Single-Sex Education

Single-sex education may refer to sex-segregated schools or sex-segregated classrooms within coeducational schools, but both definitions refer to the practice of teaching males and females separately. Single-sex education may imply different pedagogy, curricula, and opportunities for boys and girls, or it may simply refer to teaching girls and boys in different schools or classrooms. The debate over coeducation versus single-sex education has engaged parents, educators, and scholars interested in teaching both boys and girls in the safest and most effective manner possible, but the question has been complicated by the social and political implications of separating boys and girls.

Separate schools for boys and girls, particularly in secondary and postsecondary schools, were common through the early to middle part of the twentieth century, and separating boys ...