Debating Single Sex Education: Separate and Equal, 2nd edition, provides a balanced summary of the context, concerns, and findings about single sex education in 21st Century United States. Few school reforms have engendered as much controversy as single sex public education. This book examines the history of single-sex classes and legislation that has over time evolved to render the reform legal, even though it continues to be subject to public scrutiny and litigation. The book also provides insights into the social, religious, and cultural contexts that set the stage for the growing popularity of single-sex education over the last decade. It explains controversial brain-based research and addresses the problem of bullying in single-sex classes. Finally, the book includes findings based on research in single-sex schools across the nation. Do single-sex classes work? This book provides information that will allow the reader to make an informed decision about that question. Debating Single Sex Education: Separate and Equal,2nd edition, strives to inform the debate and add to the discourse on this popular school reform.
Although coeducation has been the norm within private and public schools since the 1970s, single-sex education has staged a comeback in recent years as a means of addressing the academic and social problems faced by some students. Single-sex education raises controversy on ideological grounds, and in 1996 the Supreme Court struck down the all-male admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute in a decision that has cast a legal cloud over public initiatives. In this timely book, Rosemary Salomone offers a reasoned educational and legal argument supporting single-sex education as an alternative to coeducation, particularly in the case of disadvantaged minority students. Salomone examines the history of women’s education and exclusion, philosophical and psychological theories of sameness and difference, findings on educational achievement and performance, the research evidence on single-sex schooling, and the legal questions that have arisen. Correcting many of the current misconceptions about single-sex education, she argues that it is a viable option and that the road to gender equality should be paved with diverse educational opportunities for all students—regardless of race, class, or gender.
What makes a good education? 'A crucial book of the moment: the best-informed education insider laying out how schools should work' David Bodanis In a brilliant blend of memoir and manifesto, renowned educator Clarissa Farr tells stories from the frontlines of schools to offer vital lessons for the way we teach. What are the challenges facing students and schools today? How do we encourage girls to become tomorrow's leaders? What must change for students of all backgrounds to find ambition and succeed? A handbook, a memoir, an urgent message for our time. If we care about the future of our schools and young people, here are the changes we must make. 'Part memoir, part love letter to the mad, wonderful world of schools and school leadership, Farr brings to life her own experiences and interweaves them with wider reflections upon education in the UK today... She does not pull any punches ... A warm and witty book' Times Educational Supplement 'Elegantly written ... It is about the importance of good teachers and the influence a school community can have on the lives of children' Sunday Times 'Wise, courageous and compassionate' Sir Anthony Seldon 'An urgent call to improve the way we help young women prepare for this complex world written by someone with oodles of experience and a load of passion for good education' George Osborne
Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex education across the United States, and many public schools have created all-boys and all-girls classes for students in grades K through 12. The Separation Solution? provides an in-depth analysis of controversies sparked by recent efforts to separate boys and girls at school. Reviewing evidence from research studies, court cases, and hundreds of news media reports on local single-sex initiatives, Juliet Williams offers fresh insight into popular conceptions of the nature and significance of gender differences in education and beyond.
A neuroscientist shatters the myths about gender differences, arguing that the brains of boys and girls are largely shaped by how they spend their time, and offers parents and teachers concrete ways to avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Single sex schooling might appear to be an obscure issue on the sidelines of the educational policy debates of our times. But it is far from this. In fact, a sizable number of people and political organizations would like to make these schools obscure, but somehow they are “scaling up” rather than down. In 1996, there were only two public single sex schools operating in America. By 2015 there are now at least 100 public single sex schools, despite opposition from the outset. These schools are primarily serving poor, urban, black and Latino, at risk children. This book takes up the challenge of studying the effectiveness of single sex schools. Riordan frees the discussion of its ideological and political baggage and brings a degree of theoretical and empirical balance to the debate. The book provides a sociological foundation for considering single sex schools. The basic argument is that the larger school context of all girls or all boys serves as the driving factor for producing favorable outcomes in single sex schools.
A thoroughly revised edition of the classic resource for understanding gender differences in the classroom In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Gurian has revised and updated his groundbreaking book that clearly demonstrated how the distinction in hard-wiring and socialized gender differences affects how boys and girls learn. Gurian presents a proven method to educate our children based on brain science, neurological development, and chemical and hormonal disparities. The innovations presented in this book were applied in the classroom and proven successful, with dramatic improvements in test scores, during a two-year study that Gurian and his colleagues conducted in six Missouri school districts. Explores the inherent differences between the developmental neuroscience of boys and girls Reveals how the brain learns Explains when same sex classrooms are appropriate, and when they’re not This edition includes new information on a wealth of topics including how to design the ultimate classroom for kids in elementary, secondary, middle, and high school.
Are boys and girls really that different? Twenty years ago, doctors and researchers didn’t think so. Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends. It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated. In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations. For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female. Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say. Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes. A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.
The Handbook of Gender and Education brings together leading scholars on gender and education to provide an up-to-date and broad-ranging guide to the field. It is a comprehensive overview of different theoretical positions on equity issues in schools. The contributions cover all sectors of education from early years to higher education; curriculum subjects; methodological and theoretical perspectives; and gender identities in education. Each chapter reviews, synthesises and provides a critical interrogation of key contemporary themes in education. This approach ensures that the book will be an indispensable source of reference for a wide range of readers: students, academics and practitioners. The first section of the Handbook, Gender Theory and Methodology, outlines the various (feminist) perspectives on researching and exploring gender and education. The section critiques the notion of gender as a category in educational research and considers recent trends, evident especially in the gender and underachievement debates, to locate gender difference solely within biology. This section provides the broad background upon which the issues and debates in the other sections can be situated. Section two, Gender and Education, considers the differing ways in which gender has been shown to impact upon the opportunities and experiences of pupils/students, teachers and other adults in the different sectors of education. It also includes a chapter on single-sex schooling. Section three, Gender and School Subjects, comprises chapters that cover gender issues within the teaching and learning of particular school subjects (for example, maths, literacy, and science). It also includes topics such as sex education and assessment. The chapters in section four, Gender, identity and educational sites, address up-to-date issues which have a long history in terms of explorations into gender and educational opportunities. More recent inclusions in the debates, such as disability, sexuality, and masculinities are discussed alongside the more traditional concerns of ′race′, social class and femininities. The final section, Working in Schools and Colleges, illuminates the working lives of teachers and academics. The chapters cover such topics as school culture, career progression and development, and the gendered identities of professionals within educational institutions. The contributors to this book have been selected by the editors as authorities in their specific area of gender and education and are drawn from the international scholarly community.
