Challenging Masculinities: Disability and achievement in testing times
- 1 March 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Gender and Education
- Vol. 13 (1) , 39-55
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250124346
Abstract
This article describes a feminist classroom project on masculinities undertaken with a group of boys in a UK school for pupils with special educational needs. Positioned by current educational policy as the 'failing/failed boys' of school effectiveness and similar discourses, and excluded from mainstream schooling, these 'underperforming' 1012 year-olds were invested in achieving successful positioning within cultures of hegemonic masculinity. Current official, institutional and media preoccupations with quantifiable academic attainments had served to reinscribe them within a world of hetero/sexist 'laddishness' in which their only hope of success was to prove themselves as macho stars of the football pitch. This article explores some of the tensions and contradictions, as well as the moments of hope, in working with the boys to construct alternative versions of masculinities.Keywords
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