Boys and Literacy

Edited by Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, and Joanne Begiato
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).


Introduction - Michael Brown and Joanne Begiato
Part I: Experiencing martial masculinities
1 Burying Lord Uxbridge's leg: the body of the hero in the early nineteenth century - Julia Banister
2 Brothers in arms? Martial masculinities and family feeling in old soldiers' memoirs, 1793-1815 - Louise Carter
3 Recalling the comforts of home: bachelor soldiers' narratives of nostalgia and the re-creation of the domestic interior - Helen Metcalfe
4 Charles Incledon: a singing sailor on the Georgian stage - Anna Maria Barry
5 Visualising the aged veteran in nineteenth-century Britain: memory, masculinity and nation - Michael Brown and Joanne Begiato
Part II: Imagining martial masculinities
6 Hunger and cannibalism: James Hogg's deconstruction of Scottish military masculinities in The Three Perils of Man or War, Women, and Witchcraft! - Barbara Leonardi
7 Model military men: Charlotte Yonge and the 'martial ardour' of 'a soldier's daughter' - Susan Walton
8 'And the individual withers': Tennyson and the enlistment into military masculinity - Lorenzo Servitje
9 Charlotte Brönte's 'warrior priest': St John Rivers and the language of war - Karen Turner
10 'Something which every boy can learn': accessible knightly masculinities in children's Arthuriana, 1903-11 - Elly McCausland
11 'A story of treasure, war, and wild adventure': hero-worship, imperial masculinities, and inter-generational ideologies in H. Rider Haggard's 1880s fiction - Helen Goodman
Epilogue: gendered virtue, gendered vigour and gendered valour - Isaac Land
Index

When critics consider young people’s practices within cyberspace, the focus is often on negative aspects, namely cyber-bullying, obsessive behaviour, and the lack of a balanced life. Such analyses, however, may miss the agency and empowerment young people experience not only to make decisions but to have some degree of control over their lives through their engagement with and use of technology, which often includes sharing it with others in cyberspace. This was a finding of research conducted by Nicola Johnson, which also informs the two novels considered in this article, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Brian Falkner’s Brainjack. The article draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of acts of resistance (Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of our Time, 1998) to demonstrate how these fictional representations of hacker heroes make a direct address to their readers to use their technological expertise to achieve social justice. Rather than hacking primarily to “see if they can do it,” the protagonists of these novels acknowledge the moral ambiguity of hacking and encourage its responsible use.

This article explores ways to utilize students’ interest in fantasy literature to support critical literacy. Focusing on Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games series (2008, 2009, 2010), the author addresses how elements of the trilogy relate to violent acts in our world, helping student understand that violence and brutality toward children is not fiction, but very real, and that they can play a role in its abolishment, just like Katniss, through social action projects. Issues such as hunger, forced labor, child soldiers, and the sex trade that appear in both the fictional series and our world are discussed, encouraging students to assess their world and advocate for change. Examples of social action projects that utilize multiple literacies are suggested as a way to inspire students take action in the community and to stand up to injustice and brutality in hopes of creating a better world and a better human race.

Using popular literature to pique student interest, this article explores how to incorporate the books in the Hunger Games series into the ELA classroom to support literacy and critical goals.

This Master’s thesis comprises two complimentary texts. The first component is an exegesis that explores some factors that contribute to writing fiction that successfully engages adolescent boys, particularly those boys who are reluctant to read fiction. This research component includes a literature review of some of the current theories on boys’ reluctance to read; an examination of the kinds of fiction that appeal to adolescent boys; and a discussion of the process of writing the beginning of my adolescent novel, Karl’s Bunker. The second is the creative piece itself, Karl’s Bunker. Seven chapters of this work-in-progress have been included in this thesis. The research has assisted and supported the writing of this substantial section of an adolescent novel in a style that aims to capture the interest and engage those boys aged 13 – 17 years who are reluctant to read fiction. The story is about a teenage boy who loses his father to cancer. It follows the teenager’s journey from the time his father is diagnosed until his death two months later. Both components are underpinned by the concern amongst many parents and educators that a large percentage of adolescent boys are reluctant to read. This is supported by a number of research studies on boys and literacy including research undertaken by Wayne Martino (2001), James Moloney (2000) and Barbara Comber (2004).

This book explores boys’ underachievement in literacy in early years education in Malta, using the dual lens of children’s rights and postcolonial theory.

The author confronts issues in literacy attainment, early literacy learning and transitions to formal schooling with a case study from Malta. The book includes the voices of young boys who experience formal education from the age of five and adds a fresh perspective to existing literature in this area. Drawing on empirical research, the book traces the impact of foundational ideas of gender and early childhood, and makes practical recommendations to help young children experience socially just literacy education.

This timely text will be highly relevant for researchers, educators and policymakers in the fields of literacy education, early childhood education, postcolonial education and children’s rights.

Researchers concerned with curriculum differentiation for gifted and talented students have long promoted the benefits of providing opportunities for students to explore their personal interests within the regular curriculum. Many literacy researchers have also concluded that teachers can improve students’ (especially boys’) attitudes toward reading by offering opportunities within the literacy curriculum for students to choose reading materials based on their own personal interests. However, there are few empirical investigations into the particular interests of talented boy readers to guide teachers who wish to provide students with a rich selection of texts from which to choose. In this multicase study, 5 boys who are talented readers were observed while they browsed for reading materials in a large bookstore. Interviews with each boy and analysis of the texts that they identified as personally interesting revealed 4 major themes that together characterize the complexity of these boys’ reading preferences.

Malta, a former British colony, has inherited a legacy of formal education, which remains stubbornly in place even after almost sixty years of independence. Similarly, persistent are arguments in research and policy highlighting democracy and children’s rights in early years practice and boys’ underachievement in literacy. This paper examines five- to six-year-old boys’ perspectives about their schooled reading and writing experiences in three Maltese state schools through the dual lenses of children’s rights and democratic practice to create new understandings of these widely discussed longstanding phenomena. The paper discusses themes emerging from three focus group interviews which were part of a broader mixed-methods phenomenological doctoral study. Findings revealed that most boys experienced undesirable reading and writing practices, pointing to a need to rollback the highly formalised approach to literacy practised in many early years of educational settings in Malta. This paper questions whether countries like Malta will remain paralysed by a legacy of early formal schooling or move forward to an actual realisation of children’s rights through sustained democratic early childhood pedagogies.

The boy crisis in American education (Martin 2002) is due in part to the rejection of boy culture (Carr-Chellman,
2011). Gaming in traditional classrooms has the potential to bring schools toward a more accepting culture. This
phenomenological study explores the potential for video gaming within traditional educational settings. Interviews
focused on learning outcomes and findings were mapped onto the Common Core Standards (CCSS). Initial findings
indicate great promise from gaming for culture and learning changes.

Internationally, the research on the education of boys has sought to
understand how social practices, behaviours and rituals contribute to
identity construction. We are interested in approaches to the emotional
labor of doing ‘boy work’. As educators grapple with the gendered performances
and subjectivities of young men, there is an imperative to
engage with the affective dimensions of boyhood. We explore what theories
of affect can add to our understandings of masculinities and masculine
identity practices in rapidly changing affective economies of
gender and, specifically, what this may mean for relationships formed
between educators and students. To illustrate how theories of affect
can open up new analytical spaces, we present two vignettes from a
program in the United States designed to support young men and boys
to gain critical awareness of restrictive ‘gender norms’. Drawing primarily
upon Ahmed’s work on affective economies, we theorize how attention
to affective economies of boyhood can positively influence the work
of educators today.

This chapter employs Bourdieu’s approach to field theory to investigate a specific case study of the musical practices of an all-male, peer-led, extra-curricular music programme. Drawing upon empirical evidence from a small-scale study the participants demonstrated they were capable of high levels of engagement and enthusiasm in the field of music production despite generally being considered “low achieving” and “highly disaffected” in their formal schooling. Utilizing field theory—in relation to habitus and capitals—we investigate both the social and symbolic value of music for these young men. Our interest in the extent to which the field of music-making adopts socially validated learning processes. In our analysis, it is essential to our understanding of Bourdieu’s field theory that it is theorised in tandem with the generative capacity of the habitus where individuals are agentic in their learning. More precisely, we argue the habitus, in order to accrue value, steers these youn...

The purpose of this article is to describe a computer club that was based on the video game Minecraft in hopes that others interested in developing either a Minecraft Club or any kind of a computer club, will find this information useful. The club met in July of 2014 at a public library located in a rural town, i.e., under 10,000 population and not close to a larger city, in the Midwestern United States. The members were eight boys ranging in age from 9-12. The structure and organization of the club followed a format similar to a book club, but instead of a book, the main text was Minecraft.

The Story Exchange section of the Sims 2 website offers Sims 2 players a forum to read and review other players’ original stories which they have written while playing The Sims 2. This article draws on interview data from Sarah, a 15-year-old female involved in reading and evaluating these online stories. Analysis of Sarah’s experiences in playing The Sims 2 and using the Story Exchange website suggest that players who engage with these particular online narratives determine quality indicators of the stories, without guidance or instruction from external structures or authorities. Following this point, this Story Exchange is presented not only as an avenue of leisure, pleasure and informal learning, but one that is out of alignment with structures and institutions of formal schooling. This article argues that sites
such as these should be read as legitimate learning spaces.

This article explores a study of five preadolescent boys‘ perceptions of reading and readers, and the role of agency on their reading paths. The boys, in grades five to seven, shared their thoughts and experiences through individual and group interviews. The findings suggest that these boys adapted norms and practices of the dominant discourse among their male friends to pursue their own interests in reading. Some participants, however, stated they sometimes experience pressure to assume gender–appropriate preferences in order to be accepted by their (male) peers.