Recapturing imaginations and the gender agenda: reflections on a progressive challenge from an English perspective

Abstract

This article represents a personal, English and therefore necessarily limited response to important and provocative contributions to our understanding of debates about Gender and Education. I attempt to establish points of connection and discontinuity between the arguments and ideas flowing from the Australian context and those, past and present, that have dominated the English debates around gender and (under)achievement. Finally, I ask (but do not answer) 'What might constitute a progressive challenge to the morally bankrupt gender agenda currently being defined by policy-makers'.