Verbal abuse has been identified as a common element in the life of children in school. This paper explores how this discursive practice is used in the construction of masculinities and femininities among children aged 14-15 through observations and interviews in classes in two schools in Stockholm. Verbal abuse, often with sexual content,…

In this portrait, Travis Wright, writing as a psychology counselor in training, brings the reader into one morning's events in his clinical work with Jorge, a three-year-old boy whose family is experiencing difficult times. Throughout the morning at Jorge's day-care center, Wright encounters scenarios that force him to ask questions about child…

In his book "To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader: Engaging Teen and Preteen Boys in Active Literacy," William Brozo suggested that many adolescent boys have become mentally and academically detached from school. While Brozo acknowledges that a solution to these problems is multifaceted, he asserts that engaging boys in literature that makes use of…

This study explored the family dynamics of persistent African American college men. These students were typical Black males, not those pre-categorized as high-achieving or unprepared for college. The stories of participants revealed their strength, ambition, and intentions to successfully gain a baccalaureate degree. In general Black males are…

This study examined the effects of the gender of reading tutors on 173 third and fourth grade mainly inner-city boys identified as struggling readers. Reading achievement ("Alberta Diagnostic Reading Program") and reader self-perceptions ("Readers' Self-Perception Scale") were monitored over a 22-week reading intervention.…

Black males as a group experience disproportionate amounts of school failure. Compared to Black females and White males, for example, Black males have the highest dropout rates, poorest achievement, and lowest test scores. Further, they are sorely under-represented in gifted education and over-represented in special education. Of those Black males…

"A Man" is an original text created by the author that deals with the struggles that Black men experience when confronted by White privilege. By using autoethnographic analysis, the author critiques the language, ironies, tensions, emotions, and opportunities expressed within "A Man," then extends findings to confront the issues that Black men…

Pedhazur and Tetenbaum speculated that factor structures from self-ratings of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) personality traits would be different from factor structures from desirability ratings of the same traits. To explore this hypothesis, both desirability ratings of BSRI traits (both "for a man" and "for a woman") and…

This article describes the formation and enactment of a student and teacher-generated framework for re-authoring a troubling representation of Black masculinity in a popular culture narrative. This data-driven framework highlights the ways students and teacher provided a means for literacies to serve students' desire to re-author images and words…

In Western countries, discourses concerning "boys failing school" are circulated in media as well as in schools. Research is conducted that offers sweeping sociological, societal or biological explanations, or context-sensitive ethnographic or social psychological and variable explanations on the relation between boys and school life. In…

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…

Previous studies have shown that a subset of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) and heterosexual adults produce distinctive patterns of phonetic variation that allow listeners to detect their sexual orientation from audio-only samples of read speech. The current investigation examined the extent to which judgments of sexual orientation from speech…

Over the last decade, the relationship between boys, young men and sex and relationships education (SRE) is one that has been characterised by a history of problematising. One of the main difficulties lies with young men's engagement with the subject, and in this article I make a retrospective examination of recent classroom experience with young…

The debate in the UK about gender equity and equal opportunities for girls and boys has been "captured", in the last two decades, by an overriding concern with the issue of boys' apparent under-achievement. More recently, however, there has been a reaction to essentialist approaches related to "boy-friendly" pedagogies and…