This study examined the effects of single-sex and coeducational schooling on the gender gap in educational achievement to age 25. Data were drawn from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1265 individuals born in 1977 in Christchurch, New Zealand. After adjustment for a series of covariates…

Since 1989, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has conducted the biennial Private School Universe Survey (PSS) for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The PSS is designed to generate biennial data on the total number of private schools, students, and teachers, and to build a universe of private schools in the 50 states and the District…

This paper describes an instance of continuing professional development and explores the contribution it might make to the ongoing international dialogue of professional development. It reviews the way features of the current debate on effective teaching, teacher learning and continuing professional development overlap and feed into each other and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that school innovation is a complex process requiring a detailed accounting of the relational activity characterising everyday innovating activity. It is further proposed that complex accounts of innovation practice that describe social factors only are insufficient. Design/methodology/approach: Using…

Gender and achievement is controversial. Social and cultural concerns about who boys are and who they should become is tied closely to how both coeducational and single-gender schools function, and how they approach literacy issues. Currently, there is little understanding of social and cultural influences on students' experiences with discourse…

Although great strides have been made in the number of women who are now employed, there are still many professions that continue to experience a dearth of female employees (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 2001; Steele, 2003). Science, technology, engineering, and applied mathematic domains (commonly referred to as STEM) have…

This paper is developed from a study carried out to explore factors influencing the choices of a range of stake-holders in a multi-ethnic urban community--students, parents, teachers, community representatives--with regard to single-sex schooling. The paper discusses competing perspectives underpinning the focus of the study. Recent legislation in…

Background: Many believe the "outdoors" is a key factor influencing student learning in "outdoor education" because it is so different from the "everyday" indoor contexts of students' lives. In much of the outdoor education literature the outdoors is construed as a neutral and simplified space which allows students to…

Background: Establishing or preserving single-sex schooling has been widely discussed as a way of bringing more girls into the natural sciences. Aims: We test the assumption that the beneficial effects of single-sex education on girls' self-concept of ability in masculine subjects such as physics are due to the lower accessibility of…

The Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School (PPGVS) in India was established in 2000 by Virendera (Sam) Singh, a retired U.S. Dupont South Asia department head to address the issue of gender bias in India. According to the school's website, nearly half of India's population is illiterate: males outnumber females two-to-one in literacy and drop-out…

This paper looks at the design process of an inquiry-based mathematics and science unit in two urban grade nine classes. Three teachers who teach in an urban, all-girls' junior high school collaborated with math/science and educational experts to design and implement the unit. Results showed the following: teachers needed to be flexible regarding…

Health and education are two important issues in developing economies. Field and natural experiments provided me with great opportunities for identifying the effects of health insurance and incentive on doctors' prescribing behaviors and the peer influences among students. The first chapter examines whether doctors write more expensive…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single-sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the "lady". The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls' lives, as they were expected to behave…

A recent flurry of reporting in mainstream media argues that boys are drowning in a female-centered U.S. education system. According to proponents of the boy crisis argument, boys are just biologically and developmentally different from girls, and it is educators' responsibility to teach to this perceived difference. The U.S. education system,…