Mixed Ability Grouping

A Philosophical Perspective

Charles Bailey, David Bridges

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315533599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

The book, first published in 1983, explores the argument that justifies mixed ability groupings in schools and the consequences of practicing the different justificatory arguments. The issues to be dealt with by staff making decisions about grouping arrangements in their schools are clearly worked out from basic principles rooted in social philosophy. The ideas of social justice and fraternity, implicit and unexamined in much discussions about mixed-ability grouping are here explained and their limitations and implications described.

The issues discussed in this book are not only important for teachers and for those studying to become teachers, but also for school governors, administrators and parents who can gain a better understanding of the school system through this study.

1
‘Mixed Ability’ – What do We Mean?

In asking what we mean when we talk about 'mixed ability groups' or 'mixed ability teaching' we are not announcing an attempt at close conceptual analysis. The concepts are in any case not sufficiently stable or firmly established to lend themselves readily to such analysis. What we do want to begin to identify is something of the range of practice whose logic and rationale it is the purpose of this book to examine. In this we are trying to avoid prescriptive or stipulative definition. We prefer to offer a relatively naturalistic account based on the existing literature and on the talk of practising teachers – to many of whom we are grateful for discussions which have gone to inform what follows.

Mixed Ability Classes

One does not need to attend long to the literature or talk on this subject to discover both a variety of practice which goes on under the name of 'mixed ability', especially in secondary schools which have 'unstreamed' as a matter of policy, and a variety of practice which could well go under the name but usually does not, notably in small infant and junior schools which have never seriously contemplated any alternative.

At secondary level few schools, if any, are organised in such a way that all classes from 11 to 16 are made up of groups reflecting the full range of ability in the school. The mixed ability organisation is typically limited to the first, second, or third year, or restricted to particular subjects whose character is thought to lend itself to work in mixed ability groups or whose teachers are ideologically committed to this pattern of organisation. Given this variety of practice Her Majesty's Inspectorate sought to establish a set of minimal criteria by which to identify a comprehensive school which was significantly attached to mixed ability work. They proposed 'one in which, at least up to the end of the third year of the normal secondary course, the curriculum was taught wholly or mainly i.e. with not more than two subjects excluded in classes in which the span of ability ranged from significantly below to significantly above average' (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 9). The definition draws attention to the two variables already referred to – the number of year-groups and the range of subjects which are taught in mixed ability groups – but adds a third significant consideration – the range of ability encompassed in the groups.

There are, of course, a number of factors which go to ensure that some classes include a much wider range of ability than others. It may be helpful to give these a brief mention.

(a) The Character of the Intake of a School

It is the constant complaint of some 'comprehensive' schools that they are not in fact fully comprehensive because of either the character of their catchment area or the presence nearby of another school which manages to 'cream off' the most able pupils. Some former secondary modern schools have barely extended the ability range that they used to receive in the days of formal selection. Equally, some schools have little experience of having to cope in their day-to-day work with, for example, pupils with only a limited command of English. A small rural primary school may arrange to accommodate within its ordinary classroom routine a child or children whose handicaps or disabilities would elsewhere lead them to be assigned to a special unit or a special school. The simple fact is that not all schools have to cope with anything like the same range of abilities or disabilities (cf. Monks, 1968; ILEA Inspectorate, 1976).

(b) The Age-Range Encompassed in One Class

Secondary schools in Britain on the whole assume that their classes will contain pupils born within a twelve-month period. This naturally tends to limit the diversity of attainment that one might find in a group, as compared, for example, with the range of reading ability one might find in a family grouped primary school. Interestingly, of course, a decision to break away from the chronological grouping could be taken with a view to achieving greater homogeneity in the group, as in the United States grading system, or might have the effect of greater heterogeneity, as in the family grouping pattern.

(c) The Use of Special Provision in the School

Some secondary schools which have adopted a general pattern of mixed ability grouping nevertheless make special arrangements for remedial work with the less able, which effectively means that classes rarely include the full range of ability represented in the school. Indeed, some take this policy a stage further to the point that, as Gough and McGhee (1977, p. 43) argue:

Where a school has a relatively small range of ability in its population and forms, a 'remedial' group and, as happens sometimes, an accelerated group – 'topping and tailing' –one is led to ask questions about how 'mixed' are the groups in the middle, and how different this is from streaming.

(d) The Way in which Classes Are Formed

If you do not deliberately construct your classes on the basis of some assessment of ability, how do you do it? Typically perhaps schools may take into account considerations like maintaining an approximately even distribution of boys and girls, separating trouble-makers, enabling friends to stay together. Beyond this they commonly resort to some apparently arbitrary measure like simply dividing up an alphabetical list. Such procedures do not, however, necessarily produce groups each of which contains the full spread of ability represented in the cohort of pupils. Schools firmly bent on achieving such a spread may need to employ some of the old tools of assessment to the new end of ensuring not homogeneous but heterogeneous classes.

But even then there are problems. For just as a supposedly 'streamed' school can result in what are in effect mixed ability classes, if the criteria on the basis of which they are streamed do not apply across the board, so would-be 'mixed ability schools' may find that they have generated relatively homogeneous groups in some subjects in which the criteria on which pupils were mixed do not appear to operate to the same effect. Those in favour of homogeneous grouping resorted to setting as a means of fine tuning their group composition. We are not aware of any unstreamed schools that have taken their advocacy of mixed ability groups to this length. Why this is so may turn out to be revealing of some of the complex motives schools have for favouring mixed ability grouping.

(e) The Way the Curriculum Is Organised

Fairly or unfairly, some secondary school subjects enjoy a reputation for being more academically demanding than others. Some schools deliberately introduce options designed to be more intellectually accessible to students who are struggling with an apparently more demanding element of the curriculum – for instance, a largely descriptive 'French studies' as an alternative to a language-based course in 'French'. Even where such options are in principle both open to any taker, it is a natural consequence of this kind of alternative that the groups will tend to constitute themselves roughly on the basis of ability in the subject. The school which offers a wider range of such alternatives will tend (independently of other variables) to create for itself relatively homogeneous groups; the school which insists by and large on a common curriculum will tend (again, other considerations apart) to retain a relatively wide range of ability in any particular teaching group.

These five sets of considerations combine to demonstrate that when we talk about a class being mixed ability we are talking about a wide range of 'mixes'. There is an educationally significant sense in which any group of children is a mixed ability group. Indeed, this is precisely the point which many advocates of mixed ability grouping want to make against those who, they believe, treat streamed groups as an homogeneous block. But clearly at the other extreme a particular combination of circumstances and policies could generate groups of children representing a range of ability that must surely defeat even the most dogged refusal to recognise the variety of individual needs.

Mixed Ability Teaching

It is one thing to decide to organise a school so that each class in a given year group contains a full spectrum of ability (however assessed). It is another thing to decide how to teach and how to organise that group within the classroom. In our experience the teachers most deeply disillusioned with mixed ability grouping are those in schools which have taken the first of these steps without giving proper consideration to the second. The recent NFER study (Reid et al., 1981) reported headteachers' views to the effect that inflexibility in teaching methods represented one of the major constraints on the effectiveness of mixed ability grouping. As one head put it: 'We teach mixed ability groups but we do not do mixed ability teaching.'

At the simplest level 'mixed ability teaching' is any mode of teaching operated with a mixed ability class. In practice this can mean a variety of strategies reflecting, among other things, different views of the point or purpose of mixed ability grouping and its attendant educational and social values. These include the following.

(a) Undifferentiated Class Teaching

Some teachers attempt to carry into the mixed ability class just the same style of class instruction which they had previously employed with a relatively homogeneous group, in spite of the obvious difficulties of matching the manner, pace and content of the instruction to the diverse levels of achievement among the children in their care.

(b) Individual Work in Ability Groups

A second, perhaps essentially conservative, response to mixed ability groups is to introduce a micro streaming structure within the classroom. In primary schools in particular this is commonly associated with the grouping of children around tables, each group working individually on assignments related to their approximate level of ability. Where resources permit, a remedial group, for example, may receive special help from a teacher with time set aside for this purpose.

(c) Individualised Learning

Some teachers judge that the only proper response to the variety of individual needs, which is made especially evident in mixed ability groups, is a programme of individually tailored assignments. Most often this involves the use (sometimes ad nauseam!) of commercially or personally produced work-cards. The HMI report Mixed Ability Work in Comprehensive Schools (Department of Education and Science, 1978) reported that this was the most frequent alternative to whole class teaching encountered during the survey conducted by HMI. It argued, however, that distinction needed to be drawn between 'individual' work and 'individualised' work.

Individualised work involves personal assignments devised to meet the different needs, abilities and attainments of individual pupils. Individual work is activity on which the pupil is engaged by himself, at his own pace, but which is essentially the same as that being undertaken by the rest of the class. (p. 37)

The report adds that most of the work seen other than class teaching was individual rather than individualised in the sense which we are picking out here.

(d) Collaborative Mixed Ability Group Work

As we shall go on to explore in more detail (see Chapter 5 below), some teachers see a logical connection between a preference for mixed ability grouping in the school and an attraction to collaborative group work in the classroom. This collaboration may be based on the allocation of tasks related to different abilities (e.g. one child does the writing, a second does the picture and a third pastes the two on to some card and pins them on the wall). Alternatively, as with group discussion, team games, or choral singing, it can be based on the deliberate suspension of such discrimination.

We are not at this stage concerned to be prescriptive as to which or what combination of these or other teaching strategies is most appropriate to mixed ability groups. For the moment we wish merely to observe that 'mixed ability teaching' refers to a variety of teaching styles used with mixed ability groups.

Ability

We have so far left unquestioned the ready assumption that one of the things we have to take as given in contemplating different forms of educational organisation is that children are naturally distributed on some kind of hierarchy of ability (which then provides a sensible basis for their distribution into classes in school). This assumption is challenged by advocates of mixed ability grouping in a number of ways.

One particular preoccupation which runs through much of the discussion about the principles of comprehensive education as well as mixed ability teaching concerns the distinction between attainment and potential. By 'attainment' is meant something like presently demonstrable achievement or realised capacities; by 'potential' is meant some supposed capacity which might have been realised by now had previous conditions been more favourable or which could still be realised given the right conditions in the future. 'Ability' is a term which is used somewhat ambiguously to cover both attainment and potential.

Of course, empirical judgements about people's potential require inferences which rapidly become fairly conjectural. Deale has suggested that 'in practice we have no useful way of assessing potential (or even defining it) with regard to an individual child' (1977, p. 88). Daunt is more hopeful (1978, p. 54):

Assessment of a child's potential is a difficult task, but not impossible. It involves, certainly, a comparison of past with present performance, but not only that, since obviously such a comparison could not on its own tell us anything about whether a child's whole recorded performance, both past and present, was comparatively good or bad in personal terms. Other data must therefore be collected to build up a picture of each child's potential. This must include observation of whether a child's performance is erratic, and if so in what ways; of the child's demeanour and attitude to work, including what the child says about the pleasure or frustration he experiences; of any known specific impediments to personal success, whether in the environment of home or school.

What is plainly the case, and this is a matter of logic which hardly requires empirical study, is that a child's potential cannot be established by mere mechanical comparison with present achievement. That a child cannot do something now implies neither that he could not have done it given more favourable circumstances hitherto nor that he could not do it given appropriate circumstances in the future. Part of the argument against streaming is that it creates conditions (including low expectations by pupils and teachers of likely achievement) which positively depress achievement in comparison with potential; part of the case in favour of mixed ability grouping is that it can remove at least this form of inhibition.

At the level of logical principle there are really rather few limits on what human beings in general or individual human beings, even those in the tenth stream, might not do, at least intellectually, in ideally adapted circumstances and in time. Not only this, but at the practical level it is sobering to reflect on the dramatic achievements of physically and mentally handicapped people for whom only a generation ago society would have had no higher ambition than they might through some mechanical skill contribute towards the cost of their own upkeep. Once we break out from our hidebound conceptions of when, where, in what conditions and with what human and technological assistance learning may go on, all sorts of new possibilities become open. As Jackson argues in one of the by now classical critiques of streaming (1964, p. 143):

Excellence may have genetic limits, but we must alter circumstances a great deal before the genes finally stop our growth. Meanwhile our colossal technical resources can serve an imaginative approach to education, and rediscover what every great civilisation of the past stumbled on. In favourable circumstances, excellence is not static or severely limited. It multiplies.

The teacher who reports that a child 'could do better' is reporting a safe and almost logically necessary truth.

But what becomes particularly significant in the context of the egalitarian considerations which underl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• 1 'Mixed Ability' – What Do We Mean?
• 2 The Rationale
• 3 Justice and Equality
• 4 Fraternity
• 5 Grouping, Teaching Styles and Subjects
• 6 The Lessons of Experience
• 7 'Going Mixed Ability' – Who Should Decide?
• Notes on Further Reading
• Select Bibliography
• Index