Different Styles, Different Classrooms:
New Research Moves Carolina Day to Separate Boys and Girls
Last year, Elizabeth Dismukes was a quiet student. But this year “I feel more confident,” says the sixth grader at Carolina Day School in Asheville. Her teachers say she participates more, and she recently surprised her mom by being chosen to talk about sixth grade to a group of students and parents.
Asked to name her favorite subject, Dismukes responds “I like math”—although math was her least favorite last year. Why the change of heart? A lot of it, she says, has to do with a big change at Carolina Day.
This year sixth grade girls and boys are studying core subjects—math, science, language arts, and social studies—in separate classrooms.
The switch to single-gender classes puts Carolina Day at the forefront of a new trend, one driven by research on boys’ and girls’ intellectual development. According to Peggy Daniels, principal of Carolina Day’s middle school, researchers have discovered that adolescence is “a time when there’s a huge difference in their brains.”
Daniels points to findings that indicate that at this age, the part of the brain girls use to speak and write “is physically bigger, and the converse is true with boys.” As a result, girls begin to score over boys in subjects like language arts and social studies.
And that’s not the only advantage girls enjoy. Their brains give them an edge by allowing them to talk about their feelings earlier. Boys “shift more to the action-oriented part of the brain,” says Kathy Stevens, a consultant with the Michael Gurian Institute, which helps schools make use of the new research. “They want to respond to emotion rather than talk about it.” As a result, they tend to act out more, and have difficulty talking about their emotional responses to reading and writing assignments.
These recent findings come on the heels of older studies claiming that boys enter the classroom with a home field advantage. A famous 1993 study, for example, found that teachers call on boys four times more often than girls and tend to value boys’ comments more.
With all this research behind it, the trend toward single-sex classes seems inevitable. But at Carolina Day, Daniels admits, “we had some controversy originally.” In response, the school held forums, sent materials home, and—most importantly—arranged to train teachers. “They strategized it perfectly,” says Kathy Stevens. And in the end, says Daniels, “we realized there was a huge amount of support for it.”
The Carolina Day faculty has been the most vocal supporters. Sandy Pyeatt, who teaches sixth-grade social studies, says simply, “I feel like I can teach more effectively.” She mentions one of her students, a boy who’s having to work hard to keep up. This year, Pyeatt says, “he’s actually willing to ask questions. That’s not typical in a mixed-gender classroom: if they’re struggling, they tend to want to hide it.”
Pyeatt also feels that the change has allowed her to target her teaching. Recently one of her girls’ classes gave presentations, and nearly every student started with an apology. Pyeatt pointed this out, and she hears much less apologizing now. She also says she’s able to home in on discipline issues: it’s easier to come to the defense of a boy who’s getting teased in a single-gender class, she says, because her intervention is less likely to embarrass him.
Some schools have seen higher test scores from their single-gender classes. But as Daniels points out, her students are already high achievers. “I knew there was a good chance that they would not see big gains,” she says, and notes that some other changes—like a further reduction in class size—will make it difficult to attribute improvement to any single factor. But, she says, “I think the kids are really happy, and I think that when kids are happy they learn better.”
Feedback from the girls bears this out. Recently a teacher asked her class of girls to write about single-gender classrooms, and the responses were mostly positive. “I would never feel as comfortable as I do if there were boys in the class,” wrote one, and another offered that, “we like that we don’t have to worry about what the boys are thinking.” Feedback from boys is harder to get, but one mother told Daniels that “it would be totally uncool to say ‘I love single-gender classes.’ But I can tell you my son really likes the opportunity.”
For her part, Elizabeth Dismukes agrees with her peers. Asked to name the biggest difference between last year and this year, the burgeoning math prodigy says, “I do feel more comfortable. It’s a lot more fun to be in an all-girls group.”
-by Douglas Gibson
And did you know?
According to the latest research, boys and girls exhibit the following differences in the classroom:
• Girls have much more sensitive hearing than boys, and can be distracted by noises one tenth as loud.
• The brain centers that process language are physically smaller in boys and develop more slowly, giving adolescent girls an edge in language and social studies classes.
• The area of the brain that deals with emotions is closer to girls’ language centers, giving them an edge in being able to talk about feelings.
• Boys have a natural advantage in spatial perception, and tend to deal better with abstract concepts, giving them an edge in science and math.
• Girls’ fine motor skills tend to develop earlier, making it easier for them to perfect handwriting and other skills.
• Boys tend to develop large muscles earlier, making physical activity an essential part of their learning environment.
Elizabeth Dismukes, lower left, in Sandy Pyeatt's language arts and social studies core class.
