ABSTRACT
Estimates suggest that males are between five and ten times more likely than females to be diagnosed with ADHD, however, critical gender analyses within this area are few (though see: Singh, 2002, 2003; Bennett, 2004; Carpenter and Austin, 2008). Within education one might seek a formula whereby failing boys (BBC, 2008) plus feminised primary schools (Parkin, 2007) equals an oppressed residue of young males whose particular brand of masculinity is deemed unacceptable, pathologised and drugged. This chapter seeks to understand some of the reasons why so many more young males than females are pathologised in this way. Yet while the formula above might be seen as a point of departure, it is based on various gender assumptions which will be contested here. Placed within a gender equity framework several alternative conceptions of failing boys and feminised schools will be discussed. The data presented from Alderley Primary constructs an argument on gendered positioning in three stages: (1) The normalised dominance of boys in the classroom; (2) The gendered allocation of risk and resources; (3) Pathologisation and the new normalisation of deviance. Between them, these three stages produce a constitutive circularity (Jones et al., 2008) of masculine dominance in the classroom. This dominance is naturalised through buried assumptions of gender, made essential through institutional responses, and re-established through the special treatment derived from a psychiatric label.
