Boys, Literacies And Schooling / Edition 1

by Leonie Rowan, Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel, Chris Bigum

Overview

Current debates about boys and schooling in many Western nations are increasingly characterized by a sense of crisis as government reports, academic research and the day to day experiences of teachers combine to indicate that boys are consistently underperforming in literacy, are continuing to opt out of English and humanities, represent the majority of behavior problems and counseling referrals, and receive a disproportionate amount of special education support.

This book responds to the complexity of the current debates associated with boys, gender reform, literacy and schooling by offering a clear map of the current context, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the various competing solutions put forward, and outlining a range of practical classroom interventions designed for dealing with the boys/literacy crisis. The authors consider the ways in which particular views of masculinity, gender reform, literacy, technology and popular culture can either open up or close down new conceptualizations of what it means to be a boy and what it means to be literate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780335207565
Publisher:	Open University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2001
Series:	Educating Boys, Learning Gender Series
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	0.54(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)

Table of Contents

	Series editors' introduction	ix
	Acknowledgements	xiii
	Introduction--Dangerous places: debates about boys, girls, schooling and gender-based literacy reform	1
1	What about the boys? The rhetoric and realities of the new gender crisis	10
2	How, who, where, when, why and what way? Mindsets on gender reform in schools	27
3	Some really useful theoretical company for transforming and transformative literacy education	57
4	Mindsets matter: an overview of major literacy worldviews	77
5	Making it not so: transformative literacy practices for girls and boys	99
6	Exorcizing digital demons: information technology, new literacies and the de/reconstruction of gendered subjectivities	125
7	From Pacman to Pokemon: cross-generational perspectives on gender and reform in a 'post-feminist' age	162
	Conclusion	198
	Bibliography	212
	Index	231