This book presents a compelling range of international research on the issues of gender balance and gender bias in education. The chapters draw on cutting edge work from the US, Latin America, the UK, Ireland and Africa, presenting readers with new insights into how educators and students often negotiate deeply ingrained prejudices that are expressed in gendered terms.

This book was published as a special issue of Gender and Education.

1. Gender Balance and Gender Bias in Education: Issues in Education Research 2. Gender Balance/Gender Bias: the teaching profession and the impact of feminisation 3. A 'marked success': physical activity at Miss White's School 4. African girls, nineteenth-century mission education and the patriarchal imperative 5. Gender bias and imbalance: girls in US special education programmes 6. 'Twenty-four seven on computers': girls, ICTs and risk 7. Hard bargaining on the hard drive: gender bias in the music technology classroom 8. Exploring modes of communication among pupils in Brazil: gender issues in academic performance9. 'He was a bit of a delicate thing': white middle-class boys, gender, school choice and parental anxiety

Deirdre Raftery is the Deputy Head of the School of Education at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has published widely in the area of women's history and the history of education. Books include Women and Learning in English Writing, 1600-1900; Emily Davies, Collected Letters; and Female Education in Ireland, 1700-1900: Minerva or Madonna?. She is an Honorary Life Member of Girton College Cambridge.

Maryann Valiulis is Director and Chair of the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her edited books include Gender and Power in Irish History; Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland and Women and Irish History.