Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 50 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 28-34).

Australian boys' and girls' educational performances and achievements have been continuously on the educational agenda since the early 1970s. Then the prime concern was for girls whose educational opportunities were so limiting that their performances vis-a-vis boys' were significantly lower. In the last 30 years, however, there has been a growing and pronounced reversal of boys' dominance and this reversal has prompted educational debate often in terms of a 'boys' crisis' requiring prompt attention. In contrast to the educational debates of the early 1970s many Australian educators' and writers' attentions in the last decade have been on boys' allegedly inferior performance, retention, and participation. Boys have become more noteworthy for their disengagement and disappearance than for their achievement.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1992. / Bibliography: leaves 63-75.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Murdoch University, 1992. / Thesis submitted to the School of Humanities. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-285).

Thesis (Dip.App.Psych.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1978.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

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.