In Year 9, when boys and girls are expected to make choices regarding what they want to become when they grow up, many take a crucial decision to drop or side-line IT as an academic subject, which in turn steers them away from a possible future IT career. This thesis examines the reasons why IT careers are not well-imagined or popular amongst teenagers at this critical time of their lives. Taking the widely acknowledged ‘women in IT' problem as a starting point, it focuses specifically on gender differences that exist in relation to how teenagers form their ideas about IT as an academic subject, as a possible career and in everyday life. 79 boys and 85 girls participated in this study from a mixture of 12 state-maintained and nine independent secondary schools (single-sex and co-educational) in Southeast London Borough. This research was exploratory and used an age-appropriate, participatory and mixed-methods framework incorporating: a questionnaire, a creativity map exercise, group and individual interviews, mini-focus groups, and observations. During the interviews, students were also provided with information and opportunities regarding IT careers. I argue this has been of benefit to the students as well as the research, as it has prompted them to think about a career they previously had not even considered. The findings of my study indicate boys were more likely than girls to say that they liked and enjoyed IT/ICT1 as a subject and would consider IT as a career choice for the future. Evidence throughout the study does not suggest girls lack confidence with regard to their general engagement with and use of technology, compared to the boys. Rather, the findings suggest more needs to be done in the area of role models, mentors and careers advice to inform more girls (and boys) about IT careers. The thesis concludes with recommendations for further research, especially in light of the new computing curriculum, which commenced in September 2014.

This thesis focuses on the ways in which ‘underachievement' is constituted for boys identified as ‘underachieving' at Stone Acre, a non-selective school in a selective Local Authority in England. It explores how performance pressures, the school processes of the curriculum, selective grouping practices and teachers' understandings of gender all shape boys' experiences of learning. It argues that these layers also interconnect with school type and ethos. In seeking to bring these less visible readings of the policy frameworks and school level processes by which gendered learning outcomes occur, to the surface, this study contributes to the debate around boys' ‘underachievement' in the English school system. The research was conducted as a case study and adopted elements of an ethnographic approach. It is grounded in the work of Connell (2012, p.1677) who understands masculinities as being continuously produced in interaction with social structures and the body as encountering ‘gender regimes'. Data were gathered through a five-stage process that involved paired interviews with six boys in Year 10 (age 15) and identified at the start of the research as ‘underachieving' against the key performance benchmark: attainment at GCSE level. Additional data were collected from other sources including observations of the boys during lessons and individual interviews with eleven teachers. A key conclusion of the study was that boys identified as ‘underachieving' against key performance indicators are not learning in a gender-neutral space. Some teachers were found to have essentialist understandings of masculinities that were powerful in shaping the spaces in which the boys learned. Accountability pressures were identified as having contributed to the creation of a regulatory system that shaped the practices of teachers in both positive and negative ways. Stone Acre's school ethos and school-based approaches to teaching and learning were also found to have mitigated the boys from some of these pressures. Looking beyond the boys towards the system within which boys identified as ‘underachieving' experience their learning, this thesis demonstrates the complex, shifting and contextualised nature of the factors involved and the need for more structural readings of these.