Fighting, anger, frustration and tears: Matthew's story of hegemonic masculinity

This paper draws on Matthew's story to illustrate the conflicting discourses of being a boy and being a student. Matthew is 12 years old and in Grade Six, his final year at Banrock Primary ( a K- 6 Australian State School). School is far from a happy place for Matthew - his tearful accounts of his combative relationships with his peers and his teacher highlight his emotional distress. The paper's analytic focus draws attention to some of the ways Matthew's harmful storylines of hegemonic masculinity are made possible through, in particular, his teacher's gendered philosophies and her strategies of individualism and control. In this regard, Matthew's story provides insight into the potentially counterproductive realities of teacher practice in relation to addressing issues of masculinity within the school environment. Against this backdrop, the paper stresses the importance of teachers drawing on a sound research-based framework of gender knowledges that can illuminate how masculinities are constructed, regulated and, indeed, transformed through the power relations of everyday social practice, including teacher practice.

When "where'' is more important than "when": Birthplace and birthdate effects on the achievement of sporting expertise

In this study, we assessed whether contextual factors related to where or when an athlete is born influence their likelihood of playing professional sport. The birthplace and birth month of all American players in the National Hockey League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and Professional Golfer's Association, and all Canadian players in the National Hockey League were collected from official websites. Monte Carlo simulations were used to verify if the birthplace of these professional athletes deviated in any systematic way from the official census population distribution, and chi-square analyses were conducted to determine whether the players' birth months were evenly distributed throughout the year. Results showed a birthplace bias towards smaller cities, with professional athletes being over-represented in cities of less than 500,000 and under-represented in cities of 500,000 and over. A birth month/relative age effect (in the form of a distinct bias towards elite athletes being relatively older than their peers) was found for hockey and baseball but not for basketball and golf. Comparative analyses suggested that contextual factors associated with place of birth contribute more influentially to the achievement of an elite level of sport performance than does relative age and that these factors are essentially independent in their influences on expertise development.