Gender, Race, and the Politics of Role Modelling

"Not since William F. Pinar’s highly original The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America has a book offered a more audacious and intellectually rigorous analysis of the volatile intersection of gender and race in education. What distinguishes Martino and Rezai-Rashti’s book is a relentless commitment to critical empiricism and grounded theory. What the reader will find in Gender, Race and the Politics of Role Modeling: The Influence of Male Teachers is a refreshing refusal of the easy dogmatism that mars a lot of contemporary writing on gender and racial inequality in education. Theoretical insight on race and gender inequality in schooling is at every point well-earned and connected to empirically supportable inferences. Gender, Race and the Politics of Role Modeling: The Influence of Male Teachers is a methodologically innovative and theoretically sophisticated book – a long overdue and empirically-informed intervention into an area of curriculum and pedagogical practice that has been kept at arm’s-length by both mainstream and radical education scholars." –Cameron McCarthy, Director of Global Studies and Education at the University of Illinois-Urbana

"This book is a 'must read' for anyone wondering whether boys do better at school if taught by men teachers. The authors explode the myths around male teachers as role models in a scholarly but hugely readable way. In this book we hear the voices of teachers themselves and the boys and girls they work with. We learn that it is not only gender but also sexuality, race and ethnicity that shape teachers’ lives and professional interactions with students. Wayne Martino and Goli Rezai-Reshati have used their considerable knowledge and understanding of gender, race and the politics around ‘role modelling’ to offer more reliable and nuanced understandings of teachers’ lives than popularist assumptions suggest." –Christine Skelton, Professor of Gender Equality in Education, University of Birmingham UK

"Everybody knows that boys need good male role models and that the current 'crisis' of boys in schools is caused, in part, by the shortage of male teachers, especially at the lower grades. Unfortunately, as Wayne Martino and Goli Rezai-Rashti show in this thoughtful book, what 'everybody knows' turns out not to be true at all! Based on compelling empirical research, rather than stereotypic assumptions, Martino and Rezai-Rashti reframe the debate about boys in school, and thus finally point the way to a national conversation about the right issues. This modest empirical study is revolutionary in its implications." –Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology, author of GUYLAND