“We’re the mature people”: a study of masculine subjectivity and its relationship to Key Stage Four Religious Studies

Francis Farrell

Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk,

Francis Farrell, RE PGCE Course Leader, Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, St. Helens road, Lancashire, L39 4QP e-mail: Farrellf@edgehill.ac.uk

“We’re the mature people”: a study of masculine subjectivity and its relationship to Key Stage Four Religious Studies

Critical theory and research has shown that subjects carry gendered meanings. Numbers opting for Religious Studies (RS) have remained skewed towards girls. Drawing from poststructuralism and masculinities theory, this paper critically analyses data from interviews with a group of key stage four boys who had opted for Religious Studies in contrast to the majority of their male peers. Interview data demonstrates that these boys were able to use Religious Studies as a discursive resource, constituting themselves as emergent critical ethical subjects and developing their own relationship to existential questions of meaning and purpose. The boys demonstrated reflexive self awareness as they were also able to negotiate socially successful identities through their relationship to the dominant masculinising forces of sport, physicality and authority and engage with Religious Studies. This paper concludes that subjects such as Religious Studies which create spaces for criticality also act to create masculine subjectivities outside of restrictive gendered norms.

Keywords: boys; gender; masculinity; religious education; religious studies; subjectivity.

Introduction

The “boys in crisis” discourse is a well-established feature of UK education policy (Francis, 2006). In this paper I propose to demonstrate that social reality is far more complex than the picture produced by the panic discourse with its essentialist preoccupation with its discursive creation, the ‘failing’ boy. Critical research has demonstrated the multiple ways of ‘performing’ boy, many of which fall short of the image of toxic adolescent masculinity presupposed by the crisis discourse. There are serious implications of this nuanced theory for concepts of masculine ontology. As Martino (1999) argues, boys can and do demonstrate agency, slipping out of the incorrigible propositions of the gender binary as active, self-constituting and knowing subjects engaged in the project of the self (Foucault, 1983).

However, the project of the gendered masculine self is a high stakes ‘truth game’ (Martino, 1999). Immanent existence as a ‘man’ is desired because the gendered category ‘man’ is imbued with power, coded and territorialised by dominant masculinising discourses (Whitehead, 2002). Notwithstanding the materiality of these powerful social codes, these subjectifying discourses can be resisted, but at a cost to boys who do not have access to the resources necessary to disrupt or resist them.

This paper aims to contribute to literature on masculine subjectivity by offering an examination of how a group of secondary school boys negotiate and manage their emerging masculine identities through the lens of one of their subject choices- Religious Studies (RS). Connell (2000) and Wiener (1994) have shown that subject preferences carry gendered meanings, which has led some commentators within education policy to suggest that Religious Studies is a ‘feminised’ arena:

“The gender gap in Religious Studies, a subject more popular amongst girls has been consistently large throughout the last sixty years” (DfES, 2007:15)

Similarly, the education inspectorate OfSTED’s Religious Education (RE) subject report highlights:

“The persistent underachievement by boys” (OfSTED, 2007:14).

In 2008, the year in which the data for this study was collected, GCSE entries and results support both DfES (2007) and OfSTED (2007) claims. RE is statutory and compulsory; consequently, there isn’t a strong gendered differential in terms of the numbers of males and females entered for GCSE Religious Studies in 2008, with 99206 female entries compared with 79933 male entries for full course GCSE. However, there is a strong differential in outcomes with females achieving significantly stronger results. In 2008 16% of females achieved A* compared with 9% of males; 38% of females achieved an A grade in contrast to 25% of males and 66% of females achieved a B grade in contrast with 47% of males (JCQ, 2008:33). At the voluntary post 16 stage of education, where greater personal subject choice is available, the differential in take up of ‘A’ level Religious Studies is more pronounced with 6580 male entries in contrast with 13554 female entries. The JCQ data provides a broader context at the system level however this study seeks to illuminate the relationship between masculine subjectivity and RE at the micro cultural level of analysis with a focus on boys who made a positive choice to take GCSE Religious Studies as opposed to the ‘failing boy’ or teenage lout that populates much of the ‘crisis’ literature on boys.

Some critical considerations:

So what does the data presented in this paper reveal about boys’ subjectivities, their identity work, and their projects of the masculine self through their relationship to the discourse of Religious Studies? In some respects these boys demonstrate the characteristics of the ‘renaissance child’ of late modernity (Skelton and Francis, 2011). Using parental occupation and the boys’ imagined futures, their career aspirations as indicators, four of the boys were middle class and two were working class. With the exception of one, these boys were able to perform highly successful masculine identities through their social relationships, prowess at sport and their proficiency as students of Religious Studies or ‘Philosophy’, as the subject had been branded in their school.

Of the six, four of the boys possessed the ontological security and the cultural resources, to withstand any challenges to their masculine identity through their choice of Religious Studies. In respect of their ability to manage their identities outside of the social spaces of ‘dominant’ masculinity they might also be characterised in terms of ‘personalised masculinity’ (Swain, 2006). Were these boys “already there” (Connell, 2000), extracting a gendered social and cultural surplus, a dividend through their association with the literate arena of Religious Studies? To an extent the answer is yes. However, interviews with boys in another school who enjoyed arguably greater social and material advantage demonstrated that whilst ‘credentialing’ (Skelton and Francis, 2010:443) practices took place; Religious Studies was one of the least valued subjects amongst the boys.

Similarly, the middle class credentialism argument, cannot account for the strong engagement with Religious Studies of the two working class boys. What is clear is that Religious Studies was a resource, a technology the boys were able to use in their projects of the masculine self. It is a contention of this paper that the boys are active, agentic subjects who to some extent slip out of the petrifying structures of theoretical

constructs. These ‘philosophers’, as the boys described themselves, were actively constituting themselves as ethical subjects, ‘nomadic’ thinkers (see Semetsky, 2007) through a reflexive relationship to an educational technology that was shaping their subjectivities beyond the categories of ‘renaissance child’ or ‘credentialism’.

Personal and professional positioning

The proposal for the research which produced this paper emerged against the backdrop of the failing boys “crisis”. However, this paper is as much the outcome of my personal narrative as it is derived from my professional trajectory (Jarviluoma et al. 2003). So, what is my point of departure? I am an ITT tutor specializing in secondary RE. Prior to joining higher education I had worked as a secondary school teacher of RE. I was keenly aware of the failing boys panic, but from my perspective it appeared that boys were being reduced to a homogenised reified toxicity by this crisis discourse. I began to reflect on my own experiences teaching boys, the majority of whom were neither failing nor in crisis, and their relationship to RE. These questions did not dissolve when I began work as an ITT tutor. I recall a male trainee, working in a challenging inner city boy’s secondary school, commenting to me, that,

“If only these boys could get past all this macho crap, they just have so many questions”.

In 2005 I attended an HMI subject conference which included a session headlined with ‘Raising the achievement of boys’. The conference acted as a critical catalyst for the development of a thesis proposal focussing on the relationship between masculine subjectivity and Religious Studies. In 2006 I undertook a pilot study in a partner secondary school to interrogate the putative relationship between masculinity and underperformance in Religious Education (RE). What emerged through the data collection process was the gendered perspective of male students most strikingly evident in the comment that RE was ‘boring’, and most likely to appeal to girls because they wanted to be, ‘the vicar of Dibley’ or ‘teachers’. However, I also met boys who confounded normative concepts of dominant masculinity and were able to occupy multiple, sometimes contradictory subject positions.

My empirical fieldwork and conceptual research led to a refinement of my original focus. I began to see RE as the lens through which young male subjectivity could be critically interrogated and made visible. From this more nuanced perspective I was able to reconceptualise RE as a discursive site for the performance of masculine identity, the point of intersection where subject choice and other male discursive practices aligned. As a consequence, new research questions began to emerge.

Literature about Boys and Religious Education

There is a policy context to this enquiry, however, apart from brief discussion in OfSTED documentation, the literature on adolescent boys and their relationship to RE is limited. Wintersgill comments,

“the omission in the UK of research into boys’ spirituality is a serious one for after two decades of educational research and the development of theory regarding both spirituality and boys’ attitudes and under-achievement, it is remiss that no attempt

has been made to seek possible connections between the two” (Wintersgill, 2007:49).

Despite the restricted scope of the available research, key themes emerge which serve to illuminate some of the factors producing boys’ association or disassociation from RE. In an international survey of 2000 young people’s religious and moral issues, Tirri et al (2005) found that girls raised more religious and moral questions than boys. Similarly, the REDCo (2009) research into teenagers’ perspectives on the role of religion in education and society found that in the English sample, girls gave significantly more positive responses to questions indicating respect and understanding for religions and were “highly significantly more likely” to discuss religion with others, while boys were, “highly significantly more likely to either ignore the different viewpoints of the other” or argue that their view is ‘right’ (McKenna et al, 2009: 66). In the Dutch sample Avest collected comparable results, stating that in general, “girls more than boys demonstrate an open attitude towards the ‘other’ and the other’s religion” (Avest, 2013: 144). Recently, Thanissaro (2012), in a critical work on assessment in RE found that:

“Boys were more likely than girls to perceive RE as a subject of little importance- ranking it lower than both mathematics and geography” (Thanissaro, 2012: 9).

In the UK, Wintersgill’s PhD research on teenagers’ spirituality has produced interesting nuanced research into boys’ views of RE, religion and spirituality. One of Wintersgill’s male sample did not wish to be interviewed remarking in his questionnaire, “Some people hide their beliefs and interests from others. It’s not cool to go round talking about your spirit and things,” (Year 8 male pupil in Wintersgill, 2007: 52). Wintersgill found evidence for ‘contradictory masculinities’ (Engebretson, 2006) in the boys’ narratives where the ‘nice’ inner self is contrasted with socially necessary external hardness, critical for the maintenance of an accepted identity: “on the inside they are very nice people but they act hard but they’re not. You have to act hard to have friends or they think ‘ur a pufter” (Antony, in Wintersgill, 2007: 53)

Paralleling the work of Wintersgill, in Australia, Engebretson (2006) has researched male adolescents’ perceptions of spirituality and religion. Engebretson identifies the existence of a post modern interest in non-institutional spirituality and a drift from church. This drift is most evident amongst adolescent boys; however in the data derived from research into 965 15-18 year old boys and their constructions of identity, masculinity and spirituality (2006), Engebretson also found evidence of tendencies to challenge dominant hegemonic ideals of masculinity. Engebretson’s work confirms the existence of ‘masculinities’ creating a typology of masculinity, comprised of hegemonic masculinity, defensive masculinity and the more complex contradictory masculinity. Engebretson rejects essentialist notions of masculinity and points to the challenges of maintaining a duality of identity for many boys and men who live the hegemonic norm externally, but experience it as a struggle, as she states,

“There is no doubt that many boys struggle with a restrictive norm for masculine success, and…they often lack the emotional and conceptual skills that would enable them to distance themselves from the norm and become conscious of their own development” (Engebretson, 2006: 98).

In sum, what Engebretson and Wintersgill’s research offers are insights into the relationship of masculinity to spiritual and religious education and the gendered ontology of young masculine subjects. They show that boys live with complexity, negotiating the tensions of the inner ‘self’ and outward gender performance, confirming the view that masculinity is identity work and that the boys surveyed were negotiating gender ‘scripts’.

Methodological choices

Poststructuralism emphasises the relationship between subjectivity and the stratifying effects of language - the ‘semiotics of power’ (Goodchild, 1996). In this paper I adopt this perspective arguing that it is through discourse, that is language and the symbolic and cultural practices it gives rise to that social subjects are fashioned. Foucault describes ‘discourses’ as, “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 2002:54). Discourse, therefore, constructs subjectivity through language and thus produces the normative practices which define the parameters within which boys perform their gendered identities (Weedon, 1997). Successful social performance as a boy is therefore shaped by dominant discourses, but this is no small matter,

“...to qualify as a substantive identity is an arduous task, for such appearances are rule generated identities, ones which rely on the consistent and repeated invocation of rules that condition and restrict culturally intelligible practices of identity” (Butler, 2007:198).

From this poststructuralist perspective I sought to investigate whether the boys’ association or disassociation from RS was an effect of their discursive ‘masculine’ practices. Significantly, poststructuralists argue that dominant discourses can be resisted and fractured (Foucault, 1998:101). Engebretson and Wintersgill show evidence of ‘contradictory’ masculinity in their research, confirming the poststructuralist position that learner subjectivity is open to ontological possibility through, “intervention and resignification” (Butler, 2007:197), “becoming minor” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004: 320) offered through alternative discourses and educational technologies.

Data collection

This study focuses specifically on key stage four boys because they were reaching the end of their Religious Education programmes and would be able to offer a view of the subject formed through their experiences of primary and secondary Religious Education. The qualitative research methods utilized in this fieldwork belong to what Denzin et al. (2003) refer to as the ‘narrative moment’, a paradigmatic shift away from positivism, grand narratives and generalizable universal truths to a concern with contingent, socially situated micro-narratives. My fieldwork was ethnographically orientated. As a participant observer I was able to immerse myself in the everyday routines of the research settings to gain some footing within the micro-dynamics of the school as a discursive site, dynamic and permeable where relations of power, subjectivity and language intersect.

The school, teachers and pupils are all anonymised in the study, which is represented as:

‘Milltown High school’: an 11-16 suburban community high in a major city in the North West. BERA (2004) and BSA (2002) ethical guidelines were followed. Consent was sought from all respondents, including pupils’ parents/guardians. Anonymity was guaranteed and the right to withdrawal was emphasised throughout the project.

Data collection took place over a four week period and consisted of a schedule of:

Classroom observations of lessons; Group interviews: consisting of one female and three male groups. This enabled

‘purposive sampling’ (Silverman, 2006) of pupils for individual interviews; Individual semi-structured interviews with six boys; Exit interviews with the RE teachers involved.

The Participants

The boys in my study formed a significant minority who were bucking the gendered trend set by their male peers, for whom Physical Education was the most popular option. All of the boys are white, aged fourteen and just at the start of year ten. The interviews took place at the start of their GCSE studies over the October-November period 2008.

GCSE Religious Studies was referred to as ‘Philosophy’ in the year nine option booklet and occupied a unique position in the option columns grouped with highly specialised subjects including Japanese and Astronomy. The Head Teacher had requested Religious Studies was re-branded as ‘Philosophy’ to widen its appeal to pupils and parent/guardians as part of the schools marketing strategy to compete with independent schools in the area. The WJEC GCSE ‘Religion and Life Issues’ syllabus B. was followed, with a focus on the central questions of human life, the nature of religious experience, the existence of God, religious responses to contemporary issues such as personal relationships, medical ethics, peace and conflict.

Table 1. The Research Participants

Participant

s

Description Imagined futures

Nick Lives in a village outside Milltown.Hobbies include Kendo.

Aspiring journalist or novelist. Intending to go to University

Mike Lives in Milltown. He plays for the school football team.

Plans to study Law at University

James Lives in Milltown. He plays Rugby League for the school football team.

Plans to become a journalist. Intends to study at University.

Will Lives in Milltown. Enjoys the gym. Inspired by Barak Obama aspires to become a politician. Intends to study at University.

Dan Lives in Milltown. Enjoys the gym. Aspiring policeman and wants to join the CID. Dan has no University plans.

Wayne Lives in Milltown. Associates with an anti school peer group but conforms in RE.

Articulates an imagined future as a businessman.

The boys elude simplistic, reductive categorisation. What emerged from the interviews and my observations of the boys was that they were able to perform multiple and seemingly contradictory masculine identities. Nick, James, Mike and Will were well resourced, ontologically secure boys, with the cultural capital to simultaneously perform highly successful and visible identities as successful sportsmen, able to enjoy literature, film and RE, in preference to PE as a GCSE option. Nick demonstrated some of the features of personalised masculinity (Swain, 2006) and Will’s idealistic identification with Barak Obama shows some of the characteristics of “progressive” masculine subjectivity (Jupp, 2013). Dan and Wayne occupied a more working class social and cultural position. Both boys were described by their RE teacher as anti-authority and disruptive in certain situations, but not in RE. Wayne belonged to a gang and wore the fashion symbols of gang culture to perform his streetwise ‘chav’ masculinity. However, both boys demonstrated capacity to express themselves as “liberal, multi-talented, expressive and autonomous” (Skelton, 2012:11) subjects of knowledge and emergent ethical subjectivities- characteristics signifying the ‘middle-classed’ Renaissance child- but with no apparent disruption to their masculine subjectivities.

Main findings

“RE isn’t cool”

The boys’ choice of Religious Studies is a particularly interesting lens through which to explore their emergent masculine subjectivities when considered in the light of their peers’ comments and perceptions of RE (note: throughout the interviews participants referred to RS as RE). To gain a broader perspective on the gendered dynamics of subject choice I carried out separate group interviews with a year eleven all female group and a year eleven non-option all male group. The outcomes reveal strong constructions of a naturalised gender binary in which dominant discourses of masculinity were reified and iterated through language, subject choices and social practices. The value of this data is that it is the opinion of the year ten boys’ peers which is being considered here. These pupils provide and embody the social standard against which the Milltown ‘philosophers’ perform their masculinity, giving rise to the question, did their association with RE reinforce or disrupt their masculine subjectivity?

Firstly I will present some of the year eleven boys’ views. The boys were not conscious of subjects having gender meanings. When asked why there were so few of their peers taking GCSE RS, Alex’s response demonstrates how he implicitly positions Geography and History as subjects with more masculine meanings and girls as ‘different’ to boys, thus accounting for the gender bias in RS. Referring to the girls, Alex comments,

Alex: ‘Cos I don’t think really that they’re more into the History and Geography side ‘cos they had in the options we had like RE down in the same column so they might like, they might have thought I don’t want to do History, ‘cos girls are more generally different to boys.

His peer, Brad, demonstrates a more questioning perspective, commenting,

Brad: It’s a good question, it’s weird that...I suppose there’s less girls in geography maybe, but I don’t know actually, it’s really weird...but more boys take wood work and stuff like that.

When asked which boys might pick RE, Brad, to the amusement of his peers, referred to Geoff, who:

Brad: Wants to be the next prime minister!

RE was perceived by Brad as a subject for their ‘more clever’ peers, aspirational middle class boys and not a subject that the majority of male pupils, characterised as ‘chavs’ would associate with.

In the all girl group interview a similar reification of the gender binary emerged through their talk. The girls’ narratives revealed strong identification between boys, sport and practical subjects. In addition, masculine peer group loyalty was identified as a key social practice influencing boys’ subject choice. Becky accounted for this in terms of the option columns for GCSE choices, implying that with PE (Physical Education) and DT (Design and Technology) to compete with; RE had little chance of attracting male students,

Becky: I think it’s like because of the option table, like PE’s in it and there’s a lot of D&Ts in it.

Leanne accounted for this differential in terms of male peer group culture and the need to appear ‘cool’,

Leanne: I think there’s a stigma attached to boys doing it though ‘cos we don’t care like RE isn’t cool is it? Like boys don’t want to do it... ‘Cos I know a lot of boys who, a lot of people who would want to do it but they didn’t because they thought it would look stupid so they did graphics, wood work.Interviewer: do you mean girls or boys?Leanne: Boys...girls don’t care really do they?Jade: I think ‘cos like with girls, there’s like more, you have to look at both sides and lads... like sort of have a... stereotypical point of view.Leanne: Have a narrow minded view...yeah.

Jade’s critical comments suggest an inability or unwillingness amongst her male peers to engage with the ambiguities and fuzziness of the issues considered in the RE classroom.

“Big ideas is what I like doing”

The group interviews provide a stark gendered context to subject choice. RE was perceived as uncool for boys and was positioned as a girls’ subject. From the girls’ perspective the emphasis in RE on dialogue and appreciation of ‘both sides’ of a debate was given a feminine gendered meaning. In the light of these findings I was interested to establish why the boys had opted for RE, whether they were able to use it as a resource and how it related to the on-going and precarious process of constructing a socially successful masculine identity.

In the group and individual interviews three key themes emerged in the boys’ narratives- big ideas, ethical issues described as “everyday stuff” and “respect” for cultural difference. The boys’ choice of RS was deliberate and required them to ‘buck’ the gendered trend of their peers. RS appealed to the boys because it was “just different” to other subjects (James),

James: So it was something that I thought you could have your own opinion on...put your own opinion to and there’s no real right or wrong answer.

The boys’ narratives indicate that they valued the epistemological openness of the pluralistic RS discourse, as Will noted, commenting on its capacity to, ‘lead anywhere’. Nick differentiated RS from other subjects which he characterises as ‘clockwork’,

Nick: ...I don’t like the lessons which are like I said, just like clockwork, y’know, like maths, y’know like there’s only one answer and you have to know that answer and if you don’t you are just wrong, but I like the ones where you can make it your own... in some ways you are right and in some ways you are wrong and just, y’know...it’s still ‘live’ to yourself really...like you can be right in your own way, but people can see it as different.

The boys also valued the open discursive nature of classroom discussion, as Mike and Dan state,

Mike: It’s more creative and big ideas is what I like doing...like doing alot. Dan: It (RE) just covers so many aspects of, of like beliefs and then I can put my own opinion on to their belief and then I can make my decisions if I’m like I’m an agnostic or an atheist or whatever...my view.

The theme of ‘big ideas’ emerged throughout their responses:

Will: Big questions I think is quite a big one I’d quite like to learn about ‘cos you can have so many arguments...say like is there a heaven or a hell? You could try and prove the point, is there a heaven or a hell?

I asked Dan to further elaborate about his beliefs, and in common with the rest of his peers, there is no sense of a central religious meta-narrative informing his perspective, just a weak, provisional agnosticism but there is evidence of an emerging ethical subjectivity;

Dan: I would...probably describe them at the minute unsure because....if there’s lots of bad things that happens and God’s all powerful, like why can’t he stop it? Like why do people die? ...Like the major ones like the twin towers...should somebody have shot that plane down? ‘Cos it was that low and should God have made that decision if they were going to die?

Ethics, referred to as “everyday stuff” also emerged as a dominant theme the boys wished to explore through RE,

Will: There’s that one on the news a couple of weeks ago where that guy who wanted to do euthanasia but couldn’t ...I was just like saying well y’know my

opinion on it like if he should or shouldn’t so like it sort of helps on your view on stuff like that.

Wayne wanted to explore social justice issues such as ‘equality’ as he put it, referring to his own experiences of what he perceived to be racial discrimination and harassment,

Wayne: ‘Cos I believe that, all of us should be more similar and not different, all of us should be the same ‘cos we’ve got the same ‘air and we’ve got the same flesh and the same blood.

Another theme emerging from the boys’ narratives was the ‘respect’ narrative, where the RE discourse was valued for its capacity to promote cultural knowledge and understanding. The data shows that classrooms are not hermetically sealed spaces, but sites where pupil and teacher biographies, history, self and the world interact (Wright Mills, 1975). A feature of much of the boys’ talk is evidence of the way in which a post 9/11 discourse has shaped attitudes to cultural difference. In the following narrative James’ comments offer an insight into the practices of his peers when asked about their attitudes to RE,

James : I think it is, ‘cos y’know like with all the terrorist things that are going on outside the school people think like why do we have to learn about other religions, y’know there’s only ours so why would we want to learn about any others? ‘Cos it’s not really going to affect us, why do I want to learn about your religion because you’re a terrorist?

James’ comments revealed openness to the horizon of alterity but also a reflexive relationship with RE and encounter with other traditions as a resource capable of edifying their own concerns and questions.

“I’ve not lost my reputation”

The interviews suggest that the boys were able to make use of the resource of RE as a technology of the self (Foucault, 1987). Their narratives show how they constituted themselves as emerging subjects of knowledge and as ethical subjects (Besley, 2002). However, as earlier data has shown, the subject did not enjoy a strong profile as a high status choice for boys attempting to gain footing within the social web of school and peers. Interviews with the boys revealed they had a reflexive awareness of the gendered hierarchy of subjects. Maintaining ‘reputation’ amongst friends and peer group loyalty were identified as practices required for the enactment of a successful social identity and therefore these practices had a significant bearing on which subject choices the boys would make. In the group interview I asked the boys to talk about the social influences on their subject choices,

Nick: It’s more like your reputation in some ways, amongst your other friends.....say like if you were in a group and they all did PE and you like did something different, like cooking, they all have different feelings about, (pause) well not feelings... thoughts towards you.

Mike added that in his case choosing RE had no impact on his social standing:

Mike: Because I’d picked Philosophy (RE) instead of PE and many people thought I’d have picked PE instead of philosophy but it’s gone down well...I mean nothing’s happened... I’ve not lost my reputation...or so called reputation.

This sequence demonstrates the reality of normative discourses of masculinity circulating amongst the pupil culture of key stage four for whom the most popular option for GCSE was PE. However Mike is able to resist this, perhaps through his ability to occupy more than one subject position, as both ‘sportsman’ and ‘philosopher’, both high status performances of male identity within the wider milieu of the school and his middle class home background. He has the cultural resources and the ontological security to occupy these subject positions and there is no disruption to a self that is able to maintain the appearance of stability. The boys in this group interview also implied that the RE classroom was a liminal space for the articulation of concepts and ideas the majority of their peers would regard as ‘weird’, the delegitimized narratives of spirit or theology (Lyotard, 2005),

Nick : When you’re in groups on the tables and stuff like when he says discuss say God as a being or stuff like that you don’t really have a chance to say that to other people your own age...’cos if you said that in public or someone people would say, you know like...James: You weirdo... (Laughter).

Similar narratives emerged through the talk of the other Milltown boys who associated with RE. I explored the popular subject choices with the boys and again PE emerged as a dominant option,

Interviewer: So what do most of your mates go for?Dan: Usually the PE, any of the PE’s.Wayne: Woodwork.Dan: Yeah, like resistant materials and then vocation... sort of go for the safe option, which is triple science ‘cos they think if you do that then you’re guaranteed of a grade.

The notion of popular subjects being safe options, suggested the boys saw what I have characterised as their ‘nomadic’ RE as requiring an investment in an alternative discourse which carried with it risks inherent in epistemological openness,

Dan: They just say it’s pretty boring.Will: Yeah. Too deep. They just want to take the safe option and just live life as it comes instead of trying to realise what it actually is.

These year ten ‘philosophers’ had positioned themselves as academics, the ‘mature people’, able to take greater social and intellectual risks than their peers, the ‘chavs’ and the ‘big majority’, the ‘sporty people’. The data points to the existence of different communities of masculine practice, but the boys’ talk about the relationship between RE and their imagined futures suggests that RE reinforced their masculine subjectivities. Rejection of the socially ‘safe option’ did not come at a cost to their masculine identity work expressed through imagined futures in professions such as law, journalism and aspirations to attend University. However, the connection to a critical RE was producing an ethical subjectivity as Will’s talk about his future self indicates,

Will : Well, I always like wanted to be a successful businessman and that, but then I thought, well anyone can be a business person if they want, but I thought actually when I’m older I don’t want to look back and think well, I didn’t take the easy route and did something to change the world and that...I want to do something I won’t regret...’cos I think like anyone can be a lawyer...well not a lawyer, but work in an office and all that and never actually do anything significant to change the world, so I want to do something like that.

Will continued to talk about the significance of the recently elected Barak Obama as a (male) political role model, describing his own desire to become a politician. These idealistic aspirations and the existence of the ‘big questions’ narrative of the Milltown boys suggests to me that their association with the RE discourse could not be accounted for entirely by classed practices such as ‘credentialism’. Subsequent interviews with boys in another middle-class setting, confirms my analysis. Here were boys from a similar middle class social and discursive site engaged in masculinising practices through, for example their rejection of the offer of ethical discourse as the following reveals. The RE field of enquiry is feminized and therefore rejected as unmasculine in Josh’s talk,

Josh: That lesson on euthanasia was great, upsetting the girls, they were all crying about that guy who had to go to Switzerland, but the boys couldn’t give a stuff!

“We’re the mature people”

The interview data presented thus far demonstrates how pupil subject choice offers critical researchers considerable scope for interrogating gendered practices and the social and individual processes at work in the constitution of gendered subjectivity. Association with RE was a deliberate choice for these boys and had not resulted in disruption to their masculine projects. In the case of Will, Nick and Mike; I would argue it had reinforced their masculine subjectivities. But this wasn’t a cynical masculine dividend the boys were extracting. Their narratives also indicate ways that the normative molar masculine subject can be re-signified through connection with the epistemologically open spaces of the RE discourse. RE was a resource the boys were able to draw from. However, schools are discursive sites, intersected by multiple discourses, and, of course, the focus of this enquiry, the dominant discourse of masculinity. The Milltown boys were working hard at constructing their masculine subjectivities. My final enquiry addresses the connection between association with RE and the other discursive practices the boys were engaged in.

Analysis of the boys’ narratives and reflection on the evidence obtained indicated a relationship with certain masculinising practices. Relationship to sport and physicality emerged as dominant signifiers of masculinity as did relationship to authority, either as conformity or resistance to authority. Together these ‘vortices of masculinity’ (Connell, 2000) emerged as significant indices of masculinity, central to the performance and maintenance of the masculine subjectivity of the boys. When asked to describe themselves and their favourite subjects all the boys I spoke to defined themselves in relation to sport and physical education. What follows is a snapshot illustrating the relationship between association with RE and the masculine ‘truth game’ (Martino, 1999) of sport as a masculinising practice.

Relationship to sport

Mike, Nick and Will, who had greater access to social and cultural resources, displayed the characteristics of a ‘personalised masculinity’ (Swain, 2006) through the way in which they performed their identities. In this extract Nick demonstrates an ‘artistry of the self’ in his description of Kendo, his sport and hobby:

Nick: It’s about what everything represents each other...y’know, like how your sword represents your life and like, y’know, your sword is everything and yet but it’s nothing without you and stuff like that, so it goes into all that sort of thing...I really like the Japanese culture. I’m actually a big fan of it, and most of my teachers are actually scholars in the culture and Buddhist and all that, so yeah.

In this second example Will shows that whilst he is able to perform his identity through activities, “defined as properly masculine” (Connell, 2000: 158), he stresses his interest in literature, with its more feminine gender meanings, showing he is able to negotiate more than one subject position;

Will : Ok...well...erm...I like sport alot, this year like, I’m doing alot of sport like, tonight I’m going rugby training, tomorrow night I’m going rugby training, and then I go to the gym alot, both Mondays and Fridays and then I play rugby on Sundays...but like...non-sporting activities...I like reading, ‘cos, I just like literature generally and I like, erm, I like going to the cinema as well, I like film.

Nick and Will’s practices, their interest in sport and physicality, their subject choices and their career/educational trajectories all contributed to their projects of the self and suggest a level of ontological security that enabled them to personalize their masculine identity work. Their narratives contrast with the comments of their year eleven peer, Brad, who firmly disassociated from RE, reflecting the indifference of his immediate peer group:

Brad: Right if one of us, like? I don’t know ‘cos none of my friends ...I don’t know anyone who’s taken RE, any of the boys... I just think boys are just not that into it...I’m sat there thinking about football or something.

The boys’ narratives reveal that sport and physical activity are significant discursive resources required for the enactment of desired masculine identity and the acquisition of ‘muscle capital’ (Duckworth, 2013). Sport is revealed as a key masculine signifier, but the boys are also able to make social and psychic investments in RE regarded as peripheral or feminine by the majority of their peers.

Association with RE and relationship to authority

Relationship to authority has been well documented in research (Mac and Ghail, 1994; Willis, 1977; Connell, 2000; Martino, 1999) as a focus for masculinity formation. The theme of authority emerged inductively through the boys’ narratives and I was interested in the ways in which the boys who associated with RE related to authority, were they the academic ‘ear ‘oles’ of Willis’ (1977) ethnography?

Six of the Milltown boys demonstrated identification with the aims of their school and their teachers. From the position of ontological security afforded by their social, gender and cultural advantage these boys’ identification with authority in

the school could be interpreted as a tacit recognition that they too posses authority and will be authorities in their future lives. In the following narrative Mike, an aspirational lawyer comments:

Mike: One teacher said I was an asset to every classroom, which is good to know...I dunno, I just, it’s like ‘erm, being rather big headed of me but I’m clever and a bit popular, so the people who tend to be naughty in classes, when they’re in the class, like next to me, and they see me working, they start, they tend to start to work, so that’s good.

Mike, in common with the other Milltown boys has a relationship with teachers and school that poses no threat to his ontological security. School reinforces and affirms Mike’s sense of a stable self and rewards his identity work,

Mike: Well, we’re the mature people. I think everyone who picked Philosophy is mature...and RE, it’s just when you...in some classes you’ll meet you’ll get people who’ll mess around...I think there’s one lesson where people mess around and that’s English, yeah.

Mike characterises his RE group as the 'mature people', differentiating himself from the majority of his peers whose dominant practices are ‘messing around’. However, in contrast to Mike, Wayne’s relationship to authority both within school and through his encounters with the ‘hard machinery’ of the law refutes a simplistic categorisation of these as a homogeneous group of ‘credentialling’ middle class renaissance children. Wayne explained his interest in ‘equality’:

Wayne: ‘Cos, I, I’ve got loads of mates and they’ve got loads of, they get loads of rubbish ‘cos of what race they are, some of them do...Because, most of the people that are put away for the things they didn’t do ‘cos most of them are black and they try to give them their story, but most of the people just don’t accept the story and they just have to take the pain.

Discussion: the practices of the self

Masculine subjectivity viewed through the lens of the boys’ relationship to the RE discourse has been the focus of this paper. In this way it shares the same preoccupation as Foucault’s later work on the technology of the self,

“I am interested… in the way in which the subject constitutes himself in an active fashion, by the practices of the self” (Foucault, 1987: 123).

My findings indicate that although the boys’ identity work was fashioned through their relationship to vortices of masculinity (Connell, 2000), most noticeably through their successful involvement in competitive sport, the Milltown boys were able to negotiate a range of subject positions, with the characteristics of ‘personalised masculinity’ (Swain, 2006). Analysis might conclude that these boys’ subjectivities appeared to be shaped by what Connell (2000) refers to as the, “mechanism of educational credentials”, where the central themes of their masculine identity work are, “rationality and responsibility rather than pride and aggressiveness” (Connell, 2000:140). However, as Coulter (2003) argues, young men can become part of the solution where social justice projects are being developed. The credentialism argument

cannot account for Dan and Wayne’s interest in ‘equality’ and ‘big questions’. In particular, I was struck by the narratives of Nick, Dan, Will and Mike who articulated a capacity to think differently and expansively through their RE in contrast with what Jade had characterised as the ‘stereotypical’ style of thinking she saw in her male peers. The boys narrated their disillusionment with what Nick called ‘clockwork subjects’, maths and science with their masculine subject meanings (Paetcher, 2007). The boys’ openness to question points to ways in which RE can create new territory, epistemologically open ‘nomadic’ spaces in the curriculum which can begin to disrupt dominant ‘molar’ masculine subjectivity- a process which Deleuze and Guattari call, ‘transformational pragmatics’ (Deleuze and Guattari, in Semetsky, 2007). Pedagogically this concept refers to new ways of thinking, perceiving and feeling produced through encounter with cultural and ontological pluralism and is therefore, “oriented towards becoming-other” and, “overcoming one’s old mode of knowledge and existence” producing new modes of being, “characterised by new percepts and new affects” (Deleuze in Semetsky, 2007: 210).

In a similar way the ‘everyday life’ narratives signalled the ways in which the boys were using their RE to constitute themselves as ethical subjects. From a Foucauldian perspective this process of identity work is an expression of the ‘care for self’, (Foucault, 1987:118).

The evidence from these narratives therefore points to RE as an educational technology which enables processes of self constitution to take place. Foucault’s final lectures on the ‘culture of the self’ explore the concept of parresia, ‘truth telling’ and ‘free-spokenness’. He argues that where modern philosophy takes up these practices, it is taking up the ‘mode of being’ of ancient Greek philosophy, that is, by seeking to critique truth claims, philosophy challenges, “deception, trickery, and illusion” (Foucault, 2010:354). To engage in this philosophical parresia is also, ‘ascesis’, that is, “constitution of the subject by himself” and has as its object, a ‘becoming’, the, “process of the transformation of the subject” (Foucault, 2010:354). Foucault’s concept of parresia connects to the boys’ narratives which reveal an emergent, albeit stuttering relationship to questions of truth, moral obligation, ethics and cultural difference. In this way RE enabled engagement with parresiastic projects, greater experimentation in thought as they begin to ‘problematise the problematic’ (Gould, 2007) and perhaps become nomadic subjects as Semetsky (2007) argues, these boys are also beginning to ‘constitute problems’ for themselves.

Conclusion So what are the implications of this study? It provides empirical evidence for the complexity of boys’ lives as they negotiate dominant masculine cultures at work in the social spaces of secondary school. But, these boys elude the reductive categories of cool guy, swot, wimp or poofter (Martino, 1999). Through their choices and their reciprocal, reflexive relationship to the potent technology of parresia offered through the discourse of RE they showed themselves to be active, self-constituting subjects. The Milltown boys’ narratives also highlight approaches which educators can adopt for exploratory, critical RE to work effectively. The data collected for this study and similar research (Farrell, 2014; REDCo, 2009) demonstrates that effective, inclusive RE teaching and learning strategies such as visiting faith communities, listening to and seeking the views of pupils, encouraging risk taking in discussion through, for example, P4C methods (Philosophy for Children) enable pupils to participate in the RE field of enquiry. The dialogical interpretive pedagogy underpinning these strategies align to Benhabib’s feminist understanding of the self “as a being immersed in a network of

relationships with others”, where, “the respect for each other’s needs and the mutuality of effort to satisfy them, sustain moral growth and development” (Benhabib, in Erricker, 2000:115). These findings suggest that interpretive pedagogical approaches (Jackson, 2004) which seek to address pupils’ own questions and concerns by building conceptual bridges between the pupil and religious narratives, or by testing religious and secular truth claims (Wright, 2006), have the capacity to develop critical self reflexive subjectivities. The recommendations of the REDCo report (2009:62) similarly urge practitioners to adopt approaches which create opportunities for personal reflection and open discussion. REDCo (2009) also reported that boys were less likely to participate in open discussion than girls; therefore the significance of developing approaches which encourage dialogue cannot be underestimated as my own research with boys in another educational setting illustrates. The boys I interviewed were enmeshed in hyper-masculine gang culture but they placed a particular value on RE as a political space where they could debate the racial tensions that dominated their community. They referred to this process as ‘getting it out into the open’ through dialogue (Farrell, 2014). The RE classroom was functioning as a reflexive space of deconstruction for these boys and helped them develop what they called ‘respect’. In this context of competing male gangs RE was functioning as an, “alternative discourse, a vehicle for social justice that might begin to problematise these practices as a source of masculine capital and validation” (Farrell, 2014: 656). In this way it could be argued that RE for both the Milltown boys and their self-styled ‘gangster’ peers was gender work, privileging narrativity, contextuality and, “the standpoint of the particular other” (Benhabib, in Erricker, 2000:115).

The crisis discourse has produced the category of the failing boy, however, critical masculinities scholarship should also be concerned with those ‘invisible’ boys who demonstrate capacity for counter hegemonic consciousness through their practices, boys like Dan, James, Mike, Will and Wayne. The hallmark of their lives is the sometimes paradoxical complexity of their existence, because, as Jackson argues, schools are arenas where on a daily basis identities are made through “negotiation, refusal and struggle” (Jackson 1996:114). Olson (2010) argues to encounter the ‘Other’ is to change. These boys were changing through encounter with the pluralistic discourse of RE, evidenced most strikingly in the case of Wayne and Dan, characterised as ‘trouble’, but able to access the alternative discourse of RE in a way that enabled them to become more reflexive and, “ develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world” (Freire, 1996:64). PE and technology were the natural choices of their peers, but the Milltown philosophers were beginning to think otherwise, to question dominant constructions of subjectivity about what is an admissible existence as a boy, becoming-other through education as the “practice of freedom” (Foucault, in Peters ed. 1998:69).

References

Avest, I. (2013) Religious Education Beyond Multi-Religious Instruction: Pupils and Students Reactions to Religious Education in a Context of Diversity in Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern world Gross, Z., Davies, L. and Khansaa, D. (eds.) London: Springer pp.137-149.

Besley, T. (2002) Social Education and Mental Hygiene: Foucault, disciplinary technologies and the moral constitution of youth, Educational Philosophy and Theory 34 (4) pp. 419-433

British Educational Research Association Revised Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research (2004)

British Sociological Association Statement of Ethical Practice (2002)

Butler, J. (2007) Gender Trouble. 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge

Connell, R. (2000) The Men and the Boys, Cambridge: Polity

Coulter, R. (2003) Boys Doing Good: young men and gender equity, Educational Review 55(2). pp 135-145

Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. (eds.) (2003) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. 2nd ed. London: Sage.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2004) A Thousand Plateaus, London: Continuum

DfES, (2007) Gender and education: the evidence on pupils in England, London: DfES

Duckworth, V. (2013) Learning Trajectories, Violence and Empowerment Amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners Monograph Educational Research, London: Routledge.

Engebretson, K. (2006) Identity, Masculinity and Spirituality: A Study of Australian Teenage Boys Journal of Youth Studies, 9 (1). pp. 91-110

Erricker, C. and Erricker, J. (2000) Reconstructing Religious, Spiritual and Moral Education, Oxon: Routledge

Farrell, F. (2014) A critical investigation of the relationship between masculinity, social justice and the neo-liberal discourse Journal of Education and Training, 56(7). pp. 650-662

Foster, V., Kimmel, M. and Skelton, C. (2001) What about the boys? An overview of the debates in What About the Boys? Martino, W. And Meyenn, B. (eds.) Buckingham: Open University Press pp.1-24.

Foucault, M. (1983) M. Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, H. Dreyfus and P Rabinow (eds.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (1987) the ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom Philosophy and Social Criticism, 12. pp. 112-131

Foucault, M. (2002) The Archaeology of Knowledge London: Routledge

Foucault, M. (2010) The Government of Self and Others ed. Gros, F. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Francis, B. (2006) Heroes or Zeroes? The discursive positioning of underachieving boys in English neo-liberal education policy Journal of Education Policy 21(2), pp. 187-200

Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed London: Penguin

Gould, E. (2007) Legible Bodies in Music Education Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education 6(4) pp. 201-223

Haywood, C. & Mac an Ghail, M. (2003) Men and Masculinities, Buckingham; Open

University

Jackson, D. (1996) Why Should Secondary Schools Take Working with Boys Seriously? Gender and Education 8:1, pp. 103-116

Jarviluoma, H., Pirkko, M. & Vilkko, A. (2003) Gender and Qualitative Methods, London: Sage

JCQ, Examination results (2008) (http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/gcses [accessed 25th March 2010])

Jupp, J. (2013) What are white progressive masculinities? Counternarratives and contradictions of committed white male teachers in inner city schools Gender and Education 25:4, pp.413-431

Lyotard, J. (2005) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Manchester: Manchester University Press

Mac an Ghail, M. (1994) The Making of Men: masculinities, sexualities and schooling Buckingham: Open University

Martino, W. (1999) ‘Cool Boys’, ‘Party Animals’, ‘Squids’ and ‘Poofters’: interrogating the dynamics and the politics of adolescent masculinities in school British Journal of Sociology of Education 20 (2) pp.239-263

McKenna, U., Neill,S., & Jackson, R. (2009) Students’ Views on Religious Education in England in Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in their Lives, Schools and Societies Valk, P., Bertram-Troost, G. , Friederici, M.,& Beraud, C. (eds.) Munster: Waxmann pp. 49-70.

Mills, C. Wright. (1975) The Sociological Imagination London: Penguin

OfSTED (2003) Boys’ Achievement in Secondary Schools London: HMSO

OfSTED (2005) Boys’ Achievement in RE London: HMSO

OfSTED (2007) Making Sense of Religion London: HMSO

Olsson, S. (2010) Our View on the Other: issues regarding school text books British Journal of Religious Education, 32(1) pp. 41-48

Paechter, C. (2007) Being Boys, Being Girls: Learning masculinities and femininities Maidenhead: Open University

Peters, M. (ed.) (1998) Naming the Multiple Westport: Bergin and Garvey

Semetsky, I. (2007) Towards a semiotic theory of learning: Deleuze’s philosophy and educational experience Semiotica 1(4). pp. 197-214

Silverman, D. (2006) Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction London: Sage

Skelton, C. and Francis, R. (2011) The ‘Renaissance Child’: high achievement and gender in late modernity International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16:4. pp. 441-459

Swain, J. (2006) Reflections on Patterns of Masculinity in School Settings Men and Masculinities 8(3) pp. 331-349

Tirri, K. Tallent-Runnells, M., & Nokelainen, P. (2005) A Cross-Cultural Study of Pre-Adolescents’ moral, religious and spiritual questions British Journal of Religious Education 27(3) pp. 207-214

Thanissaro, P. (2012) Measuring Attitude to RE: factoring pupil experience and faith background into assessment British Journal of Religious Education 34 (2), pp. 195-212.

Weiner, G. (1994) Feminisms in Education: an introduction Buckingham: Open University

Whitehead, S. (2002) Men and Masculinities: key themes and new directions Cambridge: Polity

Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour Aldershot: Gower

Wintersgill, B. (2007) Gender Differences In Teenagers’ Views Engaging Boys in Religious Education: Overcoming Barriers to Achievement at Key Stages 3 and 4 Keynote educational, Marriott Hotel, Manchester, Tuesday 8th July, 2008