Research Article
Adolescent boys' science aspirations: Masculinity, capital, and power
Louise Archer,
Jennifer DeWitt,
Beatrice Willis,
Corresponding Author
Louise Archer
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Correspondence to: L. Archer; E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJennifer DeWitt
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Search for more papers by this authorBeatrice Willis
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Search for more papers by this authorLouise Archer,
Jennifer DeWitt,
Beatrice Willis,
Corresponding Author
Louise Archer
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Correspondence to: L. Archer; E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJennifer DeWitt
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Search for more papers by this authorBeatrice Willis
Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH United Kingdom
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
There is widespread international concern about post-16 participation rates in science, with women's under-representation constituting a particular issue. This paper contributes to these debates through a novel, critical examination of the role of masculinity within boys' negotiations of science aspirations. Drawing on a UK longitudinal study of children's science and career aspirations from age 10 to 14 (including a survey of over 9,000 (Year 6, age 10/11) and 5,600 (Year 8, age 12/13) pupils in England and repeat individual interviews with 92 children (at age 10/11) and 85 (age 12/13), the paper focuses in-depth on repeat interviews with 37 boys. We identify five discursive performances of masculinity, which are related to the boys' (science) aspirations: two are associated with science/related aspirations (termed “young professors” and “cool/footballer scientists”) and three characterize boys who aspire otherwise (“behaving/achieving” boys; “popular masculinity” boys and “laddish” boys). Classed patterns across these five discourses are then explored through two cross-cutting phenomena, (1) popular constructions of science as “brainy”/“smart” and (2) the uneven social distribution of “science capital,” explaining how each of these are implicated facilitating middle-class boys' identifications from/with science and dissuading working-class boys' aspirations. We argue that these analyses illuminate an orthodoxy of science careers which maps closely on to current patterns of participation in post-16 science and which impacts powerfully on who can/not conceive of a career in science as being “for me.” © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 1–30, 2014
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