Description

Mission
The Center represents a commitment by a consortium of schools, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania and other universities, to conduct research, encourage public discussion, and advocate on behalf of boys and girls. Member schools are committed to developing an evidence basis for their curricula and to supporting faculty research that answers key curricular questions. Emphasizing methods that give voice to boys’ and girls’ experience, especially with regard to their identities as males and females, the Center helps schools promote the widest sense of possibility and greatest hope for integrity among their students. Its work is explicitly collaborative, engaging students, their parents, teachers and administrators, as well as university faculty, in a common pursuit of understanding and school improvement.

Membership
CSBGL is comprised of a small group of coeducational, coordinate and single sex, day and boarding schools. Each school has organized action research teams to explore key questions related to boys and girls education, guided and supported by Center staff. These teams present their work to each other at an annual Roundtable conference.

The Center also includes additional schools, affiliate members who, having completed a CSBGL Audit, desire to maintain both the Center’s support for evidence-based programming as well as communication with other schools pursuing parallel questions. A bi-annual student survey sampling key topics in boys’ and girls’ education and attendance by several staff at the Roundtable are key benefits to this membership.

Annual Roundtable
Each year the Center provides an opportunity for schools to share with teams from other member schools in a Roundtable. The two-day conference includes a keynote talk by national experts on boys’ and girls’ education, relaxed times to share with faculty from other schools interested in similar questions and a full-day conference with research reports and collective discussion. Work presented at the Roundtable is posted on the member page of the Center’s website, to facilitate ongoing conversations among teams pursuing common interests.

Published Work
As a research organization, the Center encourages its staff to contribute to the development of scholarship in the field of boys’ and girls’ education with conference presentations and publications. Links and full reports are often also made available on the Center’s website: www.csbgl.org.