Gendered Art: Implications of Single Sex Art Education at an Urban Middle School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 121
  In Roundtable Session: Culturally Responsive Pedagogies

Abstract

This paper documents single-sex art classes at one public middle school serving a high percentage of low income students of color. In creating single-sex classes the school was hoping to tackle issues of classroom management and student achievement. However, the need for higher standardized test scores diverted the school away from gender reform and towards a forced system of prescribed standards. The lack of transformative curricula and stress towards standardized testing resulted in teachers relating to their students based on stereotypical roles of how boys and girls behave, learn, and interact, within the arts. Further, it was observed that single-sex schooling tended to ignore all together the complexity of sex, gender, and sexuality existing within the middle school students.

Author

• Kelly A. Hrenko, University of Southern Maine