There appears to be a globally unifying discourse that suggests Muslim communities are not supportive of girls' education. This paper aims to destabilize such a discourse by inserting the narratives of Muslim parents pursuing girls' education in Assam's Nagaon district. By paying attention to the concepts of "bhal suwali" (good girlhood)…

This article utilizes a combination of the masculinity and intersectionality frameworks to argue that the underachievement of boys occurs in the intricacies of patriarchy, region (rural area), and class culture. The article utilizes data drawn from a qualitative study at two rural institutions in the parish of Manchester, Jamaica, to critically…

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials about girl bullying. The "mean girl" phenomenon has been widely taken up as one of the current key narratives about schools and school girls. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the origins of this discourse within behavioural psychology, which…

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These…

The number of Black females enrolled in colleges and universities has grown in recent years, particularly at predominately white institutions (PWIs). Currently, research on the rise of Black females at PWIs is limited and fails to adequately address the emotional, social, and mental well-being of these students. Recent studies also largely ignore…

High achievement, and in particular, the role of the academically diligent and successful "boffin" or "geek", are notably under-researched areas in the sociology of education. Issues around gender and other aspects of identity in relation to such pupils are particularly under-researched. In this Viewpoint article we draw on evidence from our…

Despite the assertion that higher education is becoming increasingly "feminised" and that male students are the relative losers, gendered meanings continue to permeate higher education in ways that mean that the recognition of women's experiences are frequently marginalised. Our paper reports on research designed to explore student participation…

This study investigated the ways a diverse group of university women in the USA utilised racialised and classed discourses of femininity in the creation of subjectivities. Interview and focus group data were collected over a two-year time period and focused on how women navigated the higher education setting. Two forms of femininity, "Hill girl"…

This article draws upon data from semi-structured interviews with Australian Indigenous teachers to explore the role their mothers played in shaping their decisions to become teachers. The findings suggest that their mothers' emotional involvement and investment in their sons' and daughters' education generated significant reserves of emotional…

This paper compares the ways in which gender was articulated and experienced through the construction of children's education in two very different community-led educational initiatives in Britain: turn-of-the-century Socialist Sunday Schools and late-twentieth-century Black Supplementary Schools. Exploration of these historical examples of…

This paper examines young South African school children's understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children's…

An examination of gender discourses within New Labour education policy on the preparation of students for a career in teaching in the UK reveals a contradictory yet, at the same time, complementary position. In the guidelines outlining the Standards that a prospective teacher has to achieve, the ways in which gender informs pupils' educational…

This paper explores the effect of cross gender relations on the construction of boys' masculine identities. The findings are based on data gathered from a year long empirical study of 10 to 11-year-old boys set in three UK junior schools. Although masculinity is defined against femininity and boys needed to mark out a set of distinctions from…