Six years after the #MeToo movement rose to prominence, divergent responses have evolved – particularly in relation to men and masculinity. Despite the important development in men’s and boys’ understandings of gender inequality, society also witnessed a backlash by anti-feminist men and men’s groups (Maricourt & Burrell, 2022).  The growing popularity of misogynistic influencers, such as Andrew Tate, also takes root in this socio-cultural landscape. A UK study found that one-in-four young men agree with Tate’s views on women (Oppenheim, 2023). Significantly, these influencers have captured the attention of boys in schools (Halliday, 2023; Will, 2023). Tate is an individual enactment of systemic and ideological problems in society and educational institutions. Not surprisingly, educators are increasingly navigating gender and sexuality questions in their own pedagogical practices.

This research is designed to reveal and assess the ways that violent and unhealthy masculinities are challenged and disrupted in education by male-identifying teachers across Canada. Building on previous research (Kehler, Knott-Fayle, 2025) with pre-service teacher’s gender-transformative pedagogies, we have found that there is an awareness of the socio-cultural issues impacting masculinity as well as an appetite to build teaching practices which challenge them. At the same time, there are clear structural and personal obstacles to doing so.

Schools are increasingly aware of the competing discourses affecting how education addresses and responds to gender, sexuality and youth identities (Keddie, 2010). Previous action has drawn on sex role and male role models theories, calling for more male teachers to respond to the apparent sissification of boys, which proved uncritical and misguided (Martino & Kehler, 2006). Martino (2008) calls for a more critical investigation into the effects of a regime or culture of hegemonic masculinity and “gender normalization which incites anxieties about feminized and/or emasculated boys in schools” (190).

This paper critically explores the pedagogical practices of male-identifying teachers who challenge, disrupt, and navigate normative masculinities in and through education. The primary research questions guiding this research include: a) When and how do male-identifying teachers challenge normative masculinities? b) What motivates male-identifying teachers to challenge normative masculinities? c) What are male-identifying teachers’ perceptions of the impact of their critical pedagogical practices on gender arrangements?

 These research questions are developed in part using Apple’s (2016) principles for critical scholar/activists. Specifically, whilst the research is developed as a result of, and to better understand, exploitative and dominating societal relations, our aim is also “to critically examine current realities with a conceptual/political framework that emphasizes the spaces in which more progressive and counter-hegemonic actions can, or do, go on” (511).

Conceptually and theoretically, we build on feminist, queer theory, and critical masculinities studies research (Butler, 2006; Connell, 2005; Elliott, 2020), acknowledging the fluidity and diversity of gender and sexuality.  Drawing on previous research highlighting the problematic nature of male role model discourse connected to a “moral panic” within education (Martino et al., 2009; Martino & Kehler, 2006), this research is not positioned within the context of male identifying teachers as role models. Instead, engaging men as activists, as allies and agents of change requires understanding how and when men and boys take up a disruptive practice of questioning normative masculinity.

Methods, Methodology: Our data analysis focusses on making sense of the participants’ experiences and views on challenging normative masculinity through pedagogical practices. At the same time, we draw on critical discursive methods (Lazar, 2007; Thompson et al., 2018) to explore and uncover latent ideas through a detailed discursive analysis of the interviews. This exploration of the latent and multi-layered meanings in the interviews involves connecting interview data to broader structural and ideological matters as well as research on critical masculinities studies and critical pedagogy. Utilizing feminist discursive methods, the first phase of the analysis “involves identifying the broad discursive patterns that people actively negotiate in their voiced accounts”. This phase is comprised of (1) chunking the talk into sections, (2) labelling those sections with descriptive codes, (3) identifying recurring codes, (4) identifying discourses, (5) identifying discursive patterns, and (6) theoretically accounting for those patterns. The second phase involves tracing participants agentic voices, “in order to understand how they actively locate and relocate themselves” (Thompson et al. 2018, 101) relative to the discursive patterns identified in the first phase. This second phase involves (1) identifying first-person accounts to (2) identify how the individual speaks about themselves and the topic. Then (3) identifying contrapuntal voices to explore the multilayered nature of experiential accounts and, finally, (4) composing a theoretical account of the individual’s voices in relation to broader discourses (see also Gilligan et al., 2003). This approach emphasises counter-hegemonic voices and personal experiences – in this case, male-identifying teachers challenging normative and violent masculinities through critical pedagogical practices – whilst exploring the structural conditions of the personal.

Expected Outcomes, Conclusions: As van der Heijden et al. (2015) argue, it is increasingly important “to create supportive school contexts in which teachers are encouraged to be agentic in order to positively influence or change education” and most importantly, “improve education on daily practice by using their agency” (682). In the current cultural climate of change and backlash, teachers are required to respond critically and strategically in their engagement with all students to promote critical awareness and knowledge of gender inequities. Students, boys in particular, may be “quick to reject attempts to engage them in discussions about gender, claiming that these topics only relate to girls” (Schwarz, 2020, 137). However, research (Govender & Bhana, 2023; Martino & Resai-Rashti, 2012; Schwartz, 2020) has shown that teachers who are aware of the fluctuating conceptions of masculinity and who are capable of creating emotional empathy with boys can support boys to be active agents deconstructing restrictive images of masculinity. As such, amidst public concerns surrounding the ongoing discussion of gender and sexuality education, particularly around boys and masculinity (Schwartz, 2020), there are opportunities for “‘classroom trouble’, to unsettle the normative knowledges, practices and subjectivities that ordinarily circulate unquestioned in classrooms” (Youdell, 2011, 88). It is unclear how educators, teachers and schools challenge gender binaries, and particularly the rigid and damaging heteronormative aspects of masculinity which go largely unquestioned, whilst supporting and maintaining typically silenced discourses within education (Kehler, 2009; Meyer, 2007). It is this unknown that we address in this research.

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