Schools have long played a significant role in teaching students the values of gender respect and equity. These values have been embedded in education policy and practice in contexts such as Australia for decades. In the current #MeToo moment, there has been renewed emphasis on gender transformative teaching in schools. This work, however, is…

Under neoliberalism, parents as consumers are expected to provide their children with opportunities to get ahead. Governments defend elite schools on the grounds that 'diversity' and 'choice' are in the public interest but not everybody has an equal opportunity to choose. School websites act to promote specific images of schools with opportunities…

The contemporary #MeToo moment has led to renewed concern about issues of masculinity and gender justice. This moment provides a strong warrant for critically analyzing different programmes for boys and men in relation to their capacity for gender transformation. This paper presents three such programmes located in Victoria (Australia) as case…

In 2016 the world witnessed a consolidation of a western brand of political 'populist authoritarianism' that is anti-globalisationalist and creates 'shared objects of loathing' in the popular imagination. This article engages with the implications of this affective and masculinist 'post-truth' era for higher education and analyses the narratives…

As we navigate through a new form of economic era where science, technology, knowledge and services will replace consumer goods as drivers of growth, and the workplace will increasingly value creative abilities, there appears a need for an educational paradigm shift. However, within an Australian context of increasing school accountability, a…

This article focuses on the continuing impact of recuperative masculinity politics in the schooling of economically advantaged boys (elite and middle class); yet, it also indicates resistance to this politics. An understanding that the gender order is unstable and that variants of hegemonic masculinity continue to morph in the context of…

This article rejects the notion that schools have become excessively feminised spaces that are failing to adequately provide for the educational needs of boys. This construction of schools as feminised has provided the impetus for the development of what have become known as "boy-friendly" pedagogies. Unfortunately such pedagogies work…

This article explores the complex struggles associated with intersections of class, rurality and masculinity, and the ways in which such intersections work to preserve a gendered status quo within and beyond school communities in Australia. Drawing on the stories of Monica and Phoebe, two teachers who understand schooling as a site of…

Since the 1970s many feminists working for gender justice in education have highlighted the predominance and seriousness of sexual harassment in schools and condemned the enduring trivialization of such behaviours. This paper develops this body of work by focusing on how issues of sexual harassment are located within prevailing contemporary…

This paper explores issues of critical literacy, gender justice and masculinity through "Mr A's" story. Mr A is head of English at "Grange College"--an all boys' school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). The paper highlights how the privileging of rationality, control and "the masculine" within Mr A's…

Since the mid 1990s "boys" as an equity concern have come to dominate the gender and education agenda in many countries. This has been particularly the case in Australia where substantial funding has been invested in research to investigate boys' issues, into a federal parliamentary inquiry into boys' education and into schools that have…

Despite calls for a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and equity that recognizes how broader relations of gender and power continue to produce injustices for many females, essentialized accounts expressing concern about boys' poor educational performance remain the most common refrain in dominant equity discourses across Western contexts.…

In this paper I argue that the move towards devolved modes of educational governance provides significant opportunities for feminist and pro-feminist constructionist research to impact on the types of "gender work" used by schools. Research-based understandings of gender in schools have been on the defensive in Australia and elsewhere…