ABSTRACT

Single-sex schooling is believed to benefit students’ academic achievement and girls’ engagement in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). The latter is assumed because single-sex environments are meant to neutralise gender stereotypes. Little is known, however, about longer term effects of such schooling. Therefore, we consider whether graduating from a single-sex school increases the uptake of university majors in physical or life sciences. Using data from the 2003 cohort of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and multinomial logistic regressions, we find that girls who graduated from single-sex schools did not major in physical sciences at university at rates higher than their peers from coeducational schools. Likewise, there are no differences in the take up of life science majors, irrespective of gender or type of school. By contrast, fewer boys who graduated from single-sex schools went on to study physical sciences at university. We discuss the implications of these findings.

摘要

据信，单性别教育有助于学生的学业成绩和女孩参与科学，技术，工程，数学和医学（STEMM）的活动。之所以假设后者，是因为单性环境旨在消除性别刻板印象。但是，关于这种教育的长期影响知之甚少。因此，我们考虑从单性学校毕业是否增加了大学对物理或生命科学专业的学习。使用2003年《澳大利亚青年纵向调查》队列和多项Logistic回归的数据，我们发现，从单性学校毕业的女孩在大学主修物理科学的比例没有高于同等学校的同龄人。同样，生命科学专业的录取也没有差异，不论性别或学校类型。相比之下，从单性学校毕业的男孩去大学学习物理科学的人数就少了。我们讨论了这些发现的含义。