In this paper, we draw on pro-feminist, anti-essentialist espistemological and theoretical frameworks, in conjunction with adopting autoethnographic narratives, both to provide critical insight into and contextualize the particular testimony and witnessing of our own personal involvement in the gendering of a government-commissioned research…

In this paper, we provide a particular critique of policy-making processes related to addressing the gender achievement gap in the Ontario context. The focus is on tracing the effects of a neoliberal regime of accountability in terms of the designation of boys as a disadvantaged group alongside other minority groups who have historically faced…

For some time now, school boards, Ministries of Education, and the popular media have been expressing concerns about failing boys and how best to meet their needs, framing these concerns in terms of a crisis in which boys are the "new disadvantaged". This perspective does not provide an accurate representation of the problem and, in fact, detracts…

Within the context of debates about male teacher shortage, a powerful discourse about the influence of male and minority teachers as role models has acquired a particular legitimacy in the popular imaginary. In short, the call for more male teachers functions as a common-sense justification for their necessary recruitment and has been tied to a…

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role…

Boys' literacy underachievement continues to garner significant attention and has been identified by journalists, educational policymakers, and scholars in the field as the cause for much concern. It has been established that boys perform less well than girls on literacy benchmark or standardized tests. According to the National Assessment of…

This book provides an illuminating account of teachers' own reflections on their experiences of teaching in urban schools. It was conceived as a direct response to policy-related and media-generated concerns about male teacher shortage and offers a critique of the call for more male role models in elementary schools to address important issues…

In this article we offer a research-based response to and critique of approaches suggested to address boys' literacy and pedagogical reform. Our aim is to open up a dialogue by examining the conceptual limits imposed by casting boys as particular sorts of literate subjects. We argue against officially sanctioned literacy practices that fail to…

In drawing on selected interviews with adolescent boys from both Australia and North America, we present an analysis of boys' own capacities for interrogating gender normalisation in their school lives. We set this analysis against a critique of the public media debates about boys' education, which continue to be fuelled by a moral panic about the…

This paper is based on an investigation into the dynamics of masculinity in two male elementary school teachers' lives. It draws on a poststructuralist approach to empirical analysis that is informed by Sondergaard who argues for the need to attend to the "constitution of social practices and cultural patterns" through which subjects…

This article reports on research funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate school responses to gender equity. It addresses the efforts of a disadvantaged school to tackle what they perceived to be gender inequalities, but in the process of constructing a top-set and bottom-set/stream class they are developing new forms of old…

Investigates impact/effects of implementing single-sex classes, particularly as a strategy for engaging boys in the English classroom at a Catholic coeducational school (Perth, Western Australia). Uses semi-structured interviews with English teachers at the school to analyze teacher perceptions of single-sex classes in the coeducational context.…

This paper focuses on the Australian federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys' Education, "Boys: Getting it Right", which is shown to be an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. The paper demonstrates how, through a variety of rhetorical strategies, its anti-feminist politics are masked and how the report works with…

Presents two critical incidents about boys seated at the back of the classroom. Draws attention to how particular versions of masculinity influence how boys learn to relate and the possibilities for interrogating these kinds of masculinities in the English classroom. Explores what role already existing reading practices within English might play…

This review of research investigates ways in which the resurgence of the political right and the feminist backlash have attempted to impose a "common-sense" concept of masculinity on the education of boys. Explores the effect of masculinity on boys' literacy practices and argues for teaching practices grounded in social construction of gender.…