Configuring of masculinity in an ethnocentric community school

Abstract

This paper presents snapshots of a qualitative study that investigated how Year 8 boys in an ethnocentric community school configured their constructions of masculinity. Fifteen boys participated in focus group discussions that extended over a sixweek period. For one focus group, the boys were invited to bring a 'totem', which was an embodiment of their masculinity. The findings from the focus groups revealed both collective and individual constructions and enactments of masculinities that were talked into existence and transmitted through hegemonic discourses. Yet the findings also revealed the boys' individual agency to engage with other ways of doing and being a boy. Key recommendations emerging from the study include the need for boys to have opportunities to talk more openly among themselves about their gendered identities and for access to the thinking and experiences of how masculinity might be conceived within a wider community of practice.