Secondary education has spent years exploring, debating, and implementing various approaches to homogeneous and heterogeneous ability classrooms.
The standard view is…
Grouping homogeneous academic abilities allows teachers to tailor instruction to the group’s needs. Furthermore, it can prevent high-achieving students from feeling held back and help struggling students feel more comfortable participating. However, the downside is that such grouping can label and stigmatise students in lower-ability groups. This may limit the development of diverse perspectives and collaboration skills and perpetuate achievement gaps.
With heterogeneous groupings, students with diverse academic abilities are exposed to a variety of perspectives that work to encourage peer learning. In such an environment, they learn to develop social skills and empathy. On the other hand, teachers often struggle to cater to the needs of all students, as both highly-abled and low-ability students can be ignored through a lack of sufficient differentiation in classroom tasks.
Working with homogeneous groups in Core Literacy
When I was inducted into the philosophy and practices of Core Literacy, I knew I would teach in a ‘streamed’ classroom for the first time in many years. Furthermore, I was very conscious that the students were also aware that they were to be organised differently from their ‘normal’ classroom groupings.
Lewis, Beth. “Homogeneous Groups in Education.” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/homogeneous-groups-in-educational-settings-2081647 (accessed October 29, 2024).