Single-sex education
Single-sex education is practiced in many parts of the world based on tradition and religion; Single-sex education is most popular in English-speaking countries (regions) such as Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland,[1] the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, South Africa and Australia; also in Chile, Israel, South Korea and in many Muslim majority countries.
Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex schools in modern societies across the globe, both in the public and private sector (Riordan, 2002).
One version of this argument holds that male-female brain differences favor implementing sex-specific teaching methods, but such claims have not held up to rigorous scrutiny.
Supporters of single-sex education also argue that the culture of coeducational settings causes some students to focus more on socialization, rather than prioritizing academics.
[9] A UCLA report commissioned by the National Coalition of Girls' Schools used data from an extensive national survey of U.S. college freshmen and found stronger academic orientations among women who had attended all-girls, compared to coeducational high schools, but the effects were minor, and the authors concluded "that the marginal benefits do not justify the potential threats to gender equity brought on by academic sex segregation".
The study goes on to conclude that "there is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students' academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.
"[11] Leonard Sax, the President of National Association for Single-sex Public Education or NASSPE, countered the Science article by saying that "ALL the studies cited in the SCIENCE article regarding 'negative impacts' were in fact studies involving a small number of PRE-SCHOOL students attending a COED pre-kindergarten" (capitalized letters in the original).
"[13][14] In 2014, E. Pahlke, J. S. Hyde, and C. M. Allison published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin comparing achievement and attitudes in single-sex versus coeducational schools that included 1.6 million students in grades K-12.
"[15] In a 2015 review of this study, however Cornelius Riordan observed that the authors "employ a 0.2 effect-size threshold in drawing these conclusions about there being no advantage to single-sex schooling.
Despite the above conclusion, the research found that, in a separate analysis of just the best studies (well controlled) conducted in America, the effect size in mathematics was 0.14 for both boys and girls.
[18] In 2017, Christian Dustmann, Hyejin Ku, Do Won Kwak explained that "While teenage boys may be more likely to be distracted than girls by a mixed-gender school environment (Coleman 1961, Hill 2015), girls may suffer more because of, for instance, an increase in disruptive behaviour (as discussed by Figlio 2007), or a diversion of the teacher's attention to weaker students (as suggested by Lavy et al.
People in northern Nigeria are primarily Muslim and, as a result, are more inclined to choose single-sex education over coeducation in line with their religious beliefs.
Most colleges are also single-sex education institutions till graduation, but many private and public sector universities have coeducation systems.
[32] All of these were private, except the women's college Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm from 1861, and its adjacent girls' school Statens normalskola för flickor.
A major longitudinal study of over 17,000 individuals examined whether single-sex schooling made a difference for a wide range of outcomes, including academic attainment, earnings, marriage, childbearing and divorce.
This ruling, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concluded that single-sex education in the public sector is constitutional only if comparable courses, services, and facilities are made available to both sexes.
These provisions led to the publication of new federal rules in October 2006 to allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes provided that 1) enrollment is voluntary and 2) comparable courses, services, and facilities are available to both sexes.
For instance, leading experts supported gender segregation in higher education because they considered it "to be dangerous and inappropriate for women.
"[44] Furthermore, colleges and universities did not consider female applicants until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the women's rights movement began advocating for gender equality.
"[46] Girls and boys segregation in schools is definitive of a sex-based classification, and, thus, it must be supported by an "exceedingly persuasive justification" to pass constitutional muster.
[49] Specifically, proponents "who want to build a case for single-sex education usually draw on ... uncontrolled studies, small samples, and anecdotal evidence; the positive findings are repeated but are not analyzed".
[50] Alternatively, opponents of single-sex education can gather tangible support from observable patterns of pervasive gender inequality in other social contexts.
[52] Because the coalition of proponents consists of parties with different interests, the body of "educational research regarding the efficacy of single-sex schools is mixed at best".
[53] Moreover, advocates tend to bolster their respective positions by emphasizing specific aspects of educational research without addressing the remaining "array of evidence regarding institutions, structures, and processes that construct views on gender and equality".
[52] Studies used to make policy or legal arguments in the current debate over single-sex education narrowly "look only at the slice of the social picture that schooling represents".
[54] An informed assessment regarding the appropriate role of gender segregation in contemporary and future education developments requires contemplation of potential implications beyond the direct, internal, and immediate influences that single-sex schools stand to exert on students.
Assessing the current single-sex education debate through a broad lens realizes contextual factors that effectively constitute the crux of the issue.
[57] Most discussions regarding the potential effects of single-sex education characterize future students of such institutions as the sole beneficiaries of resulting impacts.
However, an appropriate assessment considers contextual implications and realizes that female citizens as a class will be the true beneficiaries if single-sex education developments reach fruition.
[52] The implications of reviving single-sex education in America could further erode outdated sex stereotypes and, thereby, facilitate gender equality in other social contexts.
