Education is about creating the conditions for all students to grow
The view of fixed
ability originates from early theories of IQ – that there is a single central
factor known as general intelligence. That young people are born with a
given amount of intelligence. And this is the principal determinant of
learning.
This view still has
considerable currency even though it is largely discredited and determined by
cultural factors and limited to language and mathematical aptitudes. The argument of TeachingWithout Limits is that there is a more empowering, complex and
multifaceted view of learning. Most teachers of aware of the multiple intelligences
research of Howard Gardner.
Today there is an understanding of the relationship between socio
economic background and school achievement and the cultural background of
students. Ability grouping is unfair if it doesn’t take into account young people’s
prior experiences and opportunities to learn. In the 70s researchers like
Coleman (Coleman Report1996) seemed to indicate schools could do little to
compensate such differences.
New areas of research
started to focus what was happening in classrooms which showed that teachers
themselves are implicated and maintaining persistent patterns of differential
achievement; that ability grouping helps create the very disparities it
purports to solve. It does this in subtle and unintended ways through the ways
it has on teacher’s thinking and through the impact it has on self-image for children
in the ‘lower’ ability groups. It is
obvious that teachers do not set out to do their children harm but they also
know that children live up or down to what is expected of them. The recent focus
on literacy and numeracy standards has
resulted in a greater emphasis on ability grouping, narrowing the curriculum and limiting the opportunities for students
to shine in other areas.
Learning Without Limits builds a new agenda for school
improvement around the development of effective pedagogies that are free from
ability grouping.
Research has brought to our attention the ‘hidden curriculum’ and how important relationships are between
the learner and the teacher. If teachers ‘see’ their students in terms of
levels of ability the students will ‘pick up’ on this. Students live up or down to the expectations of their teachers (as expressed
in Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s ‘Pygmalion in the
Classroom’ 1968)
Although most
teachers claim that students are moved up groups as they improve research shows that once placed in a slow
group this is where they stay: ’Once a weka always a weka’. The achievement gap actually widens. Jackson
(1964) found that ability placement at 7 was final – and now such definite decisions are made at an
even earlier age.
Hargreaves
(82) writes that ability labelling leads to a ‘destruction of dignity so
massive and persuasive that few subsequently recover from it’. He says that
ability labelling, ‘strips young people of their sense of being worthy, competent,
creative, inventive, critical human beings, and encourages them to find other
ways of achieving dignity, often through oppositional means’. Sadly many students go through school accepting what happens to them
without complaint. Gradually a polarizing effect occurs with pupils allocated to the slower steams
becoming increasingly oppositional and resistant as any secondary teachers
will know. Students are expert about picking up on messages about their
perceived worth – their position in the hierarchy of power. We all do.
Hargreaves
believes we need to understand the behaviours of such students and set up
alternative means for such students to achieve success. Ironically those
who end up in our prisons unable to read and write have had many hours of
unsuccessful teaching. More of the same teaching will not help them.
Schools
are, according to Cummings (2000) ‘white, middle class, monolingual and mono-cultural’.
Some students enter with all the ‘cultural capital’ to succeed. Through
increasing constant evaluation by their teachers, through messages of greater
or lesser worth, some students are made to feel incompetent leaving them ill placed
to engage in curriculum experiences. John Holt has written persuasively about
the negative effect of this ‘hidden
curriculum’ – not so hidden in some schools. It is the culture from the dominant group that is valued.
The
acceptance of the ability mind-set makes it normal for teachers to use such
groupings. This acceptance makes it
difficult to question its use and denies teachers the creative opportunities to
explore alternatives. Ability grouping acts on a constraint on teachers
thinking and creativity. .
The
acceptance of ability grouping also makes teachers believe they cannot effectively
teach students of different abilities together leading to differentiation of programmes
for different levels of ability instead of assisting all students dig as deeply
as they can into common experiences.
In
the UK the political decision to introduce literacy and numeracy hours has led
to more deterministic use of ability grouping and setting –and this is
happening in New Zealand as schools clamber to demonstrate success against
learning targets. Wait until National
Testing is introduced along with League
Tables!
That
all students can learn with appropriate time and help was demonstrated by
Benjamin Bloom (1976) with his mastery learning approach. Unfortunately
Bloom was fixated on improving traditional learning not in developing more
creative alternatives but he proved that ability was not the limiting factor. Bloom’s teacher dominated approach is still
alive and well in schools with the emphasis on intentional teaching and success
criteria and the like. The work of Marie Clay in the area of reading is a
better model.
There
is a need to raise teachers horizons of what is possible to create the
conditions for all to learn, particularly those currently in the so called
‘achievement tail’. To ensure success for all students requires removing the
limitations of ability groups and valuing success in other areas of learning. Today we are in danger of developing two
curriculums – on one hand literacy and numeracy and on the other all the
other areas of learning. It seems that literacy and numeracy have gobbled up
the entire curriculum!
There
is nothing fixed about ability grouping or how schools are organised.
We
could, as it says in Learning Without limits,
‘commit ourselves to an alternative improvement agenda, dedicated to freeing
learning from the limits imposed by ability-led practices.’ ‘That young
people are clearly capable of achieving very much more, and in ways different
from those suggested in current patterns.
The
authors are aware that is easier said than done How can teachers explore
new creative ways and at the same time fulfil compliance requirements which are
more political than educational are issues to consider?
The
side-lined 2007 New Zealand Curriculum has a key phrase – ‘every student should
be their own seek, user and creator of their own knowledge’ reflecting George
Kelly’s work on personal construct theory that we each construct our own
personal ways of seeing the world- our personal constructs – and that this
system defines the understandings by which we live. Thankfully for us our understandings can be reconstructed; we can
change our minds.
The
remaining chapters of Learning Without Limits are
based on the experiences of teachers who were willing to share their
experiences of teaching without recourse to ability grouping and, from them, a set of principles have been developed to
assist others who might want to replicate such ideals.
The
questions that teachers had to answer were: What ideas do they use to
inform their teaching? What adjustments
will they have to make? How will they organise their classrooms to engage and
inspire learners? What compromises will they have to make to fulfil compliance
requirements; and how will the school they work in support or constrain them?
As
George Kelly wrote (1970) ‘even the most obvious occurrences of everyday life
might appear utterly transformed if we were inventive enough to construe them
differently’.
So
it seems as simple as changing our minds –and, if we do, we know enough to create a far more
equitable and creative education system where all students can have all their
gifts and talents identified and amplified.
Next
blog – the process used to develop principles for others to make use of based
on the experience of selected classroom teachers – a model to follow in New
Zealand schools before it is too late!
