Generating data from small group interviews with 41 boys aged 10-11 years from two London schools in 2022, this paper contributes to the field of gender by introducing a new form of non-hegemonic and positive masculinity, which I am calling 'blended' masculinity, and which was the most common formation in each school. Although its features…

This paper explores how participants in a Swedish secondary school do gender talk with comics. Swedish schools are tasked with working with gender, but this can be a challenge for many teachers, and finding materials to work with gender aspects can be difficult. Meanwhile, literary research on comics has shown them to be a potential tool for…

This article reports on a survey of 332 Year 3 students from 14 Australian schools. We are interested in exploring Year 3 primary school student aspirations and what this data shows us about any societal changes, or not. This study is timely as it reports on contemporary data within an Australian educational context marked by significant…

Research exploring the educational experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) students and staff members has traditionally been characterised by homophobia, hostility, victimisation and marginalisation. Recent research has evidenced a shift in the experiences of LGB young people, to somewhat more accepting and positive narratives, including…

The study explores how parents' occupational field affects gender differences in educational fields. On the one hand, the theory of direct transfer predicts that adolescents enter fields similar to those of their parents because of intergenerational transmission of occupation-specific resources and that adolescents are more likely to draw upon the…

Since the 1990s the educational community has witnessed a proliferation of "bullying" discourses, primarily within the field of educational developmental social psychology. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative interview data of primary and secondary school girls and boys, this article argues that the discourse "bullying"…

Young, white, provincial working-class men are portrayed as a threat to lifelong learning goals. They are least likely to enter university and most likely to drop out. However, white provincial masculinities are neglected in debates on gender and lifelong learning. This article uses a UK-wide study of working-class "drop-out" to explore…

This article looks at the transition to higher education made by a group of male undergraduates. The data were collected though one-to-one interviews with 24 students, who were asked questions designed to elicit data about their positioning in relation to hegemonic masculinities. The evidence presented here supports the view that gender operates…

Sociological research investigating boys' masculinity performances has commonly recognised the importance of peer group cultures in identity construction. Whilst such work has undoubtedly offered important and useful frameworks for interpreting and understanding boys' behaviour in schools, the article argues that social psychological theories of…

This article presents an analysis of gender identity within the context of lifelong learning. Constructed specifically around individual experiences of occupational apprenticeship in English professional football, it draws on a re-reading of data collected in the early 1990s to depict the way in which a group of young men were socialised into…

The data in this article come from an ethnographic exploration into the construction of masculinities in three junior schools in the UK between 1998 and 1999. The author argues that the construction and performance of masculinity is inextricably linked to the acquisition of status within the school peer group, and he delineates the specific series…

Raising aspirations has been identified as a key strategy for widening educational participation in lifelong learning policy. This article deconstructs the hegemonic discourse of raising aspirations through Economic and Social Research Council-funded research on men, masculinities and higher educational access and participation.The article…