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Ability Grouping

The document discusses the challenges of ability grouping (tracking) in education, highlighting the difficulties teachers face in addressing diverse student abilities within limited class time. While between-class grouping can motivate high ability students and allow for tailored instruction for low ability students, it also risks harming low track students' self-esteem and perpetuating social issues. The document notes a lack of studies on the effectiveness of different grouping methods, despite the prevalence of within-class grouping for core subjects.

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24 views1 page

Ability Grouping

The document discusses the challenges of ability grouping (tracking) in education, highlighting the difficulties teachers face in addressing diverse student abilities within limited class time. While between-class grouping can motivate high ability students and allow for tailored instruction for low ability students, it also risks harming low track students' self-esteem and perpetuating social issues. The document notes a lack of studies on the effectiveness of different grouping methods, despite the prevalence of within-class grouping for core subjects.

Uploaded by

mohamedsarsar
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ABILITY GROUPING (TRACKING) pain or gain

Ever since formal education was introduced, the issue of differences in the level of
academic achievement, abilities and skills among students has posed many challenges to both teachers
and school administrators. Teachers are expected to cater for* these differences within the short class
period given. The average student may find the lesson to be of the right level of difficulty but the slow
learners tend to require more time while the fast learners may be bored by the elementary*
explanations designed for slow learners. The fast learners may require additional work of more
enriching content.

In the Tunisian educational environment for example, general weaknesses among


secondary school students were noticed in Mathematics, the Sciences and English Language. In these
subjects the range of performance was found to vary greatly making it impossible to cater for all
students at the same time. Both within-class* and between-class groupings* are being used but no
studies have been reported on the relative effectiveness of each of these groupings. However, within-
class ability grouping appeared to be more common for core subjects like Mathematics and English.

Between-class ability grouping or tracking has many advantages. For example, from a
high ability students' viewpoint, it enables them to compete with other students of similar abilities and
this motivates them to try harder. They use other better performing students as benchmarks to assess
their own performance. As for low ability students, the method may also favor these students because
teachers are better able to give them more attention and design ability appropriate activities for them.
Teachers certainly find it easier to teach students with similar academic ability and therefore are able
to design activities most appropriate for them. They will be able to attend to students' problems which
are expected to be less diverse than those found in heterogeneous groupings. (Teachers of
heterogeneous classes have problems giving attention to all students within the short time given
because of the diverse nature of help the students need).

However, many disadvantages of between-class ability grouping have been detected.


Among the most detrimental of them is the effect on low track students' self-esteem* and their
stigmatization*. It can also cause the maldistribution of ethnic and racial groups in the lower track
classes which may lead to severe social problems.

Teachers assigned to these classes tend to have low expectations of their students and this
may inadvertently lead to "dumbed down*" instruction which may reinforce existing weaknesses;
some teachers may even refuse to teach such classes .In another study based on student views of
ability grouping, students were found to be unhappy with their placement in groups.

Glossary
Cater for: = provide
Elementary: = simple
Within-class: = putting students of similar ability into small groups usually for reading or math
instruction.
Between-class: = forming classrooms that contain students of similar ability
Self-esteem: = confidence
Stigmatization: = blame/accusation
Dumb down: = to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (something, such as a
textbook)

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