The Cultural Production of English Masculinities in Late Modernity

Students enter schools today amid difficult, rapid social change, their sexuality and gender partly formed by family, peers, and the media. We are only beginning to understand the complex articulation between schooling, wider learning networks, and sexual/gender subjectivities. Current empirical and theoretical work in mas- culinity, sexuality, and education in England enables us to go beyond critiques of the New Right and re-engage critically with emerging social democratic models of education and to reconnect education with wider theoretical debates in the social sciences and political movements in civil society. Aujourd’hui, les jeunes entrent à l’école dans une période difficile, marquée par des changements sociaux rapides; leur perception de la sexualité et du sexe est déjà partiellement formée par leur famille, leurs pairs et les médias. Nous ne faisons que commencer à comprendre la jonction complexe entre l’école, les réseaux plus vastes d’apprentissage et les subjectivités ayant trait à la sexualité et au sexe. Les travaux théoriques et empiriques actuels sur la masculinité, la sexualité et l’éducation en Angleterre nous permettent de dépasser les critiques de la nouvelle droite, de réanalyser de façon éclairée les nouveaux modèles d’éducation de la démocratie sociale et de relier l’éducation aux débats théoriques plus vastes suscités par les sciences sociales et les mouvements politiques dans la société civile.

Gender politics and exploring masculinities in Irish education teachers, materials and the media

In October 2000, the Minister for Education and Science, Dr Michael Woods, announced in Dáil Éireann (Dáil Debates 14.10.2000) that he had asked the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) to undertake a review of Exploring Masculinities (EM). EM is one of a number of optional Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) modules that may be offered to boys in single-sex schools during the Transition Year or senior cycle of post-primary schooling

Definition and characteristic features of a ‘cultural flashpoint’: a case study of Exploring Masculinities, a controversial gender and education programme in Ireland

The concept ‘cultural flashpoint’ (CF) has not been fully defined or  described. The authors test this concept through the prism of  a controversial gender-focused Irish school programme, Exploring  Masculinities (EM). Adopting an instrumental case study methodology, they use media content analysis to develop a temporal trajectory of the CF, describe its shape, explicit and implied contentious  themes, and its process. They identify characteristic features of  a cultural flashpoint: (i) a focal issue, event and/or object; (ii) conflict; (iii) bounded time period; (iv) the involvement of exo- and  multi-sectoral individuals and groups; (v) randomness, opaqueness  and conflation among its expressions; and (vi) broadly cultural and  not confined to its sector of origin. They offer a definition of a CF  and suggest it as a conceptual device for identifying, analysing and  understanding contestation about educational (and other) change  occurring in the context of wider and more long-standing cultural,  social and political movements. </p