Family trees and pajama parties: the (un)intelligibility of gender in single-sex classrooms in the U.S.

Abstract

This paper explores how middle school youth in a single-sex education program created a social landscape that enabled disruptive gender play. The paper considers the possibility of transformative acts within the rigid boundaries of single-sex education. It draws together theories of performance and play to examine how youth read, respond to, and produce their single-sex classrooms. In examining the single-sex classrooms as a space in formation rather than a rigidly conceived space, the researcher sees many instances of students releasing themselves from the heteronormative gender binds that shape experiences of their peers in co-education classrooms. In the single-sex classrooms, gender is taken up with more fluidity and performances that are not solely confined by gender binaries.

Keywords:

• gender studies
• children’s geographies
• play
• social reproduction
• single-sex education

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the 97 seventh grade SGI students who allowed me to travel through their days with them for one academic year. Thank you for talking with me, sharing your stories, your successes and your tears, and for getting me hooked on the YA fiction you recommended. I would like to thank the American Association of University Women for a fellowship that provided me time for analysis and writing. Finally, thank you to the three anonymous reviewers who helped me refine this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra J. Schmidt

Sandra J. Schmidt is an Associate Professor in the Program in Social Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research brings spatiality into K-12 social studies education to help young people critique their socio-spatial worlds. Her research often uses photovoice, walking tours, landscapes, and other visual methodologies to help participants capture, represent, and elicit robust depictions of their spatial experiences. She currently has a Spencer Grant to research spaces of belonging with African newcomer youth. Her scholarship has been published in Theory and Research in Social Education, The Journal of Geography, Journal of Curriculum Studies.