Power, pedagogy and persuasion: schooling masculinities in the secondary school classroom

In this paper I have attempted to sketch out the elements of a perspective on social justice and the education of boys that resists the colonization of concern about them through the discourses of school effectiveness and underachievement. In doing this I have critiqued the presumptions of the distributive paradigm of social justice, and attempted to analyse its influence on recent education policy, specifically the first White Paper of the New Labour Government, Excellence in Schools. I have then briefly reviewed recent perspectives on gender, social justice and education, ending with a deconstruction of the composition of the ‘underachieving boy’. Finally, in turning to look at an alternative feminist perspective on social justice issues in the education of boys I have drawn on the work of Iris Marion Young, Jenny Shaw, Bob Connell and Jane Kenway to identify important elements of such a perspective. In conclusion I suggest that we need to take these understandings back into schools and connect with the lived experience of teachers and pupils: firstly by researching the emotional and psychic landscapes of teaching and learning, and secondly, by seeing how particular pedagogic frameworks, whilst raising examination performance, can either promote or undermine a social justice perspective on the education of boys.