In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Education issued new rules making it easier for schools and districts to use gender-separate classes, programs and activities as a strategy for enhancing educational achievement and opportunity. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings described the revised Title IX regulations as part of a greater effort to…

The gender issue is relevant to classroom learning in more ways than one. Increasingly in the United States, young boys are saying that school is stupid and they do not like to read. This phenomenon cuts across all demographic groups: it affects affluent white boys in the suburbs no less than it affects black boys in low-income neighborhoods. In…

Pedagogical change is posited as a crafting process constituted by the relational activity of social and material actors. A case study was used to investigate how pedagogical change becomes enacted in everyday practices in an independent boys' school in Australia. In comparison to a scripted implementation plan, the pedagogical change process was…

Single-sex education describes a diverse range of situations, including individual classes, programs after school, required programs, voluntary programs, and programs to remedy gender inequities and encourage cultural and racial pride. This brief addresses the genesis and legality of single-sex classrooms, the merits and critiques of single-sex…

In 2005, the National Education Association (NEA) began publishing a series of reports on the status of underserved groups in education. This report on the status of women and girls is based on the principle that every student has the human and civil right to a quality public education. America's public schools are expected to serve the needs of…

This study examines teacher-student interactions and selected student gender differences with volunteer boys and recruited girls in a technology class. The participants were teachers and triads of girls and boys in single-gender sections of a technology course where the students built, designed features for, and programmed Lego robots. We analyzed…

Shows the benefits of single-gender, single-race programs to train women and minorities. Dispels myths that concern managers and hinder the acceptance of the single-identity approach. (JOW)

Students in an agricultural education leadership course included a lab section of 20 females and one of 20 males and females. The all-female section had stronger perception of their abilities to lead, work with groups, make decisions, and communicate than did women in the mixed group. (SK)

The purpose of this study was to investigate selected student and teacher variables and compare the differences between these variables for female students and female teachers in coeducation and single-sex physical education classes. Eighteen female teachers and intact classes were selected; 9 teachers from coeducation and 9 teachers from…

Recent international education reports have highlighted some of the progress (as well as remaining disparity) in gendered education enrollment rates. But, the problem of gender segregation is still a very real issue even in some nations where girls are enrolled at levels on par with boys. Separate classes, curricula, and in many countries separate…

The number of public schools offering single-sex instruction has risen from fewer than a dozen to 205 since 1997, with classrooms sprouting up in places such as Atlanta, New York, and Philadelphia, says Leonard Sax, a psychologist and physician who directs the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, in Maryland. The increase is…

Spielhagen reports on her interviews with students in Hudson Valley Middle School, a middle school in a rural district in upstate New York that has offered voluntary single-sex classes for three years. The 24 6th, 7th, and 8th graders whom she interviewed had chosen to take all-boy or all-girl academic classes for at least one year. All Hudson…

Given the dramatic increase in depression that occurs during early adolescence in girls, interventions must address the needs of girls. The authors examined whether a depression prevention program, the Penn Resiliency Program, was more effective for girls in all-girls groups than in co-ed groups. Within co-ed groups, the authors also tested…

Generally, the levels of participation and achievement of females in science do not match those of male learners. This report describes the formation and study of an all-female section of calculus-based physics for the purpose of providing an environment that might enhance the participation and achievement of females in the physical sciences so…

The current debate about boys' education risks taking us back decades in terms of understanding the significance of gender in relation to education. Of particular concern here is the tendency within such debates to rely on dichotomous understandings of gender which reinscribe essentialist understandings of both "girls" and…