Now available in paperback, this award-winning book provides a comprehensive history of gender policies and practices in American public schools. David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot explore the many factors that have shaped coeducation since its origins. At the very time that Americans were creating separate spheres for adult men and women, they institutionalized an education system that brought boys and girls together. How did beliefs about the similarities and differences of boys and girls shape policy and practice in schools? To what degree did the treatment of boys and girls differ by class, race, region, and historical period? Debates over gender policies suggest that American have made public education the repository of their hopes and anxieties about relationships between the sexes. Thus, the history of coeducation serves as a window not only on constancy and change in gender practices in the schools but also on cultural conflicts about gender in the broader society. "Learning Together presents a rich and exhaustive search through [the] 'tangled history' of gender and education that links both the silences and the debates surrounding coeducation to the changing roles of women and men in our society....It is the generosity and capaciousness of Tyack and Hansot's scholarship that makes Learning Together so important a book." —Science

Based on essays presented at a conference held at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Mar. 11-13, 1983.

Do girls do better in single-sex or co-educational schools? Up to now, discussion has centred on girls’ academic achievements in single or mixed-sex groups, but Pat Mahony’s research clearly demonstrates that this is not the only issue, and that co-education is damaging for girls socially as well as academically. She challenges the argument that co-education is desirable because it is more normal. Her research reveals that it is normal for girls to be ‘put down’ in class, to be verbally abused and sexually harassed by boys, and yes, this will be their ‘normal’ experience as women. But does this justify the way girls are treated in schools? Pat Mahony goes on to explore some of the reasons behind this state of affairs and suggests that the answer lies in sexual politics, not biology. The book concludes with practical suggestions for bringing about change in schools, including case-studies from existing projects.

This book exposes the complexity of single-sex schooling, and sheds new light on how gender operates in policy and practice in education. The essays collected in this volume cover a wide range of institutions, including K-12 and higher education, public and private schools, and schools in the US and beyond. Detailing the educational experiences of both young men and women, this collection examines how schooling shapes-and is shaped by- the social construction of gender in history and in contemporary society.

Concerned with pedagogy and the learning achievement of both girls and boys, this book examines international trends in subject performance throughout schooling and looks critically at a range of interventions in difference contexts and countries, all aimed at enhancing equity in schools and higher education institutions.; The book argues that pedagogy can not be isolated from the overarching gender-education system. What can be done, it claims, is that teachers can be provided with a range of pedagogic strategies which can be used to make education, as it is experienced by students and reflected in their achievements, more just.