Interventions to Reduce the Negative Effects of Ability Grouping

To improve ability grouping, Ireson and Hallam (1999) identified the following principles that should be followed; a student’s main experience should be within mixed ability classes and re-grouping by ability should occur only in subjects in which reducing the spread of attainment in the group was particularly important; the grouping plan must reduce student variability in the specific skill being taught, not just in general ability or achievement; there should be frequent reassessment of pupils’ progress and group assignment, and groupings should be flexible enough to allow for easy movement between groups; within the groups teachers must actually vary their pace and level of instruction to correspond to students’ levels of readiness and learning rates.

Due to the inconsistent nature of findings towards ability grouping, Hallam, Ireson and Davies (2004b) suggested that the grouping of pupils should be planned more flexibility to allow for the process or groupings to be altered depending on the needs of year groups.

2.6 International Research on Ability Grouping

It was important to consider different research that has taken place around the world; however this continues to be unequivocal. A great deal of research has been undertaken in different countries, for example in America and China; however this was not necessarily easy to generalise to this country due to the differences in culture and education systems.

Research in America suggested that grouping within schools was in place to allow for individual academic needs to be met (Harris, 2011). In America it was shown that ability grouping can have a negative effect on an individual’s self-concept and self-efficacy, and therefore led to impinging on academic achievement and future academic success or failure

38 (Ansalone, 2001; Ansalone & Ming, 2006); and this was particularly relevant on the affect this had on pupils placed in a low ability group (Oakes, 2005). Venkatakrishnan and Wiliam (2003) expanded this further by stating that pupils in high ability groupings tended to benefit or experience no difference, while those in low ability could fall behind. Harris (2011) highlighted that in American schools even though the same curriculum was followed in different ability groups, there were suggestions that curriculum coverage varied. This could have led to disaffection amongst the pupils from different ability groups if they heard about different topics or curriculum being covered, especially if pupils felt they should be in a different group.

Following on from the disaffection mentioned above, Burris, Heubert, and Levin (2006) found in America that pupils who were placed in top sets in Mathematics, or given the opportunity to participate in accelerated maths classes, were more likely to continue to study the subject further. This raised several questions: could this be the result of pupils who were placed in the top set or given these opportunities were more likely to be gifted in these curriculum subjects, and therefore would naturally continue to study these subjects anyway? Or could it be argued that they only continued to study these curriculum subjects further due to the opportunities they were given, and therefore those not given these opportunities or placed in lower sets were at a disadvantage?

In support of mixed ability teaching, Van Houtte, Demanet, and Stevens (2012) found that high achieving pupils in a mixed school environment experienced greater levels of self esteem, when they were grouped with lower achieving peers.

Yun Dai (2011) indicated the need for further research in China into the effects of ability grouping, as he found that Chinese pupils experienced a decline in academic self-concept,

39 however, further research was required to ascertain whether this decline was due to the school environment itself or the grouping the individuals were placed into.

Research conducted by Cheung and Rudowicz (2003) in Hong Kong supported ability grouping, as their findings suggested that when there were greater ranges in abilities this resulted in pupils having lower self-esteem. This was suggested to occur due to the greater levels of comparisons that could have occurred between the pupils in the mixed ability lessons.

In 2014, new research took place in China, as Zhang, Chen, and Wang (2014) felt there was not sufficient literature in China that provided empirical evidence regarding ability grouping (ibid, 2014). Ability grouping was organised differently in China, decisions to place pupils in certain groups were not based on performance in individual curriculum subjects, it was based on test scores (ibid, 2014). There were two types, key classes and non-key classes, essentially the key classes were high ability and the non-key classes were low ability. The two classes followed the same curriculum; however the key classes would have been progressed more rapidly. The key class would have had the most privileged resources, including the best teachers for all of their curriculum subjects (ibid, 2014). In contrast to this, it was found in America that class sizes were smaller for lower ability pupils, allowing the same level of resources to be available (Betts & Shkolnik, 2000; Rees, Brewer, & Argys, 2000).

Research in Chinese schools found positive results in relation to mixed ability classes (ibid, 2014), and it was suggested that when pupils were in this mixed environment it would have had a positive impact on low achievers. As supported by other research from America by Meijnen and Guldemond (2002), it was found that at the beginning there was no initial

40 impact on the high achievers. Further support was given by Ding and Lehrer (2007), where they found that low achieving pupils benefited from being surrounded by high achieving peers. However, they did also explain that high achieving pupils actually benefited more from being surrounded by other high achieving individuals (ibid, 2007).

Shepherd (2012) shared a report from Paris which acknowledged that when pupils were divided by ability, at an early age, this can lead to higher numbers of pupils dropping out of school and lower levels of achievement.