Hyunjoon Park Jere Bechrman University of Pennsylvania
Despite the significant progress of women in overall educational attainment during the last few decades in the United States and other developed countries, the proportion of females in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) college majors and occupations is much smaller than the proportion of males. The proposed project will investigate whether one particular educational institution--single-sex high schools--can help overcome gender disparities in STEM learning and interest. Although the major interest of the project is to assess differences in STEM outcomes between girls attending all-girls schools and their counterparts attending coeducational schools, differences between boys attending all-boys schools and those attending coeducational schools will be also systematically examined. A critical improvement of this project over previous research is the usage of data from South Korea where students are randomly assigned into single-sex versus coeducational high schools. The random assignment of students into high schools in Korea makes it possible to address selection biases from which most previous studies have suffered because they use observational data. Specifically, using two different datasets of nationally representative high school students, the study will explore how single-sex high schools enhance high school students? mathematics and science test scores, and high school students? expectations of STEM college majors. In particular, the project will focus on issues related to the mechanisms through which single-sex high schools influence students' STEM outcomes. The project empirically tests three mechanisms of single-sex schools, suggested by previous literature: better academic climates, better teacher-student relations/interactions, and enhanced students? self-concept/self-efficacy in mathematics and science. Because of the randomization, standard ordinary least squares (for continuous measures such as mathematics and science test scores) and limited dependent variables (such as expecting a STEM college major) estimators will yield unbiased estimates of the effects of single-sex schools. By empirically testing three explanations of why single-sex schools might be more effective than coeducational schools, the project will be able to make significant advances in understanding how single-sex schools may have impacts on important high school indicators of advancement towards STEM careers.
Broader Impacts. The project promises to make significant improvements in our understanding of whether all-girls high schools are an important institution to broaden participation of female students in STEM careers. By identifying mechanisms through which single-sex school effects are purportedly generated, the project has implications beyond the unique Korean setting to other countries including the US. Project findings will be disseminated to school principals, teachers, and educational policymakers by publishing the results in journals that have general r as well as academic readership. In light of growing interest in single-sex schools in several countries including the US as a means for addressing educational disparities including STEM outcomes, the project findings will provide timely evidence regarding recent educational efforts to expand provision of single-sex schooling.
Many countries in the global world are concerned about how to recruit into and retain students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. In particular, facing considerable underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, many policies and programs have been proposed to increase women’s participation in STEM fields. The major purpose of the current study is to assess the impact of one particular institution that is claimed by many to enhance female students’ STEM outcomes – single-sex schools. Do students attending single-sex high schools show better STEM outcomes, than their counterparts attending coeducational schools, such as higher math and science test scores, higher levels of self-confidence and self-efficacy on math and science, or expectations and actual choices of a STEM college major? If students in single-sex schools indeed show better STEM outcomes, is it because single-sex schools are really more effective than coeducational schools? Or is it simply because students who have chosen to attend single-sex schools differ from the beginning from their peers who have chosen to attend coeducational schools in their academic motivation, efforts, and other relevant characteristics that may lead to better educational outcomes? In order to sort out whether the positive effects of single-sex schools, if any, are due to characteristics students bring into schools or due to how single-sex schools indeed do for students, the current project utilizes a unique setting in Seoul, South Korea where students are randomly assigned to single-sex and coeducational high schools within school districts. This unique random assignment in Seoul high schools provides an exceptional opportunity for assessing whether differences in STEM outcomes between students in single-sex and students in coeducational schools reflect the effects of schools per se, not contaminated by students’ selection into single-sex schools. The findings from the current project, based on the data of high school students in Seoul, highlight robustly positive effects of all-boys schools across various STEM outcomes including mathematics test scores in the national college entrance exam, science interest and self-efficacy, expectations of university attendance with a STEM college major, and actual choices of a STEM college major in college. Although female students attending all-girls schools also show a higher level of performance on the mathematics tests than female students attending coeducational schools, the differences in other STEM outcomes by the school type are not significant. Although the exact mechanisms through which positive effects of single-sex schools are generated remain to be explored by further research, the current project highlights the possibility of single-sex schools that reduces adolescent boy-girl culture diverting attention from interest in and success in academic pursuits.
