Teaching boys in neoliberal and postfeminist times: Feminization and the question of re-masculinization in the education system and policy field

This paper focuses on teaching boys, male teachers and the question of gendered pedagogies in neoliberal and postfeminist times of the proliferation of new forms of capitalism, multi-mediated technologies and the influence of globalization. It illustrates how a politics of re-masculinization and its reconstitution needs to be understood as set against changing economic and social conditions in which gender equity comes to be re-focused on boys as the ‚new disadvantaged‘. This re-framing of gender equity, it is argued, has been fuelled by both a media-inspired backlash discourse about ‚failing boys‘ and a neo-positivist emphasis on numbers derived primarily from standardized testing regimes at both global and national levels. A media-focused analysis of the proliferation of discourses about ‚failing boys‘ vis-a-vis the problem of encroaching feminization in the school system is provided to illuminate how certain truths about the influence of male teachers come to define how the terms of ensuring gender equity are delimited and reduced to a question of gendered pedagogies as grounded in sexed bodies. Historical accounts of the feminization of teaching in the North American context are also provided as a basis for building a more informed understanding of the present, particularly as it relates to the contextualization of policy articulation and enactment regarding the problem of teaching boys. In light of such historically informed and critical media analysis, it is argued that what is needed is a more informed, evidenced based policy articulation of the problem of teaching boys and a more gender sensitive reflection on the politics of masculinities in postfeminist times. (DIPF/Orig.)

„Lernen nicht, aber ...“ - Bildungsprozesse im Breaking

With over 30 years of tradition, breaking in Germany provides fascinating insights into the learning of dance in Hip Hop culture, reaching from informal street learning to the introduction of courses in educational institutions. This article draws information from a qualitative empirical study based on the Grounded Theory Methodology. The study asked subjects ranging from first-generation German B-Boys and B-Girls to teenage students about how they have learned and currently learn to break. The interview material reveals a rich and self-regulated learning culture with strong impact on protagonists. A synergy of social, aesthetic, and ethical principles seems to be characteristic, creating a gravitational field of learning with a unique and complex form of imitation at its core. (DIPF/Orig.)