Single Sex Education
It’s always amused me how fashions change: they all too often seem to come right around again to the starting point, even if the justifications have changed.
One example might be the breast feeding of babies. Once it was no longer necessary, with the invention of decent artificial milks, there was a huge swing away from it: now the advice is that one should indeed breast feed, it’s both good for the baby and the mother (the latter as a prophylactic against breast cancer is the latest word).
The same often happens in economics, although that’s more to do with the fact that the questions there never change, just the answers.
The latest reversal seems to be over single or mixed sex education. Time was when it was the logical assumption of all right on people that boys and girls should be educated together. This was an obvious part of creating gender equality, that they should be treated the same and raised and educated the same way. This appears to be changing:
Boys at primary school perform ’significantly’ better in English tests if they are taught in classes with fewer girls, a new study claims.
Research from Bristol University, which used data from every state school in England, found that as the proportion of girls rose, the results achieved by their male classmates fell. Steven Proud, who carried out the work, concluded it ‘might be beneficial for boys to be educated in single-sex classes’ in English.
He argued that girls tended to be ahead of boys in English, and so were more likely to answer questions, raise their hands and behave confidently in lessons. Boys studying alongside a large number of girls find it easier to ‘hide in the background’.
It would be very interesting to see if the same results were found in reverse in math classes. For in the above example it’s the girls’ greater facility at verbal communication which makes them more confident and thus pushes the boys into the background. As we know from our EQSQ tests, the flip side of that greater proficiency with language for girls is the greater math ability of the boys.
So in mixed math classes, do the boys dominate and push the girls into the background?
One other thing that we need to note, which is that it is only averages for boys and girls here: it’s not a definition, that girls are better than boys at language, rather, a probability. An individual can be anywhere on the spectrum, we just expect to see more girls at one end, more boys at the other.
Which leads us to an interesting possibility. That instead of arguing for single (or even mixed) sex classes, the actual argument should be in favour of teaching single ability classes rather than mixed. We’ll always find some girls who excel at maths (that is, using Simon Baron Cohen’s description of such a talent being a signifier of a “male type” brain) just as we’ll always find those boys who excell at language (similarly, “female type” brain). Those who excel at a specific subject should be taught alongside those others who also do. Those who are rather more duffers at a subject, as the above research shows, do better when taught with similar duffers.
So we might in fact take this research as showing that mixed ability classes are a bad idea rather than the point the researchers think they have found, which is that mixed sex classes are the problem.
However, even if this is the truth, I wouldn’t expect it to change very much: the idea of setting, of placing the bright with the bright, the talented in one subject with others who share the same talent is, at present at least, so deeply unfashionable that it’s difficult to see things revolving back on this point.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
[...] of single sex education, perhaps it setting or streaming by ability that is [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
You’re right on the mark, Tim (at least in my opinion). I teach AP Senior English – Advanced Placement, a senior-level high school course that counts as college credit if the student passes the end-of-year national exam. The bar is set high for them, and remains high throughout the year. We can discuss complex, mature topics without virtually none of the following: objects being thrown around the room; students interrupting with nonsense; and the “too much work†groans. My students are pretty serious students and LOVE being in a classroom without all this crap going on (their words).
On the flip side, I’ve also taught classes of special ed (not those with physical disabilities, but learning disabilities). That, too, was rewarding, and much, much easier than teaching in a mixed-ability classroom. And it’s not only easier for the teacher, the students do better when they are in a class that is taught, more or less, at the pace and complexity that suits their abilities.
Certainly in the U.S., tracking has gotten a bad name. Those who argue against it say that the ‘higher ability’ students ‘pull-up’ the ‘lower ability’ students. But is that really the job of the higher ability students? Shouldn’t we give them a place where they, themselves, are challenged academically? It’s like telling teachers they must team-teach their classes with teachers who have very different academic values and practices. I’m guessing even the anti-tracking group might argue with this.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
While we on my side of the pond call it “setting” or “streaming” rather than tracking, yes, the idea is the same. And there’s a tremendous resistance to the idea for what seem to be basically political reasons. Some vestigial belief perhaps that children really are a blank slate that society writes upon, rather than there being any innate differences between people.
Entirely mad to my way of thinking but it does hold sway in a surprising number of teacher training colleges.
Just how is it that the brighter students are supposed to “drag up” those a little slower?
May 9th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
It’s thought that by merely being in the presence, in the same classroom, as higher-achieving students, lower-achieving students will be influenced to do better. I suppose it’s a blend between peer-pressure (in a good direction) and peer-learning. It’s true that students often learn best from their peers. But it’s also true that those higher-level students, in regular-ed classes (opposed to honors or AP) are actually being dragged down by lower-level students, especially those who simply don’t want to be there. Often, students who aren’t putting any work into school display at least one of the following behaviors in the classroom:
- Immaturity – acting out, interrupting, basically ruining the class’s prospects of learning much that day.
- Apathy – refusal to do any work, in or out of classroom.
- Distractedness – daydreaming, writing letters, talking to friend in next seat.
This is what I see, way more than any of these students being positively influenced by others. Anyway, even if some students are benefiting from the presence of higher-level students, shouldn’t we worry at least equally about how the higher-level students are being hurt by the presence of the distracting students, as listed above?