Are Australian boys underachieving? An analysis using a validity–reliability framework based on the work of Lee Cronbach and Pamela Moss

Recently, in Australia, many newspaper headlines have announced that girls are outperforming boys academically. Educational journals have published articles on the topic and conference speakers have referred to it. This paper examines the achievement of boys in modern classrooms. By referring to Cronbach’s perspectives on validity arguments (1988), especially the political and operationist perspectives, and Moss’s notions of reliability warrants (1994), especially as they relate to inconsistency and critical community, we use a previously promulgated ‘validity–reliability’ framework to analyse the academic achievement of boys. In the process, we refer to the relative achievements of girls and boys in the common curriculum and we explore the thesis that the feminisation of education contributes to apparent shifts of balance in achievement between the sexes.