Michael Kehler

GENDER‐BASED LITERACY REFORM: A QUESTION OF CHALLENGING OR RECUPERATING GENDER BINARIES

In this article we offer a research ‐ based response to and critique of approaches suggested to address boys’ literacy and pedagogical reform. Our aim is to open up a dialogue by examining the conceptual limits imposed by casting boys as particular sorts of literate subjects. We argue against officially sanctioned literacy practices that fail to engage with research ‐ based literature that raises serious questions about gender reform initiatives. We suggest caution and further informed dialogue in response to media generated public concerns and educational policies aimed at remasculinizing schools rather than interrogating gender binaries. Key words: masculinity, gender reform, literacy practices, essentialist frameworks Dans cet article, les auteurs offrent, a la suite de leurs recherches, une reponse aux approches suggerees pour s’attaquer a la litteratie chez les garcons et a la reforme pedagogique. Tout en formulant des critiques, les chercheurs visent a ouvrir un dialogue en examinant les limites conceptuelles imposees lorsqu’on considere les garcons comme des types particuliers de sujets quant a la litteratie. Les auteurs s’opposent aux pratiques officiellement sanctionnees en matiere de litteratie, mais faisant fi de la litterature qui, fondee sur la recherche, souleve de graves questions au sujet des initiatives de reforme selon le sexe. Ils suggerent d’etre prudents et de poursuivre un dialogue eclaire en reponse aux inquietudes du public suscitees par les medias et aux politiques de l’enseignement visant a remasculiniser les ecoles plutot qu’a remettre en question la vision binaire des genres. Mots cles: masculinite, reforme selon le sexe, pratiques de litteratie, cadres essentialistes

Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The Complications of Young Men (Re)negotiating Heterosexualized Identities.

Drawing on a larger ethnographic study of four high school young men, this paper foregrounds high school male–male friendships as a context for examining how heterosexism and homophobia operate to limit and delimit the ways masculinities are constructed. I begin this article by first highlighting an inconsistency between recent school initiatives aimed at “helping boys” improve literacy scores and emerging safe school initiatives that recognize and support a diversity of gender identities in Canadian schools. I move from this point to illustrate how compulsory heterosexuality emerges when high school young men attempt to develop male–male friendships. The final section describes the fear and homophobia that restrict and confine relationships among high school young men. In the light of the complex ways masculinities are negotiated among and between young men invested in friendship practices that transgress a dominant normative masculinity, the article concludes with a call to develop and ensure safe spaces exist for all students.

Questioning Masculinities: Interrogating Boys' Capacities for Self-Problematization in Schools.

In drawing on selected interviews with adolescent boys from both Australia and North America, we present an analysis of boys’ own capacities for interrogating gender normalisation in their school lives. We set this analysis against a critique of the public media debates about boys’ education, which continue to be fuelled by a moral panic about the status of boys as the new disadvantaged. Our aim is to raise questions about boys’ existing capacities for problematizing social relations of masculinity and how these might be mobilized in schools to support a counter‐ hegemonic practice committed to interrogating gender oppression. Key words: gender reform, boys’ education, masculinities, normalization A partir d’un choix d’entrevues effectuees aupres d’adolescents venant de l’Australie et de l’Amerique du Nord, les auteurs presentent une analyse des capacites de ces garcons de remettre en question la normalisation en fonction des sexes dans leur vie scolaire. Les auteurs opposent cette analyse a une critique des debats dans les medias sur l’education des garcons, lesquels continuent a etre alimentes par une panique morale au sujet du statut des garcons consideres comme les nouveaux defavorises. L’objectif vise est de soulever des questions sur les capacites des garcons de problematiser les relations sociales masculines et de voir comment ces aptitudes pourraient etre mobilisees dans les ecoles pour appuyer une demarche antihegemonique visant a remettre en question l’oppression basee sur le sexe. Mots cles : reforme et sexes, education des garcons, masculinites, normalisation

Reading Masculinities: Exploring the Socially Literate Practices of High School Young Men.

This paper explores recent Ontario policy directives aimed at improving literacy levels among boys in addition to the perspectives underlying these policies. By drawing on the school experiences of four high school young men, the authors examine how boys read and misread masculinities through socially literate practices. This paper argues that these kinds of reading practices routinely inform how boys think about social identities, literacy and schooling more generally. The paper concludes by arguing that the textual practices involved when high school boys read the bodily texts of their male peers are useful entry points for opening a dialogue that highlights how and what boys can read in a particular context.

Examining the (Em)Bodied Boundaries of High School Locker Rooms

This chapter examines the intersections of masculinity, health and physical education and, in doing so, questions the impact that being a ‘boy’ — particularly one reluctant to participate in physical health education — can have on culturally embodied life practices. The relative absence of discussion acknowledging youth masculinities and health, particularly the normative expectations of boys communicated through health education, remains one of those ‘social categories [that] find expression as independent research variables, merely to be acknowledged as relevant, before being ignored’ (Evans et al., 2008, p. 120). Rather than ignoring growing concerns amongst adolescent boys who silently and secretively struggle with body image issues, this chapter aims to unsettle the silence and pervasive sense of denial (or at best, benign neglect) in schools surrounding the issues and realities of adolescent male body image(s). Our research includes the voices of adolescent boys for whom the masculine body is often seen but not heard. While the larger visual landscape focuses on idealised, muscular and privileged bodies which are afforded a voice by virtue of their embodiment of heteronormative masculinity, our focus is on bodies without voices. In short, we foreground the voices of adolescent boys whose bodies are perceived as not like the rest of the boys and who struggle to navigate masculinised spaces of locker rooms and physical education (PE) classes.