A framework for ‘best practice’ in boys' education: key requisite knowledges and productive pedagogies

Abstract

In enhancing the social and academic outcomes of boys, positive teacher student relationships and quality pedagogy that is informed by key research-based understandings and knowledges about gender are positioned as central. The managerial rather than pedagogical focus that is currently characterizing schools in Queensland (Australia), where the acquisition of basic skills is seen as more important than students' intellectual engagement, can be seen as constraining boys' academic and social development. In examining what might constitute ‘best practice’ in boys' education, this article draws on significant sociocultural research in the areas of gender, masculinity, and schooling to define the key understandings and knowledges that are seen as necessary for teachers to construct and apply contextually driven pedagogic strategies effectively in order to improve educational and social outcomes. The productive pedagogies framework of quality teaching and learning is presented as being potentially generative in this regard. This framework is presented as a way forward for teachers to move beyond the ‘common-sense’ and prescriptive approaches that continue to drive much of the curriculum and pedagogy in Australian schsools and, more specifically, many of the programs designed to address the educational needs of boys. In drawing on understandings of gender inequities as a product of social practice, the article illuminates how teachers can adopt the productive pedagogies framework in connecting with boys in intellectually engaging ways to explore their understandings of gender and masculinity, and to broaden their appreciation of difference and diversity.