When I was contacted by the editors of "Gender and Education" to see whether I wanted to respond to this article, I was not particularly keen to do so. I generally believe that critique is a good thing, and that direct responses have a tendency to come over as precious, petulant, and petty. However, having read the article several times, and…

This essay comments on the emotional difficulties psychoanalytic discussion introduces to conceptualising the poesis of gender through its reconsideration of the valence of aggression and its development in psychical reality. It returns to the 1936 lectures on the emotional life of gender given by Melanie Klein and Joan Riviere to a public about…

The present article attempts to pay attention to the ways in which a group of young Cypriot students engage in the construction of conventional notions of masculinities through the negation and the fear of homosexual desire. Drawing on interviews with 12 male and female university students, I argue that many young men go through complicated…

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) "hegemonic masculinity" is an expression of working class counter-school culture; (2) some teachers are "cultural accomplices" in constructing "hegemonic masculinities" of anti-school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these "cultural…

Few men choose to become primary school teachers. Those who do move into a world often thought of as feminized and contend with a publicly-voiced rhetoric which simultaneously idealizes and demonizes them. This paper turns a spotlight on one student's stories of being a man and a student primary school teacher. It considers how he negotiates the…

This paper is basically about terminology. In it I discuss the terms "masculinity" and "femininity" and how they relate to being male and being female. My theme arises from an increasing difficulty that I am finding in understanding how individual identities relate to dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. Christine Skelton and…

Introduces a special issue that is positioned against the backdrop of the current "boys in crisis" debate. It focuses on how the articles address embodied identities and material inequalities; social mobility and working class femininities; resisting individualism and rationality; power and responsibility; masculinity and the middle class; and…

The ongoing moral panic surrounding adolescent boys continues to cause concern, proving pivotal in popular discourses centring on the "problem of youth". Drawing on ethnographic data from a large co-educational secondary school, this paper illustrates how school outcomes are adversely affected by working class boys' investments in peer…

Argues that schools are highly sexualized sites, within which struggles around sexuality are pervasive, of consuming interest and, at the same time, taboo. Suggests that struggles around gender, explicit homophobia, and implicit heterosexism within schools derive from and feed macho and misogynistic versions of masculinity. Argues that sexism in…

Suggests a connection between schooling and various forms of sexual and/or physical violence (male to male, male to female, and adult male to child) and identifies and critiques the major orientations of mainstream, sociocultural, and feminist anti-violence pedagogies. Identifies the contours of an alternative anti-violence pedagogy. (GR)

Provides the author's reflections on the experience of training to be a physical education teacher and shows how informal culture served to legitimate and reproduce a hegemonic form of masculinity within the student body. The paper concludes by arguing that attempts to improve the quality of practice cannot be separated from issues of masculinity.…

Addresses the problems associated with constructing masculinity as a monolithic category, and offers a particular pedagogical approach designed to open up the examination, legitimation, and valorization of alternative subject positions for high school boys in the English classroom. The author also translates feminist poststructural theoretical…

Examines ways in which female and male teachers and students talk about themselves and each other regarding physical activity, the body, and their expectations of femininity and masculinity. It is argued that physical education is where bodies are inscribed with gender differences, that is, the female body as lacking those qualities associated…

Examines ways in which language practices in the classroom, particularly those involved with reading and writing stories, are gendered literary practices. Argues that the gendered nature of classroom literacy practices requires more critical scrutiny and that texts cannot be treated as separate from their cultural production. (SLD)