‘James always hangs out here’: making space for place in studying masculinities at school

Abstract

All learning is emplaced. It happens somewhere and it involves material things. It is located and situated. This paper focuses on spaces and places outside of the classroom where lessons about ‘self’ and ‘other’ are learnt. Drawing on recent research (‘Space, place and the making of masculinities in primary schools in Ireland’, O Donoghue, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2006, volume 3), the paper analyses the stories/narratives of a group of ten and eleven year old boys, stories that tell of how they learn to speak, act and perform masculinities in school spaces and places. These performances, ‘naturalized’ through repetition and regulation, happen in spaces that exert significant effects on boys by opening up/closing off certain behavioural possibilities. The paper makes visible processes of doing and re/presenting research into masculinities and schooling in, with and through art. It argues that a research approach drawing on theories and processes of contemporary art practice offers much for conceptualizing, doing and representing research and provides opportunities that other research methods close off.

Notes

1. Both parental and individual consent was sought and received for participation in this component of the research study. The project plan was agreed with students, staff and management in the school before commencement. Their comments on its design and implementation were sought at this early stage. Consent was also secured for the reproductions of visual and textual narratives used in this paper. For purposes of anonymity boys names have been changed and replaced with pseudonyms.

2. Single‐sex schooling is very much a product of the involvement of the church in Irish education, especially the Catholic Church. Historically, single‐sex schools were founded and run by religious orders. Of all 3155 state‐funded primary schools 554 are single‐sex (17.5%). Of all boys currently enrolled in state‐funded primary schools, 28% attend single‐sex schools. The great majority (over 95%) of primary schools are state‐funded. The National Curriculum is taught in state‐funded schools.

3. The national curriculum caters for all primary‐going children (children between the age of 4 and 12 years of age). It comprises a broad range of subjects including languages, maths, the arts and social, scientific and physical education is taught in all state funded primary schools.

4. These are the boys' own words and descriptors to describe their images.

5. As Lynch (1998) and Lodge and Lynch (2000) argue, the subordination of students to teachers reflects young peoples lesser status in society as a whole, both constitutionally and politically. Young people, they note, ‘are not generally empowered to define issues of significance in political or educational debate, because they lack the status both of expertise and of age' (Lodge and Lynch 2000, 46).