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[quote=SAM2]I'm sharing a good article I read recently: "Single-Sec Education and the Brain" by Lise Eliot.  Eliot wrote the excellent book "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" about brain and development difference between girls and boys.  This article includes many of the same themes.  Its basic argument is that although there are some differences between how female and male brains develop in infants and children, the neurological sex differences are actually fairly small.  Her implicit point is that to the extent there are differences between girls and boys, those differences are largely driven by how parents and society treat girls and boys differently (consciously and unconsciously).  Accordingly, Eliot seems to be an opponent of sex-segregation in the classroom.

To the extent there are some measurable average differences across large populations of girls vs. boys, those average differences are especially insignificant in light of the large variation among individual children within each population.  In other words, if you are measuring some characteristic on a 1-100 point scale, and you find that the average girl scores 2 points higher than the average boy, that average difference is actually very minor in context when you discover that normal scores for each sex are spread fairly evenly over a 40-point range.

Eliot is particularly blunt in her criticism of Gurian & Sax, two popular writers who have written books claiming significant differences in how boys and girls learn (although she criticizes several others as well).  Eliot dissects and debunks their claims about sex differences by pointing out where these popular writers lack any scientific basis at all for various claims, where they have misinterpreted scientific research, and where the weight of more recent scientific research has undermined their arguments.

Below is a link to the article itself, which is about 20-25 pages long and only moderately dense from a science perspective.  Also below are links to a couple summaries of the article, for those who might not be inclined to read the whole thing.

Full article: https://docs.google.com/open?id=1q3oKOfhAFPnpoh3Ya0hRO-tEuxC7id9kCnd8J3NncPVIg_v9IUi_4yB_ToJc
Summaries: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110818101653.htm and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/201109/pseudoscience-in-sax-sex
A full Eliot bibliography, which suggests she feels pretty strongly about this issue: http://66.99.255.20/DNN/home/CMS/Neuroscience/Faculty/Eliot/Publications/tabid/998/Default.aspx[/quote]

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