Wayne Martino

'Cool Boys', 'Party Animals', 'Squids' and 'Poofters': Interrogating the dynamics and politics of adolescent masculinities in school

In this paper, a Foucauldian interpretive framework for analysing the production of subjectivity serves as a basis for investigating the ways in which boys fashion their masculinities at one particular school. Interviews conducted with a group of adolescent boys, aged 15-16, in a catholic co-educational high school are drawn on the document certain social practices and behaviours, which become identifiable as particularised instances of masculinity. Data are used to investigate how these boys learn to relate to themselves and to others within the context of peer-group relations and dynamics at this particular school. Possible implications of this research for educational in schools are indicated.

Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: commensurate global and national developments

This paper focuses on outlining, contextualising and theorising the rise of global and complementary national modes of test-based, top-down accountability in schooling systems. The effects of these infrastructures of accountability on schools, teachers’ pedagogical work, on the width of curriculum and on the goals of schooling are also alluded to. These developments are theorised in terms of rescaling of the policy cycle globally, as a well as the topological turn that sees the globe reconstituted as a single space of comparative and commensurate measurement of the performance of school systems, as part of the move to new global forms of networked governance. We argue that we are seeing a new global panopticism, with national school systems variously positioned within the global market place and global educational policy field with important effects within national policy-making. The analysis and theorising provided serves as a contextual backdrop and introduction to the papers included in the special issue of the Journal of Education Policy on the theme of Testing Regimes, Accountabilities and Education Policy. We argue, and the papers demonstrate, the significance for policy sociology today of recognising testing as a, perhaps the, major policy steering systems and the work of schools today.

Male Teachers as Role Models: Addressing Issues of Masculinity, Pedagogy and the Re‐Masculinization of Schooling

Abstract This article focuses on the call for more male teachers as role models in elementary schools and treats it as a manifestation of “recuperative masculinity politics” (Lingard & Douglas, 1999). Attention is drawn to the problematic gap between neo-liberal educational policy–related discussions about male teacher shortage in elementary schools and research-based literature which provides a more nuanced analysis of the impact of gender relations on male teachers’ lives and developing professional identities. In this sense, the article achieves three objectives: (1) it provides a context and historical overview of the emergence and re-emergence of the male role model rhetoric as a necessary basis for understanding the politics of “doing women’s work” and the anxieties about the status of masculinity that this incites for male elementary school teachers; (2) it contributes to existing literature which traces the manifestation of these anxieties in current concerns expressed in the popular media about the dearth of male teachers; (3) it provides a focus on research-based literature to highlight the political significance of denying knowledge about the role that homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality and hegemonic masculinity play in “doing women’s work.” Thus the article provides a much-needed interrogation of the failure of educational policy and policy-related discourse to address the significance of male teachers “doing women’s work” through employing an analytic framework that refutes discourses about the supposed detrimental influences of the feminization of elementary schooling.

Policing Masculinities: Investigating the Role of Homophobia and Heteronormativity in the Lives of Adolescent School Boys

This paper focuses on research with adolescent males attending a Catholic co-educational high school. A Foucauldian framework provides the analysis for the normalizing regimes of practice through which particular homophobic and heterosexist versions of masculinity are enacted. Several of the boys interviewed question the effects of particular forms of masculinity in their lives. Issues of masculinity in schools are discussed.

The tyranny of surveillance: male teachers and the policing of masculinities in a single sex school

This paper draws on research into male teachers in one single sex high school in the Australian context to highlight how issues of masculinity impact on their pedagogical practices and relationships with boys. The study is situated within the broader international field of research on male teachers, masculinities and schooling in Australia, the UK and the US and provides further knowledge about the gendered dimensions of male teachers’ pedagogical practices in secondary schools. The authors argue for the urgent need to interrogate the impact of masculinities in male teachers’ lives at school, given the call for more male role models to ameliorate the supposed feminizing and emasculating influences of schools on boys’ lives. A particular Foucauldian perspective, which draws on surveillance and its key role in practices of gender subjectification, is used to provide insight into how two male teachers learn to police their masculinities and to fashion pedagogical practices under the normalizing gaze of their male students.

Getting boys’ education ‘right’: the Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics

This paper focuses on the Australian federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education, Boys: Getting it Right, which is shown to be an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. The paper demonstrates how, through a variety of rhetorical strategies, its anti‐feminist politics are masked and how the report works with essentialised differences between boys and girls. The argument is demonstrated through a focus on a number of the report’s recommendations, including the call for a recasting of current gender policy, the need for creating so‐called ‘boy‐friendly’ curricula, assessment and pedagogical practices, and for employment of more male teachers. The report draws on populist literature and submissions from the boys’ lobby, as well as practice‐oriented submissions to the neglect of theoretically oriented and (pro‐)feminist work. As such, the significance of the construction of masculinities to boys’ attachment to and performances in school is totally neglected, limiting the value of the report’s recommendations for improving schooling for both boys and girls.

Interrogating single‐sex classes as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational and social needs

This paper explores the policy of single‐sex classes that is currently being adopted in some schools as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational and social needs. It draws on research in one Australian government, coeducational primary school to examine teachers’ and students’ experiences of this strategy. Interviews with the principal, male and female teachers responsible for teaching the single‐sex classes and the students involved in these classes are used to illustrate the impact and effect of the strategy on pedagogical practices in this particular school. The data are used to raise critical questions about the impact and effects of teachers’ pedagogical practices in light of the current literature and research about single‐sex classes. In this case study, it was found that teachers had a tendency to modify their pedagogical practices and the curriculum to suit stereotypical constructions about boys’ and girls’ supposed oppositional orientations to learning. It is concluded that teacher knowledges and assumptions about gender play an important role in the execution of their pedagogies in the single‐sex classroom.

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

Black Male Teachers as Role Models: Resisting the Homogenizing Impulse of Gender and Racial Affiliation

This article reports on research with one Black male elementary school teacher in Toronto and draws on feminist, queer, and antiracist analytic perspectives to raise important questions about the discourse of teachers as role models. The voice of this teacher is used to challenge discourses about role modeling in their capacity to address adequately the limits imposed by both cultural and structural problems experienced by minority boys in urban school communities. Important questions about the role of teachers as transformative or organic intellectuals are also raised. A case study approach is employed to draw attention to both important pedagogical issues and the limits of role modeling as a conceptual framework that continues to be used to support generalizable claims about the influence of male teachers on the basis of their gender and racial affiliation with boys in schools. What is required, the authors conclude, is a disarticulation and, hence, a separating out of role modeling from a discussion about the need for a greater representation of minority teachers in urban schools.

Male teacher shortage: black teachers’ perspectives

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role models. The study concludes that educational policy attempting to address male teacher shortage would benefit from engaging with both analytic frameworks and empirical research that is capable of unravelling the politics of representation and intersectionality as they relate to addressing questions of male teacher shortage in elementary schools.