Thesis (M.A.)--College of William and Mary. / Typescript (photocopy). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-86). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This thesis analyzes coeducation as a process between 1914 and 1964 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI), as it was called during the period of study. The date for women's full-time admission came in 1921, but this thesis argues that, in the process of coeducation, the date for official access represents only one marker for VPI. Since women had taken courses during the summer before 1921 and did not encounter a welcoming environment after that date, this thesis contends that the relative importance of this "first" needs to be put in perspective. This thesis explores VPI as a case study to analyze how society's gender roles and women's place affected the decision to admit women and their treatment on campus after access. Examining social, political, and economic events in Virginia and the nation, this thesis places VPI within the context of events at the time. In particular, this thesis discusses how federal legislation, during the 1910s, prompted VPI to admit women, an area previously unexplored by historians of higher education. Throughout the period of study, this thesis argues that VPI - its students and administration - limited women's access and inclusion on campus in an effort to maintain its identity as a white, male, military institution. / Master of Arts

The period of adolescence is marked by difficulties, objections, conflicts. It is also the period of looking for self-expression, in which changes in teenager’s psychical, inward and emotional world are observed. The cognition of the world becomes essential. The world outlook is being formed. Besides, the attitude towards other people is developing and changing. The teenagers become more active. They experience the needs of communication with contemporaries. On the other hand, the reality of today’s school shows something else. In spite of the fact, that many researchers, who made some studies on the situation of school, claim that there is a special space for spread of some social parts and interaction at the lessons of physical education (Crum, 1996); boys and girls practice separately at those lessons. The separation starts when teenagers are 12 – 14 years-old. It happens at the time when the necessity to communicate and understand each other becomes specific. This is the principal attitude of the authors of this work. It also shows that the problem of sexual education needs theoretical and empirical argumentation. Our research partially has the aim to solve this problem. The objective is - to test and estimate the standpoint of teenagers, who are educated together and separately, to the role of coeducation for their physical-social conditions. The goals of the research: to test and estimate the standpoint of teenagers, who are educated together, to the role of... [to full text]

Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

From 1868-1917 the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) underwent a formative period. SLPS was shaped primarily by professional administrators working in a transnational education community and responses to their philosophies and policies by both white and African American women teachers, members of the African American community, and students themselves. While SLPS strove to include increasing numbers of students in their schools, their practices ultimately kept groups of students separated from one another and reinforced the racial, economic, gender, and ability-based divisions in society. The philosophies and practices developed by SLPS during this period influenced education world-wide, including the use of industrial education in colonial situations.

Ho Wing Yee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [166]-[175]). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgement --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii / 摘腰 --- p.iii / Table of Content --- p.iv / Chapter Chapter 1 --- "Literature Review, Research Concern and Conceptual Framework" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Methodology --- p.40 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Cross-sectional Analysis of the Educational Claims of Single-sex and --- p.58 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Cross-time Analysis of the Educational Claims of Single-Sex and Co-educational Schools --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Curriculum Study: Gender Presentation of Home Economics in Hong Kong --- p.119 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.159 / References / Appendix I: Coding Scheme / Appendix II: Findings of Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Educational Claims of Single-sex and Co-educational Schools / Appendix III: Syllabus of Home Economics

GIVING VOICE TO STUDENT AND ALUMNAE OPPOSITION DURING THE TRANSITION TO COEDUCTION BY A COLLEGE FOR WOMEN By Rebecca Jean Grandstaff Clarke, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2011. Co-Director: Mary Hermann, J.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Counselor Education School of Education Co-Director: Teresa J. Carter, Ed.D. Assistant Professor and Adult Learning Program Coordinator, Teaching and Learning Department School of Education This dissertation provides insight into students‘ and alumnae‘s experiences during the transition and legal proceedings as their former college for women transitioned to coeducation. Previous research on the transition of single-sex colleges to coeducation has primarily examined the process from an organizational perspective. This study focuses on the participants‘ personal and intimate involvement in these events. A phenomenological approach was utilized (Creswell, 1998; Moustakas, 1994). Data collection was through in-depth interviews with three students who recently graduated from the college and acted as the plaintiffs during the legal challenge and four alumnae who served as leaders of the opposition group funding the legal challenge. Data analyses lead to the development of textural and structural themes which described the essence of the experience. The results of the study indicated that the admission of men changed the campus and classroom environment at this former women‘s college. Classroom dynamics changed; campus crime increased; and the students engaged in acts of physical confrontation and intimidation. Aspects of the students‘ and alumnae‘s experiences left an indelible impression on their lives. For the students, participating in the student protests over the coeducation decision was a transformative experience, resulting in a stronger sense of social activism. The experience of supporting and funding the legal challenge ultimately caused the alumnae to lose faith in the educational and legal systems. The study has implications for college boards and administrators considering coeducation, for alumnae considering a legal challenge to a decision by their alma mater to transition to coeducation, and for women interested in enrolling in a college for women.

Thesis advisor: Diana Pullin / Using qualitative research methods, this study looked at the role of the single-sex versus the coeducational school environment as a key factor in determining boys' perceptions of success in French communicative activities as defined in Standard 1.1 of ACTFL 's et al Standards for Foreign Lanquage Learning : Preparing for the 21st Century (1999). A total of twenty-four boys (twelve from a single-sex high school and twelve from a coeducational institution) were observed in class and subsequently interviewed. The goal was to determine if cognitive gender differences surounding foreign language communicative activities, socio-cultural concerns as respects boys' perceptions of the appropriateness of high achievement in French, and teacher pedagogy all lend themselves to the single-sex environment such that it provides a more fertile setting for boys' high achievement. The findings indicated that the single-sex sample's self-perceptions of competence were healthier in the single-sex environment for a variety of reasons. The single-sex school boys were more willing to work hard against the perception held by both sample sets that girls may possess an innate advantage in the speaking skill, they held a wider definition of what is appropriate male behavior (which included high achievement in French), and they (together with their coed counterparts) found the all boys environment more accepting of errors and more risk-friendly in general - crucial ingredients for developing the French speaking skill. The single-sex sample more willingly embraced school as a rigorous academic forum, whereas the coed sample was more likely to see school as appropriate for building social skills and for cultivating an understanding of the opposite sex. These findings suggest that the single-sex classroom environment is superior for boys as they strive to achieve in female sex-typed arenas such as French communicative activities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martinez Aleman / Colleges and universities within the United States are continuously looking at ways to assess and measure student outcomes, academically as well as psychosocially. Student engagement measures have come to the forefront of assessment tools as a way for college administrators to determine whether their students are actively engaged in programs and activities on campus and whether this participation actually affects their retention and persistence. Women's colleges have been studied extensively as an alternative to the coeducational college environment for women. Founded on the premise of providing a higher education to an underserved population of women, women's colleges have evolved to providing an educational environment that serves to empower and enlighten their female students. However, over time, the number of women's colleges have declined through closure, merger or coeducation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a significant difference in engagement levels of female students who attended former women's colleges and those who attended historically coeducational colleges or women's colleges. Exploring the engagement levels of students attending coeducational colleges that were founded as women-only, with the corresponding woman-centric educational experience, it can be determined whether that history and commitment continue and result in an educational environment that engages women significantly more than an institution that was coeducational from its inception. Using the NSSE benchmarks, HLM and ANOVA was used to determine any relationship between time from coeducational transition or male enrollment percentage and engagement levels. Interaction effects were also explored. Results of this study reveal three conclusions. First, consistent with the literature, students attending women's colleges are reporting higher engagement levels across all benchmarks when compared to their peers attending former women's colleges and historically coeducational colleges. Second, the engagement levels of female students attending former women's colleges are split along academic and psychosocial lines. Third, consistent with the "chilly climate" literature, increasing male enrollment percentage was linked to lower reported engagement levels by women attending former women's colleges. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Higher Education Administration.

The aims of this study were to define an Australian boarding school, provide a summary of international and Australian boarding school literature, and complete a small-scale qualitative investigation of students' views in a co-educational boarding school. At first glance, it appeared that contemporary Australian boarding schools were a reproduction of the influential public boys' schools of Great Britain. Although there have been a number of histories of Australian independent schools, the boarding element has often been portrayed as Dickensian and remains an overlooked area of educational research. In particular, the literature available about Australian residential schooling over the past 20 years has been limited to a handful of significant studies by Cree and Trimingham Jack. In this study 45 Australian and overseas students were asked to write memoirs of 4-5,000 words about their boarding experience emphasising their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. The limitation was that all respondents were full-time boarders for at least one year when the questionnaire-survey was completed. The memoir-based humanistic approach of the Polish- American sociologist Florian Znaniecki, as developed for the analysis of personal and group social systems in the culturally diverse context of Australia by J. J. Smolicz, was employed to interpret the memoir data. The memoir method has been well documented in Australia, as a means of collecting and analysing concrete and cultural facts, mainly in relation to the study of minority ethnic groups and their cultural actions. The humanistic approach emphasized that the researcher must accept cultural phenomena from the viewpoint of its participants and not from that of an outside observer. In the present study, this approach permitted the researcher to understand the experiences and attitudes of individual students towards an Australian co-educational boarding education through their own eyes. The memoirs analysed were generated from 26 concrete questions, which revealed place-of-birth, ethnic identity, and languages spoken at home. This provided the researcher with verifiable information about the everyday lives of the respondents. The second half of the memoirs required response to 23 questions - these yielded cultural data. These questions required students to reflect on their situation, attitudes and experiences of boarding as a system of education. This information could only have been provided by the participants themselves and gave the researcher direct access to the memoir writers' individual and group consciousness. The study discovered that a number of the students were in the process of re-evaluating and re-interpreting the advantages and disadvantages of boarding school as a social system transmitted to them by parents, friends, family, and teachers. The respondent's personal statements revealed that the relationships among students and among students and staff in the boarding House tended to be primary in nature, in that they were personal, informal, and involved the entire human personality. From these data, it appeared that the success of a boarding school was determined by the personal atmosphere, support, and comfort of the boarding House. Consideration of the empirical data found that 43 of the 45 respondents' memoirs believed that their overall experiences at the research boarding school were positive. Negative observations stressed the pressures of homesickness, tedium of school life and a lack of freedom thereby supporting Goffman's view of a "total institution". The majority of students' memoirs were ambivalent towards religion at the research school. Nevertheless, 11 stressed its significant implication in their day-to-day lives. The memoirs suggested that an education at the research boarding school was a crucible that forged students through a variety of experiences, positive and negative, individual and collective, for life. Overall, the memoirs support the observation that boarding school acts as a social system for the acceptance of new cultural values, such as the cultural diversity respondents' experienced in their lives at boarding school. The study revealed an attitudinal shift in the group that welcomed the cultural pluralism of the school and recognised the cultural monism of the home. These memoirs revealed that boarding school was a significant factor in fostering independence and embracing cultural diversity as experienced in the crucible of the boarding school. These findings challenged the popular maxim that an Australian residential education was an anachronistic, inflexible, colonial-British model and suggested that it has the potential to act as a system of education that prepares its students for the challenges of life. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Education, 2004.