The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

216 Chapter 6

feedback that girls receive about their classwork and

potentially leads females to attribute positive feed-

back that they receive in the real world to extraneous

factors.

■ Teachers have different beliefs about girls’ and boys’

abilities, which translate into how they spend time with

girls and boys as well as the nature of the feedback

they provide. Like parents, teachers attribute girls’ suc-

cess in math to effort and boys’ success in math to

ability.

■ Teacher expectations have been shown to affect stu-

dent performance.

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ Teachers give boys more attention than girls in school.

■ Teachers are especially more likely to criticize boys than

girls in school—but criticism can be helpful as it pro-

vides feedback about how to change behavior.

■ Teachers provide more negative behavioral feedback to

boys than girls which ends up reinforcing the behavior

and allowing boys to discount negative feedback about

their classwork.

■ Teachers provide more positive behavioral feedback

to girls than boys, which ends up diluting the positive

girls to be suspended or expelled, and more likely than girls to drop out of high school (National

Center for Education Statistics, 2007, 2009b).

Is single-sex education advantageous for either females or males? A review was undertaken for

the U.S. Department of Education on single-sex education studies (Mael et al., 2005). They concluded

that the results are not clear. For some outcomes, there is the suggestion that single-sex education

might be helpful; for many outcomes, there is no evidence. The most common finding is one of “no

difference” between single-sex and coeducational schooling. They also cautioned that: (1) few studies

examine moderators to determine if there are a certain group of individuals who benefit from sin-

gle-sex education, such as low socioeconomic status individual, and (2) few studies are methodologi-

cally strong. In 2006, Smithers and Robinson published a review that spanned research in Australia,

Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and concluded that there

was little evidence for the benefits of single-sex education. There are no differences in achievement or

choices of subjects taken. The primary determinant of students’ success seems to be the characteristics

of the students rather than single-sex versus coeducation. However, the topic is difficult to study. First,

single-sex education can take various forms, ranging from single-sex schools to single-sex classes

within a coeducational school, making it difficult to compare findings across studies. Second, there is a

selection bias in who attends single-sex schools. A rigorous test of single-sex education would require

a control group, but there are few opportunities to randomly assign a student to have a single-sex ver-

sus coeducational school experience. Instead, investigators compare the people who attend single-sex

schools to the people who attend coeducational schools. But the two groups of students are not the

same. Students who attend single-sex schools are often of a higher socioeconomic status, which con-

tributes to higher achievement. Girls who attend single-sex schools have higher achievement aspira-

tions, making them more achievement oriented than girls who attend coeducational schools. Thus,

single-sex versus coeducation is confounded with socioeconomic status. Even when single-sex educa-

tion is successful, investigators suggest that the factors responsible for the positive effects are ones that

could be applied to coeducational schools. For example, single-sex schools may have teachers with

higher qualifications and smaller classrooms compared to coeducational schools.

Another problem with the study of single-sex education is how to define effectiveness or success.

Success is typically defined by grades and by scores on standardized tests. But, there may be other out-

comes in which we should be interested, such as how an individual functions as a member of society,

subsequent career success, job performance, and leadership. These kinds of outcomes are much more

difficult to assess, but they could be outcomes for which single-sex education provides an advantage.

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