Boys demonstrate literacy in ways the current curriculum doesn't assess

School definitions of literacy have been slow to change, and slow to acknowledge the changing nature of literacy in society. There is a critical need to reframe the reading curriculum and to rethink assessment strategies and criteria to promote the kinds of literacy that are required in the workplace and in the home. There are many real constraints to change, both external and personal, that affect the possibilities for transformation. Externally imposed standardised testing, the increased emphasis on "covering" the curriculum, fragmented timetables, and large groups of diverse students all distract teachers from considering more subtle issues affecting the learning of their students. Schools as historically constructed institutions are entrenched in society's collective understanding of what schooling is and should be; as such, there is considerable resistance to significant structural changes. Alternative "texts" and "literacies" are often dismissed as irrelevant to the agenda of school. Teachers are products of teacher education programs that have not provided the time or space to address broad issues of literacy, gender, power, and other social-justice concerns. Therefore, their background knowledge and previous experiences of literacy learning, along with professional development models offering brief, one-time-only sessions, limit teachers' ability to closely examine their practices in light of intersecting factors such as gender. These external constraints also influence the types of activities generally found in classrooms, where critical literacy and the opportunities to understand the biased nature of language play a limited role in the overall educational experiences of students. Literacy is not recognized as a social practice but as either a body of knowledge to be absorbed or a tool for learning other bodies of knowledge that will be absorbed. Gender as a construct has been ignored in teacher education and curriculum, and often remains an unacknowledged factor in student learning.

Just as factors impacting boys' literacy are being ignored in classrooms, so are boys ignoring schooling practices that they see as boring, meaningless, and passive. The boys themselves are "morphing" literacies to suit their purposes and, they are becoming literate in spite of school instruction. Boys and girls are engaging in literacy events outside of the classroom; however, although the literacies of girls are more aligned with practices encouraged by school (reading fiction, writing stories and poems) and are more compliant in the face of dull, meaningless activities, boys are better preparing themselves for the world beyond school. The abilities to navigate the Internet, experiment with alternative literacies, and "read" multiple texts simultaneously are more useful workplace skills than is the ability to analyse a work of fiction or to write a narrative account.

As literacy educators of both boys and girls, it is vital that we increase opportunities for awareness, analysis, and action regarding issues of gender for ourselves and for our students. We can do this in many ways. However, we need to be cautious of overly simplistic solutions that suggest that we can motivate boys to read simply by introducing "boy-friendly" literature and we need to be wary of literature that serves to reinforce undesirable stereotypes for boys.

In conclusion, it is evident that boys can read, but are selective in what they read; they use reading strategies that they have adopted in school and have morphed them to help make sense of new literacies that appeal to them. Teachers need to transform our ideas about literacy to help boys recognise their strengths and move them beyond their own to broader, more global literacies. We need to better understand their "morphing literacies", critique the arguments that would position them as failing and remind ourselves that there are multiple definitions of literacy and multiple paths to becoming literate. We need to deepen our understandings of the subjectivity of literacies for both boys and girls given the socio-cultural configurations from which they emerge. We need to encourage our students to see the multiplicities of perspective and recognise the morphing of their own literacy practices.