Why Student Grouping Matters: Mixture, Streaming, Inclusion: Reproducing or Overcoming Inequality From the Classroom

• In Event: Promoting Social Transformation From Education: The Role of Successful Educational Actions

Abstract

1. Objectives

This paper presents a new classification of ways of student grouping (“mixture”, streaming, and inclusion) elaborated within the frame of the INCLUD-ED project and later further explored in the Spanish research R+D study MIXTRIN. The paper discusses the effects of every form on learning opportunities and results, as well as how each type reproduces or overcomes educational exclusion. It also clarifies the confusion between “mixture” and “inclusion” present in most popular international surveys.

2. Theoretical framework

Gramsci (1971) already stated that splitting the educational system into different tracks for different students perpetuates social differences and is a practice far from being democratic. Later, extensive research has shown that students placed in the low streams are most of the time from vulnerable social groups (Oakes, 1985); streaming damages low-achieving students, who are provided poorer learning opportunities, what in turn reduces their performance (Braddock & Slavin, 1992). Streaming also worsens inter-group relations (De Haan & Elbers, 2005; Youdell, 2003). Differently, when students with different background and levels of ability are placed together to work cooperatively based on dialogic interactions (Freire, 1998; Racionero & Valls, 2007), academic achievement, self-esteem, solidarity and the acceptance of diversity (Slavin, 1991; Cesar & Santos, 2006) improve.

3. Methods and data resources

The classification identified in this research emerged from an exhaustive analysis of: 1) multidisciplinary research and theory on student grouping, 2) the educational systems, reforms and policies in the twenty-six EU member states, 3) data on school performance across Europe.

4. Results

INCLUD-ED has provided a new classification of types of student grouping, namely, mixture, streaming, and inclusion:

a) “Mixture” means one teacher with all students into the regular classroom. It implies homogeneous teaching from the view of the mainstream culture and leaves behind minority students and those with special needs.
b) The most common response to “mixture” is “streaming” or segregation of students by levels of ability. INCLUD-ED has identified four diverse streaming strategies. Streaming often implies more professionals for the segregated spaces and practices.
c) “Inclusion” implies keeping all students together and including in the classroom and in other school spaces human resources that are already in place, such as other teaching staff that before was used to stream as well as community members. Inclusion seeks equality of results while attending all types of diversity. INCLUD-ED has identified various inclusive strategies.


5. Significance

This new classification contributes to better understand existing types of classroom organization and the results associated with them, including as a novelty the dimension of how human resources are employed. The same human resources that can be used to segregate can be reallocated to include every student in the classroom and have the same learning opportunities and results. In addition, this classification differentiates “mixture” from “inclusion”, and thus solves an error found in major international surveys, as they do not allow for differentiating between those, despite their quite opposite results.

Authors

• Rosa Valls Carol, Universitat de Barcelona

• Elena Duque Sánchez, Universitat de Girona

• Silvia Molina Roldán, Universitat Rovira i Virgili