ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present two accounts that capture aspects of some boys’ experiences of being educated in single-sex schools in Canada. These accounts were offered to me by boys who participated in a research study that followed boys’ experiences of being educated in independent, single-sex schools. These accounts convey how some boys imagine, describe, and reflect on the significance of place in their experiences of being educated and schooled. During the conduct of the study, I paid particular attention to the significance of school places in boys’ experience of schooling, for I was curious to learn why some boys feel out of place in certain school places, while others do not. I was also interested in understanding how learning masculinities and negotiating subjectivities in school are place-based. And I was curious about the ways in which place can be monopolized as a potential partner in advancing certain values of the school and not others. Interested in how school places are perceived by students and how they are given form in the ways they are used, described, and represented, I was curious about how boys’ self-understanding was connected to how they see, articulate, use, and report their relationship to school places.
