On leadership and fitting in: dominant understandings of masculinities within an early primary peer group.
Author(s)
Keddie, Amanda
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2003
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper argues the importance of examining the collective dimension of masculinities in the early school years through a description of a study into children's (young males') peer group relations. Specifically, the paper attends to the significance of the peer group in shaping behaviour, and in particular exaggerated 'masculine' behaviours, and illuminates the inadequacies of conventional teacher practices that individualise and pathologise group behaviours. The nature and dynamics of the peer group and the way these dynamics interact to form particular understandings of masculinity are illuminated through a snapshot ...
View more >This paper argues the importance of examining the collective dimension of masculinities in the early school years through a description of a study into children's (young males') peer group relations. Specifically, the paper attends to the significance of the peer group in shaping behaviour, and in particular exaggerated 'masculine' behaviours, and illuminates the inadequacies of conventional teacher practices that individualise and pathologise group behaviours. The nature and dynamics of the peer group and the way these dynamics interact to form particular understandings of masculinity are illuminated through a snapshot of the study's data, presented as a narrative. Drawing on elements of group socialisation theory, within a post-structural foregrounding of socio-political relations of power, the contextuality and contingency of the young males' peer group behaviours are interpreted.
View less >
View more >This paper argues the importance of examining the collective dimension of masculinities in the early school years through a description of a study into children's (young males') peer group relations. Specifically, the paper attends to the significance of the peer group in shaping behaviour, and in particular exaggerated 'masculine' behaviours, and illuminates the inadequacies of conventional teacher practices that individualise and pathologise group behaviours. The nature and dynamics of the peer group and the way these dynamics interact to form particular understandings of masculinity are illuminated through a snapshot of the study's data, presented as a narrative. Drawing on elements of group socialisation theory, within a post-structural foregrounding of socio-political relations of power, the contextuality and contingency of the young males' peer group behaviours are interpreted.
View less >
Journal Title
Australian Educational Researcher
Volume
30
Issue
1
Publisher URI
Subject
Education not elsewhere classified
Education