January 6, 2009
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 1994 Vol. 3 No. 3
Single-Sex Classrooms
Sidebar for No Girls Allowed!
Brooklyn College's Alice Miller, the developer of the Eureka program for Girls Inc., is a strong advocate of all-girl classrooms. She says it is the only effective way to engage girls in the use of technology. When Miller and other researchers asked girls if they preferred all-girl classes, they said yes, because they didn't want to do unconventional things in front of boys and then be criticized by them.
Not everyone agrees with Miller, however. Hyacinth Foster, a teacher of the Eureka curriculum at Brooklyn College, Polytech University, and at a private school in New York, doesn't think girls need a different type of instruction or separate classes. She says it's the teacher's responsibility to involve girls. Through positive leadership and role models, girls can achieve the confidence to speak out and participate. Foster points out that at her school three girls were accepted into engineering programs, while only one boy was accepted.
Terry Wardrop from Saint Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, tells the story of a program at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, where boys and girls were put in single-sex collaborative groups to work on projects. Previously, when the groups had been mixed, the boys had dominated the equipment and the conversations. The collaborative environment also deteriorated. When single-sex groups were formed, the girls out performed the boys. An added benefit was that the boys, observing the girls' success and method of interaction, adopted the girls' communication style.
Return to No Girls Allowed! TECHNOS Quarterly article.