Despite the widespread concern regarding young people's wellbeing, the interaction between gender and mental health appears to be generally overlooked within education and is more commonly focused on concern about rising figures of female mental health. The absence of discussions around gender is surprising, given the ongoing debate regarding the…

This paper focuses on the learning experiences of lower attaining boys attending Stone Acre, a non-selective state Secondary school in England, and how these were shaped by teachers' gendered beliefs and practices. It argues that despite changes in our theoretical understandings of gender, those found in the context of everyday practice in schools…

This article, by drawing on data collected from qualitative case-study research, raises questions about discourses that claim male teachers are better equipped to improve boys' literacy achievement on the basis of gender affiliation. It reports on interview and observational data collected from a number of boys attending five different…

In this article we argue that eliminating the divisions of labour between men and women could work towards counteracting gender inequality within professions. Globally women are over-represented in the teaching of young children in the early years of primary school, or Foundation Phase (FP), as it is known in South Africa. We are concerned to go…

This review discusses and critiques the literature on men teachers and "feminised" primary schools from a feminist poststructuralist position. It is aimed at an audience new to the topic. The focus on "men primary teachers" as a field of research flourished as a consequence of concerns over boys' underachievement when an…

From 1966 to 1972, Flintridge Elementary school located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada implemented a short lived gender reform plan to help raise boys' achievement. Shaped by a variety of complex historical factors and fuelled by a desire for innovation, educators from Flintridge Elementary sought to address the educational needs of primary school…

In South Africa, the centrality of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS has led to many educational efforts to address it. The particular social values that male teachers hold around gender-based violence have been less examined. By focusing on African male teachers' understandings of gender-based violence, this paper highlights the…

This paper focuses on the ways in which a selected group of early childhood teachers in grades one and two, located in a predominantly white middle-class context in Durban, South Africa ascribe meaning to young boys they teach. The study finds that early childhood teachers are bearers of masculinity and incorporate taken-for-granted assumptions of…

Explores the use of dance in physical education as a pedagogical tool for examining heterosexual male embodiment. Discusses how dance offers the potential for disruptive, discomforting, and pleasurable experiences that illustrate how bodies carry and construct gendered meanings. Contains 50 references. (SK)

A study of the attitudes of British student teachers (118 male, 92 female) toward gender indicated that male student teachers of 7-11 year-olds were more likely to be concerned about and supportive of traditional images of masculinity than were males training to teach 3-8 year-olds. (Contains 33 references.) (SK)

Interviews with British boys in years five through eight form the basis of a suggestion that the formation of sexual identity as something biologically or psychologically fixed in early childhood should be rethought. Sociocultural practices and relationships with school, home, and society have significant effects on formation of sexual identity.…

In postindustrial society, masculinities at school must be understood in the context of family, history, locality, and global change. An ethnography of white working-class male school subculture shows how they resist globalization by asserting traditional masculinity, providing the illusion of stability. (Contains 40 references.) (SK)

Interviews with three teenage boys and their parents in a middle-class community explored why the boys self-identify as reluctant readers, resisting approved forms of literacy. They pursue types of reading that contribute to their construction of masculine identities; their parents' attempts to influence reading are conditioned by traditional…

This review of research investigates ways in which the resurgence of the political right and the feminist backlash have attempted to impose a "common-sense" concept of masculinity on the education of boys. Explores the effect of masculinity on boys' literacy practices and argues for teaching practices grounded in social construction of gender.…

An ethnographic study of 10-11 year-old boys' construction of gender and sexual identities illustrates the complex and contradictory aspects of heterosexuality. The study suggests how boys define their heterosexualities through projections of fantasies, imagined futures, misogynistic objectification of females, and homophobic performances.…