Single-sex schools

Single-sex schools and science engagement

Joanna Sikora

Australian National University

The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author/
project team and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government,
state and territory governments or NCVER.

Any interpretation of data is the responsibility of the author/project team.

NATIONAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING RESEARCH PROGRAM

OCCASIONAL PAPER

As part of the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) Building Researcher Capacity Scheme, a fellowship program has been created to encourage researchers to use NCVER datasets to improve our understanding of tertiary education. The fellowships also provide participants with an opportunity to have their research peer-reviewed and published by NCVER. For more information see: .

© Commonwealth of Australia, 2013

With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, the Department’s logo, any material protected by a trade mark and where otherwise noted all material presented in this document is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence.

The details of the relevant licence conditions are available on the Creative Commons website (accessible using the links provided) as is the full legal code for the CC BY 3.0 AU licence .

The Creative Commons licence conditions do not apply to all logos, graphic design, artwork and photographs. Requests and enquiries concerning other reproduction and rights should be directed to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).

This document should be attributed as Sikora, J 2013, Single-sex schools and science engagement, NCVER, Adelaide.

ISBN 978 1 922056 68 9

TD/TNC 113.18

Published by NCVER, ABN 87 007 967 311

Level 11, 33 King William Street, Adelaide SA 5000
PO Box 8288 Station Arcade, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia

P [phone] F [phone] E [e-mail] W
About the research

Single-sex schools and science engagement

Joanna Sikora, Australian National University

This paper considers whether single-sex schooling affects gendered patterns in the uptake of science courses in Year 11 and the development of science-related career paths. In particular, the author is interested in exploring gender differences relating to the take-up of the life and physical sciences. To investigate these issues, the author analyses data from the 2009 cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY).

This research was funded through the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) fellowship program, which encourages researchers to use NCVER datasets to improve our understanding of education. A second paper is further investigating gender segregation in youth science engagement by looking at gendered pathways into post-secondary science study.

Key messages

Across all schools, male and female students systematically select different science subjects and prefer careers in different fields of science, as did their counterparts ten years ago.

With respect to science subjects, students’ gender, science performance and science self-confidence levels have a consistent positive influence on both life and physical science engagement. The latter two are more prominent in the take-up of physical science subjects.

Single-sex schooling does not affect the likelihood of boys taking up physical or life science subjects while at school. However, boys from boys-only schools are more likely to plan a life science career, such as physiotherapy and medicine, than their male counterparts in coeducational schools.

Girls in girls-only schools are more likely to take up physical science subjects than their female counterparts in coeducational schools. However, single-sex schooling does not affect the likelihood of girls planning a physical science career.

After controlling for a number of student and school characteristics, the author concludes that, although some benefits of sex-segregated schooling exist, the overall effects are small. Moreover, it is unlikely that these effects have a lasting impact on young people’s educational and career pathways later in life, which questions whether programs designed to extend single-sex schooling into the government sector should be introduced.
Rod Camm
Managing Director, NCVER
Contents

Tables and figures 6

1Tables 6

2Figures 6

Introduction 7

3The debate over merits of single-sex schooling 7

4Research questions 9

5How are life and physical sciences defined in this paper? 9

Data and measurement 11

6What is science engagement in this paper? 11

7PISA 2009 and LSAY09 sampling designs 11

Results 14

Conclusions 22

References 23

Appendices 25

8Appendix A Details of methodology and measurement 25

9Appendix B Details of coding of occupations and subjects 28

Building researcher capacity initiative 30