Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2021

The research projects in this dissertation lie under the umbrella theme of gender interactions in classroom environment and the impact on student achievement, with implication for the optimal allocation of educational resources in order to improve students’ performance and promote educational equality.
- The first project (chapter 2) investigates the causal impact of participation in single-sex rather than coeducational classrooms on student performance at higher educational level, using a natural experiment setting in a country where single-sex schooling is highly prevalent.
- The second project (chapter 3) examines the association between the classroom gender composition and the student math achievement via a cross-country analysis of TIMSS data.
- The third project (chapter 4) looks into the student-teacher gender interaction, providing evidence for the causal impact of teacher gender on student performance in the previously-unexamined contexts of Muslim-majority countries. 
My research findings provide important implications for the policy-making not only in Muslim countries but also for western societies with large inflows from the middle-eastern countries. Destination countries mostly face serious challenges of integrating their new members into the mainstream society. Despite their well-designed policies to address these challenges, they sometimes end up with unintended negative outcomes or simply do not reach their integration goals. In fact, certain distinct aspects of Muslim culture that naturally induced contradictory mechanisms had been initially overlooked by the policymakers. Similarly, the so-called cultural ignorance might cause policymakers to pass over some of the potentially strong and effective policy levers to address integration issues. A closer look on the gender dynamics in classroom could provide insights for accelerating the reforms with integration goals and promoting educational equality in destination countries.