- Preteens
- The Teenage Years
At The Bear Creek School, we are continually focused on our mission and the goal of enabling each student to become the individual God intends. The choices we make regarding curriculum, programs, socials, arts, and athletics are all guided by our mission and core values. The design of the students’ daily and weekly schedules are another important consideration. This year we are partnering with a scheduling consultant to help us analyze our schedule and ensure that it best meets our goals and the needs of our students.
In designing the new schedule, the consultant will consider our mission and goals as well as other priorities. In past schedules, separating the students into same gender core classes was a high priority. Gender separation will no longer be a scheduling priority, and we want to let you know the rationale for this change.
New Research
When we decided in the 1990s to schedule same gender core courses in grades 7 and 8, there was research showing benefits. Most of the research showed benefits for girls with results indicating they were more likely to participate in class, show confidence in STEM classes, and score better in math and science classes. Current research no longer supports the advantages of single-sex classes. Here are a few quotes summarizing some of the research.
Are single-sex schools or classrooms the solution to gender-based inequities? In a word, no. In 2014, researchers analyzed 184 studies from around the world comparing single-sex versus coeducational schooling and found no advantage in separating boys and girls at any grade level.
New Trends in Gender and Mathematics Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Advocates of single-sex education base their argument in part on the assumption that girls lag behind boys in mathematics performance and need to be in a protected, all-girls environment to be able to learn math (e.g., Streitmatter, 1999). The data, however, show that girls are performing as well as boys in mathematics, based on 242 separate studies (Study 1) and 4 large, well-sampled national U. S. data sets (Study 2). The great majority of these girls and boys did their learning in coeducational classrooms. Thus, the argument that girls' mathematics performance suffers in gender-integrated classrooms simply is not supported by the data. If we wish to improve students' mathematics performance, we would do better to focus not on gender, but on factors that have larger effects, such as the quality and implementation of the curriculum (Tarr et al., 2008) as well as the quality of the elementary school.
Internal Observations
Avoiding instead of teaching social skills: At the middle school age, interactions between boys and girls can be awkward and challenging. By placing students in same gender classes, we were able to avoid some of these difficult situations. However, we found that we were not teaching them the skills to navigate those relationships in grades 9 – 12. Having boys and girls in class together will give us intentional opportunities to teach students to treat each other with dignity and respect, regardless of gender. It will also allow us to teach them to feel confident and comfortable in their interactions.
Class size inequities: Making gender a priority in scheduling meant class sizes were frequently imbalanced. Small classes can cause difficult social dynamics, and large classes can mean the students do not get as much individual attention. Removing gender as a priority will allow us to even out class sizes and remove those inequities.
Limiting friendships: When single-gender classes and math placement are both scheduling priorities for core classes, there is typically less mixing of students throughout the day which limits the opportunities to develop friendships outside of those cohorts.
Class participation and culture: In preparation for a schedule change, during 2024 – 2025 professional development sessions, teachers will be taught processes and systems that ensure best practices in the mixed gender classrooms. We are confident we can continue to create a classroom culture where students receive high-quality instruction, participate fully, and are treated with dignity and respect regardless of gender.
In Conclusion
The faculty and administration are passionate about living out the mission and we think carefully and deeply about how the schedule impacts our student's learning and development. We will be intentional during this process to create a schedule that best meets our outcomes. The schedule for the 2025 – 2026 school year will be completed in the spring, and we will roll it out with all of you then. The faculty are excited about these changes and are looking forward to a new schedule.