The view that the returns to educational investments are highest for early childhood interventions is widely held and stems primarily from several influential randomized trials—Abecedarian, Perry, and the Early Training Project—that point to super-normal returns to early interventions. This article presents a de novo analysis of these experiments, focusing on two core issues that have received limited attention in previous analyses: treatment effect heterogeneity by gender and overrejection of the null hypothesis due to multiple inference. To address the latter issue, a statistical framework that combines summary index tests with familywise error rate and false discovery rate corrections is implemented. The first technique reduces the number of tests conducted; the latter two techniques adjust the p values for multiple inference. The primary finding of the reanalysis is that girls garnered substantial short- and long-term benefits from the interventions, but there were no significant long-term benefits fo...

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Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects

Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

SUMMARY—Amid ongoing public speculation about the reasons for sex differences in careers in science and mathematics, we present a consensus statement that is based on the best available scientific evidence. Sex differences in science and math achievement and ability are smaller for the mid-range of the abilities distribution than they are for those with the highest levels of achievement and ability. Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes; the reasons why males are often more variable remain elusive. Successful careers in math and science require many types of cognitive abilities. Females tend to excel in verbal abilities, with large differences between females andmalesfound whenassessmentsincludewriting samples. High-level achievement in science and math requires the ability to communicate effectively and comprehend abstract ideas, so the female advantage in writing should be helpful in all academic domains. Males outperform females on most measures of visuospatial abilities, which have been implicated as contributing to sex differences on standardized examsin mathematics and science. An evolutionary account of sex differences in mathematics and science supports the conclusion that, although sex differences in math and science performance have not directly evolved, they could be indirectly related to differences in interests and specific brain and cognitive systems. We review the brain basis for sex differences in science and mathematics, describe consistent effects, and identify numerous possible correlates. Experience alters brain structures and functioning, so causal statements about brain differences and success in math and science are circular. A wide range of sociocultural forces contribute to sex differences in mathematics and science achievement and ability—including the effects of family,neighborhood,peer,andschoolinfluences;training and experience; and cultural practices. We conclude that early experience, biological factors, educational policy, and cultural context affect the number of women and men who pursue advanced study in science and math and that these effects add and interact in complex ways. There are no single or simple answers to the complex questions about sex differences in science and mathematics.

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The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics

Schooling in Capitalist America.

How do boys see themselves? Their peers? The adult world? What are their aspirations and fears? 'Young masculinities' centres on a study in which boys talked openly about these questions and many others. It will be of interest to students and researchers in psychology, sociology, gender and youth studies, as well as policy makers and other professionals.

Young Masculinities: Understanding Boys in Contemporary Society

This paper reports a qualitative analysis of data from a study of masculinity in 11–14 year old boys attending twelve London schools. Forty-five group discussions (N= 245) and two individual interviews (N= 78) were conducted. The findings indicate that boys’ experiences of school led them to assume that interviews would expose them to ridicule and so threaten their masculinity. Boys were generally more serious and willing to reveal emotions in individual than in group interviews. A key theme in boys’ accounts was the importance of being able to present themselves as properly masculine in order to avoid being bullied by other boys by being labeled “gay.” The ways in which boys were racialized affected their experiences of school.

Producing contradictory masculine subject positions: Narratives of threat, homophobia and bullying in 11-14 year old boys

This paper is concerned with thinking through the cultural construction of personal identities whilst avoiding the classical social-individual division. Our starting point is the notion that there is no such thing as ‘the individual’, standing outside the social; however, there is an arena of personal subjectivity, even though this does not exist other than as already inscribed in the sociocultural domain. Our argument is that there are psychoanalytic concepts which can be helpful in exploring this ‘inscription’ and thus in explaining the trajectory of individual subjects; that is, their specific positioning in discourse. The argument is illustrated by data from a qualitative study of young masculinities, exploring the ways in which some individual boys take up positions in various degrees of opposition to the dominant ideology of ‘hegemonic’ masculinity.

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Taking a stand: Using psychoanalysis to explore the positioning of subjects in discourse

Teenage boys have a troublesome reputation, making them central figures in contemporary moral panics. Media and government, teachers and police, focus on boys mainly as potential problems, with their apparent underachievement at school and the escalation of street crime linked especially to mobile phone theft being the main current examples, but generally heightened instances of ‘control’ problems ranging from delinquency to sexual abuse perpetration also being quoted (e.g. Farrington, 1995; Vizard et al, 1995). Many researchers in the area of gender and identity have also drawn attention to an apparent ‘crisis’ in contemporary forms of masculinity, marked by uncertainties over social role and identity, sexuality, work and personal relationships, and often manifested in violence or abusive behaviours towards self and others (e.g. Frosh, 1994, 2000; Jukes, 1993). This both reflects and contributes to the production of a parallel developmental ‘crisis’ for boys, engaged in the process of identity construction in a context in which there are few clear models and in which the surrounding images of masculinity are complex and confused. More generally, changes in employment and in normative gender relations mean that boys and young men are having to forge new, more flexible masculine identities. Developing an understanding of the ways in which they manage this task is made especially complex by the fact that masculinities are racialised and expressed through social class positions (Back, 1994; Edley and Wetherell, 1995; Pattman et al, 1998). In response to concerns over this supposed crisis in masculinity, various researchers have addressed questions relevant to the understanding of how boys and men are dealing with social changes. The study of boys and masculinities is not new; indeed, Willis’ (1977) study of white working class young men making the transition from school to employment produced findings which fit with current claims that masculine cultures are violent, misogynist and anti-school. However, a decade or two ago it was more easily assumed that even if specific groups of boys and young men were considered problematic because of their poor educational performance and culture of toughness (e.g. working class and/or black boys), this was not to be seen as a general problem with masculinities. In contrast, more recent writers have been inclined to assume the existence of just such a general problem and have suggested a variety of (sometimes contradictory) explanations, including the absence of adult male role models in the classroom (Pollack, 1998), boys’ problematic behavioural styles (e.g. Jackson, 1998; Salmon, 1998) and the impact of feminism (Kryger, 1998). Some researchers have pointed out, however, that the evidence on which notions of a ‘crisis’ in masculinity has been constructed is not as robust as might be expected. For example, they argue that there has been a neglect of the fact that working class and black boys have always done badly, while the most privileged boys continue to do well; and that there is an implicit blaming of girls, women teachers and feminists and neglect of the fact that half of all girls in Britain do not gain five grades A-C at GCSE (the standard measure of academic success). These and similar complications with the data make simple explanations of the underachievement of boys in terms of some essential mismatch between school achievement and the masculine psyche, or masculine socialisation, less than helpful (Epstein et al., 1998; Skelton, 1998; Yates, 1997). Instead, several researchers have argued that the ways in which boys act as masculine, and their masculine identities, need to be seen as

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The trouble with boys

How do young South Africans give meaning to love? In this paper we draw on findings from an interview study to examine the ways in which young Africans, aged 16 to 17 years in a poor township in KwaZulu-Natal province, express ideals of love and romance. Their claims to love we show are strategic advantages as they negotiate poverty and economic marginalisation. Girls' ideals of love are tied to their aspirations towards middle-class consumerism. Love becomes inseparable from the idealisation of men who provide. Upholding provider masculinity is a strategic means to claim money, fashionable clothes and prestige. Unlike girls, the boys' love investments were focused on farm girls from rural areas in South Africa. Farm girls were constructed as virgins with little investment in commodification. Farm girls are a strategic option through which boys' economic marginalisation experienced in the township girls is reconciled through an exalted masculinity. Love is produced by particular sets of economic and social circumstances through which gender inequalities are reproduced, and should be taken more seriously in working with young people to address gendered social environments and HIV risk.

Rob Pattman

Papers

Young Masculinities: Understanding Boys in Contemporary Society

Producing contradictory masculine subject positions: Narratives of threat, homophobia and bullying in 11-14 year old boys

Taking a stand: Using psychoanalysis to explore the positioning of subjects in discourse

The trouble with boys

Girls want money, boys want virgins: The materiality of love amongst South African township youth in the context of HIV and AIDS