Brain Science, Sex Differences, and Rationales for Single-Sex Schooling

• In Event: The State of Single-Sex Schooling: Theoretical, Empirical, Methodological, and Legal Issues

Abstract

Among the more popular rationales for single-sex education is that boys and girls benefit from different instructional methods due to fundamental differences in their brains and cognitive function. This talk will summarize the copious data on gender differences in the brain and behavior, with special focus on empirical research addressing the proposition that “boys and girls learn differently.”
Decades of research have indeed identified many areas in which the average male and female differ. However, such differences are nearly all in the statistically “small” range, meaning males and females overlap much more than they differ in most measures of cognitive ability and personality attributes. For example, meta-analysis of sex differences in verbal abilities finds that such skills differ overall by a mere one-tenth of a standard deviation (Hyde & Linn 1988). Similarly, boys and girls show nearly identical math scores on most standardized tests in elementary and high school (Hyde et al., 2008), although males outperform females in certain spatial skills (e.g., mental rotation) at most ages (Voyer et al., 1995).
Research on gender differences in the brain is less advanced than research on cognitive and behavioral gender differences. However, the emerging picture looks much the same. Males have larger brains than females throughout life, but reliable gender differences in specific brain structures or function have been hard to identify and there is no single neurologic finding diagnostic of “the male brain” or “ the female brain.” Two differences often cited by single-sex school advocates—a larger corpus callosum in females, and stronger lateralization of language function in males—have failed to hold up under meta-analysis. Recent studies using very large databases have revealed modest gender differences in neural connectivity and resting brain lateralization. As with behavioral measures, however, the distributions of such neural measures show far more overlap than separation among populations of men and women. Importantly, far fewer differences have been detected between boys’ and girls’ brains, compared to adult men and women, suggesting that brain sex differences, like behavioral differences, grow larger with age, socialization, and education.
Finally this talk will address the issue of supposed learning differences between boys and girls. In spite of its popularity, this claim has no empirical support in neurobehavioral research. Boys and girls process, store, and retrieve information using the same neural mechanisms. Moreover, the very value of learning style assessment has come under serious attack in recent years based on research that fails to demonstrate its empirical validity, regardless of gender considerations.
Overall, girls and boys are far more behaviorally and neurologically similar than different. Prenatal hormones may bias boys and girls toward slightly different abilities and interests, but different experiences appears to be the main force driving boys and girls apart as they grow. Gender-blind educational practices remain the best approach for managing the wide range of cognitive and emotional abilities among both boys and girls.

Authors

• Lise Eliot, Rosalind Franklin University

• Janet S. Hyde, University of Wisconsin - Madison