This book explores new questions and lines of analysis within the field of ‘gender and education’, conveying some of the style and diversity of contemporary research directions. It celebrates as well as assesses the achievements of feminist work in education, acknowledging this legacy while also ‘troubling’ and opening up for critical reflection any potential stalemates and sticking points in research trends on gender and education. The collection has a strong cross-cultural focus, with chapters exploring experiences of students and teachers in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Hawaii and South Africa. The chapters examine topics relevant to both boys’ and girls’ education and to forms of education which span different sectors and both informal and formal spaces. Issues examined include citizenship and belonging, affect, authority and pedagogy, sexuality and the body, racism, and national identity and new and emerging forms of masculinity and femininity. Across these varied terrains, each of the authors engages with theoretical work informed by a broad range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches from across the social sciences and humanities, drawing variously from postcolonial, queer, and new sociological theories of modernity and identity, as well as from fields such as cultural geography and narrative studies.

This collection of thought-provoking essays is essential reading for scholars and graduate students wanting to understand the current state of play on research and theory on ‘gender and education’.

This book was published in a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.