Male achievement
Primary socialisation
Edwards and David
Parents allow boys to be noisier, leading to them breaking school rules
Boys have trouble sitting still and concentrating
Work should only be done at school
'Macho values' shaped by peer group
Burns and Bracey
Girls work better at home and are more organised
Care more about presentation
From the age of 6/7, girls start to read more, which continues
Analysis (AO3)
Boys literacy and language skills are poorer than girls
Mothers reading bedtime stories encourage girls to read more
Reading is seen as feminine
Schemes put in place to improve boys' literacy
Dads and sons reading
National literacy strategy
Globalisation and decline of 'male' jobs
Decline in manufacturing jobs, increase in long term employment
Service sector jobs are often part time and desk bases, more suited to women
Females become main breadwinner
Led to a crisis in masculinity
Mitsos and Browne
Decline in male employment opportunities has led to a crisis in identity for men
Boys think that it is unlikely for them to get a proper job and therefore have little motivation and self esteem
Analysis (AO3)
Not relevant to society
Men are still more likely to be in employment than women
Relevant for W/C people as they do manual labour jobs that require less skill
Not relevant for M/C, who do higher skilled work
Feminisation of education
Jackson
Interviews and questionnaires in 8 schools
Found that working hard is seen as uncool and feminine
Boys who want to succeed work hard in private
Sewell
Education is feminised
Doesn't praise masculine traits (competition and leadership)
Praises feminine traits (methodological working)
For example, increase in coursework, discussion based learning, linear exams, passive learning
Shortage of male primary teachers
Majority of teachers in primary schools are women, with around 17% male
Survey of 8-11 year olds showed that 51% believed to be better behaved with a male teacher
42% said they work harder with a male teacher
39% of them never had a male teacher
Analysis (AO3)
Francis found that 2/3 of 7 year olds believed that the gender of the teacher doesn't matter
Refutes idea of male teachers being needed for boys achievement
Reed
Found that there were 2 types of language used for discipline
Disciplinarian discourse - teachers' authority is explicit
Liberal discourse - teachers' authority is implicit and there is pseudoadultification, where the teacher treats the child like an adult
Found that both male and female teachers adopted the disciplinarian discourse to control behaviour
So gender of the teacher shouldn't affect the behaviour of boys in the classroom
Laddish subcultures
Epstein
Culture where real boys don't work
More focused on peer group
Harassed for working as masculine jobs are meant to be manual labour
Labelled as sissies and faced homophobic abuse
Francis
Laddish subculture is growing
Masculinity is associated with being tough
Boys are concerned with labels like 'swots'
Ringrose
Found that anti feminists have contributed to a moral panic
Believed that they will become the dangerous unemployed underclass
Threaten social stability, leading to poverty and crime
Leads to policies shifting to help failing boys, which has negative impacts, including ignoring problems of W/C, and ignoring problems faced by girls in schools (harassment, bullying, subject choice bias)