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This paper explores the salience of sport in the lives of eight-year-old and nine-year-old South African primary school boys. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I argue that young boys' developing relationship with sport is inscribed within particular gendered, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Throughout the paper I show differences and durability of meanings across the social sites that affect and position blacks, white, boys and girls. It is argued that young boys' early association with sport is centrally about identity and doing sport, or at least establishing interest in sport is one important way in claiming to be a real boy. The findings have implications for the call by the South African Government to get the nation to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines male and female teachers' language practices in relation to 'censuring' talk in the primary classroom, in the context of the debate around boys' 'underachievement' and the 'feminisation' of primary school culture. Through an analysis of classroom observations with 51 men and women teachers, it looks to see whether gender differences could be found in the ways individual men and women teachers communicated in terms of their 'censuring' comments of pupils' work or behaviour. Secondly, the paper takes issue with the notion that teachers operate within a 'feminised' educational culture, by looking at the ways in which teachers' classroom talk can be seen to be constrained by two contrasting discourses relating to the power relation between teacher and pupil: a 'traditional' disciplinarian discourse, and a more 'progressive' liberal discourse. Both discourses have complex gendered and class dimensions, challenging the conception of a 'feminised' primary school culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses events at Kingsmead School, Hocknwy, in the aftermath of head teacher, Jane Brown's refusal to take children to a ballet of Romeo and Juliet. The paper explores the ensuing struggle over space, governance and gender within the centext of LEA power after LMS. It analyses different levels of governance direct, midway and at a distance, and explores the relationship between these levels and developed legal powers. The paper links Hackney's techniques of governing, and school supporters' acts of resistance, to their competing spatial representations of Kingsmead Highlighted are discourses of ridicule, excessive sexuality, kingship, community and parents rights, as well as techniques of discipline, law, and fortification. Finally, the paper explores the conflict in terms of the production of lesbian feminist space, and considers the centrality of gender to the events that occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the theory of critical sociology of education by probing it through the unique example of the education of the Druze in the Golan This examination highlights the fact that even if the state culture is being contested, the state cannot simply dominate the conflicting culture It also questions one of the major ideas of the corresponding principle and resistance theory, with respect to dominant vs subordinate relations This paper points out that teacher resistance was usually overlooked It was also found that a hegemonic curriculum which is based on a disputable foundation is not likely to achieve as goal The concept of cultural capital has been found partly useful, but in regard to gender it fails to explain the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data derived from two socially contrasting primary schools in Durban, this paper focuses on how gender and sexuality feature in the teaching and discussion of HIV/AIDS. A detailed analysis of two 'life-skills' lessons in the two schools shows that, despite the social differences between the schools, discussions of gender and sexuality remain muted. Discourses of childhood innocence make it difficult for teachers to provide comprehensive knowledge of sex, sexuality and gender in the primary school 'life-skills' lessons. Implications for teacher training are suggested briefly in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of feminist pasts has been largely ignored in the history of education. This paper suggests that the historical sociology of Olive Banks provides fresh starting points for future research exploring the relationship between the history of social and political movements and a reassessment of contemporary and historical forms of 'radical education.' The article proceeds to use group biography to explore a municipal socialism that has been over-ridden in historical memory by the classic political histories that take the view from Westminster and Whitehall. In so doing it seeks to show the contribution of six educator activists who were participants in the making of a metropolitan political elite emerging from the association between feminism, socialism and the labour and trade union movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic staff in universities continue to be male dominated, particularly at the higher levels, despite the introduction by many of equal opportunities (EO) policies. This paper draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken in an old (pre-1992) UK university. The main aim of the study was to measure the impact of gender issues on the university campus, an important part of which was the issue of the effectiveness of its EO policies. Using a theoretical lens of hegemony, this paper develops an account of the adapting responses in the academy to the perceived demands of EO. It attempts to categorise these responses into four types: three different types of accommodation, and one of more overt resistance. It is not claimed that these are mutually exclusive, as any one academic may use different responses at different times, but it is proposed that they go some way to explaining the relative ineffectiveness of EO policies in an academic setting, and the maintenance of male dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the gender gap at GCSE in eight contrasting English secondary schools, and discusses the reality and rhetoric of classroom interactions, focusing on the views of teaching staff, the perspectives of Year 11 students, and observations of teacher--student, interactions in the classroom. In an earlier paper (British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (3)), the authors examined the extent to which there was less positive teacher-support for the learning of boys than for the learning of girls, and this issue is reviewed in differing school contexts. Research in this broader context suggests that most teachers believe that they give equal treatment to girls and to boys, particularly in support of their learning, but focus group interviews with students and classroom observation suggest that this is rarely achieved; in most schools, boys appear to dominate certain classroom interactions, while girls participate more in teacher--student interactions which support learning. If the underachievement of some boys is to be addressed successfully, these patterns of interaction need to be challenged, to enable boys to begin to develop the very learning strategies which many girls employ effectively to enable them to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores, through the life histories of a group of first and second generation immigrant pupils from the 'Asian' and 'African' diasporas, the complex ways in which 'black' identities have evolved in British society over the past two decades. The phrase 'black identities' is used here not as a racially descriptive term but rather as a signifier of ethnic 'otherness'; to make distinct (from white society) and, at the same time, to unify the experiences of disparate groups of ethnic minority groups as marginals within metropolitan societies. Charting the life histories of a group of students in an inner-city comprehensive school in their own collective and individual voices, the paper provides a glimpse of their perceptions of their status as citizens, their views on cultural identity, and their dreams, aspirations, hopes and desires as young people growing up in contemporary British society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from theories of identity formation and feminist theories, this paper develops an account which is both structural and personal of the social construction of academic women's lives in a South African setting. Such discussion is necessary given the paucity of material on gender in South Africa, and timely in its comparative account of the shaping effects not only of gender, but also of race in the academy. Using life-history interviews, the paper explores and begins to explain the marginalisation of women in South African universities where male and masculine carries greater cultural prestige, and where the gendered economy and gender divisions in private lives shape and constrain academic selves, but where race has been and is a central carrier of power. Using the words of the women, it seeks to unpick the seamless narration of the White, male, masculinist colonial university as a move towards a more inclusive and so more fully human account of aspects of life in South African universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as a point of departure the prominent position of boys in the classroom as demonstrated in previous research, this paper discusses girls' ways for gaining influence and control in school. Drawing upon an empirical study of gender patterns in student-teacher interactions in Swedish schools, various scripts to counter powerlessness are illustrated and discussed. It is argued that the features of these scripts, i e these ways of attempting to influence and control, are to be related to societal and institutional gender expectations as well as to individuals' and groups' actual situations and experiences. It is suggested that girls' scripts to counter powerlessness differ from boys', in so far as they concern different dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on gender relations in a working class co-educational school, this paper reports on the differences in power, status and control when male and female students interact with school-based curricular processes The research site provided an interesting arena for the empowerment of pupils, particularly female, through a negotiated school-based curriculum fragment of the total school organisation This paper aims to portray teacher/student negotiations in the context of classwork and classroom behaviour and the making of appropriate subject selections, a process which portrays an experimental interaction between students and the organisation and authority of the school The research identified areas linked closely to emerging shifts in female student career options, as well as reflecting perspectives relevant to policy and theory development for the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1981 we gave a paper at the International Sociology of Education Conference at Westhill, subsequently published as 'The Educational Worker' A Reassessment of Teachers', which was a polemic on the subject of teacher professionalism and proletarianisation. The paper is partly a critique of 'The Educational Worker', following from a belated recognition of the importance of gender in analyzing teachers' work, and also makes use of more recent historical and comparative research. This paper puts the emphasis on the social construction of skill and argues for the study of 'schoolwork', that is for the study of the labour process of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest public sector institution in the United Kingdom, education is a key site for studying the context of 'choice' and changes in the identities of professional workers in contemporary society. Recruitment and retention problems in education have led to the creation of new routes into teaching to attract career changers from other professions and occupations. In this paper we focus on career changers within the Economic and Social Research Council project 'Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures' who have entered teaching from other private sector occupations. We analyse these career changes in terms of 'turning points' in the participants' lives in order to assess the extent to which choices are 'self-initiated', 'forced' or 'structural'. We are interested in the basis on which these choices were made and the impact of gender on career decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underachievement of boys has been a focus of intense concern in Australia for over 15 years. Historical analyses suggest that male students' poor performance has traditionally been attributed to factors external to boys themselves (methods, teachers, texts), deflecting attention from the relationship between masculinity construction and successful engagement with school. This paper turns the focus back, addressing the ways in which gender itself was constructed within hearings held for the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys' Education. Discursive analysis demonstrates that witnesses to the Inquiry drew upon a series of gender binaries in representing male and female students, and accounting for their relative attainment. These binaries worked to associate masculinity with 'authentic' learning, such that the success of male students was naturalised even in the absence of achievement. Conversely, the association of femininity and 'inauthentic learning' worked to undermine female students' demonstrated success. The role of these binaries in the reproduction of a paradoxical relationship between gender and achievement is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo-liberal and managerialist educational project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ways in which inner-city, ethnically diverse, working-class girls' constructions of hetero-femininities mediate and shape their dis/engagement with education and schooling. Drawing on data from a study conducted with 89 urban, working-class young people in London, attention is drawn to three main ways through which young women used heterosexual femininities to construct capital and generate identity value and worth; namely, investment in appearance through 'glamorous' hetero-femininities, heterosexual relationships with boyfriends, and the 'ladettte' discourse. We discuss how and why young women's investments in particular forms of heterosexual working-class femininity can play into their disengagement from education and schooling, drawing particular attention to the paradoxes that arise when these constructions play into other oppressive power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins to develop the concept of gender-relevant physical education, combining the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his notion of the habitus and feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young's analysis of feminine motility. It draws on data generated from a study of young people's articulation of the relationships between muscularity, physicality and gender. The social construction of the body has been of central importance to the construction of femininities and masculinities, and has formed an enduring meta-theme through much of the research on physical education and gender. We build on the young people's insights to argue that Bourdieu's notions of the habitus and the exchange of physical capital provide a useful means of conceptualizing issues of embodiment and gender in school physical education and sport. We conclude by sketching an outline of gender-relevant physical education as a process of interrupting the habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the key role of the body in the construction of identity in school boys aged 10-11. The findings are based on data gathered from a 1-year empirical study set in three UK junior schools. I argue that the body is used by the boys as a means of classification, inclusion and differentiation, and is the principal resource to establish status and position within the pupil peer group. The most prevalent and esteemed resource is physicality and athleticism (found particularly in sports and informal playground games), but I also examine how the body is used in tough and intimidating ways, and show how boys construct identities by using their bodies as a social symbol to display items of sports-related and brand-inscribed clothing. Finally, I consider how the body forms a major component in the construction of dominant and subordinated forms of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that male and female undergraduates adopt different, gendered writing styles. This paper discusses findings from a project that examined this issue, and explores lecturers' perceptions of gender and undergraduate writing. It shows that, in the case of 'second-class' awarded essays, a majority of academics were unable to correctly identify the authors gender. Applying analysis of discourse to the explanations of academics concerning their attempts at gender identification, we found that narratives used by academics tended to support discourses of gender difference, particularly in terms of ability. These various narratives, and the resulting constructions of male and female students, are discussed. It is argued that the narratives position male and female students in stereotypical ways, with implications for their power positions. We conclude that while it is important that gendered trends around undergraduate writing are recognised and addressed, the stereotyping of students according to gender must be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision-making coolesce My concern is not to enter the debate about the merits of single-sex education for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discourses of feminity and discourses around single-sex schooling to see how they interact in the choice of single-sex schools by girls and their parents In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory can be used to offer a more dynamic and complex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by neo-liberal theorists The theory I develop is illuminated by interviews with three girls and their parents, from different social-class backgrounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about secondary school to apply for A focus such as this enables me to do two things firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the relationship between gender and educational decision-making, and secondly, to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and its relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisation of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial dimensions of social interaction and reproduction have received increasing attention from sociologists in recent years. However, these issues remain largely implicit in most studies of classrooms, schools and the education system. In this paper, I argue that the study of social space should be integral to analyses of the relationship between educational differentiation and social reproduction. After examining the position of space in Gidden's theory of structuration, I focus on how space is used in schools as a resource in the production of unequal gender relations. Space is viewed not simply as a context in which interaction occurs, but as a phenomenon which both produces and is produced by, gendered power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some feminists have argued that a woman's class position should be determined by her own employment and work history, whereas Goldthorpe has argued that the family is the basic unit in class analysis, with the husband's occupation determining the class position of all family members, including the wife's Goldthorpe denies that this position as an example of gender bias, claiming that class and gender inequality are separate issues This paper argues that gender and class inequality are strongly interconnected, by virtue of the importance of the work in child-rearing earned out by the wife-mother and its effects on the child's scholastic achievements and life chances It shows that within-family processes are more important than clew position in affecting children`s scholastic achievements It further argues that children `s family environments are affected by the biographies of both parents The institutional separation of the family, schooling and the work-place means that there will be great variability in the biographies of parents who are in the same `class position' by virtue of their occupations The notion of a single indicator of `class position' therefore seems inappropriate, and too static for the complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid-1970s Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity Less often studied is the teacher herself of himself. In particular, the question arises of why, after a decade or so of feminist research on sexism and education, teacher appear to make relatively little effort to implement antisexist initiatives. The paper considers four possible explanations for this situation. Antisexist initiatives may be particularly uncongenial or threatening by their nature or mode of introduction. Characteristics of teachers such as age, sex or social class may influence receptivity to reform. Teacher ideologies about gender or education may set limits to what appears acceptable Conditions under which teachers work may not be conducive to enthusiastic innovation. The Challenge for sociologists is to tease out interrelationships and assess the relative weights of these factors, the challenge for feminists is to transcend the gap between principled scholarship and practical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The masculinity of science can be studied as a topic in the cultural reproduction of gender. In this paper four distinct, but not necessarily contradictory, accounts of the way in which science comes to be seen as a masculine subject are examined. It is argued that schools could play a transformative, rather than a reproductive, role in the formation of gender identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a brief rejoinder to Gorard and Smith's reply to an article I published in a previous issue of British Journal of Sociology of Education. In that original article I provided a critical review of their quantitative research on gender and education in the United Kingdom. In their reply to this article, Gorard and Smith seem to agree with many of the points I made. However, they appear to be particularly perplexed by why I had written this review given that they feel they have already addressed most of my points elsewhere. In this brief rejoinder I explain very clearly my motivations for writing my original article and refer readers to a more detailed and comprehensive paper where I have responded fully to each and every point raised by Gorard and Smith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article reports on a research project investigating the experiences of male primary teachers in Queensland, Australia. While its findings cannot be presented as indicative of all male teachers in all contexts, it does, however, send a warning to policy-makers that the employment of more male teachers may not be in the best interests of gender justice unless such strategies designed to attract more male teachers are informed by sophisticated understandings of gender and social power. Utilising a (pro) feminist post-structuralist theoretical perspective, it is demonstrated how some male teachers contribute to the maintenance of segregated work roles, which is of central importance to the continuance of gender power differentials in a patriarchal society. The research method focused on social relationships and involved a series of semi-structured/life history interviews with 11 male teachers, six female teachers, two male principals and two female principals. An important implication from this research is that the employment of male teachers must be accompanied by an awareness of how teacher practice impacts upon the socialisation of students and how such practice reinforces or contributes to change in the broader gender system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on case-study research at a high-achieving secondary school in London to illustrate how school experiences may influence drug use and reproduce inequalities in reconstructed ways in late modernity. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and observations. We focus in particular on the accounts of three female students expressing a shared counter-school identity and style to explore how drug use has become an important source of bonding, identity construction, coping and excitement for young women from disadvantaged families at high-achieving schools, including as part of strategies to resist the narrow focus schools can place on academic attainment, monitoring and discipline. We propose that, in late modern times, class-based counter-school cultures are being replaced with new consumer-based ones, but that secondary schools continue to act as sites for the reproduction of social stratification, as well as risk and harm relating to drug use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the social dimension of inequality in educational participation. We look at the social transmission and gender-specific channelling of education and further training in the context of employment and family. Based on quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data collected from a multi-level empirical life-course study (Hamburg Biographical and Life-Course Panel: 1980-2006) conducted with a sample of the 1979 cohort of secondary school graduates in Hamburg, Germany, we discuss the education and further training practices in their lives - with special emphasis on social class of origin and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research highlights the continuing relevance of family culture in explaining educational inequalities in Turkey, especially patriarchal beliefs and practices that discourage investment in the education of girls. We extend that research by introducing two much-debated, but empirically untested, aspects of family culture - parental religiosity and headscarf preferences. An analysis of a nationally representative sample of 15-19 year olds in 1988 shows that while religiosity had no significant effect on educational attainment, children who lived in families whose fathers expected them to wear a headscarf in public had lower educational attainment, especially girls. The large negative headscarf effect suggests that the government ban on headscarves in schools may be an obstacle to eliminating gender inequality in education. The results are discussed in light of recent trends in Turkish society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years the findings of a number of quantitative research studies have been published in the UK on gender and achievement. Much of this work has emanated from Stephen Gorard and his colleagues and has not only been highly critical of existing approaches to handling quantitative data but has also suggested a number of alternative and, what they claim to be, more valid ways of measuring differential patterns of achievement and underachievement between groups. This article shows how much of this work has been based upon rather under-developed measures of achievement and underachievement that tend, in turn, to generate a number of misleading findings that have questionable implications for practice. It will be argued that this body of work provides a useful case study in the problems of quantitative research that fails to engage adequately with the substantive theoretical and empirical literature and considers some of the implications of this for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although high-stakes tests play an increasing role in students' schooling experiences, scholars have not examined these tests as sites for socialisation. Drawing on qualitative data collected at an American urban primary school, this study explores what educators teach students about motivation and effort through high-stakes testing, how students interpret and internalise these messages, and how student hierarchies develop as a result. I found that teachers located boys' failure in their poor behavior and attitudes, while arguing that girls simply needed more self-esteem to pass the test. Most boys accepted their teachers' diagnosis of the problem. However, the boys who felt that they were already 'doing their best' and 'working hard' began to doubt that educational success is a function of merit and effort. I conclude that students learn about much more than the three Rs through their experiences with high-stakes testing, and argue that future research should attend to the social dimensions of these experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with experiences of ethnic identity amongst a group of three-year-old and four-year-old children, four-fifths of whom are of Pakistani heritage and the remainder of white indigenous heritage. Focused on a nursery school in the United Kingdom, the study explores the relationship between the individual and the social and cultural, initially in the home and then as the children start nursery school. An ethnographic approach is used to record the children's daily experiences and relationships as contexts where they reveal, shape and reshape who they are. Children's ethnic identities are explored in relation to boundaries where different communities of practice collide, alongside other aspects such as gender and sexuality and under the influence of factors such as power and religion. What appears to emerge is a sense of ethnic identity as social practice and performance rather than as the result of maturation or of internal cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of ‘the school’ as a set of institutional processes and practices that shape the possibilities of educational research forms the focus of this article. It is argued that the discursive and material practices that render schools agencies of cultural reproduction also have effects for what research can be undertaken in them and how. With reference to a series of ‘episodes’ that occurred during research about young people and sexuality in New Zealand, evidence for how schools shape research endeavours is provided. These examples present a complex picture of the way in which schools simultaneously police and are regulated by symbolic boundaries of gender and sexuality. How school disciplinary power works to effect what it is possible to claim about the voluntary nature of student research participation is also explored. It is argued that through the powerful discursive and material practices that occur in schools, these institutions can impede research that attempts to transgress dominant meanings about gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a variety of sources to review the racialisation of children and young people's lives with a view to understanding their current experiences and the futures that appear to be available to them. In the absence of much work using children's own accounts on this issue, the essay draws on research from a range of perspectives. The firrst part sketches in the background to many children and young people's experiences of the intersection of racialisation and gender by considering how racialisation and gender currently intersect with education. Education potentially provides the qualifications, and hence the social capital, that serve to mediate children's futures. However, it also provides the institutions within which children and young people have to negotiate many of their everyday practices and relationships as social actors. The second part of the essay considers examples of racialised and gendered positioning that need to be addressed if inequalities are to be eradicated. This essay has argued that the welcome recent focus on young children as agents needs to be extended to provide understandings of racialisation and its intersection with gender and education. The literature available documents shifting patterns of racialised and ethnicised, as well as gendered and classed, inequalities in educational attainment and experiences, as well as Afro-American and Asian parents' political campaigns and efforts to improve their children's educational chances

Primary school children's interview responses are examined to investigate whether they construct gender as a source of discrimination in their school lives. Their reported experiences and descriptions of sexism in school are discussed, as well as their reports of strategies they employ to cope with or resist it. As social-constructionist analysts is applied to the data; the children's discussion and reports of sexism are interpreted as their constructions in a particular interactive environment (interviews with a white, female adult), rather than as necessary expressions of `truth'. After contextualising this research in a discussion of developments in feminist theory in the area of gender in the primary school, this analysis begins by reporting the large number of children who claimed to have observed incidents of sexism in school. It then discusses how a majority of girls maintained they had been victims of such sexism. The constructions of those who said sexism did not occur in school are also considered. Analysing children's discussion, it is explained that children reported various types of sexism to be practised by fellow pupils. These are listed and explored, and it is suggested that sexism is an excess of gender category maintenance, which can be utilised as a form of power or control. Finally, children's reports of a variety of strategies of resistance to sexism are examined. It is argued that, while some method of resistance were reported to be more successful than others, there was some suggestion that may be prevented from assertive resistance due to their constrictions of femininity as passive or facilitating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently public and policy discussions about gender equity have become strongly concerned with boys This article discusses some aspects of the form, the context and the implications of these developments in Australia (and notes some points of similarity and difference with developments in the UK) It focuses on three main areas the ways examination and other `indicators' have been wed in public policy constructions of gender inequality, secondly, the issue of what types of reforms constitute gender equity as a project and thirdly, the issue of research agendas and the entry of masculinity to gender research [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the differential achievements of girl and boys at general certificate of secondary education (GCSE) over the four years 1991-94, in the context of one Suffolk, Great Britain comprehensive school. The article also attempts to analyze, through questionnaire and interview with students, teachers and parents, some of the factors contributing to such differences. The years since the inception of GCSE have seen an increasing concern with the differences in achievement between boys and girls in 16+ examinations. A number of factors may be seen as contributing to these underlying differences and to the changing trends apparent since the late 1980s. Underperformance by boys may be linked to disenchantment and the perceived inevitability of unemployment as conventional work opportunities have been reduced through deindustrialization and tertiarization of the labor market. The changing relationship between the relative attainments of girls and boys has significant implications for theory as well as for more substantive understandings of school effectiveness and classroom practice. The article authors' intention is to provide some initial insights into the situation through an intensive study.

The article examines key issues and concepts of existing approaches towards sexism and racism in the sociology of education, which can be categorized broadly as either liberal or radical. It explores the predominant theoretical approaches within two fields and strategies for change, mainly in terms of at whom they are directed. It studies some of the similarities, contradictions and conflicts within and between areas and show that at an interventionist level theoretical distinctions break down. This is partly because regardless of theoretical perspectives teachers are limited by the context in which they operate. Thus within areas strategies are not the sole preserve of a single theoretical position. Over the past 20 years, the fields of "race" and gender and their relationship to schooling have each spawned a vast quantity of literature, covering a wide range of theoretical and political perspectives. In each area different accounts of and explanations for inequality have been expounded and various strategies for change have been put forward.

The article reports on studies issues of gender differences in primary schools. It examines how the group dynamic is affected by altering the gender composition. The author of the article sets up a research worked on an identical craft, design and technology task. There already exists research to show that the impact of gender is not uniform and consistent. It seems possible that working-class girls have had a socialization that makes them more prepared to adopt a role of "little mother" than the middle-class girls, whose conditioning takes in greater possibilities and wider horizons. Class, race and academic achievement are all categories that crucially interrelate with concepts of gender. The research was carried out with two groups of four children from the first year junior class of the school in which the author teach. Each group was set the same design Technology task and presented with the same range of materials. The findings support the view that the impact of gender on girls is not uniform and consistent across boundaries of race and class but that the three categories are inextricably interwoven.

Parents of 116 first-year pupils at an urban comprehensive school were studied by questionnaire and interview. They were asked about their educational and occupational aspirations for their children, their views on sexual equality and their children's out-of-school activities. Educational aspirations were found to be high, with little differentiation between the sexes. Parents were enthusiastic about their daughters studying physical science and neutral about craft subjects occupational aspirations were also high and although they tended to be sex-stereotyped, parents were found to be generally supportive of non-traditional choices Class differences were few. Most parents were in favour of working mothers, equal pay and men helping with housework. However these egalitarian attitudes coexisted with more traditional assumptions about male breadwinners and a woman's main responsibility being to her children. Parents' own domestic labour and that which they required of their children was strongly sex-stereotyped. The messages which children receive about gender from their homes are contradictory, but not as uniformly traditional as many teachers assume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]