Boys’ Peer Group Relationships in Schools

Abstract

Previous chapters have demonstrated that structural reforms in boys’ education have been limited by their tendency to reinforce essentialist understandings of boys and masculinities. We have also demonstrated how such initiatives have failed to engage with research-based under­standings about boys, which draw attention to the significance of the social and cultural dimensions of gender identity formation (see Way and Chu, 2004). In this chapter we focus on the issue of boys’ peer-group relationships in schools to highlight how knowledge about gender hier­archies has the potential to further inform and enhance our pedagogical understanding of the sort of reform agendas that are required to facili­tate boys’ engagement with schooling. While the focus here is on one particular school context (Martino, 1998), we also review some of the significant studies that have been conducted in the field and which have contributed significantly to our understanding of boys’ social relation­ships in schools. Our aim is to illustrate the need for educators and policy makers to engage with a research-based knowledge about the differences that exist amongst boys and how socio-cultural influences have a role to play in how they understand themselves as particu­lar sorts of boys.