Race, Class, And Gender In Boys' Education: Repositioning Intersectionality Theory

Abstract

Boys’ identities are distinctly gendered, racialized, and classed across disparate social and cultural contexts. Related intersectional identity processes are associated with boys’ academic success. While intersectionality has been utilized throughout boys’ education scholarship, a limited, “light touch” approach is often enacted. A critical logic of interpretation, intersectionality theory accounts for race, class, and gender within equity-based empirical studies. The authors contend insufficient engagement with intersectionality may lead educational research on boys’ social and learner identities to become static. Examining boys’ identities through intersectional approaches reveals more complex insights particularly as related to their school engagement. Critical of recent “boy crisis” literature, this article strives to compel theorists of boys’ education to more fully leverage the history, constructs, and epistemologies of intersectionality.