How do boys from diverse backgrounds manage in an elite boys' school? Interviewing a representative sample of 27 boys, blocked for race, class, and academic performance, we found that they navigated the school's academic geography by mastering "a drill" that included hard work, unwavering commitment, a will to win, a cool style, and self knowledge as learners. Some developed a transformative love of learning. But many marginalized boys struggled with the school's social geography. African American boys managed most effectively as they developed intra-group discourses of race and class enabling them to take up the school's offers of "hegemonic habitus" without "selling out." We discuss the liberating implications of helping students in both independent and public schools develop similar critiques.
-In a previous issue of Mind, Brain, and Education , Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue that educational research needs to be grounded in the lived realities of school life. They advocate for research schools as a venue for accomplishing this. The Center for the Study of Boys ' and Girls ' Lives represents an alternative model -a research collaborative among independent schools and university-based scholars. This article describes the Center ' s experience with democratic, participatory action research. It discusses major roadblocks encountered doing such work, including diffi culties selecting research topics collaboratively, epistemological differences in methods and design, the scarcity of time, and resistance to results when they challenge gender stereotypes or the status quo or involve student researchers. The article concludes with strategies for overcoming these roadblocks, including clearer, upfront negotiations with schools and a compact that specifi es roles and responsibilities for both school and Center personnel. THE NEED FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCHIn their article in the most recent issue of Mind, Brain, and Education , Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue cogently for the need to ground scholarly research in practice and practice in scholarly research. Without such rootedness, they claim, researchers often misconstrue schools ' pedagogical goals and fail to appreciate the nuances of practice, whereas educators often misunderstand scientifi c fi ndings and are subject to the latest pseudoscientifi c claims of popular literature; what Hinton and Fischer term " brain scams. " The solution they call for is research schools, in which scientists and teachers work together to overcome the differences in language and methods, in understandings about the nature of evidence, and even in epistemologies that have kept them apart at grave cost to both. In such schools, they envision scientists educating teachers to conduct research and educators helping scientists to discern what kinds of inquiries can result in fi ndings relevant to their educational practice. Hinton and Fischer see scientists gaining deeper understanding of the cultures of schools, which would enable them to shape more appropriate and effective investigations, and they see them linking schools together in order to create richly textured databases that help both them and educators assess what results are unique to the ecology of particular schools and what are generalizable across them.The very reasons that make school -university collaborations necessary also suggest potential roadblocks to establishing and sustaining them. The Center for the Study of Boys ' and Girls ' Lives (CSBGL) was founded as a research collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania ' s Graduate School of Education and what has now become nine independent, private schools ( www.csbgl.org ). Its member schools 1 each contribute to its fi nancial maintenance. Together with Center staff, schools defi ne the research areas they are interested in and are supported b...
Despite a continuing stream of concern on the part of researchers, demographers, and cultural pundits about a crisis in boys' social development and schooling, surprisingly little attention has been paid to what is perhaps the richest pool of data: current, observable teaching practices that clearly work with boys. In schools of all types in all regions of the globe, many boys are thriving. Boys of limited, ordinary, and exceptional tested aptitude; boys of every economic strata; boys of all races and faiths -some of them -are appreciatively engaged and taught well every day. Reaching Boys An International Study of Effective Teaching PracticesIf there is a crisis in boys' education, answers are not hard to find. Thousands of teachers around the world have found the secret to making lessons successful for boys. By Michael Reichert and Richard Hawleypdkintl.org V91 N4 Kappan 35 MICHAEL REICHERT is executive director of the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives (www.csbgl.org) and on staff as consulting psychologist at the Haverford School, Haverford, Pennsylvania. RICHARD HAWLEY, author of several books about children and learning, is the retired headmaster of Cleveland's University School and founding president of the International Boys Schools Coalition. He lives in Ripton, Vermont.
In the last decade, boys’ lives, and particularly their school achievement, have come under increasing scrutiny. While dominant discourses have stressed boys as victims, schools as failing boys, and an essentialist view that boys will be boys, few take account that boys develop their self-concepts in the looking glass of the variously gendered academic and social curricula of schools. Yet understanding how boys form their sense of self is crucial, as much research has shown that students’ self-concepts have a strong relationship with their grades. This exploratory study attempts to address this need, finding that the addition of a measure of boys’ social anxiety significantly enhanced the statistical explanation of self-concept. Follow-up interviews with 27 boys helped us to understand the nature of their social anxiety and its relationship to the power dynamics and traditions of the particular school we studied. We conclude by suggesting ways such schools may be able to help boys reduce their anxiety and enhance their senses of self.
Positive relationships should come fi rst in efforts to improve boys' learning and engagement with school. Teachers can make the difference.
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