ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that there are important issues to focus on with boys and literacy—but that there are also important issues to address here for girls, and that the two need to be read in tandem. In this regard much can be learnt from the work that has already been undertaken on girls and literacy, in terms of how gender impacts upon literacy learning and literacy practice. The chapter focuses on what can go wrong for boys in literacy and English classrooms: at how their histories in families, in peer groups, and in male youth cultures position them in relation to the reading/writing classroom, and at how practices commonly in use in such classrooms might be incompatible with boys' developing understanding of masculinity. It then considers positive agendas for change, so that literacy, and the literacy classroom, might become more desirable spaces for boys—and yet still be attractive and desirable learning domains for girls.