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Gender and school

A blog about my reading and research on gender constructions and performances amongst secondary school pupils

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I love talking about education and gender, and I think that other people do too.

If you would like to get in touch then please email me on stnvrrc@ucl.ac.uk.

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Climates, not Cultures

A post about Culture, Performativity, Essentialist Masculinity and D ifférance . Also about boarding, which I think can be great when done right. I became interested in masculinities through working in boarding schools with teenage boys. I moved to a boarding school for the first time about 10 years ago, and moved to living in the boarding house with the boys about two years later, thereafter spending 7 years living in two different boarding houses, in two different schools (in two different countries). It was a really cool experience, pretty full on as its sort of 24 hours a day that anything could happen, but hugely rewarding. It was also a great place to bring up children, and I know that my kids loved having so many ‘older brothers’ to play with when they wanted. The role of a housemaster (that’s what I was doing) is really diverse: you are the main caregiver for the boys there, you oversee their academic progress, their health, happiness and thei...

Slow dancing with a mate

When you’re writing up research you usually have to write an impact statement where you describe how what you’ve learnt about might be put to use one day. I’m pretty relaxed about the idea that my thesis (if it ever gets written) will mostly just occupy some dusty space in a university server somewhere, almost entirely untouched for the rest of time. But I’ve not got many regrets about taking it on because it has lead me into so many conversations about what it is to be a man or woman, and I know there is lots of good that has come from these. M y interest in this area came from trying to understand the lived experience of boys at school, and it’s still in this area where I hope a lot of what I’m learning might one day be able to be used. I reckon that what my impact statement is going to focus on. First and foremost, I talk to Naomi about all this stuff, and some of what I read is a catalyst to chats that mean I get to appreciate her position a little better. The school I ...

All the world's a stage

A post about Goffman's Dramaturgical Analysis and considering (a little) it's application in schools. Also a bit about online identities and the exhibitional approach, but more on that in another post. It was suggested to me once that I could, as a teacher, build a presence around school by putting a pin in the sole of my shoes. The idea is that even when you’re not seen, you’re heard – omnipresent and surveillant. The ‘tap tap’ of the teacher’s shoes like the ripples in a glass signalling the coming of T-Rex on Jurassic Park . It means that if you’re ‘good’ then before you’ve turned a corner any trouble will have fled, and maybe it even extends your aura. I tried it for a while in an echoey building and I reckon it worked. Within education there must exist hundreds of tricks that are employed to help build a persona. Pupils might need to mask emotions in order to maintain the characters they take on, and teachers might have to feign them so as not to upset students, or to h...