(614) IS THERE A NEED FOR SINGLE SEX EDUCATION? A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

摘要

The terrain of gender inequalities in education has seen much change in recent decades. Thisliterature review examines the empirical research and theoretical perspectives on gender inequalitiesin educational performance and attainment from late childhood to young adulthood. The primarypurpose of this paper is to critically evaluate this limited literature database and determine whether theargument that the sexes need to be educated separately is valid. The key methodology is acomprehensive literature review of existing studies using a predetermined set of criteria for inclusionor exclusion of retrieved papers. The data analysed was secondary qualitative and quantitative data.The basis of the selection criteria for the literature were: published within the last fifteen years,published in peer reviewed journals;;sources were located and explored via the University journaldatabase using 'single sex education', 'co-educational', 'boy crisis' and 'achievement gap' as keysearch terms or phrases. From the initial search, 38 articles were deemed to be relevant to thisliterature review. Exceptions were made for some of the literature which dated back more than fifteenyears due to the consistent acknowledgement in many of the recent chosen journal articles. Incomparing the two settings (single sex and coeducational), the weight of evidence is that research onsingle sex and co-education has failed to demonstrate unequivocally that there is a valid and genuineneed to educate the sexes separately. A number of studies have reported small but inconsistentdifferences between the outcomes of single sex and co-education that are difficult to replicate. This ismainly due to the number of extraneous variables which affect the students' overall perception of theirschooling experience. The most likely explanation is that there can be advantages to both separatingor combining the sexes in terms of less distraction and seeking approval from the opposite sex, butthese advantages are minor compared with other factors. The data indicates that there is a flaw in theunderlying premise that either single sex or coeducational schools must be 'best'. What the researchdoes support is that the outcomes are specific to individuals and an experience of single sexeducation is better for some students while a coeducational school may be better for others. Onefactor which has been made apparent through the research is that schools are complex institutionalsettings. The question of whether there is a need to educate the sexes separately is not a simple orstraightforward question, it is extremely complex. There are many convincing arguments which are foror against the idea of educating the sexes separately, such as;;the boy crisis, biological difference andachievement gap. The research on all three of these issues has presented conflicting evidence. Thepresent research highlights the need for more attention to be directed to the particular effects ofpedagogy and the normalising assumptions about gender that inform the implementation of curriculumin both the single sex and the coeducational classes.