The developmental influence of sex composition in preschool classrooms: Boys fare worse in preschool classrooms with more boys

摘要: Abstract A multilevel modeling approach was employed to investigate the relation between sex composition and developmental change in 70 urban preschool classrooms. The research represents a unique contribution as (1) few studies have examined influence of during years, (2) it first use continuous (i.e., ratio) opposed binary mixed- versus single-sex) indicator for classroom composition, (3) sample an important often neglected group low-income children from schools). series HLM models were run, addressing nested nature data (children within classrooms), relating using cognitive, motor, social subscales Child Observation Record (COR). Overall, there no main effects at classroom-level composition. However, cross-level interaction indicated that, while girls’ development not influenced by boys classrooms with proportionally more fared significantly worse terms assessed combined score on COR. More specifically, this significant when predicting COR cognitive subscale, but nonsignificant motor subscales. This true controlling number students classroom-level, well child's age baseline ability Time 1 COR) child-level. Implications early childhood education policy are discussed.