Students Benefit from Diversity of Gender

We have been seeing the limitations of “one size fits all” (cliched) approaches to education through the lens of testing.  No one way seems to work and the urge to have some constructed norm (or a normed test) may be naive.

I’d argue that students benefit from diverse learning situations, peers, classes, and approaches.  However, I wouldn’t word it as “different,” since that presupposes a norm from which things can differ.  In doing that, the assumption is that there’s some “it” that one has to get to. .  . now, we have a more nuanced idea of how standards and identity function.

Too often, though, diversity is being ironed out of curricula in an attempt to hit the testing targets or to “fit in content.”  (How often did you learn about the past thirty years in history courses–and learn it well?)

With gender, we can see that there may be clear pros to having separate-genre classes, such as focus and lack of showing off to impress girls (for boys) or changes in how the students might dress.  I think that the subtle benefits occur when boys, for instance, see how girls think through issues and model problem solving in innovative ways.  The whole group could experience different benefits.

Intuitively, it may make good sense to separate them, but we know that our intuitions are often incorrect.  Want to see an example of the popular supposition that there are clear learning styles–something many of you likely assume–being refuted?  Check out Daniel Willingham’s video “Learning Styles Don’t Exist.”