Tuesday, December 6, 2016

How a single-gender environment can lead girls to choose a STEM career

I believe I read an article in 2015 that co-ed education does not help either genders. Boys & girls learn in different ways because their brains are structured differently. But, in co-education system, & since most teachers end up being females, boys are treated the same as girls. This adversely affects the learning abilities of boys, so much so, that post-secondary education institutes in North America are reporting more female enrollment than males.

Now, here's an article highlighting the research how an all-girls education system provides positive role models & peers, which help more girls in learning & accepting that they can also achieve a successful career in STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) fields.

So, all this new research in 21st century is saying that co-education has worse outcomes for both genders. Didn't old religions also practice that thousands of years ago? I don't know about other religions whether they ever dealt with co-education issue, but Islam specifically said to keep the genders separate. Now, Islam's gender separation has a much bigger scope in society than only mixed gender schooling but schooling is a huge part of a student's life.

Western countries ridiculed the separate gender schooling system of the Islamic countries for hundreds of years. They systematically broke that system down in the guise of gender equality in education, even when, gender equality can still be achieved with separate education system. Islamic countries instituted co-education system in the name of modern & Western education system. Now, the research from Western education institutes is coming out to affirm the benefits of single-gender education system.

Western countries, & their public, are like those stubborn & rebellious children that when they are told by their parents not to do something, they will still do it, & when they suffer because of their actions, then they learn the benefits what their parents said, based on their knowledge & wisdom. Except, the difference in a child doing something wrong & then learning from it, & countries changing their social, educational, & political systems to follow certain other countries, & then learning that they might've made a mistake is not the same. Turning around such social, educational, & political systems take decades & decades, & affect generations after generations.

So the hard lesson here is, & especially for Muslims, that blindly following the West will only lead you to disaster. Critically analyse what & why something is positive & negative in the light of modern science of the time & religion, & then implement it if it seems beneficial.

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It's a call heard from academia to business: More women are needed in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering & math. But how best to encourage girls to consider careers in STEM?

It turns out simply encouraging them to take risks & be the best they can in any subject leads many to consider STEM fields.

This is the strategy of many all-girls' schools.

For St. Clement’s School principal Martha Perry, simply ensuring that her pupils receive a well-rounded education is the focus of the school.

Our emphasis is girls learning, and if girls are interested and keen on a STEM subject then we’re going to make sure we support them and we are going to make sure that they have access to the best possible instruction, the best possible facilities and the best possible experience to be learning,” she says.

Not that she has to be overly concerned. Of the Toronto all-girls school’s most recent graduating class, roughly one third of the 64 students were going on to study STEM subjects at the post-secondary level.

Studying at a single-sex school may have a bearing on that. According to a study by Goodman Research Group, which evaluates programs, graduates of girls’ schools are six times more likely to consider majoring in math, science & technology at the postsecondary level compared with their peers at co-ed schools.

A similar study undertaken by the University of California, Los Angeles, commissioned by the U.S.-based National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, suggests that girls’ school graduates are three times more likely than their co-ed independent-school peers to consider engineering careers.

From Ms. Perry’s perspective, the nurturing surroundings of an all-girls school play an important part in their development. St. Clement’s doesn’t put an overarching emphasis on STEM subjects, believing instead that the school’s best role is to give its students the opportunity to believe that they have the capacity to make a difference in anything they do.

I think a girls-only environment actually allows girls to explore their own passions and their own interests and affords us the opportunity to provide them with a wealth of different options to explore,” she says.

The reasons for this vary. According to Megan Murphy, the executive director of the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools (NCGS) in Virginia, two of the biggest are peer role models & overcoming a media message that too often portrays women as being less capable than their male counterparts in STEM subjects. In addition, she says, historically the majority of science teachers at girls’ schools were women, too.

Whether it’s from a faculty perspective, a graduate perspective, or a peer perspective, girls at girls schools have a wealth of role models and I think that’s probably the key factor as to why we see so many more girls at girls’ schools pursuing STEM subjects as undergraduates,” she says.

In addition, she explains, being around peer role models who love science & math helps deflect some of the media or popular culture messages that portray women as less capable of successfully studying STEM subjects than men.

Being among peers doing the same thing, whether in a physics club or a science Olympiad, helps build girls’ confidence that they can thrive in STEM subjects. That confidence is key to a long-term commitment to a field of study. For instance, the UCLA study suggests that 47.7% of women entering postsecondary education from single-sex schools felt well prepared in math, compared to 36.6% entering college from co-ed schools.

When you check out of Algebra 1, even in a little way, that’s a critical building block for every single science or technology class that comes after that,” Ms. Murphy says. “So if you lose them in the pipeline as middle schoolers, it’s really hard to get them back.”
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Much like St. Clement’s, Elmwood School in Ottawa doesn’t put a direct emphasis on teaching STEM subjects, but helps its students build what headmistress Cheryl Boughton refers to as “balanced brains,” based on a concept explored by American educator & psychologist Dr. JoAnn Deak.

Consequently, the responsibility charged to Ms. Boughton & the rest of the faculty is to ensure that by the time the girls graduate from Elmwood, they are well versed in all areas of academia & not just the subjects in which they are particularly strong.
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