Growing up Male: a Social-Emotional Program for Grade 11 Males with Behavioural Needs in a BC Secondary School

Male adolescents who have behavioural needs are some of the most vulnerable students in schools today. To meet the pressing need of helping such students, a gender-conscious 9-session intervention course was developed and implemented by the researcher for nine grade 11 male students with behavioural needs for and at a public secondary school in British Columbia. Exit interviews with participants suggest that participants gained social and emotional insights via the intervention. Quantitatively, participants filled out the Gender Role Conflict Scale for Adolescents to self assess three variables associated with emotional health, while their teachers completed the Conners 3-TS to assess for two variables related to social health. Only one variable improved, Restricted Emotionality (p < .05), from the start to end of the intervention. Within this study’s ethnographic framework, the researcher’s interactions with the young men also revealed their frustrations regarding their feelings of being marginalized by educators in schools.