title: U.S. Principals' Attitudes About and Experiences with Single-Sex Schooling.
abstract: Despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting the use of single-sex education, the number of U.S. public schools offering single-sex education has increased. However, our understanding as to why decision-makers have implemented single-sex education is lacking. To address this gap, we surveyed U.S. public-school principals and assessed their attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling. Sixty-seven principals from single-sex schools and 193 from coeducational schools participated. The results indicated that principals who had experience with single-sex schooling tended to have more positive attitudes about single-sex schooling, viewed it as more effective, and more often evoked gender-essentialist rationales for the use of single-sex schooling than did coeducational principals. However, both single-sex and coeducational principals noted issues with single-sex schooling. It was concluded that single-sex schooling is not a silver bullet to educational reform and that when single-sex schooling is implemented, one set of issues and problems is substituted for another.
authors.affiliation: T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Box 873701, Tempe, AZ, 85287-3701.480-965-6978, rfabes@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Fabes
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA. erinpahlke@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pahlke
authors.affiliation: T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Box 873701, Tempe, AZ, 85287-3701.480-965-6978, kathrine.galligan@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Kathrine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Galligan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. borders@unm.edu.
authors.forename: Adrienne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Borders
keywords: coeducation; educational reform; principals; segregation; single-sex schooling