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 * Students' Experiences of Ability Grouping- disaffection, polarization and the construction of failure.(by Jo Boaler, Dylan William, Margaret Brown) **

The article deals with the four-year longitudinal research held in six schools in the UK. Its aim was to examine the effect of ability-grouping practices on the overall achievement in mathematics and students' attitudes towards this way of teaching mathematics. The UK is a country where division of students with similar, equivalent abilities into groups which are taught separately has a long history. The assumption that everyone has a certain set of abilities pitched on a fixed level has given a ground and legitimized the so called "streaming". Almost all the UK schools have been experiencing [|"streaming"] since the 1950s. Despite the segregating character of "streaming" resulting in unequal opportunities for those from the upper and lower ability groups, the practices of selection in the UK continue to develop on a comprehensive scale. There are schools where 6 and 7 year old pupils are taught mathematics and science separately studying different amount of material, having different teachers using different schemes of teaching in different groups. The growing public concern on inequitable nature of the streaming practices continuing to widespread in the UK resulted in the research under consideration. All the students that took part in the research were taught mathematics in mixed, heterogeneous classes with varied abilities up to grade 7. Starting with the 8th or 9th grade they were divided into groups according to their aptitude in Math. Forty out of forty-eight students were eager to return to study in the mixed-ability groups. In addition, they reported lower achievement results and decreased motivation as repercussion of ‘streaming’. The major reason for students' dissatisfaction put in the highest set is the anxiety of covering the material at a too rapid pace without in-depth understanding and constant stress of failure. Top group teachers often treat their students as if possessing qualitatively and meaningfully distinct intellectual characteristics as opposed to the rest of the students. They are reported refusing to admit their students’ failure to cope with either fast pace of work or students’ inability of handling the material itself. They neither allot their students any sufficient time for tackling tasks nor allow them the possibility of miscalculation. As a result, students (mostly girls) feel dissatisfied by the methods of teaching and their own attainment and report they want to get down one or even two groups. Likewise, higher proportion of top-set students compared to the rest of the students often rank remembering higher than thinking. Consequences of ‘streaming’ in low-group settings appear even more damaging than in top- group settings. Lower group students report of frequent change of teachers, teachers with no mathematics qualifications sent to teach them. Further, such students are often taught on a very low level that does not allow any significant breakthrough to the higher levels of knowledge. They feel they are perceived as limited capacity students that are not expected to make any progress. Hence, they feel annoyed with teachers who do not even try to challenge them and real learning is replaced by mere copying from the board. The discriminatory character of the system segregating students by their abilities feels acute when a student making ones best at the lowest tier can obtain D as the best grade while one needs C grade to have the opportunity to go on learning or to be employed. The idea of ‘streaming’ emanates from the coziness to teach a group of pupils as a unit using the same materials, proceeding at the same pace. But the problem of setted groups is that one cannot expect the abilities of students located in a group to be identical. The pace of coping with the material at a particular level appears to be different even within groups with the so called homogeneous abilities. Both in top and lower-set groups there are always students who finish their task faster than the others or slower than the others. The former need to be provided with the additional studying materials or else they feel they waste their time. The latter sometimes feel dissatisfied and disadvantaged if a teacher carries on with the majority without giving them enough time to think or proper support. To recap, ‘streaming’ aims at the enhancement of educational attainment by sorting out pupils. However, the research states that teachers working with the mixed-groups being free of constructed expectations ('these pupils are successes, those are failures') use more strategies allowing work at an appropriate level and pace to the greater part of students. In students’ opinion, math lessons can be improved if there is a room for open work, group work, investigating and exploratory tasks. Moreover, students believe that even in a group of students with similar abilities the range of weaknesses and strengths is rather big and can become an advantage, since students can learn from each other. Lastly, the most startling finding of the research is that the proportion of students who consider the level and pace of their studying appropriate for them is higher (81%) in mixed-groups compared to 77% in setted groups. Indeed, the opportunity for a weaker student to learn the same material together with the more advanced ones sets before him higher goals and higher expectations on the part of their teachers and hopefully result in higher attainment.Acquiring the idea at a slower pace and at a different time for the less advanced seems much more attractive than diminishing their opportunities to learn. On the other hand, the more advanced students who are challenged rather than pressured are likely to show nice results without feeling depressed or frustrated. The authors of the article show strong favor to the mixed-ability classes and blame between-class ability grouping in low math achievement in the UK.

P.S. There is another word for heterogeneous or mixed ability groups - [|"banding" and there is one more term concerning the issue "setting".] "Setting" means streaming for certain subjects. [|The on-going discussion]on this burning for many countries issue is going on.

__Summing up...__

While relating to the issue of streaming, the majority of my collegues split up into two groups with opposing views. Noga and Irit claim that they have a great deal of experience as teachers of English which suggests that streaming facilitates teaching and stimulates learning on the part of students. They are certain that dividing their students according to their endowed lingustic aptitude and previous achievement yields good instructional results and proves its efficacy for those learning in homogeneous groups. Noga and Irit stress that given a teacher is sensible to his/her learners needs, materials are properly selected and students feel equal within their group, there is no reason why the practice of grouping would not work.They are both sure that advantages of grouping by far exceed its disaavantages.

On the other hand, Louisianne, Aleen and Rana tend to advocate the opposite point of view. They back up teaching heterogeneous classes without separating students in conformity with their linguistic abilities and achievements. In Aleen's opinion (and I personally strongly believe in it), no homogeneous group could be called or in fact is homogeneous, since there are no people with identical abilities, learning styles or background. Rana says that her individual experience of studying in the top group during her school years proved to be " a nightmare" and affected her future learning in the most negative way. Louisianne supports the latter point of view by telling that once they cancelled streaming in her school it was for the "own good" of each and every student.

I tend to think that a teacher finding him/herself in the homogeneous or heterogeneous surroundings has to make the best of the given situation. A wise and a well-trained teacher will modify his/her own instructional behaviour, teaching materials and ways of assessmment to make his teaching enjoyable and linguistically and intelectually efficient whether he/she teaches homogeneous or heterogeneous classes.