, one in four male primary teachers is likely to become a head teacher, compared with one in thirteen female primary teachers. However, the speed of the ‘glass escalator’ effect in that country, as in many others, does not appear to be incentive enough to attract a lot of men into teaching, particularly primary school teaching. To some extent this is the product of constructing men who want to enter teaching as wanting to be like women, and thus as ‘abnormal’ men. This is less so in relation to high school teaching within the masculinized domains, such as science, maths, manual arts and physical education, but particularly so in relation to teaching in the early years of school. The work of looking after – including educating – young children specifically and children generally has been constructed within patriarchal societies as ‘women’s work’ – for either mothers or female teachers (see Haase, 2008). In some instances, men’s ‘abnormality’ for wanting to teach in these areas is constructed as being gay or, and often interrelated with, having paedophilic intentions (see Berrill and Martino, 2002; Martino, 2008a). Within a ‘patriarchal gender order’ (Connell, 1995), homophobic discourses work alongside misogynist discourses to imply that men who undertake supposedly feminine activities, such as primary, and especially early childhood, teaching are not ‘real men’. This serves to suggest that men who want to work with children are either gay or ‘suspect’ (King, 2004; Martino and Frank, 2006; Silin, 1997; Sumsion, 1999). The work of Jim King (1998) in the US has been particularly useful here. In his interviews with early childhood educators they speak of needing to demonstrate their heterosexuality in order to avoid rumours and innuendo about their sexuality and supposed reasons for teaching. Within a society where gay men are often demonized and subjected to various forms of discrimination, and where paedophilia and homosexuality have become conflated, such accusations act as powerful deterrents to men entering the teaching profession. Hence, one of the common reasons given for men not entering teaching is that many have a fear of false paedophilia accusations. The fear appears to be most pervasive when men move into non-masculinized

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areas of the curriculum and/or schooling sector. For example, when men move into early childhood their motives are often questioned (King, 2000; see also Murray, 1996; Smedley, 1998; Sumsion, 1999). Whilst false claims of sexual abuse are devastating to those accused, the risk that some men pose to children in early childcare and other educational settings is an important topic that should not be trivialized (see Cameron et al., 1999, chapter 7; Skelton, 1994). There has been a significant amount of feminist political work done to put the issue of child sexual abuse on the political agenda (see, for example, Kelly, 1988; Scutt, 1990; Segal, 1990). This work has seen the development of a number of institutions and legislation designed to protect children. It would be unfortunate if much of this work was undone in an attempt to attract more male teachers into the system. Thus, what is needed is not so much greater protection for men accused of sexual abuse of students, but rather a more thoughtful engagement with the discourses that work to generate a fear about men who want to work with children. That response would acknowledge that particular men practising particular masculinities do pose a risk to children (Cameron et al., 1999), and indeed to women, to each other and often to themselves. It would acknowledge that gay men pose no greater threat to children than do heterosexual men. It would also recognize that this fear has been an integral factor in maintaining an inequitable gender order. Such acknowledgments would recognize that underpinning attempts to attract and retain male teachers ought to be considerations of the gendered relations of power in schools, alongside considerations of what types of men are wanted in teaching. For instance, there is a significant body of research that has demonstrated that some male teachers are abusive towards students, collude with boys against girls and/or abuse female teachers and male teachers not performing hegemonic forms of masculinity (Bailey, 1996; Datnow, 1998; Ferfolja, 1998; Mahony, 1985; Mills, 1996; Robinson, K., 2000; Roulston and Mills, 2000). Understanding which kinds of men are needed is perhaps best understood by examining the practices of existing male teachers. Brian from Cave Street provides an interesting case study. At Cave Street the male teachers are located primarily in the upper grades. However, Brian teaches the Grade 2 class. Brian is in his mid-twenties and only in his second teaching position. The ways in which he engages with the students and other teachers often challenges traditional gender stereotypes. He is a new teacher at the school and the principal is particularly impressed to have Brian on staff. He loves reading; both boys and girls appear to enjoy being in his class; he never raises his voice to

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control students; his classroom is wonderfully decorated with student work and with his own resources; and he is always happy to have visitors come into his classroom. During breaks he seems to move comfortably between the two different spaces, men’s and women’s, in the staff common room. He is quite quiet, and regardless of which group he is sitting with, he usually talks only to the two or three people sitting near or opposite him. When sitting with the women, unlike many of his female colleagues, he rarely shares much of his personal life, instead preferring to talk about the students in his class and other school issues. When sitting with the men, he does not share in the conversations about football and other such matters; he mainly discusses the study he is undertaking at university and current education policies. However, he is experiencing increasing pressure to take on a more active role across the school. For instance, he was asked to coach the Grade 4 football team, but refused, and is experiencing some compulsion from the principal to be the coordinator of the Responsible Thinking Classroom (RTC), where many of the ‘naughty’ boys are sent during ‘time out’ from their regular classrooms. He is resisting this also. He is intending to leave teaching at the end of the year (see Mills et al., 2008, for a similar story). Brian’s experiences give some insights into why some men leave teaching. For him, it is neither the status of the profession nor the fear of false sexual assault claims. Indeed, Brian is a highly valued member of the staff at Cave Street. On the surface it seems as if ‘everyone loves Brian’ (see Murray, 1996), and he is made to feel loved. However, he is expected to be a ‘male’ teacher, not just a teacher. This expectation involves him being a disciplinarian and a sports coach. He is highly regarded as a Grade 2 teacher, by parents and by the principal and other teachers, but at the same time there is an expectation that surely he would want more, such as taking on key leadership roles within the school, like the RTC coordinator. It is interesting to note that many of the early childhood female teachers are not under the same pressure. The misogyny within this system works to suggest that they are happy with their lot, at the same time as working to suggest that Brian should not be. Brian’s lack of ambition and his dislike of sport position him as not a ‘real’ man. Whilst he appears to be valued within the school community, and appears to have a sense of that value, underpinning this valuing are discourses that police the boundaries of normalized masculinities. His stocks as a male teacher are likely to be dependent upon his conformity to such a construction of masculinity. It may well be that it is his reluctance to conform that causes him to make the decision to leave teaching before such devaluing can occur. Hence, whilst there is

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some justification to suggest that the status of teaching works against the attraction and retention of male teachers, this status is often reinforced by those within the system who encourage men to move out of the classroom. It is also ironic that the very attempts to ‘masculinize’ some men within the system are what can drive them away.

Why do we need more men in teaching? There have been a number of rationales given as to why there is a need for more male teachers in schools. These have included helping boys to achieve better at school, to control unruly and misbehaving boys and to provide boys with role models and mentors. The current focus on male teachers, whilst having a long history (see Martino, 2008a), has largely paralleled the boys’ debate focus on achievement (Jha and Kelleher, 2006; Ontario College of Teachers, 2004). The calls for more male teachers have largely been driven by a culture of blame that attributes boys’ lack of success in schools, inter alia, to feminized curricula, assessment regimes and teaching methods and to female teachers (Smedley, 1998). Achievement, though, is not the only concern of those advocating for male teachers to be teaching boys. Alongside the ‘truth’ that boys are underachieving are discourses that construct boys as ‘lost’, ‘damaged’ and ‘alienated’. These discourses reflect broader social trends from the early 1990s and from the men’s mythopoetic movements, part of what Lingard and Douglas (1999) referred to as ‘recuperative’ masculinity politics, that encouraged men to get in touch with their ‘deep masculinity’. The mythopoets sought to return men to the supposedly ‘golden time’ before feminism. They usually drew on assumptions about a natural or essentialized masculinity, which needs to be spiritually nurtured from boyhood to manhood by a father figure (see Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Bly, 1991; Gurian, 1999; Pollack, 1999). This mythopoetic literature constructs men and boys as lost souls who are on the verge of becoming depressed, suicidal and violent offenders. Pollack (1999, p. xxi) provides a good example of this view: Boys today are in serious trouble, including many who seem “normal” and to be doing just fine. Confused by society’s mixed messages about what’s expected of them as boys, and later as men, many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name. It is often mythopoetic literature and arguments such as the above that are drawn upon by those in schools who are attempting to address issues

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on boys’ education. For instance, in Australia, the popular psychologist Steve Biddulph is regularly mentioned by teachers. He is perhaps that country’s most well known proponent of mythopoetic politics. His books Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Live (1995) and Raising Boys (1997) have both been best-sellers in Australia and have also helped to shape the men’s agenda in other English-speaking countries. His work has been widely criticized for its anti-feminist politics (see, for example, Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Lingard and Douglas, 1999; Mills, 2003). However, it has been popular with many concerned about boys’ education. For instance, in a research project that we conducted for the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) (see Lingard et al., 2002), a male teacher in a small co-educational primary school, drawing on a lower-middle-SES population of a major city, stressing the importance of male teachers in boys’ lives, drew heavily upon the mythopoetic and essentialist discourses found within Biddulph’s work: Steve Biddulph tells a great story about how his little boy puts his armour on when he gets closer to school. 500 m from school he turns out from being this loving honest caring kid to this tough straight strong child who goes and walks into the corridor like this. One of the things with boys’ education I think you need to teach boys how to connect with their emotions. The teacher uses this Biddulph type language to justify the need for boys to experience pedagogies that value their ‘maleness’, something that does not happen in supposedly ‘boy-unfriendly’ schools. This valuing of maleness is supported by getting behind the mask that all boys supposedly wear to hide their true selves. The underlying reasons why some boys might feel the need to wear such masks are not considered. For instance, there is no mention of the homophobia or misogyny that leaves many boys in terror of being labelled as a ‘gay’ or a ‘girl’ if they express their emotions openly. There are similar silences about the misogyny, femiphobia and homophobia, which impact upon the numbers of male teachers in schools. There is at least, though, a recognition of the need to connect boys to their emotions better. Another of the teachers we have interviewed, in stressing the need for boys to have male mentors, drew on his experiences as a boy with male teachers at his school. These male teachers appeared to function

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as surrogate fathers in the support they provided him. He talked about each of them: Mack, my manual arts teacher. I didn’t have a dad because he died when I was very young and this guy said, ‘You don’t talk about girls like that. That’s not what you say, if you want to talk to a girl this is how you do it’. So I had a mentor in him. And Jamie Pearce my phys ed teacher and next door neighbour. . . . Mr. Webber in Grade 4 gave me a lift home and said how is your reading going and I said I don’t do much, he said did you try reading it’s good fun. So all my life was made up with these, not all males but lots of them and that was really important to me to have a male because I didn’t have a dad at home. The theme of the missing father is a common one in the mythopoetic literature (Blankenhorn, 1995; for critiques of such literature see Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Kimmel, 1995; Mills, 2003; Mills and Lingard, 1997). For many mythopoets, the pressures confronting boys could be avoided if there were men involved in their upbringing. They thus lament the fact that so many boys are currently being brought up in single-mother households. In the light of that absence, it is suggested that male teachers can become influential father-like figures for boys. For instance, one male primary teacher told us that Sometimes people say to me, ‘Oh, it’s good that you’re there because you act as father figure for children who don’t have any fathers.’ And a principal talked about how she structured classes taking into account some boys’ needs for a father figure: I think there are issues, real issues developing about boys and role models because of single parent families. I mean, I really do mean that, and when I assign children to classes, I do look at that in terms of placement, you know, maybe this child, boy child would be better in Jonathan’s class because there is no male, you know. I mean, I’ve got one little bloke who lives with his Mum, who’s a really nice lady, does her absolute best, but she doesn’t have parents, the child doesn’t see his father or his grandfather in the family, she has no brothers, she doesn’t have a partner, there is no male role model anywhere for the child, and I think that’s a problem, you know.

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Such sentiments were evident in some of the comments made by the early childhood teachers, men and women, in Murray’s (1996) US case study research of male and female childcare workers in two childcare centres, many of whom utilized the discourse of male teachers being replacement fathers (see also Allan, 1994). The importance placed on fathers by many advocates for boys’ education is evident in some schools’ programmes of fathers reading to sons and ‘dads and lads’ evenings that have been organized in order to bring fathers into children’s, or more specifically sons’, lives. A key role that such father figures are often expected to play is the disciplining of their children. The idea that students will be uncontrollable without a firm male hand implies that the most effective forms of child rearing involve displays of hegemonic masculinity, a stance that clearly valourizes particular forms of masculine domination (Francis and Skelton, 2001). Within this valourization of male teachers and their supposed ‘natural’ disciplining skills, there is again a deficit model of female teachers implied. This works to reinforce patriarchal relations of power and indeed to normalize traditional nuclear families in that some schools’ usage of male teachers to discipline students is analogous with notions of ‘Wait until your dad gets home!’ (King, 2000, p. 13). There is also a way in which male teachers can use this disciplining role to emphasize their masculinity and to distance themselves from being constructed as feminine (Francis and Skelton, 2001). Whilst in some instances the focus on male teachers’ supposed ability to control students does refer to all students, it is most often used in the context of controlling just boys. This is problematic for gender relations as it works to construct boys as active, rebellious and boisterous, whilst constructing girls as passive, biddable and quiet. This lack of concern for girls’ behaviours is perhaps not unexpected. Whilst those advocating for more male role models usually lament men’s lack of involvement in the lives of their sons, daughters rarely warrant a mention. There is very little talk within mythopoetic literature of men taking responsibility for child rearing per se; rather it is of men needing to take responsibility for turning their sons into ‘fine young men’. These men’s politics, despite what some may think of such literature, are not about constructing new masculinities but about shoring up the hegemony of traditional masculinities. Indeed, it has been shown in a range of research that when men take responsibility for teaching boys, especially in non-traditional areas of the curriculum and in homo-social situations, they often collude with boys to maintain existing gendered relations of power. This is particularly the case in relation to sport and humour (Connolly,

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1998; Martino, 1999; Roulston and Mills, 2000; Skelton, 2001). This was apparent in the case of Sean from Cave Street Primary school. Sean is a Grade 6 teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years, a large part of which has been at the same school. He has very strong opinions about education, education policies and student behaviours. He could be characterized in many ways as an educational traditionalist. He also appears to be well liked by the students, although some find him a bit strict. His humour, which at times bordered on the sarcastic, did upset some of the quieter students, although the more boisterous boys appeared to enjoy it and had worked out the limits in terms of making amusing retorts to his jokes. His classroom is characterized by desks in rows and he has a seating plan that students are expected to follow. Sean is particularly vocal about the boys’ issue in education. He is often wont to tell stories of how education was better for boys in his early days of teaching. For instance, he stated, I don’t think boys are being challenged enough by education. There’s no danger, there’s not any element of failure any more. Boys love anything that’s dangerous, and they have to be challenged. And any school, not many schools do that. You know, I take kids rock climbing. When you’ve got them dangling on the end of a 300 ft cliff, they’re focussed. He complains that despite evidence to the contrary very few people at his school appear to be taking the issue of boys’ education seriously. He often blames feminists for the current supposed demise in boys’ education. When in the staff common room, he always sits in the armchair circle. He takes the football team and deals with many of the discipline problems occurring in Year 6, and occasionally teachers threaten to send misbehaving students to him. In determining classes for the start of each school year, Sean is often allocated a number of the troublesome boys. There is a strong sense that he is ‘good with these boys’. There is no doubt that he is quite liked by many of the more difficult boys and they do appear to behave for him. However, little attention is paid to the consequences of this state of affairs in relation to the impact upon the boys and girls in his classes. For the boys, especially the ones considered to have behaviour problems, they are learning that the way to impose one’s will is through domination, control and fear. Sean is also not averse to dropping into conversations anti-feminist comments, which suggest that arguing for women’s and girls’ rights is an extremist and foolish act. Whilst some

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girls do banter with him, it appears as if they are not prepared to argue the case at length. There is also a way in which the boys and Sean join together in a ‘fun’ way to tease the girls. This is always constructed as having a bit of a laugh and as creating a positive environment in the classroom. However, it does create a divide and there is a clear ‘us’ and ‘them’ between the boys and girls in the class – albeit with not all boys feeling that they make the grade as a ‘boy’ in Sean’s eyes. Men like Sean epitomize the kind of male teacher that is often idealized within the calls for more male teachers (see Britzman, 1993). He is clearly a ‘man’s man’. Students are well behaved in his class, he accepts and values the boys who display normalized masculine behaviours, or as some would say ‘boyish energy’, and he is engaging and good humoured. Sean is the kind of male teacher who has been able to stay in the classroom as his masculinity has never been in any doubt. He is very much seen as an informal leader in the school due to the significance of his institutional memory in relation to his school; as a result, the school administration often defer to him. It is unlikely that Sean will be leaving the profession anytime in the near future. Whilst this can be regarded as a positive by those who advocate for more men in teaching, little consideration is given to the impact of Sean’s teaching on the girls in his class or on the way in which the valourization of his practice, as indeed with the valuing of Brian, positions the female teachers in the school.

What about the girls and female teachers? One of the major failings within many of the claims about the lack of male teachers in schools is the silence about the education of girls and the existing effects of male teachers upon girls. There has also been a concomitant silence regarding the ways some male teachers, in order to ‘bond’ with the boys in their classes, collude with some boys to discriminate against female teachers and girls and engage in homophobic bantering with boys in their classes (see Francis and Skelton, 2001; Martino and Frank, 2006; Roulston and Mills, 2000). This collusion is in part created by some men’s attempts to demonstrate that they are ‘normal’ men and in part created by their ‘acceptance’ of boys’ behaviours as ‘boys being boys’. This could well be why, as some commentators indicate is the case, some boys prefer male teachers, especially if the boys’ sexist and/or homophobic humour is not challenged (Roulston and Mills, 2000). This bonding of male teachers with boys in their classes has been noted elsewhere (Skelton, 2002). However, as indicated, this is not necessarily a positive. We would also note here, however, that

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our research (Lingard et al., 2002) found overwhelmingly that students, both male and female, thought that the gender of the teacher was not a significant factor in their schooling. Whilst the argument that male teachers understand boys better than female teachers, and thus can teach them better, often by building a ‘camaraderie of men’ (Roulston and Mills, 2000), is likely to have a negative impact upon girls in schools, the discourse around male teachers also works to devalue female teachers (alongside single mothers) and suggests that boys will not work for women. This devaluing is evident in a number of calls for more male teachers. For instance, in an extract from Peter West’s submission in support of scholarships for male teachers to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in Australia and published on its website, he states that Female teachers talk ‘motherese’. Caring, mothering and teaching are easily conflated by female teachers as one activity. (Peter West, Research Group on Men and Families, University of Western Sydney “Do role models matter? Submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities (sic) Commission”, pp. 1–2). HREOC. http:// www.hreoc.gov.au/sex_discrimination/exemption/decision.html It is worth noting here that the negativity that is ascribed to mothering when performed by female teachers does not appear to be apparent towards men in those arguments for male teachers that are based upon the premise that boys often do not have fathers in their lives. Hence, to some extent male teachers are expected to perform a parenting role with boys, whilst female teachers are not. This construction of mothers and fathers and female and male teachers is grounded in essentialist assumptions, which suggest that men’s and women’s ‘natural’ predispositions lend themselves towards men and women performing particular gendered societal tasks – not particularly useful assumptions for promoting gender equity in schools (see Blount, 2005; Grummet, 1988). Consequently, and unfortunately, it is men who reflect dominant constructions of masculinity, such as Sean above, who are often valourized in terms of being ideal male primary teachers. This was apparent in a newspaper article about a professional Australian rugby league football player who was training to be a primary school teacher (Ricketts, 2004). In the article the football player states that ‘It’s a big challenge teaching in the primary system because there are not too many males and I’d like to be a good role model for

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the boys.’ He later goes on to comment, ‘When you see (prop) Paul Rahuhihi getting bashed all the time, you just want to get in there and get bashed as well so you can walk off the field as his equal.’ Ironically, the picture of this player shows him holding a pile of books with the (pro)feminist Rob Gilbert and Pam Gilbert (1998) text Masculinity goes to School on top. Some of the arguments in the Gilbert and Gilbert book on the dangers of dominant masculinity appear to have had little effect on this primary pre-service teacher. Perhaps, it is to be expected that, given the misogyny and homophobia that have policed the gendered boundaries of the teaching profession, some men legitimate their decision to become primary teachers by demonstrating their subscription to masculine pursuits such as wanting to ‘get bashed’ on a rugby field. Broadening the range of male teachers in schools will require a cultural change in the status of teaching that seeks to value the work that has been done in primary schools, mainly by women, but also by some men, by addressing the misogynist and homophobic practices in schools that police gender boundaries, not by valourizing football players. The appeal of men who perform dominant masculinities in schools is the claim that that they will be better able to control male students and/or that they can better tolerate boys’ behaviours than female teachers. Whilst the ‘men as disciplinarians’ discourse denies women’s ‘behaviour management’ and pedagogical skills, there is some evidence that male students are likely to misbehave more for female teachers. For instance, in the Australian study we conducted for the federal Department of Education, Science and Training (Lingard et al., 2002) some of the female staff at a small rural high school expressed their concerns about boys’ behaviours. Some described themselves as ‘victims’ of some boys’ behavioural problems. Observations conducted at this school indicated that male students did indeed tend to be more disruptive with female teachers. Such behaviours by boys towards female teachers have been documented in other research (Askew and Ross, 1988; Francis, 2000; Jones, 1985; Keddie and Mills, 2007; Walkerdine, 1989). These boys’ behaviours towards these teachers need to be addressed in ways which do not denigrate female teachers by suggesting that they are not as capable of teaching boys as men (see Bailey, 1996; Button, 2007; Coulter and McNay, 1993). It is perhaps no surprise that the call for more male teachers has worked to alienate many female teachers. Various schemes to attract more men into teaching are likely to contribute to existing resentment about the privileged position of males in the school system – as indicated in the data, there are a disproportionate number of male

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principals and deputy principals given the number of female teachers in the primary sector (see Skelton, 2002). Anecdotal evidence from some teachers and principals also indicates that male primary teachers in some education systems are already being employed in preference to their female colleagues and, in some instances, seemingly obtaining the most desirable positions. Regardless of the validity of these claims, the perception amongst many women in the teaching profession that men are receiving preferential treatment in obtaining teaching positions will not be alleviated by schemes, such as that mooted in Australia for scholarships for male pre-service teachers, especially if they also guarantee a teaching position for these men upon graduation. Many female teachers have articulated to us that there is incentive enough in men’s rapid promotion to administration positions, due to Williams’s (1992) ‘glass escalator’, without also trying to entice them with such things as financial support for their studies and guarantees of positions upon graduation. Ruth was one teacher who articulated such concerns. She is a Grade 6 teacher and is in her late forties. She has a good rapport with all students, and is well known in the school community and many parents ask for their children to be put in her class. She is active in the education sector beyond the school. She is heavily involved in her State’s middle years’ association and has been arguing for some time that the school needs to give a greater focus to the special needs of this group of students. She feels strongly about the school’s push for more male teachers and claims that it is undermining the work being conducted by female teachers. She has been heard to say that ‘boys don’t come to school to see men. They come to get an education.’ This sentiment surfaced in an interview with her when the topic of male teachers was raised: I really think that it’s more important to have quality rather than quantity, and if my children, I would much rather have them in a classroom where the teacher was a really good teacher rather than simply putting them into a classroom – my son, for instance, who didn’t have a father in his life – rather than having him in a classroom where there’s a male just for the sake of having a male. I would rather have him with a teacher who was going to encourage him to learn, to inspire him, to do all those things that he’s at school for. He’s there for education not to see men, if you like. Yeah, I think it’s more important that the teaching – and my son grew up without a father, as I say, he had role models, but they were outside of the school and

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I guess most of his education in primary was with women teachers. He had one male teacher as I remember. And I can’t remember him being any more or less enthusiastic about his school work. Maybe I’ve been blind. But no, I really think it comes back to the quality of the teaching rather than the gender of the teacher. As an assertive woman who has strong opinions and is passionate about education and her students, and as someone who can always be relied upon, Ruth is highly respected by other teachers and by the senior administrators in the school. In the staffroom she moves between the men’s and the women’s space quite comfortably. Students in Ruth’s classes are provided with stimulating work that challenges them, as well as engaging with the students’ worlds. For Ruth, she wants her students to have as broad a range of opportunities opened up to them as possible. To this end she encourages them to problematize existing gendered expectations of themselves and of others, to challenge acts of racism and other forms of inequities in the classroom and beyond, and to have high expectations of themselves and others. It would be a foolish assertion to suggest that the boys in her class would be better off with a male teacher, especially if that male teacher’s pedagogy is not of the same standard as Ruth’s. The constant view that boys are suffering because they are being taught by women and not men devalues the major contributions that female teachers such as Ruth are having in the lives of boys. This is evident in the irritation that Ruth articulates about the male teacher debate. Ruth’s case is a wonderful demonstration of the significance of teacher pedagogies and a critical disposition to good education. Many of the advocates for more male teachers who implicitly, if not explicitly, blame female teachers for some of the problems that boys are supposedly facing also fail to acknowledge the ways in which the power dynamic between boys and female teachers is often highly gendered in ways that can be oppressive of female teachers. This was evident in some of the stories told to us by Sarah. Sarah teaches in the science department at a large high school. She is a popular teacher with both other staff and students. She is a youngish teacher in her mid-twenties. She loves science and refuses to see it as a male-dominated field. She teaches junior science in the lower school and physics in the senior years. She argues that she is not a feminist, but suggests that women should be able to do anything and that she would be livid if she were held back because she is a woman. Here she almost seems to be appropriating a post-feminist stance. However, she also tells

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us about how she often feels sexualized by some of the older boys and has started to police her own dress style; in particular, she avoids tightfitting clothes and sleeveless dresses (see Keddie and Mills, 2007). She says that some of the boys try to joke with her about what she did on the weekend and this annoys her. She also says that she is aware that some of the boys joke with male teachers about her. It was suggested by some male teachers that the senior boys who make jokes about her are only ‘normal’ boys making ‘normal’ comments about a young woman, and that if Sarah does not like it, perhaps it would be better for a man who understands these boys to take the class. One of the senior boys at the school gives some indication of how female teachers can address this situation: The only, I mean, a lot of female teachers, the only way of getting respect or in control is to be less than pleasant. However, such an approach fails to acknowledge that boys at the school need to learn how to behave appropriately and that such behaviour is not ‘normal’, but part of a process that works to police an unjust gender order. The accusation that female teachers such as Sarah do not understand boyish energy is founded on a presumption that boys have essential ways of being that can be understood only by men and that it is only men who can channel these ways of being into a socially acceptable form. Sarah’s harassment from boys, and from some male teachers, can also be read as a mechanism by which she is being forced out of the masculinized domain of physics. Whilst there have been calls for more male teachers in schools generally, there does not appear to be a shortage in physics classrooms. Teaching physics is constructed as a manful activity. Hence, Sarah’s harassment may be a product of her being perceived as belonging in the junior classes – where the students require more ‘care’ – but not in the academically rigourous physics classroom. When women complain about the behaviours of boys in their classrooms, this can be read as a problem of the woman rather than of the boys and, as Smedley (1998) has argued, men come to be seen as the solution to this problem. However, there is little recognition that male teachers who accept or tolerate ‘boyish energy’ may be a problem in that they may be complicit in the behaviours, which not only reinforce and legitimate the harassment of girls, female teachers and some marginalized boys, but also work against these boys’ development as engaged learners and socially responsible young men (Roulston and Mills, 2000; see also Datnow, 1998; Francis, 2000; Martino and Kehler,

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2006; Skelton, 2001). A productive engagement with the male teacher debate in relation to boys would recognize that it is the dominant image of masculinities that is often at the heart of the problem of many educational issues for boys (see Chapter 6 this book; see also Epstein et al., 1998; Martino and Meyenn, 2002; Mills, 2001). We would argue that some male teachers are in a position to disrupt this image, as are many female teachers (see, for example, Keddie and Mills, 2007). However, such teachers are the ones who become marginalized within the current calls for more male teachers. This is unfortunate.

What makes a ‘good’ male teacher? Whilst much has been made in the media and in various texts on boys about how boys prefer male teachers, our research has indicated that this is not the case (Lingard et al., 2002). This has been borne out in other research as well (Ashley and Lee, 2003; Trent and Slade, 2001). Many male students in these various studies claim that they do not care about the sex of the teacher – they just want good teachers. For example, in the Trent and Slade (2001) study boys said that good teachers can be male or female, and that for them it was not so much the sex of the teacher, but the age that was important. (They were more inclined to prefer young teachers.) The qualities necessary to demonstrate good pedagogy in relation to the education of boys and girls are not innate to either sex. The priority of all education systems, thus, should be to attract teachers of the highest quality not simply male bodies. However, we would suggest that at the same time the sexed body does matter (Butler, 1993; Gatens, 1995; Grosz, 1995; see Mills et al., 2008) and that it is important for men to disrupt some of the dominant constructions of masculinity, which suggest that teaching is women’s work. We would thus argue that it is possible that increasing the numbers of male teachers in schools who perform practices that support students’ learnings and social development and who challenge hegemonized constructions of masculinity may lead to an improvement in the educational experiences of some boys (see Francis and Skelton, 2005; Younger and Warrington, 2005). However, it would be too simplistic to suggest that boys simply witnessing these males would change their behaviours. Role theory has long been criticized as denying the complex social relations that surround students’ lives (see, for example, Coulter and McNay, 1993; Martino, 2008a; Segal, 1990). People do not simply choose from a smorgasbord of identities. Indeed, as Lewis et al. (1999)

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indicate in a paper used to support the call for more male teachers in schools in Australia, boys often write off men who do not conform to their image of ‘real men’. In the case of the Lewis et al. (1999, p. 4) paper, one of the male pre-service teachers interviewed made the comment that schools needed ‘more male teachers who are good role models rather than weird nerdy ones’. Further explanation of what a ‘good role model’ looks like and what kind of teacher constituted a ‘weird nerdy’ one would have been useful. However, this comment does indicate that men who have been marginalized and subordinated within various gender regimes (Connell, 1987, 1995) are unlikely to be welcomed into all school communities and indeed may feel like they do not belong (see Mills et al., 2008). Several teachers we have come across in our research illustrate this point. John was an English teacher at a secondary school who was openly gay. He experienced some forms of harassment from some boys and some other staff and parents. He commented, for instance, When I first got here I was the only one (male English teacher) and to be quite honest, a lot of the other teachers who had been here for a while used to make small jibes about how is it being surrounded by women in that staffroom as though English was simply just the dominance of women. The supposed jokes, sometimes made to his face and sometimes behind his back, often had an edge to them, which equated homosexuality with paedophilia. Whilst at that school there was a requirement for more male teachers in English; John was not perceived to be the ideal role model. Indeed, it was often suggested that he turned boys off English and further exacerbated the construction of English as a feminized subject. James had a similar story to tell, despite being both sporty and clearly straight. James taught in the drama department. He was relatively new to the school and was also the first male in this department for many years. He also taught in the English department. He was quite sporty and when arriving at the school offered to take the soccer team. In his first week at the school he was interviewed by the male principal who explained how important he was going to be as a role model for the boys. He was told how many boys at the school saw drama as a soft subject and how it was imperative that they be provided with a strong role model in English. The principal, whilst very much a traditionalist, saw benefits for boys in doing drama. He explained to James that in the new times in which we

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live boys have to be able to express themselves well and need to develop good communication skills. This is recognition of the emotional capitals now needed in large sections of the labour market. Part of James’s job was to not only to teach his classes, but to demonstrate that men could like sport, be straight and still like drama and English. Over the course of the first year at the school, James had had a number of conflicts with the principal over gender issues, and in particular the lack of support that the school was providing to girls. Mustafa also had problems at his high school. He had been teaching in the maths department at this predominantly Anglo-Celtic high school for about five years. He is approximately 40 years old. He felt that he had never been fully accepted by the students. In particular, he complained that many of the boys mocked his accent and that the behavioural issues in his classes were never taken seriously. He also felt that he was discriminated against in that he was never allocated any senior classes and was often given the difficult junior classes. What comes through in John’s, James’s and Mustafa’s stories is that the discourses circulating through the male teacher debate are those that work to normalize hegemonized constructions of masculinity. There is an implicit assumption that the male teachers required are those who do not disrupt such constructions. They are expected to be straight, Anglo-Celtic, strong disciplinarians and, if not sporty, at least engage in normalized masculine activities. So ingrained are the assumptions about normalized masculinity that rarely within the claims about the need for more male teachers is there any mention of the qualities expected of male teachers. Likewise, as King (2000, p. 3) notes, there is little mention of the ‘troubled’ ‘relationships between the socially constructed categories of “men” and “teacher” ’. These are critical issues in understanding both the attraction (or lack thereof) of males to teaching and their performances within it (see Skelton, 2001). For as Skelton (2001, p. 148) has stated, ‘the significance of a heterosexual identity is of particular significance for male primary teachers’. This is also evident in King’s US research. King’s (2000) interviews with male primary school teachers show how some men are so concerned about being perceived to be gay because they work with young children that they develop strategies to disprove such suggestions (see also Berrill and Martino, 2002; Martino, 2008b). These include, for instance, having pictures of their wives and children on their desks (King, 2000), or wearing wedding rings (Sumsion, 1999). One of the consequences of this ‘troubled’ state of affairs is that male teachers, as indicated above, often enact forms of ‘behaviour

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management’ that emphasize their construction of ‘normal’ masculinities. As Francis and Skelton (2001, p. 13) state, Many students, teachers and parents see men as being ‘natural’ disciplinarians. And many male teachers may seek to perpetuate this construction of themselves in order to better achieve a construction of ‘hard’ masculinity’. In order to demonstrate their ‘manliness’ some male teachers use gendered discourses or put-downs to male students in ways to control them (Francis and Skelton, 2001; Mills, 1996; Roulston and Mills, 2000). Thus, Francis and Skelton (2001, p. 12), drawing on Connell (1985), argue that ‘One way of handling the various contradictions involved in their constructions of gender and occupational role is for men to emphasize those aspects of teaching that are more compatible with conventional masculinity.’ As a consequence, in primary schools it is male teachers who often teach the older pupils, coach the football teams, are involved in managerial roles and discipline and act as mentors for students considered to have behavioural problems. This need not be the case. For instance, a male teacher at Cave Street talked about the qualities needed for male teachers in the early years: Patience to begin with. You’ve got to have patience to teach the littlies. A softness, you have to have this kind of gentleness with the young, young kids. They can respond to that. And the ability to listen. They really need someone that’s prepared to listen, and it might be the most mundane thing that they want to tell you, but you’ve got to show an interest in what they’re telling you. I think that’s really important . . . I think there’s no good forcing men to go and teach down there because you’re not going to get the effort from there either, so. I’ve seen some fabulous male teachers down in the junior school. Kids just love them and they want to climb all over them and everything, yeah, ‘cos they’re just something new to them. Thus, in encouraging men into teaching, in much the same way that it is necessary to ask which boys and which girls in relation to gender gaps in educational achievement, it is equally as important to ask questions regarding the impact of different types of male teachers. An increase in the numbers of male teachers simply because they are male is unlikely to improve the educational outcomes of boys or girls. Indeed, employing men on these grounds may well have a negative impact upon students’

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well-being and academic success, if the teachers are employed for their sex rather than for their high-quality teaching skills. What is critical in terms of improving students’ learning is the quality of the teacher’s pedagogy not their sex (see Trent and Slade, 2001; Lingard et al., 2002). We would argue that such quality teaching recognizes the importance of caring, alongside challenging students intellectually, connecting the classroom to their world and encouraging them to value and engage with differences (see Lingard et al., 2002, 2007; Hayes et al., 2006). Both men and women are equally capable of such teaching. However, particular kinds of male teachers who demonstrate such pedagogies and in the process challenge dominant constructions of masculinities may be able to make a positive impact upon students – boys and girls – in their classes by suggesting alternative constructions of masculinity. This same set of observations, of course, applies equally to female teachers as well.

Conclusion In this chapter we have not argued against the employment of men or even more men in primary teaching. In a society that values equity, it is important that men take responsibility for child rearing and children’s education, both at home and in schools (see Mills, 2000b). Our criticisms have been based upon the silences in the male teacher debate that have served to shore up the privileges of men and boys at the expense of female teachers and girls, and which fail to address issues of hierarchical gendered power relationships (Martino and Kehler, 2006). These relate to lack of recognition of the ways in which homophobia and misogyny underpin gender relations in schools. We have argued that such discourses have served to construct the teaching profession, especially in the early years and some curriculum areas, as a ‘feminized’ occupation. This construction has served to devalue the status of teaching by constructing such work for women as being a ‘natural’ feminine activity. It has also, and concomitantly, worked to police the entry of men into certain areas of the profession – namely the early years of schooling and other supposedly ‘feminine’ areas of the curriculum – and to construct men who do become such teachers as ‘abnormal’, which is often read as being gay or a (potential) paedophile. Some men have of course resisted such pressures and have developed a variety of strategies to confront such allegations. Many of these strategies have worked to reinforce the hegemony of traditional forms

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of masculine performance. The allure of the ‘glass escalator’ has also compensated for some of the stresses that such men may face. Many of the backlash strategies for encouraging more males into teaching are unlikely to either construct a re-culturing of the school environment that enables men to perform non-traditional masculinities or to slow down the exodus of men out of the classroom and into management. We are concerned that such strategies do not recognize the complex nature of gender relations in schools or the ways in which the negative perception of men entering teaching does not disadvantage men as a group, but does reinforce their privilege (see Haase, 2008). In challenging current arguments about the need for more male role models in schools, we have raised concerns about the ways in which some male teachers denigrate the work of female teachers and sometimes collude with boys to reinforce the current gender order, along with the gender regime of the school. However, we do not argue that all male teachers do this. We recognize that many male teachers, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, contend with and in some cases confront traditional constructions of masculinity in their daily routines. These male teachers have to resist the normalizing and homogenizing pressures they experience from some students, parents and other teachers to be a disciplinarian, a football coach and/or an advocate for boys’ and men’s rights (see Berrill and Martino, 2002; Martino and Berrill, 2003; Martino, 2008b). Those that are either unable or unwilling to conform to these pressures may well experience harassment and oppression from their students and, in some cases, their colleagues. The current calls for more male teachers do nothing to support these men. Whilst we are heavily critical of attempts to attract more male teachers that are based upon fallacious assumptions about the supposed benefits for boys of having men in their lives, we do believe that men need to take greater responsibility for the welfare of children – both boys and girls. Such a responsibility would involve ensuring that both girls and boys receive a quality education and also working to resist the limitations imposed upon students by dominant constructions of gender. This responsibility is unlikely to be carried out unless some attention is given to creating a school environment, where misogyny, femiphobia and homophobia are not tolerated. In such an environment schools like Cave Street Primary and Smith Road Secondary School, with which we began this chapter, would begin to look very different. When such portrayals start to lose their resonance with those working in schools,

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we will know that schools are beginning to challenge those gendered relations of power which trivialize women’s work, police the boundaries of acceptable masculinity by keeping men out of certain positions in schools and marginalize men who do not fit the hegemonic ideal. Such a scenario would be positive for both boys and girls.

6 Boys’ Peer Group Relationships in Schools

Introduction Previous chapters have demonstrated that structural reforms in boys’ education have been limited by their tendency to reinforce essentialist understandings of boys and masculinities. We have also demonstrated how such initiatives have failed to engage with research-based understandings about boys, which draw attention to the significance of the social and cultural dimensions of gender identity formation (see Way and Chu, 2004). In this chapter we focus on the issue of boys’ peer-group relationships in schools to highlight how knowledge about gender hierarchies has the potential to further inform and enhance our pedagogical understanding of the sort of reform agendas that are required to facilitate boys’ engagement with schooling. While the focus here is on one particular school context (Martino, 1998), we also review some of the significant studies that have been conducted in the field and which have contributed significantly to our understanding of boys’ social relationships in schools. Our aim is to illustrate the need for educators and policy makers to engage with a research-based knowledge about the differences that exist amongst boys and how socio-cultural influences have a role to play in how they understand themselves as particular sorts of boys. As previous ethnographic research has demonstrated, the depth of analysis afforded by such focused and local investigations has been instrumental in developing a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics and politics of masculinities in boys’ lives in school (see Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Walker, 1988; Willis, 1977). Such knowledge, we argue, needs to inform the take up of any gender reform strategies in schools directed at addressing boys’ education in order to avoid merely reinforcing problematic and essentialist understandings about 147

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boys’ masculinity. In this sense, we draw attention to the pedagogical implications of such knowledge vis-à-vis gender reform in schools. This is important, as we have already emphasized, given the public discourse and moral panic about boys’ education which has tended to present boys as a homogenous and undifferentiated group (see Foster et al., 2001; Kimmel, 2004; Lingard and Douglas, 1999; Mills, 2003; Way and Chu, 2004; Martino, 2004 for a critique of this position). For example, Way and Chu (2004) claim that there has been ‘a resurgence of interest in boys’ lives and experiences’ in North America, but that this has not necessarily produced nuanced understandings about adolescent masculinities which move beyond stereotypical representations of boys (p. 1) (see Froese-Germaine, 2004 and Martino and Kehler, 2007 for a critique of boys’ education in the Canadian context). Moreover, they argue that boys’ own perspectives have not been included or drawn on in studies which have ignored the significance of culture and context as a basis for developing a deeper understanding about experiences of masculinity: ‘In order to understand boys’ development, it is important to start with boys’ own perspectives and to learn what they view as the main issues, key obstacles, and central concerns in their lives’ (Way and Chu, 2004, p. 3) (see also Noguera, 2003). Indeed, as Walker (2004) argues, such ‘voice-centred’ research, which pays attention to and incorporates boys’ perspectives on how they see themselves in the world and how they interact with others in schools and the broader society, is important politically as a means by which to counteract ‘the media’s tendency to homogenize male youth’ (p. 32) (see also Cook-Sather, 2002; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; Thiessen and Cook-Sather, 2007). Such research also has important pedagogical implications for addressing the educational and social needs of boys in schools. Given this emphasis on the need to include the perspectives of boys themselves as a means by which to present a counter-narrative to normalizing stereotypes about boys, this chapter provides a focus on boys’ peer-group relationships in a middle-class school in Australia. Our aim is to investigate boys’ own perceptions of their relationships with other boys in this school as a basis for investigating the dynamic of hegemonic masculinities in their lives (Connell, 1995). In this sense, we present the complexities and nuances of their lives at school, which draw attention to the interwoven dynamics of class, race, sexuality and gender (see Froyum, 2007; McCreedy, 2004; Pascoe, 2005; Vaught, 2004; Way and Chu, 2004). While ethnographic and case studies cannot be used to generalize across populations, they provide much needed knowledge

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which can further inform our understanding about the complex ways in which cultural contexts of specific schools and communities impact on boys’ lives and developing understanding of their masculinities (see Patton, 2002; Stake, 2000). In this capacity, the research reported on in this chapter is used to – highlight the factors influencing the various statuses and hierarchies of masculinity for adolescent boys in one particular urban middleclass school; – draw attention to the various power relations that mediate boys’ experiences with their peers in school; – illuminate the significance of homophobia and heternormativity in the policing of masculinities for adolescent boys; – provide some insight into the racialized dimension of whiteness in this particular school community and its significance for reflecting on the impact of hegemonic masculinity in adolescent boys’ lives. It is also important to add a cautionary or qualifying note about studies which have tended to focus on documenting boys’ perspectives on peer-group relations in school. As we will demonstrate, both in our review of the research literature and in relation to our own research on boys’ peer-group cultures, these studies have typically generated various classifications of different sorts of boys, such as the ‘footballers’, ‘cool boys’, ‘party-animals’, ‘swots’ and ‘ear’oles’, which have the potential to objectify boys and to downplay the complexity of the contradictions involved in how individual boys in each of these groups negotiate their masculinities. In addition, feminist researchers such as McRobbie and Garber (1976) have drawn attention to the invisibility and marginalization of girls in this early ethnographic literature on boys’ peer-group subcultures. Skeggs (1989) also comments on the failure of Walker in his study of boys’ subcultures in the Australian context to ‘comprehend the processes of institutionalisation that legitimate and reproduce racism and sexism’ (p. 485) (see also McRobbie, 1991). While acknowledging these limitations, we would like to stress the significance of such research-based perspectives, which draw on the categories and classifications of the boys’ themselves. These categories provide a means by which to further understand how boys are discursively making sense of their social worlds in school and the relevance of this for both understanding the function of peer-group hierarchies and for building pedagogical content knowledge about the nature of masculinities and their impact on boys’ lives at school. Moreover, we consciously

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use boys’ voices to take into account the dynamics of gender, race and sexuality in their lives by attending to the institutionalized processes of normalization vis-à-vis identifying the interplay of heterosexualized and racialized dimensions of hegemonic masculinities in one particular school context.

Reviewing the literature on the influences of boys’ peer groups The peer group has been identified as a major influence in boys’ lives and studies have documented its impact on their learning and social relationships at school (see Dalley-Trim, 2007; Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Jackson, 1998; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Martino, 2000; Smith, 2007; Walker, 1988). For instance, Collins et al. (2000) draw attention to the relationship between poor school attainment in the early years and association with peer cultures which promote anti-academic and anti-success attitudes, delinquency and other anti-social behaviours. They claim that Some boys and some girls in primary and secondary schools belong to peer cultures of banter, bravado and bullying which may undermine their school achievement, their mental health and their chances of developing a positive outlook on life. The literature indicates that such peer cultures may contribute to an anti-excellence attitude, to a lack of individual and collective responsibility and optimism, and to confining and risk-prone choices of life-style (Collins et al., 2000, p. 11). Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) in their review of the literature on boys’ school cultures – particularly in reference to the studies conducted by Mac an Ghaill (1994) and Walker (1988, p. 125) – also claim that ‘to be committed to schoolwork was to be inferior and effeminate’. Moreover, Jackson (1998) indicates that ‘for some boys, academic achievement is associated with fears and anxieties about effeminacy’ and that this is linked to the values of ‘traditional macho cultures’ in schools and those subscribed to in the peer group (p. 90). This is supported by our research in the Australian context (see Lingard et al., 2002). For example, we found that ‘acting cool’ or being popular, even for some middle-class boys, involved an apparent rejection of school work and high achievement or appearing to be too studious. In other words, an important aspect of defining peer-group masculinity for many boys involved at worst a form of protest against

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the values and priorities of the school and at best some appearance management of how hard students actually worked. This is not just a phenomenon that is confined to working-class boys (see Willis, 1977). In fact, ‘acting cool’ and its association with boys’ public rejection of schooling, while maintaining a private commitment to study, needs to be understood as tied to broader issues of compulsory heterosexuality and homophobia, which function in quite specific ways to police ‘acceptable’ forms of masculinity (see Epstein et al., 1998; Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Jackson, 1998; Martino, 2000). This point is made explicitly by Debbie Epstein (1998) who claims that ‘the rejection of the perceived ‘feminine’ of academic work is simultaneously a defence against the ‘charge’ of being gay’ (p. 97). She adds that ‘ “resistance” to schooling is not only (or even mainly) about class, as Willis (1977) suggests, but is also deeply invested in compulsory heterosexuality’. However, she claims that as boys move into the final year of compulsory schooling, investing in academic work is reclaimed as a marker of dominant middle-class masculinity, which involves what Redman and Mac an Ghaill (1997) refer to as ‘muscular intellectualness’. Jackson (1998), however, does point out that there are classed dimensions to these social relations, with working-class boys feeling the need to assert their heterosexual masculinity in order to compensate for feelings of helplessness and powerlessness within a broader socio-economic context of failure (see also Burns and Bracey, 2001): In many boys’ lives at school, there is a dynamic interaction between their social/economic worlds of failure, dependency and powerlessness and their deep investments in dominant forms of heterosexual masculinities. Sensing some of the despair and pointlessness of the jobless men around them and the fragility of their own lives, they counter the ‘failure’ of their lives by reaching out to alternative sources of power and status. Dominant heterosexual masculinity is one of the most enticing sources of compensatory power. And that often means buying into a culture of aggressive, heterosexual manliness which deliberately rejects school learning as an unmanly activity (Jackson, 1998, p. 89). Socially, the effects of such performances of masculinity for ‘insecure boys who are very much aware of their vulnerability’, Jackson adds, is to ‘strive to display a hyper-masculine performance that will not only defend themselves from their fantasized “weakness” but also gain approval of the peer group’: To save their own skins, some boys, develop desperate longings to gain power and apparent invulnerability through peer group

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acceptance. Boys like that will often go to great lengths to prove to other boys that they are not ‘soft’ or ‘sissyish’. As a result, not working hard at school can be seen as a defensive strategy by some boys to distance themselves from an academic world that is perceived as dangerously ‘weak’ (Jackson, 1998, p. 89).

Willis’s study of working-class boys Willis’s (1977) study of working-class boys’ peer-group cultures at school also highlights the power dynamics between various boys. He presents working-class boys’ decisions to actively embrace manual labour as an act of resistance to the formal aims of schooling. These were perceived, he claims, to be driven by a form of Western capitalism resulting in the denigration and devaluing of certain forms of labour associated with working-class groups. He illustrated how working-class ‘lads’ defined their masculinity in opposition to authority as embodied in the formal academic aims and processes of schooling and provides many accounts of these boys’ resistance to education. For example, he presents their constant disruptive behaviour in class, as well as their derisive ‘laffs’, over-friendly hellos, coarse language and foot-dragging walks in the corridors as performances of an oppositional working-class masculinity. Willis illustrated how this resistance was further emphasized in the lads’ rejection and treatment of the school conformists who were referred to as the ‘ear’oles’. The latter, in their complicity with the institutionalized authority and support for formal education, became a major target of derision for the lads. Willis highlights, however, that the lads not only rejected the ‘ear’oles’, but felt superior to them (Willis, 1977, p. 14). This superiority was demonstrated in terms of having a ‘laff’, enjoying themselves and securing a form of independence. Such behaviours were distinguished from those of the ‘ear’oles’ who were prepared to sit in class and ‘sweat their bollocks off’ (p. 14). The ‘lads’ also considered themselves superior in terms of their sexual relationships with girls. Chatting up girls was perceived to be tied to ‘coming out of your shell’ and ‘losing your timidness’. This was conceived of as a rite of passage denied to the ‘ear’oles’, who were cast into feminized roles of passivity. Willis’s study, despite the fact that over 30 years have passed since it was conducted, is still significant in that it highlights the ways in which the boys’ need to assert their heterosexuality in peer-group situations, both as means by which to enforce their masculinity and as a

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response to a particular class dynamics in which they are positioned as inferior. His study highlights how schooling and a peer-group culture of masculinity need to be understood within the broader context of social and economic influences. This is particularly important in the current context of globalized market economies which have led to the depletion of factory floor labour and the proliferation of what is perceived to be the feminized service-sector labour market (see Haywood and Mac an Ghaill, 2001; Kenway and Kraack, 2004; Mac an Ghaill, 2000; McWilliam and Brannock, 2001). Lingard and Douglas (1999), for example, argue that in the contemporary globalized economic context, Willis’s lads probably learn now how not to labour, while their idleness has become a concern of contemporary social policy. In this sense, Willis’s study provided the groundwork for further examination of the role that the peer group plays in influencing boys’ attitudes, expectations, aspirations and behaviours with regard to their experiences of schooling and participation in the labour market. It was particularly significant in drawing attention to how working-class boys’ experiences of schooling involve the rejection and stigmatization of other boys on the basis of their race, perceived sexuality and attributions of effeminacy. More recent research on schooling masculinities, however, has tended to highlight how the post-industrialized context of globalized market economies and changing labour markets have impacted on boys’ social experiences of masculinity and how these in turn have impacted on boys’ behaviour, attitudes and aspirations at school (see Collins et al., 2000; Mac an Ghaill, 2000). The collection edited by Dolby et al. (2004), Learning to Labor in New Times, seeks to bring the Willis account up to date in a context of globalized economies and changed labour markets and in terms of the critiques offered of Willis’ work by feminist and critical race scholars.

Walker’s study of boys’ peer-group cultures Walker (1988), a decade after the Willis research, provides some significant insights into the impact of school and peer-group cultures on adolescent boys in an urban, working-class boys’ high school. He identified four friendship groups at one particular Australian school – ‘the footballers’, ‘the Greeks’, ‘the three friends’ and ‘the handballers’ – and documented how these boys’ social relationships impacted on their lives at school. More specifically, Walker’s study highlights the influence of sport, ethnicity and social class on how boys at a specific school defined their masculinities. His research identifies the specific effects of

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boys’ peer-group cultures and spells out what some of the influences might be that lead boys to behave in certain ways. A particular form of masculinity was valued by the boys at this school and this was manifested in the way that many of them strived for the admiration of their friends. In fact, for boys belonging to the ‘footballer’ group and the ‘Greeks’, sport was the touchstone for establishing and valuing a particular form of hegemonic masculinity. The ‘footballer’ group, according to Walker (1988), was considered to be the dominant peer group at the school in the sense that it set the ‘cultural agenda’ by which the ‘Greeks’, who were also considered powerful, could achieve the status of a ‘legend’ (p. 29). For instance, being a member of the ‘football’ group entailed valuing, celebrating and differentiating rugby from other sports such as Australian Rules and soccer. Also these boys, like the lads in Willis’ study, stigmatized those boys they considered inferior in masculine terms as ‘poofs’ and those in ethnic or racial terms as ‘wogs’, ‘chows’ or ‘coons’. However, Walker makes the point that such homophobic and racialized (and racist) name calling was not only confined to the ‘footballers’. They marked common ground on which a sex/gender system was established by many of the boys from disparate groups (see Connell, 1995; Davison, 2000; Jackson, 1998).

Mac an Ghaill’s ethnographic study Mac an Ghaill (1994), in his study of boys and masculinities in the UK, has also highlighted how a hierarchy of peer groups was established in a working-class school. He also draws attention to the role that a particular pecking order of masculinities played in its capacity to impact significantly on the social and educational outcomes of boys and girls at school. He categorizes groups of boys in terms of (i) Macho Lads (academic ‘failures’); (ii) Academic Achievers (academic ‘successes’); (iii) Working-Class New Enterprisers; and (iv) Middle-Class Real Englishmen. What is particularly noteworthy about Mac an Ghaill’s (1994) study is the knowledge he provides about the hierarchy of classed, raced and sexualized masculinities vis-à-vis boys’ peer-group cultures at one particular school in the UK. Overall, Mac an Ghaill’s study is important and useful in that it emphasizes the extent to which those boys, who step outside of the normative boundaries marked out for defining acceptable masculinity, are stigmatized and labelled as effeminate or ‘poofs’. In this sense, he draws attention to the impact of homophobia, misogyny and compulsory

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heterosexuality on boys’ social relationships with one another at school, while also addressing the racialized dimensions of heteronormativity (see also Davison and Frank, 2007; Frank, 1993; Froyum, 2007; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005; Plummer, 1999).

About the study and the school The particular study we report on in this chapter (Martino, 1998) involved talking with adolescent boys in a predominantly middle class, co-educational Catholic high school in a major Australian city. While the research was undertaken in a specific Australian context, it also speaks to existing research on masculinities and boys’ peer-group cultures conducted elsewhere. It provides further knowledge about the nature of hierarchies in boys’ lives and cautions against the all too familiar tendency to homogenize boys which, as we have already demonstrated in earlier chapters, is at the heart of many of the boys’ education reform strategies that have been advocated not only in Australia, but also in North America and the UK (see Francis, 2006; Froese-Germain, 2006; Martino and Kehler, 2006, 2007; Titus, 2004; Younger and Warrington 2005 for a critique of such policy initiatives). Twenty five boys, aged 14–15 years, were interviewed. The participants were told that the study was attempting to document their thoughts and opinions about school and their relations with their peers. Certain questions were used to prompt the boys to talk about their friends and friendship groups at school, which tended to elicit responses about the interplay and dynamics of masculinities in these boys’ lives: – Tell me about your group of friends at school. What are they like? What do you talk about? What do you do at lunch time and recess? – Can you talk about other friendship groups and what they are like, how you see them? How would you describe the way they behave? Give specific examples if you can. – Are certain groups or boys considered more popular than others? Can you explain? All of the participants in the study made some reference to the cool boys at this school and the impact these boys had on their lives. The cool boys, therefore, become the focus in this part of the chapter, given the extent to which they were named as having a significant impact on other students’ lives and relationships at the school. Moreover, boys from different friendship groups also made reference to the

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‘footballers’ on the playing field who were considered to wield considerable power, both physically and in terms of the cool status they had acquired at this particular school, given its emphasis on football as a means by which to build a particular school spirit or ethos. Key male teachers were also instrumental in highlighting the accomplishments of the school’s football team which attested to the particular power and status attached to being a certain sort of heterosexual male in this school community. Over 30 boys had gained membership of this ‘footballer’ group, with many of them representing the school in a State-wide football competition. Such a large number of boys congregating together in one particular location contributed significantly to their physical presence and visibility at the school. It is important to note that the large group also comprised subgroups each including approximately ten footballer boys whose presence could be felt as one moved through the school grounds. However, it was not just the size of the group that contributed to their power. In fact, many of the boys were not particularly well-built, nor had well-developed physiques. It was more about the particular performance of gender that they enacted (Butler, 1993), which enabled them to project a cool pose that exuded selfconfidence and ‘toughness’ simultaneously through conscious use of physicality to covey an impression of intimidatory defiance (see Majors, 1989). The celebration and exaltation of the footballers as champions by the principal, the physical education department and other male teachers, underscore the extent to which a particular culture of masculinity and male privilege were valourized in this school context. This was reflected in the status attributed to these boys and the public exposure they received. In fact, the school was known as the ‘football school’ and had a reputation in the wider community for producing outstanding football players. The school had won a state competition in Australian Rules Football for five years consecutively and assemblies were frequently held to acknowledge the success of the football team. Many of the students had, in fact, expressed irritation about the emphasis placed on football at the official level. Several boys from this school played for one of the local State football teams and had been drafted to the AFL (the national Australian Football League). In this school a definite culture of football was established and supported strongly by many of the parents. This emphasis on football needs to be acknowledged in light of many boys’ comments about its role and status in their lives at this particular school.

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The social dynamics of masculinities in peer-group situations Through interviewing the boys observed at this particular Catholic school and asking them about their friends, it was possible to document a specific dynamic of social relations between and within various groups of boys. By identifying themselves as members of a particular peer group, they indicated what it was like socially in terms of how they had learnt to relate to other boys. While there was considerable overlap across all peer groups in terms of how the boys discursively constructed their relationships with their peers, there was definitely a hierarchy established with the ‘footballers’ wielding the most power and those boys considered to be feminine or gay being accorded a subordinated status (see Connell, 1989; Epstein et al., 1998; Mills, 2001; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005; Pascoe, 2007). Many of the boys from other peer groups – for example, ‘basketballers’, the ‘try hard footballers’, ‘the loners’ and ‘the handballers’ – spoke at length about the abuse that ‘the footballers’ directed at them. They all commented on the size of the group which consisted of about 30 boys. However, it was also interesting to note that many of the ‘footballers’ themselves mentioned that they disapproved of the way that some of their friends acted or behaved, but did not openly express this criticism for fear of being rejected and put-down themselves. It is important to emphasize that knowledge about the interplay of masculinities in schools that is grounded in boys’ own perspectives of their relationships with their peers is central to informing our understanding about their lives and to moving beyond simplistic gender stereotypes (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003; Walker, 2004). Moreover, since, as Skelton (1996) argues, not all schools ‘operate within identical constraints’, this knowledge about the dynamics and politics of boys negotiating and enacting their masculinities in a specific school context, is pivotal pedagogically speaking in terms of developing an understanding of the conditions needed for creating safe classroom environments for all students.

Rejecting school and ‘mucking around’ in class Many boys tended to document the overt rebellious behaviour of the ‘footballers’ (see Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998). They highlighted the footballers’ rejection of the value of education which was embodied in both their overt disruptive behaviour in class and open derision of those boys

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considered to be studious or high achievers. Nathan, for instance, a ‘footballer’ himself and a high achiever, describes many of his friends as scorning the value of the education provided by the school. He talked about how some of the footballers hated school, never did any work and did not have any respect for teachers. School for these boys, according to Nathan, was a prison sentence: ‘They just see it as they have to stay there until Year 10, then just dropping out and getting some manual job where they don’t have to do much’. However, Nathan sees himself and several of his friends as investing in their education: But then I’ve got a couple of friends who are like me and they like the education that they’re getting and they want to use it. And then there’s other guys in between – they take the education and use it but they still really don’t see all it’s going to do for them in later life. But they are guys who are just sitting in between, you know, in General classes and that, who are passing, getting B’s which is still good, and they think that they’re doing sufficient, so they don’t have to try as hard ‘cause they’d rather be in an average than an extended class. At this particular school, students were streamed. The top ten percent of the Year 10 cohort were allocated to ‘Extended’ classes for high achievers and gifted students, with most other students studying ‘General’ courses in each of the core learning areas. There was also a small class for those students who experienced learning difficulties or who were very low achievers. What Nathan draws attention to here is the particular ‘don’t give a damn attitude’ about school work, which enables him to enact a form of protest masculinity. Many of his friends rejected mental labour and its rewards (see Willis, 1977). What is highlighted, however, is that these boys’ rejection of school and its rewards, which enables them to establish the ‘cool’ demeanour of a rebel in enacting a particular currency of masculinity not dissimilar to Willis’s ‘lads’, cannot be tied to a working-class location. Rather, such practices appear to be linked, in complex ways, to a peer-group social dynamics in which the imperative to ‘act cool’ is related to investing in a particular heterosexualized masculinity. Moreover, being a skilled footballer player appeared to play a major role in helping these boys to establish a desirable masculinity, which is differentiated from the demeanour of the stereotyped ‘high achiever’, who is committed to his studies. The role of sport in these boys’ lives is important in drawing attention to the norms governing how boys learn to socialize with their male counterparts. There are certain requirements that boys clearly need to

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meet in order to gain acceptance from their peers. Failing or refusing to meet these requirements, understood in terms of being ‘socially bright’ – knowing how to relate and to socialize with other boys – may result in being derided, demeaned or ostracized. Nathan, however, points out that not all boys in the footballer group necessarily reject the value of education. Some footballers, like him, see its value and want to use it to further their own interests and participation in the labour market through gaining access to higher education. In this sense, these boys’ particular class capital is significant in terms of how they are able to ‘act cool’ in front of their peers, while still maintaining a commitment to their studies. Other boys from within the footballer group also referred to a collective sense of not wanting to be identified as hard-working students. Pete, for example, indicated that his close friends within the larger footballer group were not trying as hard as they should. He attributed this to the need to ‘act cool’ and to avoid looking ‘geekish’. I think most of them don’t try ‘cause it’s not seen to be ‘cool’ to try. Nic – he doesn’t really try that much. He just sits around and does whatever. But he’s good, he’s funny. He doesn’t go out lots and John, he’s probably got a bit of brains too, but he doesn’t use them much. They just don’t want to be seen as working real hard, trying, listening and that. Pete highlights the compulsion for many boys to demonstrate what Majors (1989) terms ‘a cool pose’. This is demonstrated or performed through acts of disrupting classes which enables these boys to acquire the desirable status of rebels or tough cool guys. For example, Miles talks about establishing a ‘cool pose’ in English class, but differentiates between the way members of his peer group and other boys in that class behave in terms of ‘mucking around’. He claims that most of his friends have a more laid-back approach to their studies but that they still get their work done. They muck around in class, but they never go too far. They know where to draw the line. When they go too far they ‘get pulled back in line’. Miles suggests that mucking around in class is a way to act cool in front of his male friends, but there is a limit and a line which he draws. He never goes too far because he still wants to do well in his studies. The influence of his family background is clearly a factor here. Both his parents are professionals and he lives in an affluent neighbourhood and his brother is already attending university. Thus the sort of rebel

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status he negotiates is framed within the context of his social-class location as a white middle-class boy. He mucks around in class, but is aware of how far he is able to push the limits without risking being severely hboxreprimanded by the teachers. Miles is able to negotiate his cool status with his peers, while still maintaining a commitment to his studies. In other words, he is never too disruptive to warrant being severely reprimanded in class. Miles distinguishes his group and their behaviour in class from that of other boys, such as Chris and Matt, who were referred to as the ‘basketballers’ at school. Many of the peer groups at this school appeared to be identified in terms of the sport with which they identified or played during the break. While the footballers monopolized much of the public space on the sports field, the ‘basketballers’ tended to congregate on the basketball courts. The boys tended to physically mark out a space in the school grounds through their physical and active engagement in particular sport-related social activities such as football or basketball. For Miles, the ‘basketballers’ were ‘try-hards’. They never quite measured up to the footballers’ standards and this was also reflected in how they misbehaved in class. According to Miles, boys like Chris and Matt tried hard to make other people notice them in class by ‘mucking around’ and trying to ‘act funny’. When these boys act in rebellious ways, they are perceived to be ‘making fools of themselves’. However, when Miles and his friends muck around and put each other down, it is considered ‘cool’ and interpreted as fun. Nathan, however, reiterates how identification as a ‘try-hard’ or ‘loser’, as well as its attribution, shifts depending on one’s allegiance to a particular peer group: You get the group that thinks they’re the best and then there’s a certain group they think are ‘losers’ . . . they’d class some people as ‘losers’ and some people as being all right. Then you get the ‘loser ‘groups who would think, ‘Oh those big guys they think they’re good’ – they reckon they’re ‘losers’. So it’s really like just who your friends are ‘cause you might think if one person’s a loser you might influence your friends to think they’re ‘losers’ and then the group who are thought of as ‘losers’ think that group’s alright, so, it’s like everyone thinks of each other in certain ways. This is supported by Bret, one of the ‘basketballers’, who rejected the way Miles, and other ‘footballers’, acted in class. He thinks of the ‘footballers’ as ‘idiots’, who just talk in class ‘for the sake of it’ because they

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think mucking around is cool. Bret actually identified Miles specifically as one of the culprits and claims that he should not muck around, especially given that he achieves quite well: ‘He doesn’t need to muck around and act ‘cool’ and all that’. However, Bret seems to understand that Miles engages in this sort of behaviour to gain approval from other boys in his friendship group. He even suggests that acting cool for Miles is perhaps a means by which to mask the fact that he is a capable student who achieves well at school. Bret also talks about how the ‘footballers’ target those students who work, particularly the quiet boys who are referred to in derogatory terms as ‘loners’. These boys are treated badly at school and often ridiculed by the footballers: ‘the group that thinks it’s cool to muck around’. They are called ‘squares’, perceived to be socially inept and are considered to be un-masculine. In fact, Bret indicates that these boys are aligned more with the girls in the eyes of the footballers because of their commitment to working hard and behaving in class. ‘They’re not as childish as us. They’re a bit more mature’. As consequence, they are often targeted by the footballers and become the source for their derisive humour. However, according to Bret, the footballers do not actively seek out these boys to ridicule: They wouldn’t go out of their way to call those boys names, but if they see those boys by themselves or in the library or going to class early or something, they might call them a square and make fun of them. And if they find out someone’s got really good marks or if they’re in the area and they overhear they got a good mark, they might just call them square. Thus, the ‘footballers’ differentiate themselves from those boys who do not play football or who choose to work hard in class or who go to the library at lunch time to complete an assignment. This identification is enacted verbally through the use of derisive labels such as ‘square’ to police the boundaries of what it means to be ‘cool’, which is inextricably linked to the footballer’s expression of a particular masculinity. It is also important to note that other boys, such as Bret, while not involved in publicly differentiating themselves from those conformist boys, are also quite conscious of the differential status that is attributed to the latter. This leads them to maintain a certain degree of social distance from these boys for fear of association and the contamination that this would have vis-à-vis their own status in the peer-group hierarchy. Many of the boys were thus quite conscious of the effects of the surveillance of their

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peers and appeared to be more concerned about the gaze of other boys than that of girls in terms of its capacity to determine one’s status and position in this hierarchy (see Martino, 2000).

Hierarchical masculinities All the boys interviewed mentioned the ‘footballer group’ as distinctive in terms of their status and particular style of masculinity. The cultural ascendancy of the footballers emerged here as a key aspect to the gender dynamics at play in this school in terms of highlighting the importance of sport as a defining characteristic of establishing one’s position and status within a hierarchy of peer-group relationships (see also Walker, 1988). A quiet boy, Brian, who was a member of another distinctive peer group, for example, identifies the ‘footballers’ as rebels who are ‘more responsive to violence’: ‘They enjoy violence more’, he says and adds, ‘It’s just the way they behave and what they do in class; they’re loud, they talk up and they kind of stuff around and mess about in class.’ He links this sort of mucking around in class to a manifestation of violence, which perhaps highlights the extent to which their challenge to institutionalized authority constitutes an act of intimidation that is also associated with the way they respond to other boys who are considered to be inferior or less ‘cool’ (see Martino and PallottaChiarolli, 2003, 2005). For example, Brian mentions a boy, Ryan, who chooses to associate only with a small group of girls and distinguishes this peer group in terms of their dislike for violence. He characterizes this group as being more into ‘soapies’ and in terms of how they behave. Thus, he distinguishes this group and Ryan, in particular, as occupying a position at the opposite end of the peer-group spectrum in terms of their avoidance of any intimidatory acts of violence. They are the quiet conformists who are publicly committed to high achievement. However, Ryan’s masculinity, in his close association with these girls and in his avoidance of socializing with other boys, is seriously questioned by many of the students at this school. This highlights the broader context of the heteronormative policing of masculinity and its manifestation in terms of enforcing a culture of gender conformity and peer-group hierarchical socialization. In short, failure to be a certain sort of boy and, hence, to act or behave in a certain way potentially carries with it homophobic and misogynist sanctions that are enforced by the dominant peer group (see Dorais, 2004; Pascoe, 2007). This kind of dynamic of social differentiation is also highlighted by Nathan when he mentions the ‘handballers’:

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You’ve got the popular group, you’ve got the groups that play football, you’ve got the basketball groups, the groups you know that hang around, play kingpin. And like there’s either groups that go to the library and then there’s just groups that just sit around and talk in different areas around the school and then they all hang around together and they do stuff on the weekend. Nathan highlights the differentiation amongst certain groups of boys. What is interesting is that certain activities such as football and handball are associated with particular expressions of masculinity or, rather, form the basis upon which certain attributions of legitimate masculinity are made (see Dorais, 2004; Kimmel, 2001; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005; McCreedy, 2004; Pascoe, 2005; Vaught, 2004). This is further highlighted when Nathan explains the significance of playing handball as a stigmatized practice. It is a game that is played with a tennis ball and there is a group of high-achieving boys who often ‘hang around together’, who are identified with this game. Nathan indicates that these boys are thought of as the ‘loser group’ and not really considered to be socially acceptable. He also highlights that playing ‘kingpin’ is set against the tougher sport of football, which further contributes to its questionable and, hence, feminized status. This stigmatization was attributed to both the sort of hand-wrist action involved in hitting the ball and also to the fact that many girls joined with the boys in playing this game. It was not a strictly homosocial activity. However, as will be further illustrated, hierarchies not only existed between various peer groups, but also operated within each designated peer group.

Racist and bullying practices The dynamics of ‘acting cool’ also impacted on subordinated boys in terms of the hierarchies that were established within their own peer groups. Brian, for example, was a member of a small group of four boys who were considered to be loners. They would ‘hang out’ at the other end of the sports field and just stand and talk. These boys were conscious of their subordinated status and position towards the lower end of the peer-group pecking order. They literally occupied a space on the fringe of the sports field and reiterated that not anyone could just join in and play football with the ‘footballers’. Brian saw Jamie and Terrence as the rebels in his group because of their tendency to pick on younger boys whom they considered to be inferior or easy targets. He recalled an

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incident earlier in the year where Jamie, aged 15, got into a fight with a South Asian boy in Year 9, aged 13: He was fighting with a Year 9. He was calling him ‘nigger, nigger’ . . . He’s just racist. Both Jamie and Terrence like picking on people. While this group appears to occupy a subordinated status in the hierarchy of masculinities established within this particular school, boys like Jamie and Terrence engage in racist practices, which involve targeting younger boys as a means by which to bolster their masculinity and hence, acting ‘cool’ in the eyes of their friends. This incident highlights the racialized dimensions of peer-group hierarchies, where both gender and age factor into how these subordinated boys learn to relate or express their masculinity to reclaim some form of dominance over other boys positioned lower down the social hierarchy. This situation is not unlike that involving three Bengali boys in Reay’s (2001) study, who were positioned at the bottom of the male peer-group hierarchy at an inner-city primary school in London. These three boys were positioned as subordinate to both the white boys and the African Caribbean boys, who were more concerned with football than academic achievement. The Bengali boys were often excluded from football matches because they were not considered to be skilful enough. In order to compensate for their inferiorized positioning within this male peer-group hierarchy, Reay recounts how the Bengali boys would harass the three middle-class girls identified as ‘the nice girls’ in her study. These girls were subjected to frequent taunting and were positioned as a contaminating presence. This involved labelling the girls as stupid and dumb and was often executed to gain some approval or acceptance from their dominant male peers (p. 157). This highlights the extent to which race, gender and regimes of heterosexuality form an axis along which peer-group relations intersect and are negotiated by individual boys. The significance of such a racialized dynamic is further highlighted from within the footballer group at the particular school reported on in this chapter. In short, not all boys within the footballer group had equal status and this became evident though the sort of humour and banter that was often used to put particular boys down in the group. While such humour was often dismissed as merely having fun, the racism and homophobia involved in such banter highlighted the extent to which the boys’ masculinities were both heterosexualized and racialized. For example, many of the ‘footballers’ would refer to one of their ‘mates’ as

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‘boonga’. This is an extremely racist term used in the Australian context to refer disparagingly to Indigenous or First Nations’ people. But, as Glen below pointed out, this racist label was deployed in humour and took the form of a ‘piss taking’ practice which appeared to help the boys establish a particular form of male bonding (see Kehily and Nayak, 1997; Mills, 2001): Glen: There’s one guy, he’s not actually hassled, they just call him a name ‘boonga’. He’s not Aboriginal, but he sort of looks like one so they call him ‘boonga’ or ‘coon’ or whatever, but he can take it . . . he’s not ‘Abo’ or anything, Aboriginal. We just call him ‘boonga’ instead of calling him his normal name. Wayne: How does he react when you call him that? Glen: He just smiles, but when it gets on his nerves he might punch you in the arm or whatever. It is important to note the differential ways in which racism is being deployed within two different peer groups at this school. In the ‘footballer’ group many boys engaged in racist banter to establish a mode of male bonding, whereas in Brian’s group racism functioned apparently as a means by which two of the boys could establish a rebel masculinity in the eyes of their friends. However, both cases highlighted the extent to which hegemonic masculinities are tied to regimes of white male privilege that are built on a denigration and inferiorization of the racialized other (see Martino, 2003; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005). What is interesting is that Raymond, who is also a member of one of the subordinated male peer groups, talks at length about the ‘footballers’ in disparaging terms and refers to the above-mentioned practice of racist labelling among the footballers. He refers to the footballers as ‘real idiots’ and reflects on his own peer-group dynamic: There’s about five of us and Scott and I are the popular ones in our group. Adam, I like him, he’s a nice guy – he’s interested in ‘Star Trek’ and that sort of thing. I like that as well. The other three Mark and Colin, they were like friends in Year 8 and they were never popular and there’s Tom, he was never popular. Tom’s really quiet. I just like him because he’s just there, he’s always quiet he didn’t talk at all so we were going to reject him but we didn’t.

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Here Raymond highlights the vulnerability of peer-group relations and the tenuousness involved in securing acceptance from other boys. This particular group of boys found solidarity in their marginalized status. They developed strategies for dealing with oppression by using humour to build internal group solidarity. In this way, they make fun of the footballers within their own group. They even call them the ‘footy kickers’. They also parody them as a source of entertainment during lunch break, but the footballers have no idea that they are doing this. We sort of laugh at the footballers. We find the funny side of them, like we tease them within our group and say they’re the footy kickers. We hang around outside the Metal Work rooms and like the tree there, we climbed up that a couple of times (laughs). But the teachers don’t like that. Most teachers just tell us to get down. We also kick the footy and say, ‘Oh ‘boonga”. There’s this guy they call ‘boonga’. They call one of their friends that. His name’s Mark, he’s got darker skin. Everyone calls him that. He doesn’t really care, I don’t think. They do it probably just like to tease him, you know, “Kick the footy boonga” and that sort of thing. What is interesting is that initially Raymond commented on his own positioning within his peer group. He referred to Scot and himself as ‘the popular ones’ and then proceeded to discuss how all the other boys in his group ‘were never popular’. The order in which Raymond mentioned the boys would appear to signal a descending hierarchy of positions within the peer group, with the latter and Scot at the top of this micro social order. Just as Jamie and Terrence were able to establish their position within a hierarchy through teasing other boys, it would appear that both Raymond and Scott achieved a similar status at the top of a pecking order, albeit a different and less abusive one. They achieved this through capacities to orchestrate parodying practices as a means of dealing with the ‘footballers’, who themselves targeted these boys as ‘losers’ and ‘faggots’. Moreover, what is also interesting is that these boys also engage in acts of defying institutional authority by climbing the tree as means by which to enact a form of protest masculinity (see Willis, 1977). This is indicated when Raymond laughed in making reference to teachers disapproving of this practice.

‘Its’ all a bit of a mess really!’ While Raymond highlights the racialized dimensions of the footballers’ expression of white hegemonic masculinity, Scott, however, draws

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attention to the heteronormative and homophobic aspects of their bullying behaviour. When he first came to the school he tried to gain acceptance from the boys in the footballer group, but claims that he had always felt like an outsider: I’m sort of the outsider kid. I’d get pushed around by all the different groups and end up with a few friends who sort of tag along ‘cause you have to have these friends and if you don’t everyone is going to call you names. You’ve got to have somewhere to go. It’s the same at this school. If you sit with one person no one says anything, but if you sit and read a book and someone sees you they start making fun of you and it’s really strange and they want to hassle you and stuff. Scott reiterates how certain boys are targeted as ‘outsiders’. Those boys who do not fit the dominant heterosexual model of masculinity are harassed. For example, Scott draws attention to how even a boy who chooses to read a book at school can become targeted by other boys. For Scott, it is about being a certain sort of boy and having a particular disposition and skill set in terms of how one relates to other boys. This leads him to elaborate on how the ‘footballers’ relate to one another: To be in the in group you have to be hassling someone else and they’re all hassling each other. There are quite a few groups like that at this school but the football playing surfie sort of guys, they’re one big group . . . I mean it was always someone’s the brunt of all the crap for one day and then it’s someone else the next day. And you know they have their kids that tag along and they’re not liked that much – I was probably one of those kids. I used to get it every now and then. It’s a pretty big group. I think a lot of people hang around there sort of trying not to be noticed by the sort of more bullying people. But there are sub-groups and when I was trying to fit into them their fun part of it would be trying to hassle other people and sort of, yeah, dehumanise them and just keep hassling them. Scott emphasizes the role of harassment enacted by the footballers through a system of verbal abuse and ‘put-downs’ as an accepted mode of relating for these boys. He even suggests that some boys choose to be a part of this group to avoid being bullied. Finally, he made a decision to leave the footballer group because he was unable to engage in such banter and harassment and was picked on as a consequence. He felt that the footballers saw him as weak and he feels a considerable degree of pity

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for them in terms of the sorts of relationships that they develop with other boys: I never felt like I fitted into those groups. I don’t feel like I want to go back there or anything. It’s just sort of pointless. But at the same time, I feel sorry for them a bit. I mean their relationship with other people is a bit of a mess really. They just sort of get by hassling everybody and just having a few people they turn to and get them to laugh at the other people and it’s all a bit of a mess really. Scott also commented at length on the preponderance of homophobia as both an identity making strategy and as a means by which to police the boundaries of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity (Frank, 1987; Froyum, 2007; Martino, 2000). For example, he talked about how the footballers would just walk by and hassle other boys by referring to them as ‘being really gay’: ‘I mean it always gets back to gay with all these guys, it’s sort of like the big insult’. Scott mentioned one boy, Ryan, who right from the beginning of high school was targeted as ‘definitely a poofter’. Ryan was considered to be gay because of the way he talked. He also had many friends who were girls and tended not to socialize as much with boys at school. Scott highlights the extent to which sexuality or as Pascoe (2005, p. 330) terms it, ‘the fag discourse’, is deployed by the ‘footballers’ as a definitive index of subjectivity, when he claims that ‘it always gets back to gay with all these guys’ (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005). He also highlights that sexuality should not be the basis for the way that people relate to or classify one another. However, his reference to the homophobic harassment directed at Ryan emphasizes the extent to which certain boys are placed under surveillance on the basis of an imputed homosexuality that is revealed by the way that they enact, embody or perform their masculinities. As Pascoe (2005) points out, it is this relationship between homophobia and masculinity that requires greater attention. For example, she highlights that the ‘fag discourse’ and the ways in which adolescent boys use it ‘has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess and strength or an anyway revealing weakness or femininity, as it does with a sexual identity’ (p. 330) (see also Martino, 2000). While this is quite an insightful observation, it is important not to downplay the extent to which the ‘fag discourse’ can still function as a means by which those boys who are clearly identifiable as gay or identify as gay can become the target for deliberate and calculated violence.

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In fact, the hegemonic boys at one school in Martino and PallottaChiarolli’s (2005) study talked about how they were able to ‘sniff out’ those boys who were gay, with all the violence of asserting their heterosexuality that the use of this language implied. Scott also observed that the boy who was targeted for homophobic harassment himself displayed homophobic attitudes: ‘What surprises me when you talk to him is that he’s actually really homophobic himself’. This boy’s internalized homophobia needs to be understood in relation to broader social systems of self-surveillance and normalization in which hegemonic heterosexual masculinity is institutionalized and validated (see Letts and Sears, 1999; Steinberg et al., 1997). Other ‘footballers’ also provided commentaries on such abusive ways of relating – ‘from the inside’ – which support the account provided above by Scott as a targeted ‘outsider’. For instance, Aaron drew attention to what he termed ‘emotional bullying’ – perpetrated by this group – to police certain boundaries in which only particular boys are able to acquire the privileged status of a desirable masculinity: Aaron: What I see is there’s not a lot of physical bullying in this school, but there’s a lot of emotional bullying. This guy, you know Matt [high achiever], he used to come down to the oval and kick the footy or whatever, and people used to throw dirt at him and constantly keep throwing dirt at him and calling him names and whatever, just until he went away. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand why they’d do it. He hadn’t done anything to them. He’d just sort of come down and kicked the footy like everyone else. He didn’t have a lot of friends at that time and was sort of a loner I suppose, so people just thought he was a ‘loser’. It wasn’t all of them, probably only about four or five or six. The others were sort of standing back laughing though. They weren’t actually a part of it. I think it just happens when people are sort of lonely, I suppose, they’ve got no friends, they think they’re a bit weird I suppose, they’re a bit different. I can’t think of any other reason why they would do it. They’re harmless, they just try to get down there and just try and make friends. They just have a kick of the footy and sort of socialize with everyone else to be accepted by that group down there. Thus, it would appear that football plays a significant role in the hierarchy of masculinities that was established in this particular middle-class school. The links that Aaron draws between playing football and boys socializing with one another are important because they highlight one

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of the significant ways in which boys learn to relate to one another through using their bodies to perform and to enact a particular heterosexual masculinity (see Epstein et al., 1998; Froyum, 2007; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003). What needs to be highlighted is that merely playing football does not necessarily guarantee a high-status masculinity. There are both social and cultural forms of capital that are required, such as knowing how to relate to other boys and to socialize with them in particular ways (see Kehler and Martino, 2007). Aaron also indicated his disapproval of the abusive practices that are directed at those boys who are ‘sort of lonely’ and who try to gain acceptance from the ‘footballers’. He struggled to try to understand what motivated the latter to degrade and humiliate other boys whom he classified as ‘harmless’. The references he makes to Matt in these terms are significant in that they highlight the extent of his empathy for those boys who are unjustly treated and unnecessarily humiliated by the ‘footballers’. A number of the boys emphasized the role of playing football in learning to act ‘cool’ and gain acceptance from their male peers. Being skilled at football, it seems, can lead to acquiring a particular status and popularity. This is highlighted by Nathan when he was asked what would lead to a boy being rejected from a particular peer group: Well, say there was a group of guys that played a lot of sport and that or hang around together and the person comes from overseas to a new school and sits at lunchtime and reads on his own and doesn’t play much sport. He’s gonna get hassled by the guys that play sport. They’ll want him to come out at the start and play sport, but he’d rather read or like be on his own or whatever and then so they think, ‘Oh, we don’t need him and he can sit there and have his book the whole time’ and you know how people talk about others and people will get influenced by that and that person will just be rejected. Nathan’s reference to the person from ‘overseas’ may well be read as another instance of a subtle form of racism, which is implicated in the everyday practices of these Anglo-Australian boys, as already indicated earlier. It is also interesting to draw attention to the way in which football, as a desirable masculinizing and heterosexualizing practice, is set against other activities such as reading (see Alloway et al., 2002; Martino, 1994; Millard, 1997; Porche et al., 2004). In this sense, Nathan emphasizes that playing football and demonstrating an apparent propensity for this kind of sport are prerequisites for being accepted by the ‘cool’ boys. However, as Raymond also points out below, not all skilled football

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players necessarily maintain their status in this group. Steve, the captain of the school football team was rejected by the ‘footballers’: There’s a couple of guys in that group [’footballers’] that I talk to in class sometimes. But a lot of them think they’re good. They’ll start teasing and are interested in like body boarding and that sort of thing. I hate going to the beach and so I sort of find them a bit annoying. But there’s that other group of guys [‘try hard footballers’], Steve’s group. He was rejected heavily by the footballer group. He’s like the best footballer, maybe Joel is better, I suppose, but he’s like one of the really good footballers, captain of the team, and he got heavily rejected because he’s really up himself. He thinks he’s really good and all the girls like him. There’s one girl who used to like him and then she found out he’s really up himself but she still liked him. So it would appear that a particular demeanour, defined in terms of being ‘really up yourself’ or ‘big headed’, constitutes on this occasion and in this social context, the basis for disenfranchising one boy’s status within the peer group. In fact, Steve, who was formerly a member of the ‘footballer’ clan when he first came to the school in Year 8, talked about how he was picked on ‘by the group down on the oval’. Eventually he left and found a new group of friends, where he did not have to worry about ‘acting a certain way’. You had to act like the way they wanted you . . . like they’d pick on someone, you had to do that and I didn’t like that so I left them. Like if someone beat them at something, they’d pick on them because they didn’t like being beaten. They’d call them names and all that shit. You know names like ‘cockheads’, ‘dickheads’, all the common names. Steve draws attention to the way the ‘footballers’ relate to one another and, since he has been the brunt of their abusive behaviour, he readily rejects these boys and joined another group where ‘you can just be yourself’. He also elaborated on the sex-based harassment directed at other boys perpetrated by certain members of the ‘footballer’ group and provided a brief overview of the way he saw other friendship groups at the school: We don’t hassle other people or do anything like that. There’s three groups – there’s sort of Smith and his mates – all their group that

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hangs around the oval. And then there’s ours. And a group that hangs around the basketball court. And then there’s another group which Smith’s group thinks are all ‘faggots’ – Murray, Rob Murray, Friedman, Ryan – because they hang around with girls. They’ll sit around with girls and everything, whereas Smith and all that, they’d sit around just boys and then the girls would be off somewhere else, so they used to think these guys had a bit of feminine side to ‘em, so they’d tell them they’re ‘poofters’ or something like that. Steve further elaborates on Ryan’s ‘sort of a ‘poofter’ voice which everyone picks up and gives him shit about’. He also talked about the rumour about Freidman that was going around: ‘He left X school because he got caught wanking himself or something like that . . . so everyone labelled him as a faggot.’ Steve raises crucial questions about the need for boys to socialize with other boys and draws attention to the intensity of the policing and surveillance of masculinities, where the contamination of girls and hence the feminine is omnipresent. It is also important to note that while he perceives Ryan and Friedman to be part of the same peer group, this is not the case. Ryan has a small group of friends who are all girls, but Steve places him in the same group as the ‘handballers’, those boys who are distinguished as ‘non-footballers’ and who also sometimes sit and talk to girls during the break. Perhaps this is beside the point because Ryan and other boys who form part of the ‘handballer’ group are targeted by the ‘footballers’ on the basis of their assumed homosexuality and hence association with the feminine. As Pascoe (2005, p. 333) points out, ‘the fag discourse is the interactional process through which boys name and repudiate this abjected identity’. These two boys are differentiated by the ‘footballers’ on a number of counts, but primarily in terms of their engagement in handball and their association with girls as friends. This leads them to be viewed as ‘having a bit of a feminine side to them’ and forms the basis for attributions of homosexuality. Moreover, Ryan is considered to have a ‘poofy voice’ and Friedman also has a reputation from a previous school because he ‘got caught wanking himself’. What this voice-centred research draws attention to is the regime of homophobic practices and strategies of surveillance that these boys use to police sex/gender boundaries (Steinberg et al., 1997). In this sense, it is a gendered form of homophobia that is central to how adolescent masculinity at this school is constituted, as is also exemplified by Pascoe (2005) in her school-based research.

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‘Squares’ and ‘party animals’ Another ‘footballer’, Josh, who was also one of the most popular members of the group highlighted the necessity of embracing a desirable form of heterosexual masculinity as prerequisite for acting cool. He referred to his group as being ‘laid back and just easy going’, a demeanour which he distinguished from that established by the ‘handballers’ who he labelled as ‘geeks’: We’re different just in the way we act sort of, like we’re more laid back and just easy going, we’re more easy going type of people whereas a lot of other people I dunno they’re just ‘geeks’. Like those guys who play handball and real childish games like that are geeks. You know handball they just hit the ball around with their hands and shit, just like four square. Have you heard of four square – it’s a bit childish. I just think they’re a bit behind, just not socially bright sort of. It doesn’t mean you’re not academic, you know? Josh sees the ‘handballers’ as socially inept because they do not engage in activities which enable them to establish a publicly validated heterosexual masculinity. Their engagement in activities such as handball leads him to see them as not ‘socially bright’ and, hence, as not being able to relate to other boys in ways which confer a high-status masculinity. Renold (2003) refers to such performances as masculinity confirming practices. In this sense, Josh foregrounds the sort of social and cultural capitals, and hence, the sort of skills required to demonstrate appropriate or acceptable masculinity in the eyes of one’s peers. For example, while Josh appears to be uncomfortable with using the word ‘geek’ to characterize the ‘handballers’, perhaps because he does not want to be seen as criticizing them, he seems to be arguing that being academic is not incompatible with acting cool and thus socially validated forms of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity. This is illustrated by both Nathan and Adam, ‘footballers’, who talked about balancing the social and academic aspects of their lives at school in terms of negotiating their position within the peer-group hierarchy. It is because they are ‘socially bright’ and have the credentials that they are still able to acquire a high-status masculinity, despite their commitment to high academic achievement. Their involvement in social activities and practices such as football and surfing, as well as their understanding of the requirements for relating with their peers outside of school, enabled them to escape being labelled ‘geeks’.

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Nathan, like Scott, draws attention to how those boys who perform well at school or read are feminized or labelled in pejorative ways. In doing so, he illuminates a particular facet of the ‘cool’ demeanour which is a recognizable aspect of a publicly validated herterosexualized masculinity. He talks about how a lot of guys do not like reading and in his view are not as good at English as girls. He believes that this is because many boys might not consider it to be ‘masculine to read books’. He attributes this to the way that ‘you’re brought up’. I’m saying that it’s like a stereotype, you know, girls read more and they don’t go out and play sport and, well they do, but it’s just like the way most of them have been brought up, like they do a lot of work, do a lot of reading, so they’re normally the ones who do better at school and get to the top classes. The guys do too, but you know like they’re afraid to . . . I know a lot of friends who are really smart, but they don’t want to try because they think they’ll get called names and stuff for trying hard, doing extra work and that like ‘squares’ . . . and ‘suckers’ but most of the time you just ignore it. Nathan attributed these gender differences to ‘a lot of stereotyping’; he believes that there is an expectation for ‘guys’ to be big and strong, while girls on the other hand are supposed to be ‘really smart, weak’. As a consequence of these social pressures to conform to such expectations, he claims that ‘most guys don’t want to sit around a desk and do work’ – they would rather be out playing sport or watching TV and are not as concerned about their education. Nathan does believe that while some girls might have the same attitude, many others are much more concerned about investing in their future careers. The majority of girls, he states, ‘think about the consequences in life’ and are more conscious of ‘what they do now’ and how ‘it is going to reflect and lead to what they’re going to do when they’re older’. They are more committed to doing well now so that they can ‘get a good job, have a good life, get a lot of money and have a family’, whereas, in his view, ‘a lot of guys don’t really see it the same way’. According to Nathan, ‘they think they can just get through school on the borderline and just get a job as a brickie (construction worker) or something’. The reasoning behind this, he adds, relates to their belief that they can do this sort of job and still get paid well, without having to invest in education. What Nathan draws attention to here is how acting cool is connected to embracing a certain sort of masculinity or demeanour which is enacted through a rejection of academic achievement and reading.

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These sort of boys would rather play sport or watch TV than ‘sit around at a desk’ and study. Moreover, it would appear that these boys are enacting a particular differentiated form of masculinity involving the manual/mental division of labour of which Willis (1977) speaks. It is through a practice of labelling as ‘geeks’ those boys who achieve or who are avid readers, that the ‘footballers’ and the ‘surfies’ are able to establish a ‘cool’ demeanour. Nathan points to a different peer-group culture operating for girls around their commitment to achievement and schooling. As Francis (2000) argues, however, in relation to addressing questions of gendered classroom culture, girls also resist the school system in various ways, but are not as overt or noticeable in their attempts to do so. In addition, she claims that girls’ higher levels of motivation and achievement in secondary schools could be attributed to ‘a feeling that they have to do better than boys in order to compete with them on even terms in the workplace’ (p. 85). Nathan indicates that boys his age feel compelled to live up to a particular standard in which sport functions as an indicator of desirable masculinity. This is consistent with the publicly validated forms of masculinity that are legitimated in the school culture and community, where a disproportionate amount of attention is focused on celebrating football. For example, he talks about boys ‘having to live up to a certain standard’ and how ‘they’d rather be out doing sport than doing education’. They would rather have ‘heaps of friends’ and devote their time and energy to playing football because ‘they don’t think it’s like ‘cool’ and macho to do homework and to go to the library when you’ve got an assignment’. He is emphatic that ‘you have to live up to a standard and if you don’t make it you get put down’. This highlights the extent to which protest masculinity is class inflected and functions as an important aspect of acting cool. However, while many of these middle-class boys might not be investing in high academic achievement, they are still achieving and have the class capital to ensure successful entry into the post-school labour market. Nathan, for example, as a high achiever, has been able to successfully negotiate a position of acceptance within this group without compromising his academic performance: I play a lot of sport I fit into the real sporting group and I surf. If you surf you’re quite ‘cool’ which a lot of people think that so they try and take it up and then you get more friends by people trying to do what you do. But I’ve got another friend who plays football, surfs and they’re really smart – we get on really well – and I also hang around

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with people who have similar interests even though they don’t care anything about education. So we’re still linked – it’s mainly because of sport that we’ve all hung around together. We’re all linked by that as our basis, but a couple of them all they do is play sport . . . and then a couple of us actually commit ourselves to schoolwork – we can find time for both so we balance out as being in the accepted group by the way we are and the sport we play even though we do spend more time than others doing work. Nathan highlights the crucial role of sport in terms of the way he has learnt to relate to his peers. He highlights that it is a combination of ‘playing footy’ and being ‘socially bright’ which permits him to avoid the label of ‘geek’ and, hence, to gain the acceptance of the ‘footballers’ despite his academic achievement at school. Moreover, he is careful not to draw attention to his investment in school, which is camouflaged by his involvement in desirable masculinity confirming practices such as surfing and football. Adam also talks about the role of football and socializing as important factors in his involvement in and acceptance by the group: Like we all, most of us, just about all of us, play footy and most of us for the same team and so that sort of bonds us together a bit and we also see a fair bit of each other outside of school. The role of sport as a ‘credential’ which confers social acceptance and as a means of socializing is further stressed in the following comment: Sport is something that all guys can sort of get into, whether it be footy or cricket or basketball or whatever, you know. I think society sees it as something that males can do and males are good at . . . That’s what everyone sort of perceives to be the case and so I think boys in general are not pushed so much but are expected to be involved in these sort of sports and also I think that it’s a good relief sort of sometimes for guys just because they can go down and be with all their mates and have a good time. So it can be very important I think. Here Adam draws attention to the role that society plays in influencing boys’ involvement in sport. However, he indicates that not all boys in the ‘footballer’ group are involved in sport, but are still perceived to be ‘cool’. This is because they engage in other social activities, which equally confer status. For example, two of the high achievers in the

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group who are not actively involved in sport are members of a heavy metal rock band and he indicates that ‘it is ok for these boys not to be into sport’ because such involvement carries an equally cool status in other boys’ eyes. Adam, however, does see himself as different from many of the other boys in his group in terms of his commitment to his studies. It is important for him to do well in his studies and he is concerned about achieving high grades and so ‘places more of an emphasis on the value of schooling’. He relates some of his peers’ rejection of school and learning to the influence of society and emphasizes the role of social expectations in the way that they impact upon particular orientations to learning for these boys who are not motivated to achieve. He reiterates that for some of his friends school just takes a back seat because ‘it’s not looked on as cool’. He does state that, personally, he too does not really enjoy school and ‘would rather be down at the park kicking a footy or over at a mate’s place watching TV or something’. But he attributes this sort of disposition to the influence of society’s differential expectations for boys and girls: Even the way that society sort of constructs girls and that, they’re the ones who are sort of expected to be home and do their homework and that sort of stuff, whereas guys are sort of treated as being more outgoing and more likely to get up to mischief you know, and muck around in class and that sort of stuff. So, once again I think that influence is passed down on the actual people. Despite such influences, however, Adam does acknowledge that he is different and attributes this, in a sense, to his class background. He has been influenced by his sister who was attending university at the time of the research and mentions that he has been influenced by his father who has emphasized that ‘you’ve got to get into university so you can sort of set yourself up for the rest of your life’. This sort of class capital – both his parents are professionals – has led him to adopt a particular disposition vis-à-vis the importance of a university education: ‘I still think university is the only way to go for me, because I think that’s the way you get the big jobs’. Adam also has confidence in his own ability: I’ve got the capacity. It’s just a question of whether I want to apply myself and that’s what everyone’s always told me and so I know it’s up to me and I think maybe a lot of guys, like especially my friends, don’t realize that you have to work now in order for it to pay off later. I do realize that and so that’s why I probably work, but at the

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same time, I’m like all my friends, I’d rather be doing other things like kicking a footy and listening to music and that, but instead I’ll sacrifice that in order to do a bit of work at home and that. Thus, for Adam balancing the academic and social sides is a requirement that is born out of both his particular social-class location and the imperative of compulsory heterosexuality, which dictates investing in certain social activities and cultivating particular relationships that demonstrate his coolness: So I think I’m sort of a mixture of both, if you know what I mean. Like I can sort of balance quite well the social side of the school and the education side . . . It always seems that you have the two groups at school like all the people who are worried about education or the guys that just think that socializing is the way to go and I think that I’m sort of a mixture of both . . . it works out pretty well, but it can often be a bit of a drag sort of, you know trying to balance both the social and the education sort of sides of school. Hence, meeting the requirements associated with what appears to be cultivating particular sorts of social relationships with the drag of having to invest in his education, Adam highlights the pressures that boys like him face at school. So a lot of guys face whether they choose just the social side, or just worry about whether education is going to be the main priority in their lives. I think that it’s a pretty common problem. I think you sort of work out whether you’re going to be the one who’s going to be the social person and sort of school takes a back seat or school’s the number one thing and social life sort of comes second. So there is a pressure there to be either one or the other and whichever one you choose I think determines what friendship group you’re in. In Adam’s view, such a social dynamic determines whether a boy will be classified as a ‘square’ or what he terms a ‘party animal’. He talks about being caught between these two positions, which involves a balancing act to ensure that his masculinity is kept intact by still managing to act or be ‘cool’ while embracing a commitment to schooling. But for him, it does come down to how a boy acts and, hence, to a question of the sort of disposition or demeanour that is adopted:

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You know, being the high achiever a lot of the time isn’t ‘cool’, but it really depends on how you act and how you take it because if you’re like the person who is the high achiever and then that’s your life sort of thing and you can’t get past that, or whether you’re the person who does that and at the same time is sort of humble about it, but also you know it’s not their ‘be all and end all’. You know, there’s also the social side of school and that too you’ve got to worry about . . . it really depends on how you take that on. Adam further emphasizes that a boy can be a high achiever and popular, but it is how he embodies this disposition that is important. For example, being a person ‘who is really stuck-up and big-headed about it’ will not translate into social and cultural capitals in building certain sorts of relationships or friendships with other boys. As Adam understands it, a boy can be a high achiever and can still negotiate being ‘cool’ by how he relates to other boys in terms of his disposition; that is, he has to be seen to be socializing with other boys, ‘building his personality and character’ in a way that leads him ‘to go out and say “hello” to people and meet people and that sort of stuff’. What is significant here is Adam’s emphasis on acting and taking on a particular demeanour, which must be carefully orchestrated to risk being classified by other boys as a ‘square’. This requirement to act cool, as we have already illustrated, needs to be understood in heteronormative, classed and racialized terms through which many boys learn to assert their position of dominance and power over other boys and girls.

Conclusion In this chapter the focus has been on boys’ peer-group relations at one particular school. We have illustrated that boys’ perspectives on their relationships with other boys have the potential to yield insights into the significance of their own expressions of masculinity vis-à-vis their engagement in schooling. Such research-based knowledge has the potential to highlight the differences that exist amongst boys and draws attention to how race, gender, sexuality and social class are important in developing a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics and politics of masculinities in boys’ lives in school. For example, what has emerged from this study is the crucial significance of the particular hierarchy of masculinities at this school and the extent to which heteronormative, classed and racialized understandings of dominance are at the core of boys negotiating a position in the social order of peer-group relations.

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Within the limits of such heteronormative and racialized regimes underscoring the exaltation of heterosexualized white masculinity, boys learn to relate to other boys and to negotiate particular identities as adolescent males. As we have attempted to illustrate in this chapter, this has particular consequences in terms of imposing limits on what gets defined as acceptable or desirable as a public display of masculinity. In fact, we have included the voices of individual boys who seem to be ambivalent about investing in such public performances of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity, as it is defined in terms of acting and being cool. This has certain pedagogical implications, which relate to building teacher threshold knowledges that involve developing a deep understanding of the norms governing the negotiation of racialized and heterosexualized masculinities in adolescent boys’ lives. This knowledge is both an important and necessary basis for understanding the specific sort of interventions that are required to address the gendered dimensions of harassment in schools within the context of implementing a safe-school policy. In addition, as we have illustrated in Chapter 5, it has important implications for male teachers, in terms of their understanding of both the impact of masculinity in their own lives as a mediating factor in their pedagogical relations with students and of what is needed in terms of addressing the educational and social needs of boys within a framework of gender justice (Keddie and Mills, 2007; Martino, 2008a).

7 Conclusion: Beyond Recuperative Masculinity Politics

The issue of boys and schooling has acquired significant exposure in a range of nations across the globe. Responses to this issue have taken a number of forms in these various locations. However, common in many of the most strident calls to action in terms of boys’ education has been the claim that contemporary schooling has failed boys. In this book we have reiterated the need to temper the rhetoric surrounding the dominant approaches to addressing boys’ education in schools. In particular, we have challenged the structural focus of such reforms and their failure to understand and confront issues to do with the social construction of dominant practices of masculinity. Through detailing a research-based approach to examining the implementation of gender reform initiatives designed to address the educational needs of boys, we have tried to expose the limitations of embracing the so called ‘boy-friendly’ approaches, which for the most part, continue to be hijacked by a recuperative masculinity politics. Such a politics has failed to address how broader social and structural inequalities and systemic forces intersect with gender for specific groups of boys and girls to impact significantly on their capacity to engage and participate fully in schooling. This has produced significant blind spots in terms of a failure, at the level of both policy and practice, to address complex issues related to intersections of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and geographical location in the lives of students of both genders. The category of boys (and indeed the category of girls) needs to be disaggregated. Moreover, we have argued that the broader context of globalization and late modernity requires more sophisticated analytical and theoretical perspectives capable of making sense of the impact of wider social transformations and deindustralized labour markets on the participation of both boys and girls in schooling and the workforce. Specifically, we have 181

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argued for a conjoining of materialist and post-structuralist approaches and the need to understand the relational character of masculinities and femininities. We have demonstrated how there is a certain volatility and complexity about aspects of the current gender order. We see residual, dominant and emergent practices of masculinity and femininity being played out today. Feminist challenges have been important in opening up opportunities for largely middle-class girls and women, but perhaps paradoxically these successes have evoked post-feminist talk and an identity politics of the dominant (Robinson, S., 2000), which has provoked a recuperative masculinity politics, which has sought, quite successfully, to constitute boys and men, all boys and all men, as the new disadvantaged. It is such a politics which this book has challenged. Interestingly, our research and that of others (McLeod and Yates, 2006) suggested that some boys dislike talk of boys as the new disadvantaged in schooling. And, as we have also shown, and as Faludi (2007) graphically illustrates, broad global changes such as those resulting from September 11 have also resulted in some considerable re-traditionalization of masculinities and femininities set against de-traditionalizations. Faludi also points to the ways that this re-traditionalization has encompassed an anti-feminist politics that suggests feminism in the US has made men soft. This is a concern that is not just located in the US; as we were writing this conclusion, one of Australia’s daily papers reported on a study that indicated that ‘the nation’s iconically hard Aussie blokes are a dying breed’ (Courier Mail, 2008). In the UK the Iggulden brothers’ (2006) The Dangerous Book for Boys, a nostalgic look at boyhood that suggests ways in which boys can reclaim access to an adventurous youth (by such things as skinning rabbits and climbing tress), became a best-seller and has been exported to other English-speaking countries as a special local edition and is tipped to become a movie. Embedded within these nostalgic recollections of a time when men were men, is a concern about the supposed ‘feminization’ of boys, and in particular a criticism of the role schools have played in this so called ‘emasculation’ of boys. Thus, many of the structural reforms in schools that we have documented in this book, such as boy-friendly curricula and single-sex classrooms, have entailed attempting to make the school environment more ‘masculine’. However, we would suggest such reforms often pose problems for both boys and girls. What is needed instead, we contend, is a more sophisticated approach to boys’ education – one which is committed to addressing both the

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structural inequalities and socio-cultural influences in terms of their capacity to impact on the participation of both boys and girls in schooling and in the broader society. Such an approach would recognize that there are indeed issues related to boys’ schooling which need to be addressed. These issues relate to some boys’ oppressive behaviours towards girls, female teachers and ‘othered’ boys and male teachers. Those hegemonized forms of masculinity that are underpinned by domination and control often work to shore up men’s privilege as a group within broader sets of social relations, whilst in the case of young men marginalized by class or race often attract a cost to those boys performing them. Thus, structural approaches to boys’ education, which are built on reinforcing gender binaries and, hence, which rely on treating boys and girls as essentially different, risk exacerbating existing problems in terms of their failure to address the role that hegemonic masculinity plays in constraining the development of important skills and capacities for boys that are conducive to fostering more healthy, nurturing and productive individuals and relationships. We would also contend that many of the responses to boys’ education that are based upon essentialized notions of masculinity are, perhaps ironically, also built upon low expectations of boys. This is evident in, for instance, the claims that boys cannot concentrate for long periods of time and that they need to work with questions that have fixed rather than complex answers and those that require short answers rather then long answers in developed prose. These pedagogical responses, by failing to stretch and challenge boys intellectually, are not doing boys any favour, especially if the boys are already disengaged from the system and not performing well academically. We are in accord with some of those in the boys’ lobby who suggest that it is pedagogies that need to be the focus of boys’ education. However, we would argue that appropriate pedagogical responses need to be underpinned by a commitment to gender justice and an understanding of social constructionist theories of gender, not be based on theories that essentialize and homogenize boys. To this end we have found the productive pedagogies approach to be appropriate (Lingard et al., 2002; Keddie and Mills, 2007). Such an approach stresses the importance of stretching and challenging all students, regardless of their current levels of achievement; finding ways that connect the curriculum to students’ interests and backgrounds without reinforcing and reinscribing dominant gender constructions; providing a supportive environment that allows for student voice and scaffolds learning and facilitating a democratic classroom environment that values and works

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with multiple ways of being male and female. Whilst we are not suggesting that pedagogy alone can make the difference in terms of addressing critical issues in boys’ education, it is a vital aspect of schooling in terms of opening up the range of possibilities for boys both for schooling and their everyday practices and for providing them with the analytical skills to comprehend the ways in which dominant gender performances have come to be seen as natural. In addition to these social outcomes, it will be pedagogy, not the colour of classroom walls, male teachers, the brightness of light bulbs or single-sex classes, that will improve the academic outcomes of those boys who are currently disengaged from schooling. By highlighting the extent to which boys’ education has been hijacked by a recuperative masculinity politics, we have thus illustrated the need for a bringing together of research-based literature that engages with productive pedagogies and the principles of gender justice and anti-racist education within the context of addressing the educational needs of both boys and girls in schools. This encompasses an approach to policy and practice that requires drawing on analytic frameworks that are capable of addressing the complexity of structural or systemic inequalities, alongside an understanding of the cultural or symbolic dimensions of injustice in boys’ and girls’ lives vis-à-vis their participation in schooling and in the labour market. As Nancy Fraser (1997, p. 12) argues, this means ‘theorizing the ways in which economic disadvantage and cultural disrespect are currently entwined with and support one another’. In contrast, we argue the need for both redistributive policies and policies of recognition that work with difference across the categories of girls and boys and the practices of masculinity and femininity. Throughout this book we have attempted to show how the disaggregation of the data on school performance according to gender once again foregrounds the significance of social class and indeed poverty as major ‘determinants’ of the likelihood of school success. This drives home the very pressing need for redistributive polices at a systemic level, and of course under neo-liberal frames it is just such redistribution which education systems have backed away from in recent times. We would also note how the broad level of social inequality also links to this social class/school success for both boys’ and girls’ education. The good performance in respect of equity of the Scandinavian systems on PISA is a reflection of the lower degrees of social inequality in those societies as reflected in their gini coefficients. And, while we see the need for a clear focus on practice and productive pedagogies in classrooms, we also see the need for progressive systemic policies as well.

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However, as we have illustrated throughout this book, such an analytic distinction between the economic and cultural dimensions has been absent or deliberately eschewed in both policy and at the level of practice vis-à-vis addressing boys’ education. In this sense, a particular analytic approach to boys’ education has been grounded in a failure to acknowledge economic injustice and, hence, for the most part, has been governed by a conservative neo-liberal, backlash agenda concerned with appropriating a particular form of cultural injustice as it relates to the representation of boys as ‘the new disadvantaged’. This political agenda, we have emphasized, has produced a particular blind spot in terms of a failure to address the politics of gender, particularly in terms of illuminating how hybrid modes of identification, organized around axes of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and disability combine with economic disadvantage or ‘socioeconomic maldistribution’ to impact differentially on specific groups of boys and girls in terms of their access to and participation in schooling and the labour market (Fraser, 1997, p. 19). As Fraser asserts, we need to ‘acknowledge that axes of injustice cut across one another’ (p. 32) and that ‘gender is not only a politicaleconomic differentiation but a cultural-valuational differentiation as well’ (p. 20). In our research into boys’ education and gender reform strategies designed to address the educational needs of boys, for example, we found that sexuality and the role that homophobia plays in boys’ lives, were rarely being addressed, despite the literature and the perspective of students themselves in schools, which continue to highlight the damaging effects of this form of oppression (see Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005). Addressing such an injustice, however, cannot be understood in terms which treat it as a derivation solely of a cultural-valuation structure in which respect is denied to gays and lesbians or queers on the basis of a refusal to recognize homosexual identification as legitimate. It is much more complex than this. There are axes of differences and hybrid modes of identification that must be considered within specific groups or collectivities that need to attend to both structural and cultural forms of injustice. In other words, the privileging of heterosexuality – heteronormativity – cannot be addressed merely at the level of a politics of recognition, but has to address how sexuality is entwined with gender and other political-economic forms of differentiation. This also applies to a consideration of both gender and race, which, Fraser (1997, p. 19) argues, are ‘paradigmatic bivalent collectivities’ each with their own ‘peculiarities not shared by the other’, but ‘both encompass[ing] political-economic dimensions and cultural-valuational dimensions’.

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Such an analytic approach to addressing injustice is one that is much needed within the context of addressing the educational and social needs of minority boys in contexts such as the US, where the circumstances confronting African–American and Latino males have been identified as dire (Lopez, 2003), and which also demonstrate how the ‘problem’ is also located in the broader social structure. Lopez (2003) speaks of the different ‘race-gender experiences’ of Black boys in the US to explain their different relationship to schooling from their female counterparts. These minority boys have the highest drop rates from school and are vulnerable to higher rates of incarceration and poverty than their white counterparts (see Noguera, 2008). The complexity of the intertwining aspects of the political-economic and the cultural-valuational dimensions of oppression implicated in these boys’ lives, however, are often elided in the promotion of a boys’ education agenda, which continues to support single-sex schooling and the boy-friendly curriculum, without addressing the interplay of gender, race, class and sexuality in these boys’ lives. In short, there is a failure to address the complex ways in which the dynamics of masculinity and sexuality in these boys’ lives are deeply embedded in class-based and racialized forms of inequality. In this sense, we need to consider the ways in which minority boys engage with one another, and schooling needs to pay attention to how such boys relate to girls and how they in turn define their masculinities in response to certain economic conditions and experiences of stigmatization, which are deeply embedded in systems of racial inequality. Moreover, within the context of discussion about the troubles afflicting African–American boys, the whole issue of the absent father and the single-parent family continues to be invoked as a basis for both rationalizing and justifying the need for more male role models and single-sex schooling as a means by which to address or ameliorate these boys’ problems. Indeed, this concern about the absent father parallels the moral panic that continues to fuel the fears about the emasculation and feminization of white boys at the hands of female teachers and single-parent mothers (see Hoff-Sommers, 2000). Such explanatory frameworks for rationalizing and justifying structural reform agendas in boys’ schooling have the potential to reinforce stereotypical masculinities, which contribute to academic failure for some boys. As Francis and Skelton (2005) claim: The feminine/female continues to constitute a point of scorn. Yet, what many underachieving boys need to raise their achievement is

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to read more, listen and attend more to teachers and other pupils, work harder (greater diligence), be more conscientious and take more pride in their work, work collaboratively and articulate themselves better in all aspects of communication. Evidently, these are all aspects of learning/working which are constructed as feminine, and which are stereotyped as adopted by girls (p. 129). Francis and Skelton (2005, p. 129) explicitly state that simply accommodating traditional masculinity in the classroom is not going to produce better educational or social outcomes for boys. They also refer to a study by Younger and Warrington (2005), which examined strategies for raising boys’ achievement, to conclude that ‘it is in schools where gender constructions are less accentuated that boys produce higher attainment [and] that it is strategies which work to reduce constructions of gender difference which are most effective in facilitating their achievement’ (Francis and Skelton, 2005, p. 149). This perspective is also supported by a report on boys’ academic achievement commissioned by the Quebec Ministry of Education (2004) in Canada, which indicates that there is a ‘strong correlation between identification with sexual stereotypes and academic failure for both boys and girls’ and that ‘dispensing with these stereotypes leads to better performance’ (p. 14). In addition, the report is adamant in its assertion that emotional, behavioural, social and academic difficulties for boys cannot be attributed to single-parent families: ‘children in school who experience difficulties most often come from two-parent families’ (Quebec Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 18). This commentary, as we have reiterated throughout this book, highlights the need for a more thorough engagement with the research-based literature within the context of developing both policy and practice related to addressing boys’ education. As we have illustrated, this gender reform agenda needs to be committed to interrogating common sense assumptions about boys, which lead to reinforcing hegemonic masculinity and the limits that this imposes on both boys’ and men’s lives. If we reflect for a moment on the feminist engagement with education policy and schools, we see that this project not only required systemic policies, but also changes in practice and concerted moves to reconstitute femininity. This can be contrasted quite starkly with the situation as it is being played out today in many education systems across the globe in relation to concerns about boys. The boys’ reforms, which we have dealt with in an assiduous fashion in the various chapters of this book, by and large deal with structural reforms. These ‘reforms’ focus on structural changes and sometimes changes to practice

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(boy-friendly schooling, single-sex classes, more male teachers), but they fail to consider the need for boys to change, the need for a focus on the construction of masculinity, which we have shown throughout appears to be at the core of the problem. Thus we would challenge this structural reform perspective and argue that it is the construction of masculinity which must be worked with. Julie McLeod and Lyn Yates (2006) in their fascinating and illuminating longitudinal study of making modern lives, which involved 350 interviews with young people, both boys and girls over an eight-year period, confirm this as well. Their data challenge the overstatement of the extent of de-traditionalization of masculinity and femininity. The boys and girls in their study were very aware of equal opportunities and sexism, but they saw the latter in relation to an apparent discrimination based on sex not simply in relation to girls and women. However, they note that today, girls and boys are more likely to be studying the same subjects in school than they were a couple of decades ago. However, they also note that boys see the way they currently are as just being ‘normal’ and that it is still the ‘feminine’ which needs to change. Our argument is that it is this hegemonic masculinity which needs to be de-constructed, challenged and worked with in schools. In sum then, we see the need for systemic policies for gender equality, which work with both the politics of redistribution and recognition and thus acknowledge the negative effects of poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage, but which also recognize differences amongst the categories of boys and girls. The construction of femininities and masculinities and the constraining effects of dominant practices need to be challenged. Research needs to inform these policies. Further, and as we have demonstrated, structural reforms of the kind which dominate the contemporary boys’ education agenda are not what is required. In addition to systemic policies and a research base, we would argue the need for pedagogies which deconstruct masculinities and femininities and which work with difference across these practices.

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Index

academic work, as perceived ‘feminine,’ 151 ‘acting cool,’ 114, 116, 173–4, 177–9 as ‘footballers,’ 155–6, 170, 175 impact on subordinated boys, 163–4 by ‘mucking around,’ 160–1 by rejecting school, 150–1, 158–9, 173–4 Addressing the Educational Needs of Boys, 10 African-American boys and gang-related violence, 5 poor educational performance, 5, 19, 93, 164, 186 African-Caribbean boys and gang-related violence, 5 Ailwood, J., 34 Allan, J., 132 Alloway, N., 39, 103, 170 Altman, D., 29 American Association of Women Educational Foundation (AAWE) (1998), 88 Appadurai, A., 9, 16, 28, 29, 30 Apple, M., 36 Arnot, M., 18, 21, 32, 90 Ashley, M., 140 Askew, S., 136 assessment reforms, 43–7, 56, 69, 79 Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), 130 Australian Education Union, The, 39 Australian gender policies, feminism of the mid–1970s, 32, 34 role of media, 33 backlash blockbusters, 7, 10, 52 see also ‘popular rhetorical literature’ backlash against feminism, 16–17, 20–1, 80 Bailey, L., 127, 136

Ballew, A., 82 Ball, S., 12 Bartlett, Kerry, 38 Bauman, Z., 17 Beck, U., 15, 16, 53 Berrill, D., 36, 125, 126, 142, 145 Biddulph, S., 7, 38, 48, 60, 95, 120, 129, 130 Blackmore, J., 12, 20 Blair, H., 90 Blankenhorn, D., 131 Bleach, K., 58 Blount, J., 135 Bly, R., 7, 48, 120, 129 Boler, M., 125 Bouchard, P., 6 Bourdieu, P., 7, 28, 29, 47, 79 boy-friendly curriculum, 2, 8, 24, 43, 57, 62–5, 103 see also curriculum, activities-based boy-friendly programme plan, in Cathcart State High School, 62–70 activities-based curriculum, 62–5 improving literacy skills, 63, 67–70 relationship with teachers, 62, 65–7 responses of students, 75–6 responses of teachers, 70–5 boys’ behaviour, 2, 22, 45, 58, 80–2, 97, 102, 104, 111–12, 136, 139 boys, differences amongst, 2–3, 45 Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools (BELS) Project, 50 Boys: Getting it Right Report, 5, 33, 35–7, 125 common sense versus academic research approach, 38–41 criticism of Gender Equity Framework, 41–3 innovative curriculum approaches, 43–7 learning styles, 43–7 male role models, lack of, 47–50, 66

206

Index 207 policy decisions subsequent to, 50–1 theory of gender, 38–9, 44 see also Inquiry, the boys’ underachievement due to ethnicity, 12, 14, 17, 19–22, 57, 121, 153, 181 in global south, 29 Boys’ Underachievement in Education, 29 boy turn, 10, 28 background to, 11–23 Bracey, P., 151 Brannock, J., 59 British Commonwealth, 4 Britzman, D., 98, 134 Brooks, A., 20 Browne, R., 57 Brown, P., 13 Budge, D., 123 bullying practices, 163–6 Burawoy, M., 15 Burns, J., 151 Butler, J., 140, 156 Button, L., 136 Byrne, E.M., 91 Cameron, C., 127 Campbell, P., 88 Canada, 1, 5, 8, 22, 76, 187 Carr-Greg, M., 70 Castells, M., 16 Cathcart State High School, 56 boy-friendly programme plan, 6; activities-based curriculum, 62–5, 78–80; improving literacy skills, 63, 67–70, 81–2; relationship with teachers, 62, 65–7, 81; responses of students, 75–6, responses of teachers, 70–5 principal’s stand, 59–61 reform efforts in English, 56, 63, 67–70 cathexis, 15, 31 Cave Street Primary, 119, 122 ‘ideal’ male teacher, 133–4 Cerny, P., 11 Charlton, E., 26, 79, 117 Chu, J., 147, 148 Cohen, M., 21

Collins, C., 6, 18, 19, 39, 40, 45, 92, 121, 150, 153 Comber, B., 2, 116 competing victim syndrome, 2, 5, 47, 80 role of media, 7 compulsory heterosexuality, 115, 151, 178 Connell, R., 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 49, 52, 80, 82, 102, 121, 126, 141, 143, 148, 154, 157 Connolly, P., 39, 40, 46, 48, 77, 121, 132 Cook-Sather, A., 148 cool boys, 149, 155, 170 see also ‘acting cool’ Coulter, R., 136, 140 Cox, E., 47, 80 crisis of masculinity, 4, 16–17, 23, 51 crisis of white masculinity, 51 curriculum, activities-based, 57, 101–2 curriculum approaches, innovative, in Boys: Getting it Right Report, 43–7 curriculum, gender-differentiated, 78–9, 81–2 curriculum, masculization of, 25, 81–2, 93 Dalley-Trim, L., 103, 111, 150 The Dangerous Book for Boys (2006), 182 Darling-Hammond, L., 46 Datnow, A., 88, 89, 91, 94, 113, 127, 139 Davison, K., 114, 154, 155 Daws, L., 34 Delpit, L., 46 democratic humanism, 53–4 detraditionalization, 15, 53, 182, 188 differences between boys and girls, 96, 104–8 in studying English, 87, 109 discipline issues, 66, 93, 110, 120, 132, 133, 143 Dixon, C., 112 Dolby, N., 153 Donaldson, M., 84

208

Index

Dorais, M., 6, 60, 92, 114, 162, 163 Douglas, P., 3, 10, 12, 17, 20, 40, 121, 129, 130, 148, 153 Ducat, S., 4 Easton, D., 37 Education for All, 28 Edwards, T., 11, 16, 30 Eisenstein, H., 32 Elwood, J., 58 emotional literacy, 84, 97, 98, 99, 101 England, see UK English differences between boys and girls, 87, 109 as a feminized subject, 56, 67, 174 reform efforts in Cathcart State High School, 63, 67–70, 73–4, 81–2 in Riverfield High, 86–7, 109 enlightenment stance, 54 Epstein, D., 10, 39, 46, 60, 77, 84, 112, 121, 140, 151, 157, 170 Fairclough, N., 7, 33 Faludi, S., 15, 20, 28, 29, 182 Farrell, W., 48 Fausto-Sterling, A., 81 Federal Australian Labor Party, 61 female teachers devaluation by male teachers, 134–40 as victims of boys’ behavioural problems, 122, 127, 136–40 feminism, 3, 11, 18 backlash against feminism, 16–17, 20–1 post-9/11, 15 second wave, 11, 18, 23, 30, 31, 33 feminist agenda, 5–6 feminization of men and boys, 24, 36, 88, 182, 186 feminization of schooling, 6, 12, 56, 67, 88, 93 femocrats, 31, 32, 50 Ferfolja, T., 127 Ferguson, A., 19 Finland, 14 Fletcher, R., 34–5, 57

Footballers’ friendship groups, 149, 153–4, 156–60, 164, 165, 166 and rejection of value of education, 157–8 Foster, V., 34, 148 Francis, B., 6, 8, 39, 49, 58, 60, 81, 84, 85, 92, 99, 110, 121, 132, 134, 136, 139, 140, 143, 155, 175, 186, 187 Frank, B., 49, 90, 98, 100, 111, 114, 126, 134, 155, 168 Franzway, S., 12 Fraser, N., 8, 14, 53, 184, 185 Froese-Germaine, B., 148 Froyum, C.M., 148, 155, 168, 170 Garber, J., 149 Gard, M., 78 Gatens, M., 140 gender differences, 38, 58–9 in curriculum, 78–82 due to stereotyping, 174 in income and career, 19–20 in learning styles, 38–9, 102–3 gender equity, 1, 7, 9, 27, 34–7, 40, 51, 90, 117, 135 framework, 41–3 in the global south, lack of, 4, 28 Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools, 34–6 criticism by Boys: Getting it Right Report, 41–3 gender order, 3–6, 15–18, 20, 27–31, 49, 82, 126, 145, 182 gender politics, 3, 4, 12, 20, 23, 28, 30–3, 50, 51, 55 gender regime institutionalization in schools, 82–6 Gewirtz, S., 8 Giddens, A., 15, 16, 53 Gilbert, P., 39, 60, 84, 130, 131, 136, 150, 151, 157 Gilbert, R., 39, 60, 84, 130, 131, 136, 150, 151, 157 Gilroy, P., 53 girl power, 6–7 girls’ behaviour, 7–8, 45 girls, social and academic benefits from single-sex classes, 98–9

Index 209 Gjestad, R., 91 glass escalator effect, 48, 126, 137, 145 global ethnography, 15 globalization, 11–22 Goldstein, T., 60 Goode, W., 20 good student/teacher relationships, 47, 66, 103–4 Gorard, S., 121 Gray, C., 88, 89, 91, 104, 117 Greeks, friendship groups, 153–4 Gregory, D., 18 Grosz, E., 140 Grummet, M., 135 Gurian Institute at Harvard University, 8 Gurian, M., 7, 8, 38, 56, 60, 65, 82, 95, 120, 129 Haag, P., 88 Haase, M., 122, 126, 145 Hallsview Public School, single-sex classes in, 86, 87, 94–101 perspective of female teachers, 104–8 social benefits for girls, 98 handballers, 153, 163, 173 Harker, R., 88, 91 Harvey, D., 16 Hawkes, T., 57, 82 Hayes, D., 21, 46, 47, 78, 79, 84, 89, 103, 144 Haywood, C., 16, 17, 18, 153 hegemonic masculinity, 29, 83–4, 108, 122, 132, 183 heteronormativity, 29, 53, 155, 185 heterosexuality, 112, 126, 169 compulsory, 115, 151, 178 issues of, 151–2 heterosexual masculinity, 151 hierarchical masculinities, 52, 114, 162–3, 164 Hill, S., 2 Hoff Sommers, C., 7, 120 homophobia, 3, 6, 22, 29, 39, 48–50, 78, 80, 99, 111, 130, 134, 136, 149, 154, 166–72, 185

Hubbard, L., 88, 89, 91, 94, 113 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 135 Iceland, 14 identity politics of the dominant, 20–1, 52, 182 Iggulden, C., 182 Indigenous boys, 40, 51, 121 Indigenous girls, 40, 51, 121 Jacka, S., 89, 91 Jackson, C., 60, 91, 150, 151, 152, 154 Jackson, D., 83, 84, 111 Jamaica, 29 James, 141–2 Jha, J., 1, 4, 28, 76, 123, 129 Jones, A., 89, 91 Jones, C., 136 Jones, S., 76 Katz, J., 114 Keddie, A., 2, 22, 39, 78, 82, 83, 84, 103, 136, 139, 140, 180, 183 Kehily, M., 112, 165 Kehler, M., 58, 92, 103, 104, 109, 139, 144, 148, 155, 170 Kelly, L., 127 Kenway, J., 9, 15, 16, 21, 29, 42, 79, 89, 153 Kimmel, M., 20, 121, 131, 148, 163 Kindlon, D., 7, 82, 120 King, J., 48, 49, 125, 126, 127, 132, 142 Kraack, A., 29, 153 Kumashiro, K., 10, 57 Latham, Mark, 61 Lather, P., 45 Learning to Labor in New Times, by Dolby et al, 153 Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (1977) by Willis, P., 152–3 learning styles, in Boys: Getting it Right Report, 43–7 differences between boys and girls, 43–7, 104–8

210

Index

Lee, 57, 88, 89, 140 Letts, W., 169 Levy, A., 6 Lewis, E., 140, 141 Liberal Party, 61 Lillico, I., 57, 82, 101 Lingard, B., 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 40, 46, 47, 65, 70, 78, 79, 83, 84, 89, 90, 92, 103, 104, 106, 121, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 140, 144, 148, 150, 153, 183 Lisbon Declaration (2000), 13 literacization of contemporary education policy, 2 Lopez, N., 19, 186 Louts and Legends (1988), by Walker, J.C., 153–4 Lyotard, J., 16 Mac an Ghaill, M., 10, 16, 17, 18, 54, 80, 111, 147, 150, 151, 153, 154 McCreedy, L., 10, 57, 92, 114, 148, 163 McEwen, A., 88, 91 Macgillivray, I., 6 McLeod, J., 53, 182, 188 McNay, M., 136, 140 McRobbie, A., 149 McWilliam, E., 59, 153 Mael, F., 89 Mahony, P., 32, 127 Majors, R., 156, 159 The Making of Men (1994), by Mac an Ghaill, M., 154–5 male to female teacher ratio, 119–20 male role models lack of, 5, 87, 93, 99, 109, 130–2 reason for rejecting reading, 109 teacher as, 95–8, 103–4, 131–2 male role models, in Boys: Getting it Right Report, 47–50, 66 male teachers, 2, 39, 103–4 devaluation of female teachers by, 134–40 as disciplinarians, 93, 110, 120–1, 128, 132–3, 136, 142–3, 145 lack of, 2–3, 5, 21, 25, 88, 120; reasons for, 122–9

preferential treatment received by, 120, 135, 136–7 qualities of a ‘good’ teacher, 140–4 reasons for advocating, 96–8, 110, 129–34 as role models, 95–8, 103–4 male teachers, lack of, 2–3, 5, 21, 25, 88, 120 reasons for, 122–9; fear of false accusations of paedophilia or homosexuality, 126–7; fear of false accusations of sexual abuse, 123–4, 126–7; feminisation of profession, 123, 124–5; unattractive pay, 123, 124–6 Maloney, J., 120 Manger, T., 91 Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Live (1995), 130 Manitoba Ministry of Education (2004), 76 Marsh, H., 88, 91 Martino, W., 3, 5, 9, 17, 22, 26, 30, 36, 39, 40, 48, 49, 57, 58, 60, 67, 80, 81, 82, 83, 90, 92, 93, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 121, 125, 126, 129, 133, 134, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 155, 157, 162, 163, 165, 168, 169, 170, 180, 185 masculinities, and anti-school behaviours, 46, 83–4, 96 notions of, 60–1, 66, 72, 75, 80, 83, 97, 107, 113, 122, 140–4, 183 pluralities of, 14, 49, 141–2 post-9/11, 4–5, 15, 28, 182 remaking, 83 subjects associated with, 2, 18–19, 72, 78, 80 masculinity crisis, 16–17 Masculinity goes to School, 136 Massad, J., 4 maths, 59 mediatization of contemporary politics, 33 Meeting the Challenge, 50 men’s rights movement, 3, 20, 120–1 in Australia, 33

Index 211 Messner, M., 98 Meyenn, B., 17, 39, 80, 121, 140 Miles, P., 21, 159, 160, 161 Millard, E., 170 Millennium Development Goals, 4, 28 Milligan, S., 34, 41 Milloy, M., 120 Mills, M., 2, 7, 8, 10, 17, 21, 22, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 60, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 98, 103, 112, 114, 121, 127, 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 148, 157, 165, 180, 183 misogyny, 3, 22, 48, 78, 112, 115, 117, 124–5, 128, 130, 136, 145, 154 Mitchell, A., 120 multiculturalism, critique of, 4 Murphy, P., 58 Murray, J., 48, 120, 127, 128, 132, 172 muscular intellectualness, 151 Muspratt, S., 116 Mustafa, 142 Myhill, D., 76 mythopoetic movement, 3, 20, 120–1, 129–31 in Australia, 33 Biddulph, Steve, 130 National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools, 32 Nayak, A., 112, 165 Nelson, Brendan, 37, 61 neo-liberal economic strategies, 12 Newmann & Associates, 46, 78 Noguera, P., 6, 148, 186 Novoa, A., 14 Ontario Ministry of Education (2004), 76 Ozga, J., 36 Pallotta-Chiarolli, M., 3, 17, 39, 40, 57, 60, 81, 83, 92, 99, 103, 108, 111, 114, 121, 148, 155, 157, 163, 165, 168, 170, 185 Parker, L., 89, 90, 110, 111 Pascoe, C.J., 60, 83, 114, 148, 157, 162, 163, 168, 172 Passeron, J-C., 47, 79

Pattman, R., 84 Patton, M., 149 pedagogical relationships with students, 95–8, 103–4 peer-group classifications basketballers, 157, 160, 163 footballers, 149, 153–4, 156–60, 164, 165, 166 Greeks, 153–4 handballers, 153, 157, 162–3, 172–3 squares, 161, 173–9 peer-group masculinity, 150–1 peer groups ‘cool’ boys, 158–9 dynamics of masculinities in, 155, 157–62 rejecting school, 157–62 peer-groups literature, 150–5 Petersen, A., 81 Petrys, L., 120 PISA, see Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Plummer, D., 155 politics of recuperative masculinity, 16–17 Pollack, W., 7, 38, 61, 82, 120, 129 Pollard, D., 88 ‘popular rhetorical literature,’ 10, 40, 52 see also backlash blockbusters Porche, M., 170 post-9/11, 53 backlash against feminism, 20, 29 New World Order, 4 post-structuralist theory, 17–18 poverty, 3, 8, 27, 82, 184 Power, M., 12 Poynting, S., 84 presumptive equality, 34 productive pedagogies approach, 183–4 Productive Pedagogies, Schools and Gender Reform, 10 pro-feminist movement, 3, 5, 10, 16, 28–32, 35, 40, 53, 55 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 13–14, 184 Quebec Ministry of Education, 187

212

Index

racism, 4–5, 19, 138, 142, 149, 154, 163–6, 170 Raising Boys (1997), 130 Rawolle, S., 7, 33 Reay, D., 164 recuperative masculinity politics, 2, 20, 32, 35–41, 52, 53, 129 Redman, P., 151 Rennie, L., 89, 90, 110, 111 Renold, E., 80, 173 research, policing of, 30–1 retraditionalization, 15, 53, 182 Rezai-Rashti, G., 5 Ricketts, S., 135 Riordan, C., 88 Riverfield High, single-sex classes in, 87, 91, 92, 108–16 curriculum modifications, 116 improved learning and self-esteem, 110–115 modification of pedagogy to reinforce gender stereotypes, 115–16 perspective of female teachers, rationale for, 109 Robinson, K., 17, 122, 127 Robinson, S., 17, 20, 36, 51, 52, 182 Rose, N., 3, 12, 53 Ross, C., 136 Roulston, K., 48, 49, 127, 133, 134, 135, 139, 143 Rowan, L., 87, 88, 92, 109, 114, 116 Rowe, K., 45, 88, 91 Rudd Labor government, 51 Sachs, J., 12 Sacks, G., 120 Salisbury, J., 83, 84 Sanford, K., 90 Sax, L., 8, 21 Scandinavian education system, high quality and equity, 14, 19–20, 32, 184 Scutt, J., 127 Sears, J., 169 Segal, L., 127, 140 Seidler, V., 3, 16 SES, see socio-economic status (SES) Shaw, M., 120

Shulman, L., 58 Silin, J., 126 Simpson, A., 116 single-mother households, 3, 21, 48, 93, 131–2 devaluation by male teachers, 135 single-parent families, 48, 186, 187 Single-sex classes, 87 in Hallsview Public School, 87, 91, 94–108; benefits for students, 98–9; perspective of female teachers, 104–8 impact and effect of, 88–94 rationale for, 87–8, 91–3 and reinforcement of gender stereotypes, 90, 104, 105, 107, 115–17 in Riverfield High, 87, 91, 92, 108–16; curriculum modifications, 116; improved learning and self-esteem, 110–115; modification of pedagogy to reinforce gender stereotypes, 115–16; perspective of female teachers, rationale for, 109 sexual hierarchies in, 90 students’ perceptions of, 89–90 Skeggs, B., 149 Skelton, C., 6, 39, 46, 48, 49, 77, 81, 83, 98, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 132, 133, 134, 137, 140, 142, 143, 157, 186, 187 Slade, M., 43, 77, 121, 140, 144 Smedley, S., 127, 129, 139 Smith, 91, 103, 111, 112, 119, 120, 122, 145, 150, 171, 172 Smith Road Secondary School, 119, 122 socio-economic status (SES), 13 Solomon, P., 22 Spivak, G., 3, 17 sport, role of, 157–9 Stake, R., 149 Steinberg, D.L., 169, 172 Steve Biddulph, 95, 130 strategic essentialism, significance of, 3, 17 Streitmatter, J., 89, 90, 91

Index 213 structuralist theory, 17–18 students, better performance of: research, 89, 91–2 students’ perceptions, of single-sex classes, 89–90 Success for Boys programme, 5, 50–1 Sukhnandan, L., 57, 58, 60, 91, 92, 104, 115 Summers, A., 19 Sumsion, J., 126, 127, 142 Sweden, 14 swots, 149 symbolism, 33 teacher pedagogies, significance of, 137–8 teachers, responses to boy-friendly programme at Cathcart State High School, 70–5 teacher threshold knowledges, 58 teaching, as a caring profession, 123, 126 Teese, R., 40, 45, 121 The Terror Dream, 29 testosterone surge sessions, 101–4 therapeutic approach, 16 Thiessen, D., 148 third wave ‘post’ feminisms, 30 Thompson, M., 7, 82, 120 threshold knowledges, 9 Thrift, N., 14 Tincknell, E., 6 tips for teachers, 58, 61–2 Titus, J., 155 transnational business masculinity, 29 Trent, F., 43, 77, 121, 140, 144 Trowler, P., 54 Tyre, P., 8

UK, 1, 4, 5, 8, 19, 21, 23, 32, 41, 57, 121, 123, 126, 154, 155, 182 critique of multiculturalism, 4 single-sex schooling in, 91 Unterhalter, E., 4, 28 US, 1, 4, 5, 8, 19, 20, 22, 28, 32, 52, 65, 91, 126, 132, 142, 182, 186 Vaught, S., 148, 163 Verdugo, R., 22 violence, 5, 39, 42, 68, 88, 90, 162, 169 Wahl, E., 88 Walby, S., 6, 19 Walker, B, 148, 157 Walkerdine, E., 136 Walker, J. C., 111, 147, 150, 153, 154, 162 Warrington, M., 91, 94, 140, 155 Way, N., 148 Weaver-Hightower, M., 4, 10, 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, 40, 52, 58 Weedon, C., 45 Weil, E., 8 West, P., 5, 56, 64, 67, 82, 120, 135 Whitlam government, 31–2 Williams, 2, 11, 48, 137 Willis, 89, 147, 151, 152, 153, 154, 158, 166, 175 Wilson, J., 88, 89, 91, 104, 117 Woody, E., 87, 89, 91, 93, 98, 100, 107, 108, 110 Yariv-Mashal, T., 14 Yates, L., 21, 32, 42, 53, 79, 182, 188 Yeatman, A., 32, 36 Younger, M., 91, 94, 140, 155, 187