Boys, Masculinities and Reading

Gender Identity and Literacy as Social Practice

Laura Scholes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315413716
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Boys, Masculinities and Reading explores elementary students' interpretations of their experiences of reading and the contextual influences that impact those experiences. While research continues to highlight the apparent systematic underperformance of boys in comparison to girls on national and international reading benchmarks, this text moves beyond broad generalizations to consider complexities inherent in notions of masculinity and associated tensions. Applying a socio-cultural perspective, Scholes highlights the voices of boys and girls by focusing on their reading experiences. Examining the perceived, generalized "crisis" of boys' underperformance in reading and literacy, Scholes identifies the factors that shape perceptions of masculinity among different groups of boys across the globe.

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Boys, Masculinities and Reading

Gender Identity and Literacy as Social Practice

Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text. Literacy does not just reside in people’s heads as a set of skills to be learned, and it does not just reside on paper, captured as texts to be analyzed. Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people.

(Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 3)

Introduction

This book is inspired by research that examines the influence of dominant discourses of masculinities on the systematic underperformance of some groups of boys, compared to those of girls, in reading. Drawing on this body of work, Boys, Masculinities and Reading: Gender Identity and Literacy as Social Practice focuses on elementary school boys’ interpretations of their experiences of reading and the contextual influences that impact upon such endeavours. Motivated to make visible any differences between groups of boys, and between boys and girls, this book builds on research into literacy in situ and how it is acquired, and mediated, within particular social and cultural contexts (Alloway, 2007; Barton & Hamilton, 2012; Comber, 2016a; Davies & Saltmarsh, 2007; Gee, 2015; Street, 1984) by taking into account students’ own perspectives. Consistent with Barton and Hamilton’s (1998) opening remarks, my understanding of literacy is primarily concerned with students’ everyday literate interactions. My approach then is to understand how literacy is defined by the communication practices students engage in during their everyday lives (Barton, 2007; Street, 1995). While research continues to highlight the apparent systematic underperformance of boys, compared to girls, on international reading benchmarks, this book moves beyond ‘datafication’ of students and binary generalizations to consider complexities inherent in social, cultural and political dimensions that impact on notions of masculinities and associated tensions with literacy. In this way, the research outlined in this volume of work aims to address the gap in our understanding about boys’ apparent underachievement in reading, compared to girls, by exploring which boys are actually experiencing difficulties and how this is complicated by social processes that influence attitudes towards reading.

Children’s attitudes to reading have been investigated in many studies (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Bunbury, 1995; Davies, 1993; Love & Hamston, 2004; McKenna, Kear & Ellsworth, 1995; McKenna, Conradi, Lawrence, Jang & Meyer, 2012; Millard, 1997; Sainsbury & Schagen, 2004; Schiefele, Schaffner, Möller & Wigfield, 2012) with attitude affecting the level of ability attained in reading due to attitudinal influences on engagement and practice. Gender differences in experiences of reading are clearly illustrated in research, with girls, as a group, indicating more favourable attitudes than boys (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Bunbury, 1995; McKenna et al., 1995; McKenna et al., 2012; Millard, 1997; Sainsbury & Schagen, 2004). These attitudes impact on engagement, practice and the cumulative influence that exposure to print has on subsequent reading achievement (Freebody, Maton & Martin, 2008; McKenna et al., 2012; Schiefele et al., 2012). What requires further investigation however is how diverse notions of masculinities influence attitudes towards, and subsequent engagement with, reading.

The research that provides the backdrop for this book about Boys, Masculinities and Reading was motivated by my own interest in the way different performances of masculinity influence reading attitudes for elementary boys in the classroom at school. Born in Vancouver, Canada, I spent my adolescent years in Queensland, Australia, where I attended university and eventually became an early childhood teacher in the public education system. Such experiences, teaching young boys literacy within a system I perceived to valorize particular notions of masculinity associated with sports, strength and power, influenced my decision to explore the experiences of boys who struggle to fit into hegemonic moulds of being a boy or who are ‘othered’ based on disadvantage, race or ethnicity, sexual identity, or expressions of self. The theoretical and methodological considerations, and choices I made, were also influenced, in part, by my own positioning as a White, middle-class female. In this way, I am aware that I come from a particular position influenced by my experiences and that I am mainstream in many ways due to my background, with similarities in some participants’ experiences, but also I maintain limited understandings of the students in this study in many ways (Weis & Fine, 2000). That being said, I have attempted researcher reflexivity (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000) to understand, make visible and ‘to be sensitive to vulnerable populations’ (Creswell, 2007, p. 44).

With such positioning in mind, this book draws on findings from a mixed method study and presents data from a broad survey of Year 4 and Year 5 elementary school students (n = 297), and follow-up interviews with a sample of these students (n = 34), from seven socioeconomically diverse schools in Queensland, Australia. While the research is drawn from an Australian context, the findings are relevant to a broad international audience as debates about failing boys continue around the globe. These debates are fueled by boys’ and girls’ reading results reported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as part of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), that continue to highlight nations’ gender gaps in achievement (OECD, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016). As such, the supposed crisis in boys’ achievement has been taken up in the educational policy arena by governments at national and global levels as a specific target of policy intervention in education. Among these policy mandates, boys are homogenized as one group rendering nuances of experiences associated with disadvantage, race or ethnicity, sexual identities, culture and location largely invisible.

One of the main outcomes of the study that informs this book is the identification, and visibility, of six different groups of students who presented within-group commonalities and between-group differences. Boys and girls are represented in these six groups, although this representation occurs in different ratios. Findings of the study make visible the multiplicity of differences among these groups of boys. Also illustrated are how ‘domains of experience’ in the school context such as experiences of self, experiences as a reader and experiences of others influenced boys’ reading experiences. Critical is the nature of personal interpretations of parental beliefs about reading, the socioeconomic community and perceptions of the value of reading in society in terms of successful job trajectories. The book reveals how disadvantage is often, although not always, associated with constraining experiences that interplay with powerful constructions of gender identities, impacting upon reading experiences and outcomes for both boys and girls. Highlighted are the unexpected descriptions and stories by some girls of their own behaviours traditionally described as ‘masculine’ and illustrations of negative female peer group attitudes towards reading. The book argues for the need to put aside masculine and feminine divides and to develop further understanding of social, cultural and political processes that impact on attitudes towards reading and how they are mediated by socioeconomic status, peer group cultures, sexual identities, culture, religion and home-school relations.

Through examples from student interviews, complexities associated with the six groups of students’ experiences at school as readers are teased out and considered within the current educational climate of performativity. Findings then demonstrate how the systematic underperformance of some boys, compared to some girls, is influenced by particular attitudes and actions that boys internalize through their everyday social interactions and that those experiences contribute enabling and constraining influences on reading attitudes, reading frequency and subsequently performance.

The following sections now draw attention to the ‘failing boys’ agenda. highlighting the need to move beyond broad generalizations to recognize multiple masculinities and how literacy is conceptualized as social practice, as such issues are the key focus of this book. The chapter then delineates the aims of the study that informs this book, the theoretical and methodological considerations, and how the research is significant for educational policy. From this backdrop the chapter then outlines the study and provides details of the research protocols. Finally, an overview of the following chapters in this book is articulated.

Failing Boys

Inequality in educational opportunity and educational achievement are increasingly being associated with the future of a nation’s prosperity and well-being (Fenwick & Cooper, 2013) as the long-term social and financial costs of educational failure are high (Field, Kuczera & Pont, 2007). From this perspective, boys’ underachievement in reading, compared to girls, is considered a significant international problem (OECD, 2012, 2014, 2015). International comparisons of 10-year-olds on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS) and 15-year-olds on the PISA show that girls do better in reading than boys across all OECD countries. By 15 years of age, girls outperform boys on reading in PISA in all countries and economies by the equivalent of one year of school (OECD, 2014). In Australia, this inequity is greater for Indigenous boys with a two-and-a-half year gap evident (OECD, 2012). The National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results reiterates this gender gap, with boys from the most disadvantaged backgrounds as the lowest achievers (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2015).

This disparity among groups of boys is also evident in the United States. While boys’ reading scores trail behind girls on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the race- and class-based gaps are pronounced, as on average, Black students generally score lower than White students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015). Similarly, in the United Kingdom, being Black and male compounds failure, with Black boys’ lower levels of literacy perceived as indicators of broader social and cultural failure (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 2013). Debates that construct boys as disadvantaged make invisible within-group differences such as race or ethnicity and class and depend upon the assumption that boys are one homogeneous group and can be compared with girls, who form another homogenous group. In this way, literacy underachievement continues to be articulated solely as a boy problem (Watson & Kehler, 2012). As Davies and Saltmarsh (2007, p. 2) point out:

The fact that girls and boys have greater within-group differences than between-group differences is ignored when such comparisons are made. Instead the two groups are constructed as being in competition with each other, and the ‘battle between the sexes’ is the mythical ground out of which the imagined problem is made real.

Regardless, high stakes benchmark testing continues to be used to inform educational practice, pedagogy and policy. Social justice educators question obsession with measures such as PISA as they are facilitated by the OECD to test and compare the academic achievement of 15-year-old students in domains such as reading (Lingard, Martino & Rezai-Rashti, 2013; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), particularly as PISA results are anxiously awaited by governments and education ministers, cited in policy reports and subsequently used to endorse educational practices that focus solely on simplistic approaches to improving student rankings. Of concern, international benchmark testing results in a focus on technical accountability through the impact of standardized testing, the selection and narrowing of content in core subjects and the emphasis on literacy as a primary capability, driving a trend of transforming student capabilities into ‘data’ or ‘datafication’ (Lingard, 2011; Winter, 2017). In this way literacy is an outcomes accountability measure of school performance or literacization of contemporary education policy (Comber & Hill, 2000). Such politics and performance data have been used to propagate the collective perception that males are underachievin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Boys, Masculinities and Reading: Gender Identity and Literacy as Social Practice
• 2 Multiple Masculinities: Perspectives on Gender
• 3 Literacy as Social Practice: Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions of Reading
• 4 Ecological Perspectives: Masculinities and Reading as Ecological Metaphors
• 5 Diversity and Difference in the Classroom: Six Clusters of Students
• 6 I Love Reading! The Dream Team and the Archetypal Commoners
• 7 Reading Is for Nerds! The Bored and Banal and the Low Riders
• 8 Hide That Book! The Clandestine Readers and the Outsiders
• 9 Real-World Influences on Students’ Literate Practices: Enabling and Constraining Domains of Experience
• 10 Boys (and Girls) in the Literacy Classroom: Moving Forward
• Appendix A: Survey Instrument: Boys Version
• Appendix B: Interview Schedule
• Index