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…

Disturbed by a proliferation of quick-fix literacy strategies to "help the boys" increase achievement levels in the midst of a policy shift that acknowledges gay, lesbian, bi and transgender, questioning (GLBTQ) youth, the author examines how masculinities are connected to literacy practices and negotiated through a safe school policy.…

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…

In this paper, we interrogate the call for more male role models within the context of boys' education debates in Australia and North America. We explicate links between failing masculinities and this call for more male teachers, arguing that the debate is driven by a "recuperative masculinity politics" committed to addressing the…