Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Mary Roth

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if single-gender settings have a statistically significant effect on African-American male and/or African-American female academic achievement on English assessment from sixth through eighth grade. Social science statistics were used to determine if a statistically significant difference occurred in the performance of African-American males and/or female students in single-gender classrooms compared to African-American male and female students in coed classrooms. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to assess if differences exist on a dependent variable (student achievement) by independent variables (instructional setting and gender). A statistically significant difference occurred among girls during sixth through eighth grade (girls in coed environments had higher achievement scores), among males in sixth and seventh grades (males in coed environments had higher achievement scores), and among boys and girls during eighth grade (boys exhibited a higher percentage of proficiency in single-gender contexts than girls in single-gender classrooms). Results suggest that coeducational environments are more academically advantageous for African-American middle school boys and girls, especially during younger years, than single-gender environments. Mean achievement scores increased among single-gender classrooms, according to gender and alongside year length or student age. This suggests that single-gender classrooms may be more academically advantageous as students age; however, this study suggests additional research to verify the credibility of this suggestion since this study focused primarily on assessing statistical significance, of which none was found in regard to single-gender classrooms being more academically advantageous than coed classrooms.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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