Class Boys Research Articles

Body mass index and smoking: cross-sectional study of a representative sample of adolescents in Denmark

To quantify the association between body mass index (BMI) and smoking (at all and daily smoking) stratified by gender, family social class, and ethnicity among adolescents aged between 13 and 15. The analyses were based on the Danish contribution to the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey in 2002 with self-reported data on height, weight, and smoking behaviour. The study population comprised 3,072 students aged between 13 and 15 (1,512 boys and 1,560 girls). Logistic regression analysis was used to quantify the association. Odds of at all smoking by BMI (per step) was 1.10 (95% CI 1.03-1.17) among boys but there was no association among girls (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.93-1.04). No significant association was found for daily smoking and BMI. The association between at all smoking and BMI (per step) was significant among boys of middle social class (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.03-1.24) and Danish ethnicity (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.02-1.19). Significant association exists between smoking and BMI among boys of Danish ethnicity and middle family social class only.

Detaining the Usual Suspects: Charting the Use of Segregated Settings in New South Wales Government Schools, Australia

This article examines the increase in segregated placements in the New South Wales government school sector. Using disaggregated enrolment data, it points to the growing over-representation of boys in special schools and classes, particularly those of a certain age in certain support categories. In the discussion that follows, the authors question the role of special education in the development of new and additional forms of being ‘at risk’. In effect, they invert the traditional concept by asking: who is at risk of what? In focusing on the containment of risk, are modern practices of diagnosis and segregation perpetuating risks that already disproportionately affect certain groups of individuals? Do these perceptions of and responses to risk in local schools now place these students at greater personal risk of school failure and a future marked by social exclusion? And, finally, is that risk worth the cost?

Freaks and Revelations (review)

Reviewed by: Freaks and Revelations Karen Coats Hurwin, Davida Wills. Freaks and Revelations. Little, 2009 234p. ISBN 978-0-316-04996-2 $16.99 R Gr. 9-12 Inspired by the experiences of two real men, one gay and one a former skinhead, this vivid fictionalized portrayal of their violent encounter and the events that led up to it takes readers inside two very different worlds in California in the 1970s. Doug grows up in LA County in a middle-class family that's trying to outrun the increasing presence of Mexican and black people. His father is angry and abusive, and Doug gets involved with first drugs and then punk in order to manage his own anger at being ignored by his family. Jason is a sweet, mild-mannered boy who first discovers his desire for boys in dance class. Revealing his jubilant discovery to his family doesn't meet with the joy he naïvely hopes for: his super-religious mother bars him from the house at thirteen, and he resorts to living on the streets of San Francisco. Soon enough, he turns to hustling and eventually moves to LA. Vivid portrayals of both the punk scene and the different gay cultures on Castro and Polk Streets in San Francisco contextualize and provide immediacy to the boys' experiences. Their alternating narrations get shorter and shorter as they lead to Doug's vicious beating of Jason in an alley, lending to the storytelling a sense of escalating tension and an inexorable progress toward doom. Both boys have charted courses [End Page 200] that seem impossible to escape or repair, but their stories continue nonetheless, with installments from the years after the incident; their later meeting seems unlikely, but it's is one of the plot points based on actual events, and it effectively acts as benedictory closure. These final bits are less successful from a storytelling perspective, being self-reflective to the point of preachy, but they provide the necessary what-happened-next piece that readers will crave after following these boys through their personal hells. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Natural History in the Periodical Literature of Victorian Working Class Boys

Despite recent scholarly interest in the relationship between science and the Victorian periodical, historians have tended to ignore journals aimed at working class boys. Their editors, it is argued, believed that science was effectively beyond the comprehension of their impoverished and uneducated readers, and therefore included li le in the way of scientific content. However, Victorian working class boys could be passionate about what li le science was available to them. Consequently, in the field of natural history – an 'aesthetic' science demanding little in the way of financial outlay or formal education – youngsters were often very much active. Their efforts ranged in seriousness, from the leisurely to the systematic. Accordingly, working class boys' periodicals endeavoured to cater for their readers' interest in the natural world by carrying a range of scientific material specifically designed to appeal to their tastes and needs. This article provides a survey of several periodicals of particular significance: Edwin J. Bre's Boys of England; William Watkins' Lads of the Village and Seth Lister Mosley's The Young Naturalist and The Natural History Teacher. Staunchly interdisciplinary, the article sheds new light upon the connections between science, the periodical press and Victorian childhood.

On the Arts of Stillness: For a Pedagogy of Composure

On the Arts of Stillness: For a Pedagogy of Composure

“I'm not so into gangs anymore. I've started going to church now”: Coloured boys resisting gangster masculinity

abstract Coloured working class boys in Wentworth, Durban have a bad reputation, as media reports show. Focusing on an ethnography of a group of Coloured working class boys aged between 14–17, this article argues that despite the prevalence of violent gang cultures in Wentworth, the boys show variable patterns of masculinity—not all violent. While violence is an everyday event for the boys in the study, they do show potential to reject it. The data show that their marginalised social positions—characterised by high levels of interpersonal conflict, violent crime and gangsterism—do not automatically generate violent masculinities, although such conditions provide ample opportunity to display violence. Boys' masculinities are variable, it is argued, and within the same group of boys there are those able to renounce violence and disinvest in it. These findings offer opportunities for violence to be challenged and changed by encouraging boys to develop alternate forms of masculinities.

Overweight, obesity and eating disorders in adolescents-a socio-somatic reaction to social change?

Background Epidemiological studies show a considerable secular increase in obesity, especially in adolescents. Most studies prefer an individualistic explanation of the facts, thereby overlooking the evidence for social change as an important agent in the development of overweight and eating disorders. Their social distribution–overweight and obesity dominate in lower class boys and girls, as well, bulimia in contrast among female adolescents-is only one of the indicators of their social origins.

Teaching Boys: A Relational Puzzle

Focus of Study This article investigates how teachers’ relationships with boys can be central in bolstering boys’ resilience and connection to their work in schools. Specifically, we examine how teachers understand the ways that their relationships with boys shape their teaching practice as well as their understandings of boys’ learning in school. As school violence perpetrated by boys continues to make the headlines, and as many boys’ achievement continues to lag behind that of girls, especially boys of color and boys in the lower socio-economic classes, we must engage the question of how teachers come to know the boys they teach. Context Recently, boys’ development and performance in school have taken center stage in educational research on gender and schooling. Building on a significant history of research on classroom relationships as well as current findings that reveal the centrality of relationships in children's learning, this article seeks to investigate the ways that socio-cultural forces of gender both shape teachers’ conceptions of relationships with boys as well as teachers’ capacity to connect with the boys they teach. Methodology In order to examine the prevailing research questions, a Teaching Boys Study Group was formed, comprised of thirteen pre-K-12 teachers. Teachers presented detailed descriptions of individual boys to each other and then examined questions of pedagogy, gender and identity. The data were analyzed using a qualitative voice-centered relational method that required multiple listenings or readings of the data in order to surface the central tensions that the teachers confronted when considering their relationships with the boys they teach. Findings Our findings revealed two central tensions that teachers confront when considering the intersection of gender and the relational context of teaching and learning. The first tension encompasses teachers’ efforts to locate, appreciate and preserve boys’ individuality while at the same time confronting the pressures that teachers face to act as forces of enculturation. The second tension focuses on the complexity involved in locating teachers’ teaching identities—especially the ways that gender shapes their teaching identities—while at the same time identifying the meanings that boyhood holds for their male students. This tension became particularly acute when examining issues of boys’ resistance to school and to teachers. Conclusions These findings suggest that the ways teachers come into relationships with boys shape and are shaped by the teachers’ identity, the extent to which the boys express resistance to the school and classroom culture, and the forces of the school culture on both the teacher and the boy. When teachers can become aware of these forces, they have the capacity to investigate their own life histories, seek insight and support from colleagues, and revisit and hone their practice. Such awareness allows teachers to enter into relationship with the boys they teach, resist the forces of relational disconnection, and ultimately support their students’ learning. The findings suggest the essential need for and careful planning of professional development contexts that can support teachers’ inquiry into issues of gender, identity, teaching and learning.

Back to the future on gender and anti‐school boys: a response to Jeffrey Smith

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is an expression of working class counter‐school culture; (2) some teachers are ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing ‘hegemonic masculinities’ of anti‐school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these ‘cultural accomplices’ are an emerging response to recent moral panics and neo‐liberal managerialism concerned with ‘failing boys’ at school. It is suggested that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is not necessarily associated with anti‐school values in working class culture. Many working class boys might subscribe to ‘hegemonic masculinity’ without rejecting learning. Contrary to Smith’s emphasis on how working class culture generates anti‐school ‘hegemonic masculinity’, there is the possibility that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is fused with anti‐school values produced by organisational differentiation. The continuing commonalities between working class anti‐school boys and the ‘gender regime’ of some secondary schools for over 20 years implies something more enduring at work than recent moral panics.

Gender inequality in the primary classroom: will interactive whiteboards help?

This paper sets out to investigate (i) gender differences in whole class classroom interaction with a sample of teachers who were not using interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in their lessons; and (ii) the short‐term and longer term impact of IWB use upon gender differences in classroom interaction. The study focused upon teacher–student interaction at Key Stage 2 in the teaching of literacy and numeracy in English primary schools. As part of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, IWBs have been made widely available as a pedagogic tool for promoting interactive whole class teaching. In order to investigate their impact, the project looked specifically at the interactive styles used by a national sample of primary teachers. Using a computerized observation schedule, 144 lessons were observed over a two‐year period. The findings concur with other research which has found that boys dominate classroom interaction in terms of the frequency of certain discourse moves. The average length of each move did not vary significantly between boys and girls. Frequency dominance was disproportionately stronger in classes with a high percentage of boys in class, and was also stronger in lessons where whiteboards were used. Understanding how interaction varies in the classroom, and how new technology might affect this interaction, has important implications for teachers, researchers and future research priorities.

‘Ye've got to ‘ave balls to play this game sir!’ Boys, peers and fears: the negative influence of school‐based ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing hegemonic masculinities

The ongoing moral panic surrounding adolescent boys continues to cause concern, proving pivotal in popular discourses centring on the ‘problem of youth’. Drawing on ethnographic data from a large co‐educational secondary school, this paper illustrates how school outcomes are adversely affected by working class boys' investments in peer regulated ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Echoing traditional working class masculine identities formed in relation to the physical requirements of industrial labour, these performances reject associations with activities constructed as ‘feminine’, leading to disaffection with schoolwork. The paper argues that, in a school culture of pervasive homophobia, some teachers paradoxically acted as ‘cultural accomplices’, naturalizing compulsory heterosexuality in engaging alienated and disruptive young men. Moreover, evidence suggests that this is an emerging response to managerialist pressures to ‘continuously improve’ grades by adopting ‘boy friendly’ approaches. This renders questionable strategies predicated on naturalizing assumptions about boys and makes problematic calls for more ‘role models’ without investigating how gendered pedagogies affect schooling for girls and boys.

Respect, deference, respectability and place: What is the problem with/for working class boys?

The rise of the notion of ‘respect’ is a key part of the agenda for the third term of the British New Labour Government, first elected in 1997. Here I consider its relationship to and differentiate it from the idea of respectability – a term that has long been used to divide the working class – and consider the links between deference and respect. While the claim that working class youth, especially boys, are ‘disrespectful’ has a long history, I argue that the current focus on respect not only continues this association but also illustrates a deep ambivalence at the heart of the New Labour policy agenda, an uncertainty about the status of young people and a denial of their moral agency. Furthermore, there is a continuation in this agenda of a long-standing designation of certain areas in cities as places to avoid, associated with a disreputable working class population.

Masculinities fathering and health: The experiences of African-Caribbean and white working class fathers

There is a developing body of research that investigates the links between masculinities and men's health experiences, but the links between masculinities and the health of fathers has been a neglected focus for research in the UK. This paper presents some of the findings drawn from a parent study which investigated African-Caribbean and white working class fathers’ experiences of fathering, health and social connectedness. Data are drawn from interviews with 13 men (6 African-Caribbean and 7 White working class) living in a city in the West Midlands area of the UK. In this paper, I analyse and discuss African-Caribbean and white working class fathers’ stories about the meaning of health, the influences upon their health, and their health practices. It was found that for the African-Caribbean fathers specifically, anticipated or perceived racist prejudice, abuse or discrimination influenced their health experiences. However, the meaning of health for both ethnic groups of fathers was as functional capacity, that is health was an asset that allowed fathers to meet the obligations of paid work and fathering. These obligations were also associated with a restricted sense of personal agency for the men interviewed, and the associated constraints were linked to transgressive consumption of alcohol, food and tobacco. In addition, fathers were also involved in solitary ways of dealing with their vulnerability, vulnerability that was associated with fathers’ health concerns, and other difficult life experiences. Fathers’ solitary experiences of vulnerability were also mediated by hegemonic forms of masculinity. Nevertheless, the experience of fathering within the lifecourse influenced men's health experiences: reflexivity and challenges to both transgressive consumption and solitary experiences were linked to fathers’ perceived obligations to children. The significance of gender, ethnicity and social class for theory and future research with working class fathers and boys is identified, and the need for gender-sensitive public health and health promotion interventions regarding the ‘work-family balance’ and working class fathers’ personal and social skills is also discussed.

Female ‘big fish’ swimming against the tide: The ‘big-fish-little-pond effect’ and gender-ratio in special gifted classes

This study takes a second look at the “big-fish-little-pond effect” (BFLPE) on a national sample of 769 gifted Israeli students (32% female) previously investigated by Zeidner and Schleyer (Zeidner, M., & Schleyer, E. J., (1999a). The big-fish-little-pond effect for academic self-concept, test anxiety, and school grades in gifted children. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 24, 305–329). The reanalysis of the data, using HLM methodology, was designed to partition individual differences from aggregate group variance, as well as to test a number of focused hypotheses regarding the effects of gender and gender-ratio in class on self-concept. With respect to self-concept, the BFLPE hypothesizes that it is better to be a good student in an average-ability reference group than to be a good student in a high-ability reference group. Prior studies explored the BFLPE comparing gifted students in different educational contexts. Here, the BFLPE was exclusively investigated within special gifted classes. Results supported the BFLPE for academic self-concept. Furthermore, whereas girls’ academic self-concept was negatively influenced by gender-ratio (percentage of boys in class), gender-ratio had no significant influence on boys’ academic self-concept.

A comparison of girls' and boys' aggressive-disruptive behavior trajectories across elementary school: Prediction to young adult antisocial outcomes.

Multiple group analysis and general growth mixture modeling was used to determine whether aggressive- disruptive behavior trajectories during elementary school, and their association with young adulthood antisocial outcomes, vary by gender. Participants were assessed longitudinally beginning at age 6 as part of an evaluation of 2 school-based preventive programs. Two analogous trajectories were found for girls and boys: chronic high aggression- disruption (CHAD) and stable low aggression- disruption (LAD). A 3rd class of low moderate aggression- disruption (LMAD) for girls and increasing aggression- disruption (IAD) for boys also was found. Girls and boys in analogous CHAD classes did not differ in trajectory level and course, but girls in the CHAD and LAD classes had lower rates of antisocial outcomes than boys. Girls with the LMAD trajectory differed from boys with the IAD trajectory.

Adolescent Studentʼs Attitudes toward Physical Activity in Coeducational and Gender Segregated Physical Education Classes

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine high school students' attitudes towards physical activity in coeducational and gender-segregated physical education classrooms based on the student's enjoyment. METHODS: Subjects included 78 ninth and tenth grade students (boys = 40, girls = 38). A questionnaire was used to establish student's attitudes toward physical activity in both coeducational and gender segregated environments. Responses to the questions were measured through comparisons of the positive and negative question means by running a series of one-way ANOVA's (alpha level of 0.05). Focus group interviews were conducted and were audio taped and transcribed. Transcripts of all focus groups were read by each investigator. Repeated words, phrases, sentences, and concepts as well as tone, context, and nonverbal responses were summarized for each group. Supporting themes were identified based on frequency and intensity of summary content. RESULTS: Findings suggested that both male and female students seemed to enjoy physical activity in their respective co-gender physical education classes. Further, male students were found to have significantly higher positive attitudes toward physical activity than females in coeducational classes (P = .024). When comparing the overall positive means of the segregated girls and segregated boys, findings indicated that segregated boys seemed to enjoy physical activity more while participating in gender-segregated classes, but there was no significant difference between groups. The comparison of coeducational boys and segregated boys yielded a significant difference between the two groups (P = .002), both classes' maintained positive attitudes toward physical activity where coeducational boys brandished more positive attitudes. However, coeducational girls seemed to possess positive attitudes toward physical activity whereas segregated girls did not. Supporting interview themes include a desire toward socialization, varied interaction and dislike of competition. Girls indicated that they enjoy the social aspect of physical education and liked having boys in class. Many felt that girl's only classes would become boring. Girls did indicate that single gender physical education may be better for some units such as flag football because they get to participate more and focus less on competition. CONCLUSION: This research suggests that students enjoyed physical activity more while participating in coeducational settings regardless of their gender. Focus group interview results support survey conclusions.

‘Consuming Children’

What makes ‘corrupt’ children such efficacious or nodal symbols? How and why is it that certain groups of children take on this signifying function? How do narratives about corrupt children provide people with a way of mediating and articulating more general anxieties about social change or rupture? This article begins to explore these questions by analyzing how people in the city of Banaras, India talked about the corruption and consumption of the lower caste and lower class boys who worked in the informal sector of the foreign tourism industry. Through the invocation of two culturally paradigmatic ‘useless’ figures, the loafer (awaaraa) and the addict (nasheybaaz), people in Banaras not only critiqued these youngsters’ consumptive practices and their new found purchasing power in the bazaar, but they also articulated larger fears about the way that foreign tourism was ‘consuming’ these children.

Are inequalities in height narrowing? Comparing effects of social class on height in two generations

Objective: To determine whether social inequalities in height change across generations. Methods: The target population was from the 1958 British birth cohort, all born 3rd–9th March 1958, followed to 1991,...

Research report

The primary purpose was to investigate the efficacy of a full year of single‐sex (SS) teaching of science. The secondary aims were to locate any differentiation by set and gender, and to relate these to more proximal variables. Participants were 13 year olds. Higher set girls gave evidence of clear benefits overall, and higher set boys also, except in biology. Lower set pupils performed at or below expectations. Analyses of additional questionnaire and interview data pointed to further reasons for avoiding the making of unqualified generalizations about SS teaching. Pupil preferences for SS teaching were relevant, as were gender differences in attitudes to biology and physics. Qualitative data suggested higher set girls benefited from more learningrelated classroom interaction and less interference and exploitation of girls by boys in SS classes. Lower set pupils complained that SS teaching deprived them of social interaction with the other sex. The concluding suggestion was that SS teaching offers affordances of benefits when mixed‐sex teaching has specifiable disadvantages.

Do single-gender classrooms in coeducational settings address boys' underachievement? An Australian study

This paper reports a research project developed in partnership with the Principal and Leadership Team of an Australian secondary school. It monitored a school-based initiative designed to address the underachievement of male students. Students in Year 9 selected single-gender or coeducational classes in mathematics and English during the second half of a school year. Student scores in standardized tests and school-based assessment in these subjects were obtained before and after the establishment of the initiative. Results indicate no significant difference in mathematics achievement that can be attributed to gender or class composition. However, scores in school-based English improved for students in single-gender classes. Improvement for girls in single-gender classes was greater than that for boys in single-gender classes.