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Gender construction, curriculum and behaviour management

Understanding that our concepts of masculinity and femininity are constructed is an important starting point for developing behaviour management strategies that create truly safe, supportive environments and foster successful outcomes for all students. Such an understanding is clearly inconsistent with the idea that boys and girls have set behavioural and attitudinal patterns dictated by their biology.

Read more about the construction of gender.

By recognising that gender is constructed (and can be deconstructed), those concerned with the behaviour and academic engagement of boys at school will be more likely to see possibilities for change.

Gender - a common link

If we view the disruptive behaviours of many boys simply as individual problems, we fail to see what they have in common. Bad behaviour often earns boys a desirable 'tough' image, attention from the teacher, avoidance of classroom work, and some peer admiration and/or fear. If we can see how such interactions are supported by popular ideas about power and 'resistant' masculine behaviour, we are better positioned to see what is really happening and respond more effectively to it.

In schools where gender is not investigated, it is difficult for teachers, parents and students alike to challenge such gendered behaviours. Students, in particular, can be left thinking that behaviour causing harm and disadvantage is just 'natural' and 'the way things are'. To make real progress with those boys who are pushing the behavioural limits, we need to help them see the costs of such 'resistant' forms of masculinity, for themselves and others, and the possibilities and benefits of change.

Behaviour management and the curriculum

Behaviour management in schools has often been more about the management of misbehaviour than about the development of positive attitudes and values, a focus on learning, and a fair and functional classroom. The focus on misbehaviour has led to the separation of issues of behaviour management from issues of curriculum, as if the two were unrelated.

The formal curriculum represents what our society deems important for students to know, understand, do and value, but powerful lessons are also learned through interactions in the playground, the school's organisational structures and practices, the selection of topics and texts for study, and the sharing of popular culture.

There are strong and inevitable interrelationships between gender, behaviour management and the curriculum. Harnessing these links is the key to effective school action.

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