A boy behaving badly: investigating teachers' assumptions about gender, behaviour, mobility and literacy learning

Abstract

This paper explores the complex behavioural and academic issues that surfaced in an Australian primary school following the enrolment of a student whose parents were itinerant farm workers. The student did not merge easily into the school population as most of the other itinerant farm workers’ children seemed to do. Instead, he stood out because of the challenges he posed for school personnel and school processes. This single case study examines teachers’ social and discursive constructions of a boy who behaved badly; teachers’ growing recognition that he was a student who achieved well on some literacy tests, and the challenges of reconciling understandings and assumptions about gender, school behaviour, mobility and literacy learning.