In the Nordic countries as well as in many other industrialised countries in the West discourses highlighting boys as losers in the contemporary school system have resurfaced the last decade. Although, these discourses not are new, a slightly different focus can be noticed (Nordberg 2012). This paper presents the results of a research project founded by The Swedish Research Council and GEXCel (Gender Excellence Center, Linköping University). The project is informed by feminist poststructuralism (Butler, 1990; Laclau & Mouffe 1985/2001), Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 2005), Critical Masculinity Studies (Connell 1995, Hearn 2009, Petersen 1998) and Educational Policy Studies (Apple, 2006; Biesta, 2011; Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004). The aim is to study, describe and compare how hegemonic transnational discourses on boys as a failing group are transformed and refigured the when they are combined and with other hegemonic discourses in three educational settings in the Nordic region: Sweden, Norway and Denmark, three countries with a long history of gender equality. The educational discourses articulated on boys, masculinity and schooling in policy documents, reports and conferences in these settings described, analysed and compared. The analysis centres on the similarities and differences in the failing boy discourse and the kind of discourses that coexists in each setting. Attention is for example given to how boys and girls are described and positioned to each other in the policy presentations and articulations analysed in the paper Special focus is on the practices and strategies defined and the attempts to solve the problems in each setting.

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