Streaming And Pupil Attainment Flashcards
What is streaming?
Setting and streaming in education is where students are put into groups based on ability. The most academic students are placed in the top sets or streams the the least academic are placed in the bottom sets.
What does grouping and teaching by ability allow?
Allows for the more academic students to be taught faster and pushed harder, and for the less able students to be taught at a pace suitable for them and given the extra support they need.
What have studies proved about grouping and teaching by ability?
That it being able to benefit students at lower levels by teaching them at a suitable pace and giving them the extra support they need isn’t always the case, and students at lower levels do not get the support needed and it negatively affects them.
Who conducted a study of streaming in Beachside Comprehensive school and when?
Stephen Ball (1981)
For how long did Ball carry out his study of streaming?
Over a period of three years
What happened to students when they first arrived as Beachside Comprehensive school?
They were placed into one of three ability bands
What did Ball find about what determined the ability bands students at Beachside Comprehensive were initially placed into?
While the bands were supposedly based on ability, Ball found that other criteria such as social class background determined what bands pupils were placed in. Pupils of similar abilities were more likely to be placed in the top band if they were from middle-class backgrounds and those from working class backgrounds were placed in lower bands.
What did Ball find about the development of different attitudes of pupils in Beachside Comprehensive?
It was found that when pupils first entered the school they were all eager to learn and co-operative but over time differences in attitudes to learning and behaviour emerged dependent on which bands the students had been put into by teachers.
- Pupils in lower bands were the most likely to develop anti-school attitudes which manifested as putting less effort into homework, taking part in disruptive behaviour in class, and higher rates of absenteeism
What did Ball find about teacher’s attitudes to teaching the different ability bands?
Teachers also had different approaches to teaching the different bands, as pupils in the top bands were ‘warmed up’; they were pushed harder, and directed towards doing the more academic subjects and more difficult exams while pupils in lower bands were ‘cooled down’; they were directed to doing the easier exams and more practical subjects.
What was the conclusion of Ball’s study?
The conclusion of the study was that teachers label students based on their class background, and lower class students are more likely to be placed in lower sets and achieve lower grades in school, with the opposite being the case for middle-class students. Hence teacher labelling helps to reproduce social class inequalities in educational achievement.
What did Nell Keddie look at in her study?
Looked at the operation of streaming in a single subject in a large London comprehensive school
As well as looking at the classification and evaluation of students, what did Keddie also study?
The ways in which knowledge was evaluated and classified. She tried to work out the criteria used by teachers to categorise and evaluate classroom knowledge
What did Keddie discover about the ways in which classroom knowledge was evaluated and categorised by teachers?
- She discovered that knowledge defined by teachers as appropriate to the particular course was considered worthwhile; and knowledge from the students’ experience which did not fit this definition was considered of little consequence.
- Knowledge presented in an abstract and general form was considered superior to particular pieces of concrete information.
- The knowledge made available to students depended on the teacher’s assessment of their ability to handle it, thus those students who were defined as bright were given greater access to highly valued knowledge
What did Keddie conclude from her study?
She concluded that classification and evaluations of both pupils and knowledge are socially constructed in interaction situations
What conclusion did both Ball and Keddie come to?
That from an interactionist point of view, pupils experience school in different ways.
- They are treated differently by their teachers, given different labels, and often placed in different bands or streams. The pupils attach different meanings to their education and find a variety of ways to relate to their experience.
