Does Grouping
Students by Ability
Promote Students’
Achievement?
Nora El-Bilawi
General Policy claim
When grouping students, factors need to put in
consideration other than students’ shared
abilities or achivement rates.
Article 1
• Wing-yi Cheng, R., Lam, S.-F., &
Chung-yan Chan, J. (2008). When high
achievers and low achievers work in the
same group: The roles of group
heterogeneity and process in projectbased learning. British journal of
educational psychology, (78), 205-221.
Retrieved from
http://web.ebscohost.com
Background/Research
Hypothesis
Effect of heterogeneity on
Low
High
Self
collective
efficacy
discrepancies
•
would the quality of group processes predict the
discrepancy between collective- and self-efficacy;
•
would student achievement predict the
discrepancy between collective- and self-efficacy;
•
would there be an interaction between student
achievement and group processes to predict the
discrepancy between collective- and self-efficacy.
literature review
Grouping in project-based learning (Webb, 1982), (Lou et
al., 1996) heterogeneous vs. homogeneous
Group process/four elements (Johnson, & Holubec, 1993;
Kagan, 1994) Interdependence, accountability, participation, social skills
Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1993; Bandura, 1997)
•
Self-efficacy
interaction
collective efficacy
Methods
Participants:
•
The participants were 1,921 students (49.9% males, 50.1% females;
39.8% seventh graders, 33.3% eighth graders and 26.8% ninth
graders) from eight secondary schools in Hong Kong.
•
The eight schools were located in different districts and varied in
socioeconomic backgrounds and academic standards.
Grouping and projects:
students were divided into small groups and each group worked on
one topic. The topics were open-ended and students were required
to make discussions.
•
The ways that students were grouped varied across the different
schools.
•
Total # of groups was 367; they were supervised individually by the
teacher.
Methods..
Instruments/Measures:
Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM)
Observation notes (of students quality and dynamic in groups)
sub-scales
Procedures:
Students completed questionnaire before submitting the
project. Group administered in class sessions
Data analysis:
Discrepancies between collective and self efficacy equation
Results
Results indicated an interaction effect of group process
and students’ within-group achievement on the
discrepancy between collective and self-efficacy.
When compared with low achievers, high achievers
reported lower collective efficacy than self-efficacy
when group process were of low quality.
Both low and high achievers reported higher collective
efficacy than self-efficacy when group process were of
high quality.
Strengths
Organized lay-out
Weaknesses
Data analysis strategy
Objectives in relation to
framework
Relevance to Claim
Group heterogeneity, group gender composition
and group size were not related to the
discrepancy between students’ collective and
self-efficacy.
Article 2
• Eder, D. (1991, July). Ability grouping
as a self-fulfilling prophecy: A microanalysis of teacher-student interaction.
Sociology of education, 54, 151-162.
Retrieved from
http://web.ebscohost.com
Background/research
question
First, the importance of ability and maturity levels
for assignment decisions will be discussed.
Then, the nature of teacher-student interaction
will be examined as well as differences in
interaction patterns across group levels.
Finally, group differences in actual and perceived
reading achievement will be analyzed.
It will be argued that it is differences in learning
contexts which makes ability grouping as a selffulfilling prophecy.
literature review
Attentive behavior (Goffman, 1963)
Management (Goffman, 1967)
Methods
Participants:
•
A first-grade classroom
Instruments & data collection
Over an entire academic year
Observation notes ( three day a week, three hours long, )
32 reading group lessons were video taped
Interviews with teachers
Methods..
Data analysis:
Observation notes were compared to video-tapes
•
•
During the first stage of analysis four video-taped lessons,
one from each of the four reading groups, were viewed
repeatedly.
A sociolinguistic approach will be used to analyze these data.
Results
Learning contexts varied dramatically across ability
groups.
Lower ability groups were found to have more
inattentiveness, teacher management, and reading
turn disruptions and violations, contributing to their
lower achievement.
Homogeneous grouping compounds initial learning
problems by placing those children who have
learning problems in the same groups.
Heterogeneous grouping might be difficult or high
students, but is essential for students with lower
Strengths
Weaknesses
Topic
Lay-out
Discussion
Instruments
Sampling size
Relevance to Claim
Indicates that the common practice of ability
grouping should be questioned..use some of
heterogeneous grouping.
Article 3
• Signor-Buhl, S. J. (2006). Conducting
district-wide evaluations of special
education services: A case example.
Psychology in the schools, 43(1), 109115. Retrieved from
www.interscience.wiley.com
Background/research
question
Evaluate the academic outcomes of children
served in self-contained versus inclusive models
of special education programming.
Q.1: Can the academic progress of students,
served in self-contained and inclusion programs,
be compared?
Q. 2: If so, what resultswould be generated?
literature review
Inclusive models (Banerji & Dailey, 1995)
IDEA’s LRE
Methods
Participants:
•
fourth-grade inclusion classrooms attending a midsize urban district in Upstate New York.
•
Permission to complete this study was secured from the district, and student confidentiality and
anonymity were maintained.
•
A comparison group was chosen by selecting a group of students from self-contained classrooms
within the same district.
•
To compare academic outcomes of students in different instructional environments, it was important
•
to ensure that each student selected had participated in a special education program for a
•
At least two years.
•
participants with significant disciplinary difficulties based on documentation of a previous
superintendent hearing and/or a manifestation review were excluded from this study to avoid possible
confounding variables related to student misbehavior.
Methods..
Measures:
•
Intelligence test scores were used to control for cognitive differences between the
inclusive setting and the self-contained setting groups.
•
Performance on the state mandated high-stakes assessment of English and Language
Arts (ELA) skills for all fourth-grade students was used as a measure of achievement
for participants in the study
Design/ Instruments:
•
quasi-experimental design was utilized.
•
All data were collected through a review of class lists, cumulative folders, and
databases that contained student scores on district- and state-wide assessments.
Results
Students in inclusive classrooms performed
significantly better on individual measures of reading
achievement then students in self-contained
classrooms, F (1, 57) = 7.9, p = .007.
Students in self-contained classrooms attained a
mean standard score of 65.35 ( z = -2.31) on
individual measures of reading achievement
Whereas, students in the inclusive classrooms
achieved a mean standard score of 73.61 ( z = -1.76).
After controlling for IQ, the children in the inclusion
setting performed approximately .6 SDs better on
measures of reading achievement, producing a
moderate effect.
Results..
students who participated in an inclusive classroom performed at
a comparable rate to students who were in self-contained
classes, F (1, 57) = .758, p = .39. A small,
positive, effect ( SDs = .18) was found for children in inclusive
settings.
Finally, results of the ELA assessment comparison suggested
students in the inclusive classrooms performed better on the ELA
than students in self-contained classrooms, F (1, 53) = 12.38, p =
.001.
Comparison of mean scores against the four performance levels
described within the ELA suggested that the self-contained group
( M = 583) fell within the lowest performance level
whereas, the inclusion group ( M = 614) fell one performance
level higher.
Strengths
Lay-out
Analysis
Weaknesses
“Intelligences”
Participants’ description
Measures
Relevance to Claim
students who are educated in inclusive settings
achieve at a rate that is comparable to, if not
slightly better than, those who are educated in
self-contained settings.
Article 4
• Chang, M., Singh, K., & Filer, K. (2009,
March). Language factors associated
with achievement grouping in math
classrooms: a cross-sectional and
longitudinal study. School effectiveness
and school improvement , 20(1), 27-45.
Retrieved from
http://web.ebscohost.com
Background/research
question
Effects of achievement grouping of on the early mathematics
performance of language-minority students and compares their
mathematics achievement to that of English-speaking majority
students.
analysis of the differential effects of within-class grouping on the
math achievement scores of students from English-speaking and
non-English-speaking groups.
comprehensive methodological approach, which employs both
cross-sectional and longitudinal analytical tools to interpret data
from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort
(ECLS-K).
In the cross-sectional analyses, they explored the direct effect of
grouping practices on student performance, while looking at the
long-term progress of mathematics learning in the longitudinal
analysis.
literature review
Meta-analyses of the effects of grouping on
achievement point to different results based on
grouping practice. (Slavin’s, 1987)
Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY)
(Hoffer, 1992)
The interaction dynamics governing teacherstudent relation (Gamoran, 1986)
Instruments/ Models:
Methods
•
Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a
nationwide longitudinal dataset
•
cross-sectional and the longitudinal growth models used four waves of
assessment of cognitive growth of children from kindergarten through fifth
grade from 1998 to 2003
•
The total of 21,260 students who were in kindergarten in the fall of 1998
participated in the data collection in the base-year data.
•
The sampling method of the ECLS-K used a multistage probability sample
design. In the primary sampling of the ECLS-K,
•
The units were randomly selected from 90 strata of geographic areas consisting
of counties.
•
In the second stage, schools were randomly selected within sampled counties.
•
A total of 1,277 schools, 914 public and 363 private, participated in the data
collection.
•
At the final stage, all students within the selected schools became final unit
Methods..
Data collection & Data analysis
Cross-sectional analysis
Longitudinal growth models
IRT
Signification of model
Results
Preliminary analysis
cross-sectional analysis
longitudinal analysis
Strengths
Instruments
Weaknesses
Unexplained tools
confusing lay-out and
analysis
Relevance to Claim
Increased use of achievement grouping in
elementary classrooms had a negative influence
on mathematics achievement.
Overall Relevance to Policy
Equitable access to education