Ability Grouping - unintended consequences for learners and teachers. A need for a new transformational mindset for teaching to develop the talents and gifts of all students

This book explores ways of teaching without recourse to judgements about ability. It asks all teachers to reflect on the consequences for learners self images and the way they teach.

This blog will be the first of series based on the book 'Creating Learning Without Limits.'

I broke a promise to myself to not buy any more educational book but I couldn’t resist this one. And it didn’t disappoint.

I have never believed in the practice of teaching children in ability groups but the use of such groups is taken for granted by most teachers I have worked with over the years. How else do you cater for the range of abilities of students in my class', teacher’s reply when asked? I would reply but what about the harm done to those labelled as slow learners? This didn’t seem to be a problem and still isn't.

When I taught I chose, against advice of the school, not to use ability grouping instead choosing to help students individually, or in small groups skills required and then returning students back to whatever they were studying. The teachers who were advising me seemed to spend most of their day worrying about reading and mathematics whereas I wanted to focus on inquiry studies, language and the creative arts.

Anyway I bought Learning Without Limits which explores ways of teaching free from determinist beliefs about ability.

The book critiques the practices of ability labelling and ability focused teaching and examines the damage done to young people by there  use . The book's theme is positive and constructs a model of pedagogy based on transformability, the mind-set that children’s capacity as learners are not pre-determined and that with appropriate teaching all students can learn.

With the new deterministic emphasis on measured achievement based on National Standards ability grouping is gaining greater popularity. Schools  are being asked to set targets and being compared on their achieving results in literacy and numeracy .To gain ‘success’ have to comply to ‘best practice’ formulaic teaching differentiated for the three or four ability groups. Some schools are even moving into setting students across classes for literacy and numeracy. In secondary schools streaming is still the practice. In primary schools such an approach is resulting in a narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the tests and the side-lining of the creative arts.  And in countries where these ideas originate achievement levels are falling whereas,without this new emphasis, New Zealand has always been in the top performing group in international testing in literacy  and numeracy.

It is all about political ideology.  Read what Tapu Misa writes in the Herald

'Learning Without Limits' is an antidote to such nonsense.

The book provides teachers who are unhappy about what they’re being asked to do with an alternative– one that resonates to the creativeideas of New Zealand teachers past and present.

Teaching focused on ability grouping results in students unconsciously  indignity of ‘learning their place’. The view of ability has a long history starting with now discredited IQ testing. Today teachers use such grouping in ways they believe causes no damage but the evidence is otherwise. For many schools it is an unquestioned practice – it is the way things are done.  Cross class setting and streaming exaggerates the problem for learners that need more time

The book outlines a more optimistic view of education free from the constraints of ability grouping and in many respects it relates to the work of teachers in the 60s and 70s when creative teachers did their best to approach their work in a spirit of inquiry and adventure. Unfortunately the early promise of 'child-centred learning' was never fully realised as it was subverted by traditional pressure to group students and also by schools that over promised but couldn’t deliver.

By the mid-eighties the emphasis had swung to top down hierarchical National Curriculums Ability grouping was firmly established and alternative pedagogies were only for the determined. Briefly, in New Zealand, the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum and talk of personalisation of learning by the then Minister of Education providednew inspiration.

 'Learning Without Limits', after interpreting what went wrong, and following practical research by a number of teachers come to very different conclusions.

The book outlines a vision of schooling that allows everybody to enjoy a full education to realise their gifts and talents.

The authors quote Stephen Jay Gould ('Mismeasure of Man') to capture the author’s central concerns.

‘We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even hope by a limit imposed from without but falsely identified as lying within.’

The book is concerned that the talents and gifts of many young children remain untapped throughout their formal education. That , because of teacher mindsets about the value of ability grouping, not muchcan be achieved by those children from disadvantaged social backgrounds; those who do not enter schools with the ‘social capital’ to become positive learners’.

As the current reforms being imposed on schools by politicians fail or plateau, the time will be right for teachers to introduce a personalised pedagogy that promises a more promising and equitable improvement agenda- one led by educational research in tandem with creative teachers.

Getting rid of the often unintended consequences of ability grouping labelling is the first step; even just thinking about their use from the point of view of the learner.

I plan to write further blogs to describe the ideas formulated in this book.

Buying the book was worth breaking my promise.

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