IT and Music Education: what happens to boys and girls in coeducational and single sex schools?

This article reports the second stage of a project investigating the impact of IT, generally stereotyped as a masculine area of competence, in music education. The project examined differences between boys' and girls' use of music technology and their attitudes towards it. The second stage focused, in particular, upon the effects of school type, since previous research had suggested that girls in single sex schools are more likely to fare better than their counterparts in coeducational schools in areas of the curriculum stereotyped as masculine. The results of a study of 1115 pupils (661 11–12 year olds and 454 15–16 year olds) from eleven secondary schools (four girls', three boys' and four coeducational) in Leicestershire, Birmingham and Coventry are reported here. The most noteworthy findings came from pupils' ratings of their own abilities in relation to same-sex and opposite-sex peers. These ratings were lower in older girls from co-educational schools, indicating a particular lack of confidence within that group. Qualitative data from pupil and teacher interviews is used to examine explanations for this finding and its educational implications.