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…

Recognising that there is now a globalised educational discourse about "failing boys" circulating in the privileged nations of the global north, this article provides a comparative perspective on educational policy responses to the "boy turn" in Australia and Iceland. Specificities of the responses to the boy turn in the two…

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…

This book explores the relationship between violence and masculinity within schools. It suggests that violence has been "masculinized" in such a way that boys often perpetrate violence as a means of demonstrating their perception of what counts as a valued form of masculinity. Chapter 1 looks at some of the ways in which violence has…

Explores accounts given by male music teachers about practices used with boys and the role of the male music teacher through data collected during two research studies. Reports that male teachers tend to reinforce gender stereotypical behaviors in boys instead of challenging ideas of masculinity. (CMK)

This paper explores the effects of specific teacher threshold knowledges about boys and gender on the implementation of a so-called 'boy friendly' curriculum at one junior secondary high school in Australia. Through semi-structured interviews with selected staff at the school, it examines the normalizing assumptions and 'truth claims' about boys,…