Gender identity construction and the choice of single sex schooling for girls

Abstract

This thesis explores the nature of educational decision making with respect to single sex state education for girls. The issue of the gendered nature of decision making has assumed additional significance as a result of the introduction of market policies into the New Zealand education system. Underlying these policies are certain fundamental assumptions about the way choices are made in education. The key to understanding these assumptions lies in the notion of instrumental rationality used by neo-liberal theorists. Critics of neo-liberal theory with respect to educational choice argue that it presents an impoverished and a-social view of human behaviour. In this thesis, elements of post-structuralist feminist theory are used to critique neo-liberal theory and to construct an alternative account centred on the role of gender in identity formation. This theoretical analysis has been developed to interpret interview material derived from five families of differing social class backgrounds who have chosen the same single sex state school for their daughters. Their choice of school is shown to be related to the construction of gender identity via the process of heterosexual re-production. Thus, neo-liberal theory, which sees educational choice as deriving solely from instrumental rationality, has been tested and found wanting. Since the removal of zoning in the New Zealand secondary school system was premised on such a theory and justified on the basis that it would improve equality of educational provision and outcomes, the findings of this study have implications at the level of policy. Any initiatives aimed at increasing parental 'choice' must firstly be able to account for the different meanings 'choice' holds for individuals. They must also be cognisant of structural constraints such as gender, social class and ethnicity and the ways these work to prescribe the ability to exercise choice in education.