Boys and English : do boys 'disengage' from English through secondary school?

![CDATA[Adolescents’ engagement with English has been a recent subject of public concern, with anxiety that boys in particular become increasingly ‘disengaged’ as they progress through school, which has been linked in the media to such dramatic outcomes as school dropout and even suicide. There has been little empirical data to support arguments about engagement and the present study fills that gap. With a longitudinal cohort-sequential sample of 1323 adolescents spanning New South Wales Australian grades 7 through 11, self-reported effort exerted tapped behavioral engagement, while intrinsic and utility values tapped emotional engagement. Latent growth models showed declines in emotional and behavioral engagement through grade 7 and between grades 10 to 11 for boys and girls, which may be explained by ‘person-environment fit’ perspectives, related to structural changes in the school environment at these points. Gender differences favored girls where they occurred, although there was little evidence for greater declines in engagement for boys relative to girls. While there was support for boys’ greater disengagement for intrinsic value in senior grades, there was also evidence for girls’ greater disengagement in junior grades, which should be taken into account in social equity arguments.]]