Abstract
Despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting the use of single-sex education, the number of US public schools offering single-sex education has increased. However, our understanding as to why decision-makers have implemented single-sex education is lacking. To address this gap, we surveyed US public school principals and assessed their attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling. Sixty-seven principals from single-sex schools and 193 principals from co-educational schools participated. The results indicated that principals who had experience with single-sex schooling tended to have more positive attitudes about single-sex schooling, viewed it as more effective, and more often evoked gender-essentialist rationales for the use of single-sex schooling than did co-educational principals. However, both single-sex and co-educational principals noted issues with single-sex schooling. It was concluded that single-sex schooling is not a silver bullet to educational reform and that when single-sex schooling is implemented, one set of issues and problems is substituted for another.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 293-311 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Educational Studies |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 27 2015 |
Keywords
- co-education
- educational reform
- principals
- segregation
- single-sex schooling
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education