ABSTRACT
Over the years since comprehensive reorganisation, many teachers committed to the comprehensive ideal have rejected ideas of fi xed ability and developed their practice to refl ect their beliefs. They share the view, so powerfully expressed recently by Clyde Chitty (2002) that ‘comprehensive reform has no meaning unless it challenges the fallacy of fi xed ability or potential in education. It should aim to dismantle all the structures rooted in that fallacy that act as barriers to effective learning while, at the same time, it should facilitate practices that enable everyone to enjoy a full education’. However, while such teachers have, individually, developed their practices in line with their ideals, the distinctive features of teaching approaches based on a more optimistic view of human educability have never been articulated in such a way as to present a convincing and practicable alternative to ability-based teaching.
