SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION FOR GIRLS - HETEROSEXUALITY, GENDERED SUBJECTIVITY AND SCHOOL CHOICE

Single-sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision-making coalesce. My concern Is not to enter the debate about the merits of single-sex educ ation for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discou rses of femininity and discourses around single-sex schooling to see h ow they interact in the choice of single-sex schools by girls and thei r parents. In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of femin ist poststructuralist theory can be wed to offer a more dynamic and co mplex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by n ea-liberal theorists. The theory I develop is illuminated by interview s with three girls and their parents, from different social-class back grounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about which secondary school to apply for. A focus such as thr enables me to do tw o things: firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the rel ationship between gender and educational decision-making; and secondly , to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and i ts relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisa tion of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand.