Abstract
In her commentary on single-sex instruction in the United States, Liben (2015) puts the research on gender-segregated instruction in the context of values and the larger social and political processes affecting decisions about schooling. In this paper, I elaborate on her history of the research and social issues surrounding gender and achievement. In response to her point that educational decisions involve more than empirical evidence, I describe investigations of knowledge utilization that illuminate the processes by which policymakers and practitioners make school policy decisions, and I offer guidance to social scientists who want their research to be considered in such decisions. Social science research could go beyond issues of gender-based instruction to articulate some of the processes involved in different classroom and school contexts as well as some of the ways in which pedagogy could be adapted to the needs of individual children.
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Huston, A.C. Thoughts on “Probability Values and Human Values in Evaluating Single-Sex Education”. Sex Roles 72, 446–450 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0470-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0470-4