School Belonging and Boys: An Exploratory Evaluation of GuysWork

This quasi-experimental exploratory research focused on school belonging among early adolescent boys in public schools in Nova Scotia, Canada. GuysWork is a male-specific program that allows participants to critically examine and disrupt harmful masculinity stereotypes. We hypothesized that GuysWork would increase the boys’ sense of school belonging. We observed that most boys who participated in GuysWork reported a small, but statistically significant increase in their sense of school belonging after the initial year of recruitment. Early evidence suggests that programs like GuysWork offer a protective effect against decreasing school engagement over time.