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…

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…