Role of boys’ peer groups in a secondary school in Malta

Abstract

Adolecence is a period when friendship, social acceptance by peers, and a sense of belonging grow in importance. In addition to this, it is also a time when physical, sexual, cognitive and emotional changes, significantly alter the way young adolescents think about themselves and each other. Peer networks form a vital part of Children’s life at schhol and the aims of this article, which is based on a Case Study of a Boys’s secondary school in Malta, are (i) to demonstrate how messages about what it means to be a boy are both transmitted and enforced by boys in these groups and, consequently, (ii) to illustarte the significant role peer group cultures have in the construction of student masculine identities and their effect on students’ behaviour and participation at school.