Single-sex schools

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Introduction

The concerns over falling rates of interest in science among youth have been growing over the last decade (Ainley, Kos & Nicholas 2008). In Australia the interest in science has been declining steadily among students of both genders, a trend accompanied by the tendency of adolescents to select themselves out of the areas of science that are non-traditional for their sex (Sikora & Pokropek 2012a). For instance, the introduction of psychology into high school science curricula led to the steady overrepresentation of girls amongst students taking this subject (Ainley, Kos & Nicholas 2008). Certain fields of science, such as psychology or biology, are seen as culturally and functionally compatible with the ‘naturally’ feminine skills of nurturance, care or human interaction. In contrast, high-level abstract analytical thinking and problem-solving are construed as ‘naturally’ masculine skills (Charles & Bradley 2009). It is for these cultural reasons that girls and women flock into science fields related to living systems and healthcare, while boys and men concentrate on engineering, physics, geology and high-level mathematics (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2012a).

This type of gender segregation could be seen as a potential equity concern because girls and boys might, as a consequence of these sorting tendencies, lose out on opportunities to enter particular science-related careers later in life (Ainley & Ainley 2011; Ceci, Williams & Barnett 2009; Charles 2011; Hill, Corbett & Rose 2010; Kessel & Nelson 2011; Sikora & Pokropek 2011). The shortage of qualified scientists and the underrepresentation of either gender in science can be detrimental not only to economic productivity but also to social integration (Anker 1997). Such concerns have spawned a large literature on gendered patterns of science engagement overseas as well as informed a number of studies in Australia (Ainley & Daly 2002; Ainley, Kos & Nicholas 2008; Ainley & Ainley 2011). In this literature, one of the more prominent strands is the ongoing debate over the merits of single-sex education.

This occasional paper revisits the relationship between single-sex education and science engagement, using recent data from the first three waves of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), which collected information on the educational experiences from young people who turned 15 years of age in 2009. In particular, I assess the extent to which girls and boys in sex-segregated schools select science subjects and plan science-related careers in defiance of traditional gender stereotypes. The focus of this paper is thus on the following questions. First, do male and female students still opt for different science subjects? Second, are the science-related occupational plans of these students still strongly gender-typed? Finally, are these gender-typing tendencies different in single-sex and coeducational environments? In Australia some of these research questions were last explored using the LSAY95 data (Ainley & Daly 2002), with the conclusion that single-sex schooling had no net effect on science subject choice. Over a decade later, the time has come to reassess the impact of segregated schooling on the science engagement of more recent cohorts of adolescents.

Opening with a review of the literature on gender-segregated schooling and science participation in Australia and overseas, the paper comments on the current state of the debate over the merits of single-sex versus coeducational settings. Following this, the research questions are introduced and addressed with descriptive and multivariate analyses of the LSAY09 data. The presentation of the results precedes the discussion of the findings and their potential implications for future educational policy.

3The debate over merits of single-sex schooling

The question of whether students learn better in sex-segregated classes and schools has been in the minds of educators for decades (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation 1998; OECD 2006). Overall evidence in this politicised and heated debate remains inconclusive. Some authors believe that sex-segregated education actually promotes gender equity and thus should have a greater role in national education systems (Salomone 2003). In apparent support of this proposition, some international literature suggests that in recent years girls have been performing better in the quantitative sciences in single-sex schools, where they are not at risk of distraction from ratings by the other sex. Similar arguments have been put forward about the benefits of single-sex schooling for boys (Salomone 2003; Streitmatter 2002).

The usual line of reasoning offered by this camp is that girls’ self-confidence in science and mathematics is undermined by the physical presence of boys, because these fields continue to be viewed as functionally and culturally masculine domains. Therefore, the enactment of a feminine identity is at odds with success in mathematics and ‘masculine’ fields of science (Salomone 2003). A high level of mathematical skill and being identified as a ‘nerd’ are unfeminine and thus girls who find themselves topping their class in advanced mathematics, physics or geology might experience various forms of negative stereotyping (Hill, Corbett & Rose 2010). Students who take part in experiments designed to capture the impact of the gender stereotype threat are primed about ‘natural’ gender differences in maths performance and subsequently given a quantitative science test. Girls usually fare worse than boys and, interestingly, the performance gap is systematically larger following a briefing on these so-called gender differences, in contrast to occasions when none is offered (Cherney & Campbell 2011). It is worth noting that some single-sex schools in Australia routinely join their students with students of the opposite sex from other schools for various activities, including specialised science classes. Therefore, it is possible that the actual mechanisms through which the physical presence of boys makes a difference to girls’ confidence and performance might vary according to group context. While anxiety about the opinions of the opposite sex might have an undermining effect in coeducational schools, between-school competition might boost girls’ science outcomes in girls-only schools.

Dismissing such deliberations, other authors make a strong case against single-sex schooling (Halpern et al. 2011), positing that its alleged benefits are mere artefacts of poor study design. This camp proposes that the apparent benefits of single-sex schooling are attributable to selectivity on socioeconomic background or academic achievement. For example, Smyth argues (2010, p.53):

It is difficult to systematically compare single-sex and coeducational schools or classes. In many countries, single-sex schools are highly selective in their social and ability profile; even in countries with a larger number of single-sex schools, the two school sectors differ in their intake. How then do we ‘control’ for these differences in assessing the impact of single-sex education?

This puts a question mark over what really accounts for the science success of students in single-sex educational establishments (Leonard 2007). According to the opponents of single-sex education, when flaws and omissions in conceptualisation and analyses are rectified, it should be accepted that ‘[t]here is no well-designed research showing that single-sex education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism’ (Halpern et al. 2011, p.1706).

The main focus in studying the relationship between single-sex schooling and science has so far been on differences in students’ academic performance, mainly because up to the late 1980s girls lagged behind boys in science performance. However, in recent times in Australia and in many other countries girls have performed on a par with boys (OECD 2007a; Sikora & Pokropek 2012a). Nevertheless, students who do well in science do not necessarily plan to embark on science-related tertiary education or careers (Archer et al. 2010; Osborne, Simon & Collins 2003). In the United States, a recent study found that girls in girls-only schools had more self-confidence in their science ability than girls elsewhere but that this did not lead them to planning science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers (Cherney & Campbell 2011). Given this, it is desirable to better understand not only gender differences in science performance but also in subject uptake and career plans. So far, however, the number of studies devoted to these issues has been small (exceptions include Ainley & Daly 2002 and Ainley, Kos & Nicholas 2008).

Prior Australian research in this area concluded that single-sex schooling made no real difference once the variation between schools in student intake policies and other student characteristics was taken into account (Ainley & Daly 2002). Most of the literature reviewed by Ainley and Daly that described the effects of single-sex schooling in Great Britain and Ireland in the 1990s arrived at similar conclusions. Contemporaneous comparisons of data from many countries suggested that single-sex schooling was beneficial to students only in educational systems where it was uncommon and quite elitist (Baker, Riordan & Schaub 1995). Yet, a more recent study found no systematic association between the share of single-sex education and the mathematics achievement of students in 16 countries (Law & Kim 2011), leaving the debate as inconclusive as it has ever been.