ABSTRACT
The shift in educational values in the 1960s towards equal opportunities and a more child-centred approach led to a decline in streaming and an increase in mixed-ability classes (Lee & Croll 1995). Advocated by the Plowden Report, this trend continued through the 1970s in the belief that mixed-ability classes would provide all pupils with equal access to a common curriculum and would promote the matching of individual learning programmes to the needs of individual pupils (DES 1978). This required the teacher to move away from whole-class teaching towards providing individual work tailored to the needs of each child (Gregory 1986). The Plowden Report recognised that it would be difficult to translate this ideal into practice and group work within the class was seen as a means of making it possible. As we shall see in this chapter, in most classrooms the ideal was never attained and groups have tended to be used as a means of managing the class rather than as a vehicle for teaching and learning. In this chapter we will consider:
the advantages of mixed-ability classes;
the rationale for group work in the primary classroom;
classroom layout;
group size;
whole-class mixed-ability teaching;
within-class groupings — ability and mixed-ability;
working in pairs;
individualised learning programmes;
vertical grouping;
special activity groups;
teacher skills; and
planning.
