Gender in Policy and Practice

Perspectives on Single Sex and Coeducational Schooling

Amanda Datnow, Lea Hubbard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136703843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

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.

Section Three
The Transition from Single-Sex Education to Coeducation

Chapter 8
The Transition to Coeducation at Wheaton College: Conscious Coeducation and Gender Equity in Higher Education

Alan R. Sadovnik and Susan F. Semel

In September 1988, after over 150 years as an institution of higher education for women, Wheaton College (Norton, MA) became a coeducational college. After considerable debate and the consideration of complex sociological, philosophical, demographic, and historical factors, the college believed that coeducation was the best course for its future. Given its historical commitment to the education of women, Wheaton College pursued coeducation within a framework dedicated to ensuring that its commitment to women not be lost in the transition. The implementation of coeducation at Wheaton did not simply speak to the maintenance of women’s education, but rather developed a unique view of coeducation to educate both men and women to live in a society with significantly more gender equity. Through its philosophy of “conscious coeducation, ” or what is called “differently coeducational, ” Wheaton has attempted to create a coeducational institution that links its strengths as a women’s college to the education of both men and women. Such an education is grounded in the view that coeducation should help young men and women create a more just world, with men and women equal partners in this quest. The difficult task in this endeavor was how Wheaton would expand its mission and not lose the historical commitment to women characteristic of women’s colleges.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the transition to coeducation at Wheaton College. Based on archival research; in-depth interviews with faculty, administrators, and students, and (once the college was fully coeducational) participant observation and site visits over six years (1995 to 2001), the chapter examines the factors that led to Wheaton’s decision to become coeducational, the ways in which the college made the transition to coeducation, and whether or not Wheaton today—thirteen years after becoming coeducational—remains committed to its philosophy of “conscious coeducation.” Moreover, the chapter illustrates the importance of a conscious commitment to gender equity and an administration and faculty committed to it for ensuring that the emphasis on women’s education that characterized the college in the decade prior to coeducation continued in a coeducational environment. Finally, we argue that it may be the processes associated with Wheaton’s philosophy of conscious coeducation that may be more important than whether it is a single-sex or coeducational institution for ensuring a climate of gender equity.

This chapter addresses the following questions:

1. What were the historical, sociological, organizational, and demographic factors that led to the decision to become coeducational?
2. Once the decision to become coeducational was made, how did the college go about making the transition?
3. What effects did the admission of the first classes of men have on the college in the first years of coeducation and how did the college respond?
4. Has the philosophy of “consciously and differently coeducational” been implemented in curricula and pedagogical reforms?
5. Has the college’s past mission as a women’s college been incorporated into its new coeducational mission and does Wheaton College today remain committed to the philosophy of “conscious coeducation”?

This chapter chronicles the process by which a college has attempted to broaden its direction without losing its historical sense of mission. Sadovnik (1994) analyzed how a compensatory higher education program evolved in the context of a college’s institutional history and identity. He argued that the organizational processes of higher education are central to the success or failure of a higher education reform. Semel (1992), in her study of the transformation of the Dalton School, analyzed the complex interaction between cultural, social, and organizational forces and how they affect an institution’s ability to maintain its historical mission. Grant (1988) shows how a secondary school evolved in relation to racial integration. Grant and Riesman (1978), in their insightful study of reform and innovation at American colleges, underscore the important relationship between tradition, philosophy, and innovation. Finally, Lever and Schwartz’s (1971) study of the transition to coeducation at Yale suggests that women faced significant dilemmas at Yale as the tradition of male domination did not die easily. Many of the processes of educational innovation and change, resistance and accommodation, and conflict and compromise that are described in the preceding studies appear to have occurred at Wheaton. It is important to explore them historically in order to better understand how and why institutions change and adapt to a number of internal and external forces, as well as their effects on students. In the case of Wheaton, how and why a college committed for 154 years to the education of women made the decision to change, and how it implemented this radical innovation is a fascinating story with profound implications for the education of both men and women.

The ways in which institutions pass on their “collective memory” is an important aspect of this study. Educational stability and change are both related to the ways in which institutions manage to pass along their traditions or erase institutional memory. Semel (1992) documents how the Dalton School radically changed once the collective memory of the Dalton Plan had been sufficiently erased; and also, how the selective use of tradition was often used to legitimate educational innovation and change. In the case of Wheaton College, it is important to examine how the institutional memory of the traditions of a women’s college and the transition to coeducation are kept alive as the architects of coeducation retire and new faculty and administrators come to Wheaton. Therefore we pose the following questions: To what degree is Wheaton today a special place, with a keen awareness of its traditions as a women’s college, and to what degree has it become like other coeducational institutions? Moreover, how have the Wheaton administration and faculty planned for the inculcation of a collective memory in its faculty and students?

Single-Sex Education and Coeducation

The advantages and disadvantages of single-sex versus coeducation have been long debated in the sociological and historical literature. Tyack and Hansot/s (1991) comprehensive history of coeducation pointed out the complex political and historical factors that have affected educational policies related to the education of women. Miller-Bernal (1989, 1993, 2000, and chapter 9 of this volume) in a study comparing women’s colleges to coeducational liberal arts colleges argued that although there are significant differences in the experiences of women students at women’s colleges, there was little evidence to link these differences to differences in educational outcomes. Miller-Bernal’s study, however, indicated the need to study differences in the education of women in a larger number of campuses. Her historical and sociological study (2000) of Wells (women’s college), Middlebury (coeducational), William Smith (coordinate to Hobart), and Kirkland (coordinate to Hamilton), indicates the importance of studying the history of colleges to understand the dynamics of gender relations at the postsecondary level. Wheaton College’s transition to coeducation provides an opportunity to examine the ways in which the movement to coeducation has affected the educational experiences and outcomes of both women and men students.

The history of women’s colleges in the United States provides an important framework for understanding the history of Wheaton College and its eventual decision to become coeducational. Boas (1935), Faragher and Howe (1988), Horowitz (1984), Palmieri (1987), Rosenberg (1988), and Solomon (1985) provide detailed analyses of the history of women’s education in the United States and the rise, evolution, and transformation of women’s colleges and women’s higher education from the nineteenth century to the present, although much of the literature on women’s colleges examines the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the early women’s colleges, like Mount Holyoke, often began, as Wheaton College did in 1834, as a seminary. Others, such as the remaining Seven Sisters, were founded as women’s colleges. The relationship between Puritan culture, patriarchy, and changing conceptions of the role of women in the nineteenth century is central to understanding the rise and evolution of women’s colleges. Women’s colleges developed, particularly in the case of the Seven Sisters (Horowitz, 1984), as the acceptable institutions to provide education to the daughters of the privileged.

Although the history of women’s higher education and women’s colleges in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is too expansive and complicated to explore here, it is important to see their evolution in relation to debates about women’s place in society. Palmieri (1987) argues that the expansion of women’s higher education must be understood within the context of expanding roles for women, as well as the ongoing debates between nineteenth century feminists (Leach, 1980) and conservatives’ reactions to reformers. She divides the history of women’s education into three periods: the Romantic Era (1820 to 1860) or the period Linda Kerber calls “Republican Motherhood”; the Reform Era (1860 to 1890), marked by the opening of women’s colleges and the emergence of profound debates about higher education for women; and the Progressive Era (1890 to 1920), which includes both the entrance of the first generation of women college graduates into the professions, as well as the conservative reaction to women’s higher education. Within this context, women’s access to higher education, first in women’s colleges, and later in coeducation institutions, evolved historically in relation to changing and liberalized conceptions of women’s roles, as well as to conservative reactions to them.

In the twentieth century, the place of women’s colleges in an increasingly coeducational system of higher education became an important issue. In 1870, 59 percent of existing colleges were for men only; by 1930, 69 percent were coeducational, with an equal number of male and female single-sex schools; since 1960, the number of women’s and men’s colleges has declined considerably, with the 268 women’s colleges that existed in 1960 reduced to one hundred in 1990 (Riordan, 1990). With the advent of coeducation at the once all-male Ivy League colleges in the 1970s, the pressure for women’s colleges to become coeducational dramatically increased. In the 1970s, many formerly women’s colleges such as Vassar, Skidmore, and Connecticut College became coeducational, and in the 1980s, others such as Goucher and Wheaton followed suit. However, since the early 1990s there has been renewed interest in women’s colleges and the benefits of women’s education (Riordan, 1990; Sadker and Sadker, 1994). Much of this interest comes out of a growing feminist literature on the underside of coeducation (AAUW, 1992; Brown and Gilligan, 1992; Sadker and Sadker, 1994) and the benefits of feminist curriculum and pedagogy (Maher and Tetrault, 1994). The debates about single-sex education versus coeducation for women must be understood in the context of ongoing debates about the effects of women’s colleges.

The educational and attitudinal effects of single-sex and coeducational institutions at the secondary and postsecondary levels has received considerable attention over the past two decades, with little consensus about overall effects and differences. Although TidbalPs research (1973, 1980, 1985, 1986) has consistently argued that graduates of women’s colleges have higher achievement and career aspirations, and are more likely to attend graduate or professional schools than women graduates of coeducational institutions, critics have argued that her research has not adequately controlled for “selection bias, ” including the social class advantages of many females at women’s colleges, as well as the selectivity of many women’s colleges in admissions (Oates and Williamson, 1978, 1980). More recent studies (Rice and Hemmings, 1988), which use adequate controls, indicate that graduates of women’s colleges achieve at higher rates than graduates of coeducational institutions.

Studies of differences between women who graduate from single-sex versus coeducational secondary schools in the United States and other countries indicate that there are advantages to single-sex education for women in terms of educational outcomes (Astin, 1977; Carpenter and Hayden, 1987; Finn, 1980; Lee and Bryk, 1986; Riordan, 1985, 1990) and self-esteem (Astin, 1977; Carpenter, 1985; Lee and Bryk, 1986). These studies have been summarized elsewhere in this volume. This section concentrates on postsecondary education.

Miller-Bernal (1993) reports that studies of the effects of single-sex versus coeducation on attitudes to the women’s movement and school life have not been conclusive. Whereas some studies (Lee and Bryk, 1986; Trickett et al., 1982) suggested that girls in single-sex secondary schools are more supportive of feminist issues and less likely to accept traditional gender role stereotypes, other studies at the postsecondary level (Giele, 1987) found women’s college students to be more traditional. Miller-Bernal (1989) did not find significant differences between women at women’s colleges and coeducational colleges on measures of gender role attitudes. Her more recent study (Miller-Bernal, 1993, 2000) finds that although women at a single-sex college or a coordinate college have more positive experiences than women at two coeducational colleges in terms of having women faculty as role models, participating in college activities, and perceiving their college experiences as positive, these positive experiences did not have a significant effect on changes in attitudes and goals, except in the area of self-esteem.

The evidence on the effects of single-sex education versus coeducation for women at the postsecondary level is not conclusive. However, both Miller-Bernal (1993, 2000) and Riordan (1990) argue that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the atmosphere for women at coeducational institutions may be “chilly.” Feminist educators such as Sadker and Sadker (1994) and Maher and Tetrault (1994) argue that without a consciously feminist curriculum and pedagogy, women are more likely to be silenced in classroom interactions, experience lower self-esteem, and lower levels of aspirations and achievement. It is within this context that feminist educators have sought to learn from women’s colleges about ways to educate women that enhance, not shortchange them. Since the 1970s, in addition to debates about the efficacy of women’s colleges in terms of studies of the empirical effects of single-sex education on women students, a literature emerged about the extent to which women’s colleges reflected feminist visions and objectives. In the 1970s, a number of disenchanted graduates of women’s colleges published popular exposes, which argued that women’s colleges (particularly the Seven Sisters) historically reinforced traditional gender roles, encouraged docility, and that coeducation might better serve the causes of gender equality (Baker, 1976; Kendall, 1976). In the 1980s and 1990s, historians of education (Horowitz, 1984; Palmieri, 1987), sociologists of education (Komarovsky, 1985; Miller-Bernal, 2000), and feminist educators (Maher and Tetrault, 1994; Sadker and Sadker, 1994) have provided a more balanced treatment that, in Palmieri’s words, “display a new appreciation for the complexity of their subject” (1987, p. 50). These studies have acknowledged both the positive effects of single-sex education, as well as some of the negative ones pointed out by the critics.

Nonetheless, by the 1990s, there had been a renewed interest in the positive effects of single-sex education...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• SECTION ONE Introduction and Background
• SECTION TWO Public Single-Sex Schooling in Changing Policy Contexts
• SECTION THREE The Transition from Single-Sex Education to Coeducation
• SECTION FOUR Single-Sex Schooling and Students’ Attitudes and Experiences in School
• SECTION FIVE Constructions of Gender in Single-Sex Schooling
• Author Biographies
• Index