The ethos, or atmosphere, of each school was very different. Highwoods marketed itself
on the twin pillars of academic achievement and excellent sporting facilities; there was a
highly competitive atmosphere and the pupils were tightly regulated and controlled.
Petersfield also promoted high academic achievement (as measured by the SAT results)
and had astringent control and regulation, although there was a deliberate policy of non-
competitiveness. Westmoor Abbey was very different: although all schools would like to
be able to state that their primary objective is the promotion of academic excellence,
Westmoor Abbey’s main concern seemed to consist of being able to cope with, and
contain, pupil (mis)behaviour as best it could. This was a survivalist school (Hargreaves,
1995) where the ethos was more insecure, and social relations were generally poorer.
During my fieldwork I followed a rolling programme spending about a month each term
in each school. In the two LEA (state) schools I concentrated on one Year 6 class (10-11
year olds), although at Highwoods I spent time with two classes as the pupils were
organised by academic attainment and I wanted to investigate the widest possible range
of masculinities. Highwoods also differed from the other two schools in that pupils were
taught by individual subject teachers. My descriptions and interpretations below are
based on two major sources of data: firstly, my non-participant observations of the boys
and girls during lessons, and around the school environs; and secondly, on a series of 104
loosely-structured interviews (62 involving only boys; 39 involving only girls; and 3
mixed) based on nominated friendship groups of between 2-3 pupils.
Theories of embodied masculinity
The ongoing construction of boys’ nascent identities is essentially an issue about
masculinity. Many recent theoretical conceptualisations about masculinity have been
coherently summarised by Gilbert & Gilbert (1998) and, along with Connell (1987, 1995,
1996, 2000), they affirm a number of key points from recent feminist and feminist-
inspired work: masculinity is a relational construct occupying a place in gender relations;