This study was an inquiry to explore the notion of using a more critical pedagogy to educate young male Latino high school students of low socioeconomic status. Using the tenets of critical pedagogy as a guide, eight students who did not complete high school were asked how they might have felt about a different classroom dynamic and an environment…

The article points out some pedagogical challenges in supporting girls and young women in their emancipatory movements today. It spotlights a specific section in gender pedagogy by focusing on the aim of self-determination (rather than achievement) in the field of social-pedagogy and it refers to the concept of "girls work" in Germany. A critical…

This article explores political ambiguities surrounding the mutual implication between technology and subjectivity, through the analysis of recent cultural texts about childhood. These ambiguities are shown to rely upon the mobilisation of memory and assume specific gendered forms. The appeal to the past figured by the child is also shown to…

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys' achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the…

The strengths and limitations of approaches to participatory and democratic practice rooted in voice have been discussed in relation to education and also "youth voice". The paper seeks to make critical connection between the two debates, especially in relation to the persistence of practices of exclusion and marginalisation. Drawing on a two-year…

This paper interrogates the relationship between the social distance men have from children, fear, and the social expectation that men will be capable of managing student (mis)behaviours. Briefly, the central argument is that the social distance men, as a group, have from children, and child protection concerns of men working with children can…

School, typically, is no place to be caught being queer and knowledge about homosexuality for the majority of young lesbian, gay and bisexual people is routinely constructed within communities of practice. In this paper, I draw upon my own and others' literacy practices to show how our identities and readings of texts were framed by being…

In a context where the lack of male teachers is constructed as a worrying concern for many Western education systems, men who make the decision to become teachers, particularly in early childhood and primary education, are often adulated. However, alongside this adulation sits an expectation to be a "real man". This paper tells the story of John,…

This paper starts from the idea that children learn and construct gendered identities within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice, including peer communities. The data presented come from an ESRC-funded study of tomboy identities, which investigated the enabling and constraining factors for girls in taking up and maintaining…

Music is central to the lives of most high-school age boys. However, music education is a marginalised area of the school curriculum, decreasing in popularity as students approach senior school and succumb to pressures to choose subjects perceived to be more useful in the "real world". While this process is common for both boys and girls, the…

In enhancing the social and academic outcomes of boys, positive teacher student relationships and quality pedagogy that is informed by key research-based understandings and knowledges about gender are positioned as central. The managerial rather than pedagogical focus that is currently characterizing schools in Queensland (Australia), where the…

This article is based upon a comparative, ethnographic case study of two groups of 10-11-year-old boys--one middle-class, the other working-class--living in Belfast. Drawing upon Bourdieu's related concepts of symbolic violence and habitus, it shows how locality can help to explain the very different educational and career aspirations found…

Teachers have been under pressure in the United Kingdom to devise pedagogic strategies to raise boys' achievement. This article reviews the emergence of the concept of a "setting" from within the sociocultural literature as the basis for considering the interaction between gender and learning. The second section reports findings from an empirical…

The "problem" of boys' achievement in the United Kingdom has emerged as part of a policy response to a crisis in the post-war social settlement. Post-Fordism has become the dominant meta-policy of education reform in the United Kingdom, constituting both policy problems and solutions as gender-neutral. However, the economic and political…

The article focuses on a key aspect of the experiences of young gay men and considers how their responses might inform HIV prevention education for all young people. The article first outlines key representations of same-sex desire and of HIV/AIDS through which young gay men learn various certainties about gay men, gay sex and AIDS. As a…